AlanB
Elite Member
Hi folks, as driveways are often discussed, I thought I would try and show what I am doing on mine.
To set the stage, just over a year ago, we bought a fairly run down house on 9.5 acres.
We have a landscaping Lawncare business and then I have a job to pay the bills.
We stock bulk mulch to use on our landscaping customers and it comes in on "walking floor" semi trailers, 65 cubic yards at a time.
Our ground is really wet, and does not drain well. Somehow to add to the Joys, my house sits dead in the middle of where the soils change over, front is Red Clay and back is Grey (bentonite type) clay called Guthrie soil in these parts. (read this as neither the front nor back drains well)
So, I am always, broke, or cheap, or some combination of the two so am constantly on the lookout for ways to do things cheaper, and tend to use a lot of remnant stuff, scraps, leftovers or free stuff on my own projects.
For equipment around the house there is
Babe, 1925 NH (34 hp tractor)
Lil, 555c Ford Backhoe
Kabukie Bob, Bobcat 743 skidsteer
6X10 homesteader dump trailer, affectionetly known as the dump trailer.
Last year we did a lot of work on our basic get to the house driveway so that we could uh,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Get to the house The soils had rolled in so much over the past 40+ years that it was higher then the basement door and the water rolled off into the basement. For pictures etc. that was shown under AlanB's house rework thread here on the Projects forum.
So one of this summers projects is to make the big U shaped drive to get the semi trucks in and out of the yard with less hassle. About 2 weeks ago, the mulch delivery truck got stuck, they called in a huge wrecker, which overshot my driveway, when he realized it he just backed across my neighbors front yard instead of down their drive leaving 8" deep ruts for about 15'
So I have followed many of the driveway threads here, and spoke to many folks along the way and the summation of my driveway thoughts are as follows.
Remove topsoil if possible.
Big rock, then smaller rock, then smaller rock with fines.
Geotextile is good
Make the water drain off your road (I will caveat that this is not always possible)
Ok, earlier I mentioned that I am cheap so here is where the cheap part of me comes to play.
We do some business with a local concrete block manufacturer (and paving stone maker) and thinking about it, I thought they would have a lot of "scrap" that I figured I could buy cheap as "fill" or rip rap type stuff. Thinking through it I sent SWMBO to ask the question and their answer was, yes, we have two mountains of it, take all you want, we will load you whenever you want......... So that helps a lot in the "big rock" and the "make the water drain" parts of the Al B's formulae for successful driveway construction. They are 3 mile's from the house.
Talking with my buddy Bill one day, who is probably even cheaper then me, we were talking about Geotextiles etc. and he said, yeah, but you know, you can always just lay chainlink fence down. It will rust and disapear after a while, but it is usually free or people pay you to take it because most dumps etc. do not like to handle it. Then you saw me go as I just happened to have a pretty sizeable pile in the back yard. Don't you love it when a plan comes together.
I actually have some geotextile as well, but am "saving" it for the front drive.
OK, so current game plan says, dig to clay, save and sell topsoil, lay in chainlink fence, cover with clay from other digging and scrap concrete rock and block, then topdress with #2 (2" to 3") stone.
So, I started the last round by digging some with Lil, little front and a little back action, just to see how it would go and did a test little bit.
After doing this I have determined that I must purchase a dozer Of course SWMBO did not quite see the logic in this thought process as she felt continuing to feed the kids on a regular basis was more important. So while I convince her of the error of her ways, my buddy has a nice Komatsu D20 A 5 sitting quietley at his house that I may have to borrow unless I can really convince my daughter to go on a big diet
So here are pictures.
17 Here is what a pile of the free fill looks like
19 Did I mention, water stands here
20 Need to go across here
22 then we need to turn and go down to this road (the road is where the telephone pole is).
34 Lil, wallowing around in the hole she dug
36 I also had an old trampoline laying around,,,, Looks close enough to geo for me
39 Here the rock / clay / scrap is in the hole.
As always, advice and comments appreciated. Anyone have a spare dozer around they would like to help the poor with?
To set the stage, just over a year ago, we bought a fairly run down house on 9.5 acres.
We have a landscaping Lawncare business and then I have a job to pay the bills.
We stock bulk mulch to use on our landscaping customers and it comes in on "walking floor" semi trailers, 65 cubic yards at a time.
Our ground is really wet, and does not drain well. Somehow to add to the Joys, my house sits dead in the middle of where the soils change over, front is Red Clay and back is Grey (bentonite type) clay called Guthrie soil in these parts. (read this as neither the front nor back drains well)
So, I am always, broke, or cheap, or some combination of the two so am constantly on the lookout for ways to do things cheaper, and tend to use a lot of remnant stuff, scraps, leftovers or free stuff on my own projects.
For equipment around the house there is
Babe, 1925 NH (34 hp tractor)
Lil, 555c Ford Backhoe
Kabukie Bob, Bobcat 743 skidsteer
6X10 homesteader dump trailer, affectionetly known as the dump trailer.
Last year we did a lot of work on our basic get to the house driveway so that we could uh,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Get to the house
The soils had rolled in so much over the past 40+ years that it was higher then the basement door and the water rolled off into the basement. For pictures etc. that was shown under AlanB's house rework thread here on the Projects forum.So one of this summers projects is to make the big U shaped drive to get the semi trucks in and out of the yard with less hassle. About 2 weeks ago, the mulch delivery truck got stuck, they called in a huge wrecker, which overshot my driveway, when he realized it he just backed across my neighbors front yard instead of down their drive leaving 8" deep ruts for about 15'
So I have followed many of the driveway threads here, and spoke to many folks along the way and the summation of my driveway thoughts are as follows.
Remove topsoil if possible.
Big rock, then smaller rock, then smaller rock with fines.
Geotextile is good
Make the water drain off your road (I will caveat that this is not always possible)
Ok, earlier I mentioned that I am cheap so here is where the cheap part of me comes to play.
We do some business with a local concrete block manufacturer (and paving stone maker) and thinking about it, I thought they would have a lot of "scrap" that I figured I could buy cheap as "fill" or rip rap type stuff. Thinking through it I sent SWMBO to ask the question and their answer was, yes, we have two mountains of it, take all you want, we will load you whenever you want.........
So that helps a lot in the "big rock" and the "make the water drain" parts of the Al B's formulae for successful driveway construction. They are 3 mile's from the house. Talking with my buddy Bill one day, who is probably even cheaper then me, we were talking about Geotextiles etc. and he said, yeah, but you know, you can always just lay chainlink fence down. It will rust and disapear after a while, but it is usually free or people pay you to take it because most dumps etc. do not like to handle it. Then you saw me go
as I just happened to have a pretty sizeable pile in the back yard. Don't you love it when a plan comes together.I actually have some geotextile as well, but am "saving" it for the front drive.
OK, so current game plan says, dig to clay, save and sell topsoil, lay in chainlink fence, cover with clay from other digging and scrap concrete rock and block, then topdress with #2 (2" to 3") stone.
So, I started the last round by digging some with Lil, little front and a little back action, just to see how it would go and did a test little bit.
After doing this I have determined that I must purchase a dozer
Of course SWMBO did not quite see the logic in this thought process as she felt continuing to feed the kids on a regular basis was more important. So while I convince her of the error of her ways, my buddy has a nice Komatsu D20 A 5 sitting quietley at his house that I may have to borrow unless I can really convince my daughter to go on a big diet So here are pictures.
17 Here is what a pile of the free fill looks like
19 Did I mention, water stands here
20 Need to go across here
22 then we need to turn and go down to this road (the road is where the telephone pole is).
34 Lil, wallowing around in the hole she dug
36 I also had an old trampoline laying around,,,, Looks close enough to geo for me
39 Here the rock / clay / scrap is in the hole.
As always, advice and comments appreciated. Anyone have a spare dozer around they would like to help the poor with?
