Another Newbie looking to buy a tractor

[paulsharvey]

On driveway width, 12 ft, With 4 ft of clear "shoulder" on each side will readily accomade any vehicle around (some emergency services require 16 ft clear space), if the driver can drive. Make your turning radius nice and large, avoid sharp turns.

The 4 ft shoulder should slope away from the driving surface if possible. This does multiple things; it gives you a total of 20ft of clear area, enough for two vehicles to slow and pass each other; it keeps roots and veg from encouraging, it allows you to mow the shoulders, it allows a semi to get in, and it gives an area to control water flow.

Culverts, if needed, completely skip 4", 6", and 8". If it needs a culvert, start at 15". Make them Longer than you think. IE, extend 8 ft beyond the road bed on both sides. At the frontage road, large radius are your friend; 25 ft radius, gives you swing room.

For the base, you want to strip the organics, and any pumping clays. Compact, and then place the base material. 6" of good compacted base is better than 12" of dumped poorly done base.

 

[BlueKnife]

I think he could do 800 feet in a summer!

Perhaps. Or he could hire a contractor who could do it in two days.

 

[paulsharvey]

For the DIY vs Hired done comments;
800 LF, clear, strip, compact, and 6" of base is probably gonna run, 4 12 hour days, or about $14,400 labor ( that's pushing the rocks and trees/stumps out of the way, not hauling), 320 tons of base material, or about $4,800 in material. Culverts would be atleast $4,000 more, but could be more. So, I'm rough bidding $30,000. If you are Way out, that would go up another 25%.

DIY, you're still going to want at least a 4 ton roller to proof roll your subgrade, then your base. That's probably $1000/week rental. Your rock isn't going to be cheaper, culverts you can self source. I think you can save about $10,000-20,000. It's probably going to take you the better part of 160 man hours, but you have half payed off the tractor that will give you many decades of service.

This brings me to my point, if you don't need a 60hp utility tractor long term, hire it done. If you do need it, buy it and work it. If your long term plan needs a 30hp, buy that, do the stripping/clearing with a $600/day rental tracked skid steer. Then do the spreading, grading, with your 30hp tractor.

 

[paulsharvey]

If you want a turn key driveway, stumps and stripping hauled off, grass stabalized shoulders, a Done job, I'd expect the price to be closer to $60k. You are going to strip 16 dump truck loads, plus stumps, bolders, ect, and that's another 2 days of a machine on site. Find grading the shoulders to +/- 0.3 ft for sod, that's an extra day of a machine/operator and a ground guy. Then the price to grass it. A good contractor, good weather, and a clear plan, it's probably 6 working days of work.

If you decide to contract this, Please do your self a favor, research it, have a contract, and include specs in it. Don't hire a random guy by the hour off FB Marketplace. Treat this like a home builder, and have a plan and spec.

 

[MaineBarn]

Alright so I'm hearing loud and clear to not pick a tractor based on that potential project but instead to focus on the right tractor for my at home needs. The driveway project would be too much for essentially any tractor.

Maybe a 50HP tractor could do some of the work, but ultimately it's not the right machine. Even with enough time, the consensus is I'd run into things I couldn't complete and would still be spending to rent rather than own.

Not really that interested getting somewhat heavily used equipment, probably running into maintenance issues (when I'm in the middle of nowhere), and then ultimately needing to sell down the road.

 

[paulsharvey]

Step #1, get a measuring wheel, spray paint, and go lay the drive out, and look at what really needs removed, draw it up on an aerial, and look at it; consider alternative routes, and how they affect your future land use.

 

[airbiscuit]

I use flagging tape and the Huntstand app for mapping our 80 acre hunting property trails.

 

[paulsharvey]

I use flagging tape and the Huntstand app for mapping our 80 acre hunting property trails.

View attachment 2105563

When you are laying stuff out, and i get this is your parents home site, you really also want to roughly lay out future land use. Stuff like pastures, barns, ect, and take the opportunity to plan conduit chases for power/water. I agree Basemap, Landglide, Earth, Huntwise, ect are good tools, but before you get too serious, you can order a 24x36" print for like $15, and then scale draw every in. If you contract it out, you need to do this anyways, you may (or may not) need to for county permitting, ect. I assume you have a survey in PDF format?

 

[paulsharvey]

All that, but its hard to beat boots on the ground, and actually laying it out. Cheap bundles of wire flags are good, because you can do the centerline, and move it to fit.

 

[MaineBarn]

I use flagging tape and the Huntstand app for mapping our 80 acre hunting property trails.

View attachment 2105563

That looks really good! For the trails, can you see them without the lines in place? Or do they look like it's completely tree covered? I did take a look at the satellite images and can see some of the old logging trails from the overhead view. There's some over in the area I'd be clearing and could possibly plug into what looks like two old routes. It would be more of a V than a straight path which is fine. However, based on some of the other obscure probable lines, there could potentially be a lot more paths that are covered by overhead trees.

When you are laying stuff out, and i get this is your parents home site, you really also want to roughly lay out future land use. Stuff like pastures, barns, ect, and take the opportunity to plan conduit chases for power/water. I agree Basemap, Landglide, Earth, Huntwise, ect are good tools, but before you get too serious, you can order a 24x36" print for like $15, and then scale draw every in. If you contract it out, you need to do this anyways, you may (or may not) need to for county permitting, ect. I assume you have a survey in PDF format?

It's kinda of limited use situation. They have a basic structure on the lake where they spend much if their time. It might be 400sq ft. Because of it's proximity to the lake, they can't drill a well. There is no way to drill on the other property and supply water to the other property as the road bisects them and they aren't allowed to run under it.

The driveway would pretty much be for an updated structure where they could relax on days when the weather was poor or if they wanted to entertain.