gravel road grading and maintenance

I have a long gravel road back to the farm with some long medium steep hills. Big rains really tear up the road with washes and gulleys.

I only have a blade grader, and I am not very good with it.

Q1....How do you prevent washouts? Do bumps or cross drains work ?

Q2....Is a road grader implement like the DR Power Grader or the Gravel Rascal worth the money?

I recently looked at a friend's driveway that washes out with heavy rain. I told him he needs some 4" Big O drain pipe to run down the side of the driveway and he needs to make some catch basins to take the water instead of his driveway.The catch basin can be made out of a plastic garbage can buried into the side of the drive way and filled with very coarse stone,cut two holes in it for your drainage ,inlet and outlet,the inlet being lower than the outlet,a five gallon plastic pail will work as well,you may need three or four "catch Basins",if you get a lot of water down the drive you may need 6"drain tile,or you may have to run the drain tile down both sides of your driveway..eliminate the wash out problem first then you won't have to be grading your driveway back into shape after every rain

I have a gravel rascal that I use on our 1/4 mile drive that 4 house use. It is mostly flat but gets pot holes that would eat a Volkswagen during the freeze and thaw. It works pretty good when the road is damp but for get it when it’s hot and dry. I use a four wheeler to pull it because it’s just faster and turns better but it pulls the crap out of it when the teeth are down. It works Ok but not sure I would spend the money again. Our lane needs more gravel but the neighbors don’t like to pay up on it very well. Times are hard all around.

I don't think you can actually prevent washouts.

Best solution I can think of is a good ditch and a good crown to the road. In short, if you give the water the path of least resistance off the road and into the ditch, you reduce the length of it's path across the roadbed hence reduce the wash out. Makes a big difference where hills are concerned and the water can run the full length of the hill down the road.

I think a bump would not work as the water would hit the bump and be diverted making a ditch since all the water would be converging on one area.

If you had a hydraulically operated blade with ripper teeth behind a heavy tractor then you could accomplish crowning. The DR has no mechanism to keep it on the side of a hill. As shown in the pictures, it is grading a flat drive.

If you use a road gravel that sets up, usually with what they call "finds" (means parts) which is a modern day word for rock powder that accumulates from crushing rocks of a certain type you can grade the road up and vehicles pack the powder down into the rocks or vice versa. That helps to form a base that resists washing.

If the gravel is like a sand rock mix, there is nothing to bind the material together so it is easily washed away.

The gravel is easier to work in road prep however.

I have the DR catalog right here in front of me and I would have to see one of their "power graders" in action before I could comment otherwise. The idea is fine, just the ability of the unit to do a heavy duty job, especially if you do have finds in your road and it packs down tight, the DR may not be able to break through the crust.

I live on a rock road and for the past 30 years watched the county maintenance guys work the road and watched the different materials they used over the years respond to traffic and weather. So, my comments are based on that experience.

HTH,

Mark

Does the drive have good ditches? If not you will probly need to do something about that. If it has good ditches then all you need to do is put a good crown on the road. Washing comes from water running down or across the road and you need to put a stop to that. If you have a good crown and ditches then the water only runs from the crown to the side and mostly that isn't enough to start washing. A backblade works good to crown a road, just turn it at an angle and draw the sides in until you have a good 6" or more of crown. When angleing the blade don't be conservative, the more you angle it the better it will cut. Lots of people can't figure out how to get the blade to dig because they only angle the blade 1 notch.

I have a 900 foot driveway had the same problem. Three years ago I had a 8” pvc installed down one side just on the hill part of the drive about 300 foot. Then put a 12”pipe under the drive that dumped over a hill side. Topped the drive with greerbrier gravel, it packs very good. No problems just run a landscape rake over it once or twice a year to dress it.

all good advise here, one thing no one added was to make sure you have a crown in the road ( this means the center of the road is higher than the sides) so it can shed water, on steep long hills I have built what I call "spreader dikes" what this will do it make a dam type diversion dike that will slow down the running water and send it to the road side, I am not a drawer but could work some thing up if its some thing you want to try, if you can post a few shots of your road damage maybe everyone will have more to add cnt

jon you and I wear thinking the same thing at the same time LOL

I dont know about the DR products, but a rear 3pt box blade should work.

Most important thing you can do is make sure you have ditches that carry the water... so the road doesn't have to act as the ditch. Then make sure you crown the road so it shed water into the ditches. If it's crowned properly by a few inches in the center and smooth out into the ditch... the water should diffuse off the road into the ditch. If you've got places where water can concentrate on the road and start running... then it will continue running and cutting a deeper ditch.

Rod

I agree with what the others have said about crown and ditches. Make the water run to the side and into a ditch. On a hill of any consequence you will need erosion stone or rip rap to keep the ditches from washing out. make the road edge 16 inches higher than the ditch bottom then line with two inch stone near the top and erosion stone towards bottom. If the hill is very long you may even need some rip rap towards the bottom. You will be able to grade crusher run inch and a half material with your back blade, and it will compact like concrete after awhile. I looked at the gravel rascal. It looks way too light for what you need to do.

Great minds and all that.....lol

The power rascal and power grader look like junk if you ask me. You can do wonders with a normal heavy grader blade.

I agree 100% with creating a nice crown diverting water to ditches.

To create your crown, turn your blade at an angle to where when you drive forward it is cutting and creating a line or windrow of gravel in the center of the drive. Then go back down and do the other side throwing the gravel to the center again. Then, turn your blade completely straight, but backwards. Then drive forward down the windrow of gravel to spread it back out. Don't overdo it or else your drive will lose its crown in the center. You may need some more gravel to create enough pitch.

You will need 30-36 inch tubes under the road to handle heavy runoff. smaller ones will plug with crap.

1st sentence first paragraph I said ditch to catch the water and crown on the road to get it into the ditch as soon as possible.

Mark

The biggest problems I've seen in this neck of the woods are 1. Roads built on the cheap. Just more and more gravel slapped over the topsoil or, at best, the subsoil with no grade work underneath. The driveway gravel is the most permeable surface so water flows along the clay road being lower and more compacted than the gravel and surrounding soil. The other is the 'love' people have of running a grader blade in the road to 'freshen it up' with no regard for pitch, slope, or angle.

Usually after 5, 10, or 20 years of this, or more, the road is such a mess and so far below the surrounding grade it takes heavy machinery to re-cut the ditches and rebuild it right. There's the cheap fix and the right fix. I've had to do all of mine. Usually do one every other year at each farm. Still got one spot here I don't like. I've got to cut it to run electric under it anyway so I'm probably going to put a drain tile in while Im at it to get water to the downhill side.

Second law of plumbing.... 'stuff' runs downhill, always through the path of least resistance.