trail culvert reccomendations?

[Jeff]

My corduroy material options are not good. Alder, aspen. I do have field stone piles. It never gets impassable by quad.

[SwampDonkey]

It's too bad the tamarack all expired from the bug. Comes in handy at times. But yeah, aspen and alder are gone quickly.

[Jeff]

Hey! I've got tamarack piles yet. I forgot, but its been piled for ten years. Some of it it still solid as I cut some for bonfire wood. It didn't burn well.

[Joe Hillmann]

I am in the process of making a 10 foot stretch of rubber mat made of woven tire treads.  Very similar to this.
 
https://www.doubledmats.net/products

Except I am using fence staples crimped on the backside instead of nuts and bolts.

It is pretty easy to cut the sidewalls out of tires with a sharp knife then cut across the tread with a hacksaw or angle grinder.  From there it is a matter of weaving the tire treads together.

I am making a 10 foot chunk to test if it works in crossing a narrow stretch of swamp.  If it does I plan to make much more of it.  It looks like it will take about 2.5 tires per foot.

I also think the sidewalls can be woven like chain mail to also make mats out of.

[mike_belben]

I find a sawzall works really good for cutting out sidewalls without breaking a sweat.  I heat the tip with a bottletorch to pierce it through.  

[SwampDonkey]

Hey! I've got tamarack piles yet. I forgot, but its been piled for ten years. Some of it it still solid as I cut some for bonfire wood. It didn't burn well.

No, it can soak up the water like spruce laying around in grass and weeds. I had to move a 30" pasture spruce one time, that was cut on both ends and laid across a road. I had a Logrite peavey and it was a down hill move. The log had been cut for 3 years and was full of water. Heavy heavy heavy. If it were flat ground or up hill it wouldn't have been moved without gas or diesel power. :D

[Jeff]

This is a better picture of the area in question. I think im going to corduroy. This is our view from the cabin. Our wildlife viewing lane, and the major entrance to the back traills and field for the tractor. It used to have a puddle years ago before young people and atvs were set loose on it.  2 more spots on trails in the same shape.  They are slowly improving by my widening trails and getting more light.



 

 

[mike_belben]

if that is not a necessary stream for draining the site, and is just a wet depression... id fill it with native dirt to displace the water first, then corduroy over that to prevent the dirt from being pushed out by tires.  in time with a few dry spells the water will never accumulate because the depression will be filled in and once your corduroy breaks down it wont be needed anymore, hopefully. 

[Jeff]

Thats the plan! Im going to incorporate 2 25ft lengths of corrugated drain hose as well

Its a wet depression in a natural water migration area for big rains or thaws. 

[stavebuyer]

I have donated several bundles of slabs for projects just like that. 

[Satamax]

Jeff, if ever you need waterbars, over here we often use highway railing for thoses. The water tend to raise on the angled edges, and not so much dig underneath.

[Jeff]

You mean like the galvanized barricades you see along the highway? I bet those would work awesome, but dead larch may be a bit cheaper... ;)

[Satamax]

You mean like the galvanized barricades you see along the highway? I bet those would work awesome, but dead larch may be a bit cheaper... ;)

Yep, what they call W beam guard rail i think, in the US. Over here, the mountain passes often get trashed. So it's quite easy to gather offcuts. But it's good only for  waterbars, on an incline. To avoid water from make gullies. We put these just slightly in the ground, about halfway.  At an angle, so the water goes to the downhill side of the roads. Mind you. The chairlift company hasn't done that for a while They make big swale'ish waterbars now. Even concreted ones. 

[Walnut Beast]

I take your trying to do this as minimal as possible using your own machines.  In areas that call for a culvert you can use plastic drainage tile farmers use in the fields or plastic ribbed culvert with smooth inside. Easy to move cut with sawzall and connect together. Stick  it in there with no machines and haul several loads of dirt by small trailer like you have and dump on each side and then drive over and dump. That's how I did my trails

[Walnut Beast]

In the video some of the areas seem like there is no clear drainage routes and the water stands. Either drive through some of the wet areas, get it to drain, build it up with various wood, dirt, rock or put a couple long telephone poles down and some rough wood for top to drive on then make a little dirt approach at each end

[Walnut Beast]

When you do have your own trails to drive on they are fantastic to use and just a joy to ride on 

[Walnut Beast]

Here is a couple different culverts that have been in a couple years and there has been a lot of heavy rains running through these ravines and this is all they have washed out. They just need to be freshened up some

 

 

   

[Jeff]

Hey! You hit it! There is a 40 foot phone pole laying along that lane and 3 8 ft sections I had left from putting piers  under the screen porch a couple years ago. I could use those for a culvert! 
 

[woodroe]

Well I would recommend going down to Paris Farmer's Union in Jay Maine
and ask for Ray, AKA thecfarm here on the forestry forum.
Got a heck of a deal on 8" x 20' , just right for my woods road crossing a 12 acre drainage ravine.  

N12 ST1B POLY CULVERT PIPE 8INX20FT

They have bigger sizes if you need it.
And he let me cut it in half for easy transport bringing my own sawzall and ext. cord.
Only needed 10' of it so figure on selling the other 10' on craigslist for $65-$70.
Thanks Ray !

[thecfarm]

You are welcome. Better hurry, price goes back up on Monday, sale is over.
Took you no time to cut it half!! 
Another busy day, so no time to talk. 

[Rick Alger]

For horse-skidding with a forecart across standing water, I used corduroy with some brush on top, then some plywood, and lastly enough dirt to keep it stable. 

[Roundhouse]

I'm over in the western UP. On the 10 acres where my sawmill sits I've improved and built around 3/8s of a mile of access roads. They have been slowly built up to one lane passages that will handle my F350 plus trailer. I'm fortunate in that most of the ground has a gradual slope with obvious watercourses. Also there is a hilltop with a nice sand and gravel mix I've used to surface the trails. As I built I put in culverts wherever it was obvious I needed to let water pass under the road. Others I've added on an "as needed" basis where it only became apparent later a pipe was needed. As it stands now, I have 6 culverts passing under those 3/8 of a mile. 

Even old tired equipment helps ease the work. This was taken from the seat of my skid steer when I had upgraded a culvert and was filling it back in three years ago:




Most relevant to your situation is probably my newest culvert. This spot is not on one of those obvious drainages but on an area that is quite flat. It didn't occur to me to put a pipe there so I just tried to build up the surface a few times. Much of the time that area was just fine but in spring or rainy seasons in would get quite mushy. Not only is the road flat there but so is the terrain on both sides of the road. After dealing with it on and off for years I decided to try a culvert installation during a very dry August 2019. The culvert I had wasn't quite long enough so I put together a 4' box end addition out of green treated plank:




As mentioned, this was an extra dry time so the road was solid and I hand dug the trench to the exact size of the pipe. It seemed odd to be digging up the hard packed road but I new I'd be dealing with mud again sooner or later and it allowed me to carefully establish to slope of the pipe with the very gradual slope of the water flow:




The freshly covered culvert at the time of install:




Since the culvert was below the grade of the road and the surrounding land I had dug a small ditch leading up to the inlet and a ditch and small pool "downstream" of the outlet. A bit anxiously I waited for another rainy season to see if my work would pay off with a more stable road. My biggest revelation was that it did work very well despite the water not having anywhere to go in any hurry. The very existence of the new pond displaced enough water to keep the road high and dry ever since. The plan is to do some ditching through the woods away from the pool but I haven't yet had the very dry conditions return to allow that. As it is the pool will fill to point where it will level off. When I pulled the photos of the culvert installation I couldn't find any showing the adjacent pool, so last weekend I snapped some "update" photos of the setup as it functions today. Here is the spot now. The culvert crosses under at the center of the photo, the settling pool is at left, the small ditch at right:




Here is a better look at the outlet pool, the woods beyond slopes away very gradually, deadfalls etc. impede decent drainage. Long-term I plan to do some clean up so that the pool tops out a couple inches lower than it does now. This small pool of water has been popular with the deer that frequent my lot:




A look at the inlet side, the standing water is a little below halfway on the culvert:




Dead grass is obscuring a clear look at the box end but you can see the ditch that leads to the pool. Given the slight slope of the culvert there is only a couple inches of clearance between the high water level and the top of the box culvert:




Good luck, it's been my experience that even small settling/retention ponds in a troublesome area can make a big difference in keeping the trail high and dry.

[Jeff]

I want to add more rock, but enough is enough for today. 

Got a 6 hr moderate rain on it this morning, and was still able to work on it today. We started with a sucking mud hole yesterday morning.  All thise rocks wildflower and I loaded and unloaded and placed today.


 

 

 

 

 

[Walnut Beast]

Looks pretty good 👍

[mike_belben]

Great job guys, thats a lot of hard work. Camera catch you takin a dirt nap in the first pic?   Ya OK?