Howdy folks, I have about a mile of gravel road that I need to grade. The first quarter mile is washboarded and full of potholes as well as the the last quarter mile. The middle seems to be OK and just needs to be machined. The road has not been graded since it was built and the people who live on the road have just been filling in the potholes for the last several years. The county does not maintain it and left it up to the homeowners to do so. My question is would you go ahead and reshape the entire road or just the first quarter mile and the last quarter mile and machine the rest??
First off, welcome to Hef Brock 302. In your mind does the road need to be reshaped? Reshape to me means cleaning ditches for water runoff and such. If the shape of the road is still good than only a good grading will be in order. I would start off grading by subcutting the washboards completely out. Cut them so you can no longer see or feel them. If you don't cut them deep enough, they will return in short order. Once the washboards have been cut out, then I'd regrade the whole road back to shape with a crown, or pitching the top if thats necessary to aid in disposing of runoff. Just my opinion,,, Gramps.
Hi Brock 302, What type of grader or tractor are you using, is it mostly sand there. grandpa is sure right about the grading, some types of soil pack good, look at what is on the better drives where you live. sam.
X2 on what grandpa said
grandpa is telling the truth, most homeowners try to only blade and just fill the holes but it will not hold up. You have to take it down and and bring it back or the next rain/ road traffic will pound it out again. If you are going to do the work yourself I would call in no cuts and see what services are are running down the road also, phone/ cable/ gas /water can add up fast. We have alot of roads around here that phone and cable are almost on top, plowed in only 3 to 6 inches all over the place and can be a real pain dealing with them.
Grandpa gave some great advice , sometimes we will also instead of cutting copletly with blade , we pull ripper thru them deep and then start re-working as already stated. Lot depends on road soil type , just dont try to short-cut it - take the time to do it right and you will get good results.
I probably wouldn't use rippers around Bryan IIRC that area has some pretty chunky clay. I would think that wouldn't work to well.
Talking about washboards or corrugations as we call them over here in Aussieland the trucks running over them cause an impact shock wave that some report can go 2 meters ( and more ) into the direct ground beneath. And in my experience on upgrading and repairing dirt roads is that they reappear very soon after completion. So my advice is to ripp as deep as you can and reconstruct it as best you can ( eg. ripp, water, turn over, and re lay, & compact etc ). Unfortunately money and time don't allow this in a lot of circumstances so washboards ( corrugations ) will always be with us until they seal it lol which is more money and time.
I have over 10,000 hrs. of this kind of work. I will not go into the MANY variables of the road itself, however, do the mile entirely. It only takes about 35-45 minutes.
I agree with Turf. This will make it look that much better. And you won't have to come back to do the 1/2 mile that you are considering not doing now.