The company I work for just got a contract to grade some local county gravel roads, ive been designated about 15 miles of two lane hard packed. To be honest I havent really done much road work on with the grader, mostly finish work and scraper chasing. Im just looking for some basic advice on really were to start and how to go about grading a two lane gravel road, I never really was tought the proper wey our anything like that. There not really looking for a precise slope or anything just a smooth road when im done. any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks btw machine is a 140m
http://roadgradingschool.com/files/ROAD_GRADING_SCHOOL.pdf Something I came across several years ago.
15 miles .....how much time do you have to complete the work ? Is the two lane used very much?. is it a ditched road ? do you have a sod shoulder ? What type of material on the road ie 3/4 road gravel or is it just natural soils ?. Thats just some questions before I can comment
Don't know what material your on but all rds pretty much the same. You need drainage to keep rd passable. You need to keep a crown. Once you make a pass then you ca move material from center to other side of rd on next pass and leave a wind row on edge to go with the next time you grade rd. That is one way of maintain a rd. There are other methods of this it depends on your material and rd travel of vehicles weather solid or sft base and how often they want it graded
Try this website. I think it's a dandy! http://www.mnltap.umn.edu/publications/videos/gravelroadmaintenance/
I have an article about this very subject on my website that you may find helpful.
You may also want to use a box scraper to do those roads, I use mine weekly just to scatter sand and rock to keep a smooth driving surface. Mine is a gradall brand 10ft wide and uses 4- 5ft grader blades or edges whitch ever you call them. It also allows me to finish grade leaving 2" of lose sand. And rock on top of road. If yo leave much more than that it creates trails and heavy piles of material that can be hard to drive on if you need to pass. It also allows you to grade at 11-13mph instead of the 3-4 mph on grader
May be the discussion should be what not to do. Start with "do unto others .....". DO NOT leave rock larger than your surface material in the road. I carry a potato fork to clean-up with as needed for automobile traffic. I have seen roads left with 4 inch plus river rock scattered like land mines over a finished job. DO NOT attempt to blade on a muddy road. A waste of time unless you are just trying to improve some drainage. Same goes for a road without sufficient moisture unless you have a water truck available . DO NOT pull ditches until you "know" where the utilities are. Knowing where they are suppose to be won't help you much when explaining that wad of copper wire or that smell of mercaptan in the air. DO NOT use the grader to find culverts as it decreases their worth considerably. DO NOT expect traffic to equate your presence on the road with slowing down. I especially like finding a trail of oil leading from the windrow to the side of the road, or better yet, several miles of oil trail leading to an abandoned car. Expect a call from an upset citizen. If you don't put up signs at both ends, you might be responsible for those peoples (lack of) driving ability. Most of this is common sense, but we all get in a hurry sometimes. BTW, does this contract including snow plowing ? If it does, then you can easily double this list of "do nots"
Like it, sound advise
Sorry for the lack of information guys, road is 3/4 minus crushed.. sod shoulder, and they only want it graded about once a month. The county plows it themselves, there cuttin back on summer help an dont have time to grade it. Im just lookin for advice on how many passes and what direction to move the material.
Should be easy to maintain one pass each way move to crown and then to other shoulder. Sounds like the road doesn't get much traffic. My roads get 50-200 cars a day some I'm on everyday others once a week
If you can get the windrow over the crown in one pass you can finish the road in two passes. If you can't get it over in one pass you will need to make a second pass just to get the windrow over the crown and you can probably finish it in one more pass. Don't straddle the crown with the machine or you will get a flat center. If you get washboard like ripples or potholes in the road you have to cut them out. If you smooth them over they will come back. If the grader starts to bounce you are most likely driving to fast and you need to stop or slow up a lot real fast or it won't stop bouncing on it's own and you will have a real mess. These are a few things that I learned after 22 years working for our Township. Traffic can be interesting. I once had a school bus pass me on a bridge. I would have swarn there wasn't room but somehow she flew right by. I didn't need to feel my wrist to count my heart rate for a while.
so you would just cut one lane, roll it as far to the center as possible, then on the return pass grab the windrow and wing it towards the ditch? Also the road actually gets quite a bit of traffic from crude haulers and its usually rough and beat to hell by the time they want it graded again
Yes farmer45 thank you. It would depend on how wide you're road is and what mold board you're machine has. 12-14-16-24ft but over laping the crown is key. By the way I have people pass me all the time on bridges So if you read in the news about it you know where I operate and what township. LOL
Yep you got it. That sounds like once a month is not enough.
Machine is a 140M AWD, 14ft moldboard I believe. havent been down the road in a while but if I remeber right its definetly wopuld have to be a 3 wide pass road.. which brings me to my next question, would I then use the second pass just to get the first windrow over center into the opposite lane? I`m thinking the road is gonna be pretty nasty by the time i get there so im sure i will have to cut out all the holes and rough spots.. do i just roll it from side to side once or twice as im cutting the bad spots out? man this has given me a whole new respect for them county boys
That will take more than a top grade but yes you will have to cut the ruts out. Then blade it to your satisfaction. Do the same for other side of road. This will mix you're materials so you get a better pack and holes wont come back right away. When you cut be carefull not to cut past the bottom of holes you could end up with more dirt than mix and in wet terrain you will have a slippery mud road
Haha i agree, county cutbacks I guess, Oh well it will give me some good road practice. My forman was considering some kennametal cutting edges. anyone have any experience with them.. do they work? also I really appreciate all the sound advice guys!
I use straight edges but have a scarifier on front of grader for wash boards. Can just tear up portion that needs repair not the whole road.
Okay thanks! I really appreciate all the info
Have fun!!
2 things to keep in mind, dont place the windrow or stock pile any closer to the edge than you can recover w/ out losing material and avoid picking up any more sod and grass than absolutley neccesary (none at all in a perfect world). I did some reclaming last summer on some roads and was instructed to hog out some old sod covered windrows that had been there for years. At the same time on one road I just worked the edges gradually. The road I worked gradually was in much better shape and was easier to reclaim then the ones where I ended up with big sod windrows I had to work back and forth to break up. Anything you introduce into your windrow other than gravel becomes a pain because its most likely not going to break down without a few passes so your left w/ debris on the road edge or when it gets small enough it will want to clog your blade when you spread. This was different work for me so I dont know all of the ins and outs of pulling the shoulders in, but parts of it were a hassel. Anyone with experience please feel free to jump in.
Yep ur right I reclaimed ditchs for 2 yrs solid and it was a job but worth it get all the mix out and be able to drain the ditchs
Most of our roads are narrow enough that I can use two passes. I like to cut a little off on the first pass and loose most of it on the other side. It seems that no mater what I do people will all drive in one track on either side or down the middle. If the traffic is heavy and using both sides of the road this may not work as well. The main thing is to not cut across the center of the crown so you have to get the windrow to dump over the crown so you don't have to reach over to pick it up. We have a 14ft blade. We have a 2ft extention that I've used and love it for blading the road but it is harder to use when cleaning ditches and tucking in behind out snow plow so we have taken it off. I've also learned that what seems to work good one time may not work as good the next. You just have to have in mind what you want to do and try whatever it takes to get it done. I've learned a lot by trial and error.
I have tried a new approach to leaving a windrow, in the summer months I cut a extra edge along the rd and fill it with my windrow material. Its always there if i need it and its smooth so people don't. Have a pile to drive over and the homeowners don't have a pile to mow into. It works really good. In the winter I go back to the traditional windrow so i can cover the rd fast in ice and snow. I also cut my roads backwards once a month to get a cross cut. My boss is very picky about the roads being smooth. So we spend a lot of time on them.
Early on, learning the art of gravel road maintenance, my supervisor pointed out to me that the gully cutting five feet into the road I recently "worked over" was the result of my leaving a windrow between the road and the drop-off at road's edge. Water from a downpour did what it does and followed that windrow down hill until it became a stream, (or maybe a river), and finally busted through where it resulted in quite a cut into the road surface and embankment as it drained off. It took several hours and a dump truck to repair. My lesson learned was to allow for water to leave the road gradually and do not let it become a raging torrent looking to create a Grand Canyon.
Yes, its easier to control water where I at but the problem i have is no drainage, once ditch fills I have flooding roads. Flat part of area
I live on gravel and our grader man needs to be shot, he didn't crown the road causing it to hold water and become a muddy mess.... Heres a good video about it. http://youtu.be/nTEfXsDqdUg
Hi caleb, My roads were in the same shape when ii took them over 4 yrs ago. People gave me the 1 finger salute on my first day. Now they wave nice but a bad grader person is just that. A great operator wears a lot of hats so to speak. His boss doesn't. Care what he has to do just do it, the people driving on the road just know it's rough. It leaves the operator to do what he wants. That is where the rubber meets the road. He can do it right or just do enough to get by. I live by the rule why be good when you can be great. You can judge a man by his work.
If you have been finish grading new roads you will put into practice the same things you are used to regarding slope etc.The only thing is filling soft blow out spots with no material gets tough but you use what you got.You should do alright,alway thought you have to know how to build a road to be able to maintain it properly.
Knowing how to build a road helps, I dont think the operator's always put that into practice. I see roads that are filled with lose gravel to get rid of wasboards everyday. And there back the next day. You can't keep doing the same thing and expect different results. Also see a lot of dump trucks spreading sand on top of roads that have to much material on them to start with. I know first hand of a wreck caused by to much on the rd. This rd had 10" sand on windrow and they sanded with dump to fill in driving ruts. Great operators are hard to find it seems.
Weather ,amount of rain ,timing of rain etc plays a big part in sucess of a good road . Also a grader cannot fix everything.Washboard is a common but hard thing to repair as dry weather is not good for cutting and filling.There is no right way or wrong just what works for the time and conditions
That is very true, I got. 3" snow Tuesday first moisture in 6 months I'm blending snow with top gravel today to keep moisture on the rd supposed to warm to 40s by weekrnd so want it to melt on my rds