New road to the barn

[joeu235]

Working on a road to my barn. First used a moldboard plow to build up dirt onto the road base, then the skid steer to clean up the ditches, a heavy disk to break up large clods and smooth things out some, and driving the tractor back and forth to compact the dirt. I'll let rain and traffic finish compacting the dirt, finish smoothing it out, and spread road base on it in a couple months.

 

[LD1]

Looks good. But topsoil doesnt make the best material to build up a base with. Hopefully you wont have any issues.

 

[joeu235]

The soil is black land clay that goes to China.

 

[The Suburban Farmer]

I wish I had that kind of topsoil "problem" at my place... when I dug a road on the back of our property last fall, it was all red clay.

Your road looks good! But, I'd have to agree with LD1 that I MIGHT think about taking the topsoil off and putting it somewhere else to use, and then regrading with the next layer down and adding a few extra inches of road base to build it back up. When we made a new road through the pasture on my family's old farm -- which has some deep, high-quality topsoil -- we had some serious issues with washouts and washboarding just a year or two later. Thought we packed everything down tight, but it still had a LOT of erosion under the gravel.

Just my 2 cents -- take it for what it's worth.

 

[Arc weld]

I think you'll have problems when it's wet. Might need to rent a sheep's foot packer and really pack it down before you add gravel.

 

[Ed of all trades]

I have a drive that is probably 3/10s of a mile long and the only part I am having problems with is the 50' section that they dug out the top soil. It looks like it ought to drain but it just keeps needing more gravel. I wish he had left it alone.

 

[EddieWalker]

We don't really have top soil here in Texas. It's all clay in most areas. from where the grass grows, down as far as you can go. Top soil is organic and decomposes over time, this stuff just gets hard when dry and nasty when wet. If I understand what was done, he dug out the ditches for drainage and put the dirt on top of the road to build up a crown. Now he's working on compacting it by driving over it for a few months. All in all, it sounds like a perfect plan that should give good results.

Eddie

 

[bspeedy]

Not sure how similar our SC clay is to your TX clay, but... I had great results when putting down a layer of fist-size stone (called surge stone here) and driving on it for several months. Afterward, it was topped with 2" and smaller material down to quarry dust size. This method has provided a super driveway of about 1/4 mile in length that has lasted the last few years with no issues and very few touchups to the top layer.