A more durable driveway

[Ironwood]

10' drop, I wish I had that, we drop 100' in,....well 300', so steep there was no going back to once you started grading w/ the ole 8N. The top 50' is so steep it is hard to walk it. Flooding would never be a problem, washing down the hill perhaps. One of the regrind trucks tipped over sideways and pinned on a tree trunk. Front loader came to rescue him, ripped off the bulkhead. Rough terrain. Got rid of the 8N there by avoiding natural selection. ;D

Ironwood

[Al_Smith]

In Pittsburgh that comes as no surprise .There are no flat spots unless you make them .Up hill or down hill, no middle ground . ;D

[SwampDonkey]

Reminds me of the hills in Knowlesville and Divide, pretty to look at, not so great to work on. Up hills both ways. :D Well named. Here on the farm we never had any hard hills, mostly flat and mostly under 10 %. My woodlot wouldn't change 20 feet from the lowest point to the highest. The house lot is actually on a bigger hill, but it's long and gradual and not steep. Probably a 60 foot change from the lowest to highest on the 4 acres. It's a long lot, but not rectangular.

[pigman]

I have a short drive, only a mile, but my way of road building is different than most.  Half of the road was shared with a neighbor and I had to do it his way. We bought gravel every year and the road was always rough with deep ruts because of the tracks. After a little discussion and me agreeing to pay for everything, I got control of road maintaince. The neighbor wanted a low narrow road  so he wouldn't slide off the road. Water ran down the tracks, washed ruts and stood in the flat areas of the road. I rented a dozer and raised and widened  the road. Now, with minimum gravel the road stays dry and if water gets in the road after a hard rain it will quickly move off the sides of the road. I spend far less on the shared portion of the road now even though I pay for all gravel instead of half. Another thing in road upkeep is to have the road wide enough to not make single tracks. If the shoulders of the road are not driven on, they will get higher than the middle and water will run down the tracks. It sounds expensive to raise a road and loose all of the gravel, but in the long run it has saved me money and the road is a lot smoother.

[Ironwood]

I suppose a bit off topic, but I am an eastern ohioian by birth and I always loved the topography and woods in Pa, I always knew I would live in Pa. I even have a dramatic 200' drop to the East on our property line , you don't realize it until you really look, then its like WOW, that a freakin big drop. Neighbor cut "tables" and roads for deer fencing, we watched the new JD extra long track (xlt) 650 cut them, and all I gotta say is that guy was good, really good.  One hill so steep a 4x4 quad has NO chance of climbing it. He pushed over trees going down to hold the dozer back. .  Ironwood

[SwampDonkey]

Yes, a well ditched dry road makes a world of difference. Most people around here run a dozer up through their woods and no ditches. Great big mounds of mud holding all the water in the road. That seems to be the old way of doing it by most logging operations on private land. Quick and messy and cheap, but a wet soup in rain. The timber licenses and freehold mill owners build roads with ditches but sand and clay don't hold up in the wet season. And some don't build proper roads on slopes. The farm here we could drive the roads a few days after the snow melts, 4 or 5, you can't on those forest roads where we cut brush. The road crew here however ruined the road last summer where it turns to dirt off the pavement. They shoved off all the packed gravel they trucked in there 3 years ago and brought the ditch material into the road bed and pushed it around with a grader. I never saw a pith poor job as that in my life. When it rains that mess turns to snot. Ruined the road bed, I could swear.  The farmers coming through and the onlookers out for a sunday drive have rutted that road for over a mile to the next community road.

[Al_Smith]

Going east on US 30 towards Pa the lay of the land changes dramatically once you cross the river in Mansfield Ohio .It  gets more hilly the further you go eastwardly .

By the time you cross the Pa line they stack those acres on end .My dad grew up in Universal Pa which is kind of like a suburb of Pittsburgh .The first time I ever saw those hills through the eyes of a young boy of 8 years of age they looked like the rocky mountains . :D

[stumper]

Yes a good ditch is important.  The three most important things in roadway maintenance is drainage,drainage, and drainage.

[barbender]

Yes a good ditch is important.  The three most important things in roadway maintenance is drainage,drainage, and drainage.

I agree.  ;)

[Ironwood]

I do enjoy the topography here, it is what I call "accessable", not like say the rockies where mountains will "deny" you safe access by there shear scale. I REALLY love West Virginia. We get WV Public radio, and it is funny to hear, "the highs today will be 30's, 40's and 50's"  :D which is due to the varied terrain and elevation.

"Stacked on end" I like that.

Ironwood

[Al_Smith]

Here's another option .Bank run gravel will pack about as hard as concrete if you live in areas of gravel deposits left over from the ice age . You have to pay attention to crowning it because it doesn't drain real well with a bunch of fines in it .It's usually cheaper than limestone .The price of any stone ,fill ,whatever is not where the cost is involved .The trucking is what costs you .

I have around 350 tons of bank run inside my shop with 7.5 inches of reenforced 'crete  over the top . Makes darned good cheap fill  if nothing else .

[SwampDonkey]

No shortage of gravel in these parts. It's in river terrace, drumlins, kames and eskers.  ;D

[Al_Smith]

What in the world is all that ? Sounds Greek to me .

A drumlin sounds like one of those little wing things off a chicken they've figured out how to sell . I can't imagine buying something they give away free at bars during happy hour but to each their own .Speaking which though,whatever ever happened to the necks .

By the amount of wings they peddle the chickens must be growing 4 a piece these days and no necks ,odd .

[SwampDonkey]

  Ah, well just some of the landforms around here you don't have the gamble about their being gravel under.

[Ironwood]

Al,

Drumlins, eskers and are glacial remants, eastern Ohio has some, although they tend to be fairly subtle. Most people living there have no idea, likely most think they are left overs from mining operations. Lots of that stuff up in the Finger Lakes Region of NY. I enjoy seeing them. My MIL lives up there and we frequently travel in the region.

Ironwood

[Al_Smith]

Ah so ,I get it . This area of Ohio is glacial cain(sp) I think .Flater than a pancake but has gravel ,some is deep,some not so .Eastwardly where those acres are stacked on end those mounds of gravel are plain as day where the glacer melted according  to geologists .We about have to take their word for it because nobody is still alive who knows for sure .

That term drumlin just reminded me of a puny chicken leg for some reason .Having one of my moments ,for a moment .

[Ironwood]

Taken in context there is NO doubt this happened the surface we see today is only the top of the "icing of the cake" in Eastern Ohio (where I am more familiar) there are deep water aquafiers that travel the pre-glacial drainage patterns of valley and such. These valleys were filled with sediments and deposits of what was once the surface of what is now the great lakes. Envision a HUGE dozer blade a mile tall pushing debris, sometimes you get a "gooney" stone on the blade that rolls under and pops out behind with some fines (that is an Drumlin) debris point down range in the direction of travel. Medial, End (terminal) Moraines are where the dozer had stuff rolling off to the side of the blade, or when it began to melt away (retreat) and left piles. Eskers are "reverse" valleys of sediment that was under the glacier and as it melted these are left behind (think rivers inside the glacier). Now consider the multiples of occurences of Glaciation and it get topographically complex but certainly it happened. Lots of Canadian Shield granite in NW Pa. that should never be there. Heavily eroded (round), with no current erosion force that great. Had to happen somehow. Also, in satellite images the patterns all read very obviously, consider the "scratching" evidence and orientation common around many areas in Canada (Georgian Bay, Adirondacks, Coastal Maine, etc..)  Some of the drainage erosion patterns of SE Ohio and SW Pa. are outflow remanants of receeding Glaciers meltwater there is not enough current waterforce or volume to create this topography. 

I like Geology  ;D
Ironwood

[Al_Smith]

I find geology rather fascinating myself but I'm just a novice at it .

This portion of Ohio of course sits on an huge limestone foundation .It is said to be the bottom of a huge inland sea .Over that is dotted here and there with deposits of gravel shoved in by one of the ice ages .


I have two water wells .One is 190 feet and down in the

stone .Another is at 117 and in the nicest layer of pea gravel and most likely in an aquafer left over from the ice age .

The deeper well became laden with sulfer which is assumed to caused by the drilling of an oil well about a mile away by the way the crow flys .Within the last year or so  that well experinced some problems becoming what I thought was "sanding in" .In blowing it out with compressed air it turned out to be blue clay slurry .

It could tell that it like many wells had several water sources .I let the well set for 6 months and never pumped it .Believe it or not the aquafer that had the  hydrogen sulfide gas had sealed off and that water has no sulfur what so ever now .

Now the limestone .To the north are several areas of the type limestome used to make portland cement .In addition deposits of blue clay thus an industry was born becaue they are the two main ingrediants of portland cement .

[SwampDonkey]

If it's flat, don't forget glacial fluvial, means a glacier fed river bed of washed gravel. Since has receded and disappeared. You can see it happening with your own very eyes in Stewart, BC coming off the Bear glacier. When the seasonal melt is over you have a tiny little brook flowing down the valley, surrounded by gravel bed for a long way across the valley. When she's wide open melt there is a river a mile wide there in places. In Terrace there is a huge flood plain built up with gravel from ice melt along the Skeena. There now stands a forest of Lodgepole on that flat wide plain along with a large town. It's definitely not science fiction or speculative. ;) Those coast mountains have glaciers today and some have gone "extinct" in our lifetimes. You can see in the mountain tops where they all carved out bowls with steep headwalls, cirques, some with just a little stream left running down through.



Here is an Esker, there is also a branch going off to the NW into Maine (narrow dark shadow) a little ways up from the south of what is outlined in yellow. This Esker is about 25 miles long coming up from Williamstown Lake. There is gravel all over this country. I have seen a couple drumlins totally mined out for gravel and now flat like the floor. ;D

[Al_Smith]

My uncle who owns the timber tract in Knox county Ohio also owns a couple hundred acres of river bottom on the Scioto river .That ground is underladen with gravel . That stuff would grow 200 bushel per acre corn when half that amount was considered a bumper crop .He's got like a 20 acre lake on that ground left from quarring gravel that is cold enough to sustain trout .Freeze  the business off a brass monkey I'll tell you that .

Interesting though in the hill country,which really it's pretty much all that are huge deposites of sandstone .All that stone but no limestone.They have to haul it in .It changes that much in about 100 miles from the flat lands in the northwest to the central and eastern hill country .

[petefrom bearswamp]

Back to reclaimed asphalt called pavement grindings here in my area.
I put 4" or so on part of my driveway, 200 feet flat, , 300 feet about 15% grade.
This was in 1995 with no compaction except vehicle traffic.
Had to re do in 2009 finally with 6" deep and 11 feet wide and compacted by a heavy vibratory roller.
I hired a contractor and it cost me $7 per foot but worth it.
If this lasts 14 more years I'll be  87 and probably milling in the great beyond.
Pete

[SwampDonkey]

The government reclaims it here for back dirt roads. Lots of cross roads here. In our county the rural community roads run N-S. And cross roads, a lot are dirt, but most are getting surfaced with reclaimed asphalt over the years. Only the ones they plow in winter. There are lots of dirt ones that will remain so because they are basically farm roads, even though the government grades them.

[Al_Smith]

The reclaimed asphalt while supposedly saving on new bitumine for new mix really turned out to be an econimical booster for road builders .

It's been proven the reclaimed and remixed stuff doesn't have the longgevity of newly made stuff and thusly the road builders now get to resurface roads more frequently . Kinda makes one wonder if it wasn't kind of planned that way . :

[SwampDonkey]

It doesn't matter, because our winter busts up the roads anyway on the country roads. You can't expect a paved road to hold up on a clay road that heaves and rolls every time the ground freezes and thaws. Culverts will sink a foot and a half some places in the summer. :D Then the opposite in the spring frost heaves. The road bed is just the mud out of the ditch line with a thin veneer of gravel or crushed stone, if we're lucky. They don't put black top roads out in the country only on the four-lanes and truck routes where they build a proper road. So all these back country roads are just chip sealed and a very thin veneer at that. Patch work never ends. :D

[Al_Smith]

It's just the difference in how they built the roads depending on the geographical area .I'll tell you this you can tell when you're into Indiana coming from Ohio just by the roads .Not real smooth .