Road and Driveway maintenance

[kcook]

Looking for some advice on a 300' driveway and 1/4 mile or road (just put in upto County specs) maintenance. Both will be gravel. All four seasons. We can get a good snow storm or two each year.

Back Blade, box scaper or something better. At first money will be tight as Im getting a tractor and FEL.

Tractor will be 24 hp to 26 hp. Im looking at one SubCut the others will be Cuts. I plan on buy all together.

Any good brands and models?

Thanks

KC

 

[darkviper]

Compact Drag Scraper
or best would be

Grading Scrapers

These type or what roto tillers are to gardening. I have see the later work and am going to get one myself

 

[LoneCowboy]

Road Boss Grader - Road and Landscape Grading, Surfacing and Leveling, and Material Spreading and Reclamation

 

[kcook]

Compact Drag Scraper
or best would be

Grading Scrapers

These type or what roto tillers are to gardening. I have see the later work and am going to get one myself

How much are these unit? Any idea?

KC

 

[schmism]

i think ive seen prices at $1500 and up.

I have a LARGE heavy 6' blade. Its GREAT for road maintance. the ability to offset, tilt, etc is very important IMHO for good maintaince.

with options like gauge wheels and end plates they just get more usefull.

Your likely to spend the same amount on a High end rear blade (landpride RB3572) as a dura-grader or simular. (new... i lucked out and got a great deal on a used one) http://www.snjschmidt.com/pics/property/Sep_06/DSC02395 (Large).JPG

I think you would find the rear blade to be more usefull overall than the dura-grader. Its abilty to recover materal from the edge, tilt, crown, offset, windrow material etc are all features not easly achived by the dura-grader.

 

[darkviper]

You can get the 48" model from cammond aroun 700 ive been told that is what i am looking at

 

[dtd24]

I am in the process of building a driveway to my barn, and couldn't do it without the boxblade. I have the back blade for snow removal and light grading, but I think the landscape rake works best with the top layer of gravel.

 

[Coyote]

For low bucks, get a used box scrape and practice!

 

[kcook]

For low bucks, get a used box scrape and practice!

That was my thoughts, at least till the new house goes up.

KC

 

[dweitzel]

KCook, just worked on this project last week. Installed new gravel over well packed topsoil and some clay that was dug out with the loader. My observations are as follows:

Box scraper is a must to create the level surface, breaking up the soil and smoothing/filling in voids and low spots. A tooth bar on a loader can help some, but the box scraper seemed to do a great job with leveling out the initial dirt surface. Multiple passes required to break up the soil and leve it out nicely.

Box scraper also for maintaining the drive/road with some new gravel here and there as needed.

Rear 5-6' blade for dragging out new just dumped gravel either in piles, or tailgate dropped from the trucks. I attempted to use the box scraper, but just could not seem to spread the gravel out as quick with the box scraper. Perhaps I should have backed into it and used the rear balde on the box scraper to "push" the gravel along. I did find that the angle of the 6' blade did pull the gravel into the center real nice and keep the gravel from spilling out off the intended roadway. I just angled the blade left and right with each pass spreadding the gravel out thinner with each pass.

Can anyone else chime in? This is the first road/drive project I've done, so I'm sure there's a learning curve that others more experienced with these attachments can school me some. How do others use these 2 attachments? Are my observations correct?

Dave

 

[kcook]

Thanks Dave, I would think the Box Scaper would not work well with snow.

Any good box scapers manufactures? What size for a tractor 24 to 26 HP?

KC

 

[dweitzel]

I have a 6.5' King Cutter. Seems pretty substantial in thickness of material and quality. It's pretty heavy. My tractor is a 36 hp, and with the FEL for ballast on the front it works out pretty well. If you go with front weights or a FEL you can probably get away with a 6' running in low range gearing. A hydrostat will suck a little HP from the driveline, so you may consider a 5'-5.5' for hydrostat trans. Ideally you want to match the outside dimension of your rear wheels or be able to swing it to one side with your 3-point adjuster chains to the outside of the tire if needed and hold it there. That gives you pretty good flexability to square up edges of "trenches" that you may be scraping, (Like a new driveway scraping off some of the topsoil).

You obviously need more HP the deeper the scrapers are set and the hardness of the material you are ripping out. Roots and rocks will snag the scrapers also requiring aq little more HP. Others may chime in but I think something in a 5'-5.5' range will probably work real well for you. Look at King Cutter, Bush hog and Woods brands box scrapers. You probably won't go wrong with these brands.

Depending on how much use the scraper will see, you may want to check if the long scraper bar for pushing and leveling is replaceable, or reversing if you wear it down on the gravel. Not sure how long mine will last, but the King Cutter I have I can reverse the scraper surface by removing a few bolts. I plan on using mine a lot and keeping it a long time. Got a great deal on it on Ebay last year.

Dave

 

[Slamfire]

One thing I don't want on my drive is a level surface. I want the water to drain away from the road. Sometimes you can do this with a middle crown. Sometimes you need the entire roadbed to angle to one side or the other. I use a back blade for the most part, because I've not yet seen a box blade that can be angled, or a towed grader that can be tilted more or less than the existing grade. I also have a landscape rake. After a good rain, there should be NO standing water in your road.

 

[kcook]

Your right about the crown, I will have to check to see if the contractor is putting one in.

If there is a crown on the road will not the tractor natually follow the crow?

KC

 

[patrick_g]

Dave, I have a HD box blade with hydraulic scarifiers and TNT on the 3PH. This is a formidable combination and does good road building and maint. You can make/maintain a good crown to shed water. I also have an angle blade 3PH grader thingy which only does one thing better than the box and that is to recover gravel too far over on the margins of the road. With the BB I can operate the tractor at right angles to the road to get gravel back where needed off the edges but it is time consuming and there is not always room to do that.

If I could only have one implement for road maint it would definitely have to be the box blade. Mine has cutting edges on both sides so you can use it like a dozer blade when you back up. I'm not knocking any of the various road maint implements specially made for the purpose but I don't need one since I do so well with the box blade which has many uses not just gravel dressing. IF $ were no object, I might get one of them but I'd rather use the $ elsewhere and the box on the gravel. I get gravel delivered by dump truck and a belly dump leaves a long high ridge of gravel which I can spread with the box much faster than messing around with the FEL. IF ai get a load from a 10 wheeler back dump then the FEL is used at first.

The drive to and around my new house is about 1000 ft. I have other gravel roads on the property which require little maint but once in a while I give them a lick. Actually the drive in front of the house is shale not crushed limestone. Shale makes a superior drive, compacts better than limestone, even with fines, and in my area is a tad cheaper. It is less dense so they just fill the trucks and don't weigh them as they can't hold enough to be overweight. When well used and packed the shale is almost like a blacktop surface. It comes with many lumps fist sixed and larger too but breaks up easily and DOES NOT DAMAGE passenger car tires in the breaking up period.

Note: I am in south central Oklahoma and don't typically plow snow. All three of my pickups are 4x4 and the wife doesn't go out in the Prius till I have "broken trail" with a truck if there is significant snowfall. In the rare event I "mess" with the snow, I use the FEL and box blade only because I am too lazy to drop the box and put the angle blade on.

Pat

 

[Egon]

I'd go for a back blade and gauge wheels. Probably the cheapest option.

Build up a windrow and move it back and forth over the road. This will fill in low spots and give you the smoothest road surface. Gauge wheels let you crown road.

Uhh - I' biased on maintaining road surfaces!

 

[patrick_g]

Egon, There is always more than one way to approach an economic decision. The back blade is certainly cheaper but is less versatile. If you need to do any of the other things a box blade can do that you can't do with a back blade then the box blade is the most economical solution. Note that I said economical not cheapest as they are frequently NOT THE SAME THING. Cheapest is frequently not the most economical just like the most expensive is often not the best.

If driveway maint is the ONLY thing the operator will ever do and will never do BOX BLADE tasks that the back blade can't do then the back blade is a better solution both functionally as well as economically. Most folks end up wanting to do more than a back blade can do.

Pat

 

[dweitzel]

Pat, love your box scraper. Wish my cub was set up like that. KC asked 2 questions about the snow and the roadway maintenance. I threw in a little more depth about building the drive in the first place and having gravel dumped in a pile vs tailgate dropping the stone in an even layer. Maybe I confused the thread a little.

Can you explain how the box scraper will work spreading out a pile of limestone dumped in one place? Do you use the FEL first, THEN use the box scraper?

Does your Box scraper tilt by hydraulics to angle to create the crown in the middle? I know I can do this with the adjuster on my rear 3-point, just takes a few more minutes to get off and monkey with the arm.

If KC is going with base line attachments like I have, (ie no hydraulic scarifiers or top link), then the box scraper would be best for drive/road maintenance, a FEL would be required unless all the gravel is tailgate dropped and pretty evenly spread, and a back scraper blade would probably work best for snow removal.

As others posts, yes the crown will be needed for water shedding, and doing a long drive or road, I think the box scraper set up properly and tilted would be the best option. I have the luxury of having an angled back blade that tilts up and down as well as left and right. (Woods 6') does a pretty good job. This is unless I need to "tear" up some of the material first. The scarifiers are required for this.

The box scraper would be the primary purchase and if a nice rear blade is to be had at a good price, then that might be a nice secondary purchase. The box scraper with a little adjusting will do all the road maintenance well EXCEPT the snow removal.

Did I sum this up correctly?

Dave

 

[SBD]

I must be missing something. I've owned box blades and rear blades and the rear blade always seems easier to use for long stretches that need to be smoothed out or aggressively graded down. You can also flip the blade backwards and simply smooth things out with no digging.

I had a BB first but once I bought a rear blade, I never used the BB again.

 

[Tig]

I had my first try at grading a half km of hard gravel laneway last weekend. I had a BB and a small amount of new gravel to work with. Most of the load of gravel was used to fill craters elsewhere.
My rookie observations;
TnT made it possible to scrape some gravel from the edges and spill it towards the center of the lane. Bit by bit.
I made many passes constantly playing with the TnT to scratch up enough gravel to work with. The lane was very hard and dry already.
Having a full load of gravel to fill the BB with and drag around would have made the job much easier.

I do think I need a grader but I can't justify the expense and I am short on storage space. What I will try to do is build a bolt on grader mod for my 4' BB. I Think I can do this with 20' of scrap 3" angle iron. I hope this will make the process more efficient and require less fussing with the TnT. If it doesn't work out the bolt on mod may evolve into a standalone attachment.