We see it every year, and it's cringeworthy. Your road needs attention, so you start looking for a contractor to bring it up to snuff. You call the number on the first ad you see that advertises "Road Building" or "Road Blading". 99% of the time, it's a guy with a skid steer trying to keep his machine busy. Good for him, right? But is it good FOR YOU?
One thing is for certain, we've all busted our butts for the money we have. When we spend it, it's often a balance between the best quality we can get, and price. It's no different when it comes to road work, and the majority of the time you are going to get subpar work that doesn't last, doesn't function, and will cost you MORE than doing it right the first time. Your home is your pride and joy, and the road taking you home should be built the same standards you demanded for your house. It is the first impression people see, it is how you access your front door, and allows emergency services to get to your home no matter what the conditions are.
ROAD CROSS SECTION
This is where most people go wrong with their roads. The customer and the contractor are unaware that in order for a road to last, IT NEEDS TO HAVE FUNCTION. It must have the ability to shed water (the #1 killer of a road), direct it to a ditch, and carry it away. I can take you to any random driveway, and the majority of our county roads and show you undercut shoulders, flat road surfaces, and lack of drainage. It is an epidemic of lack of education that costs homeowners and tax payers a large amount of money. The illustration below shows a proper cross section of a road that sheds water and carries it away. This form MUST be obtained, especially on a gravel road, or it will not perform well even under light traffic.
EQUIPMENT
There is no substitute for the right equipment on your road project. Skid steers have their place on a road or driveway project, but it is NOT as the primary equipment in the construction. They should only be used in tight areas, such as up against the perimeter of your home, and parking SPOT, or any other area where a grader cannot access effectively.
For those that may not know, lets talk about the functionality of a skid steer. Skid steers are rigid. Even with a "dozer blade" attachment, the ability to cut and form your road is severely limited. Blade pitch adjustment is non-existent. Blade pitch is very important in uniform placement of your gravel. The image below shows a similar blade pitch of a skid steer dozer blade attachment.
The below image shows the different applications for the pitch of a blade or mold board, each having a great effect on the quality and durability of your road.
The inefficiencies of a skid steer cost you money. It's inability to maneuver into different slopes, angles and pitches is much like carving your Thanksgiving turkey with a butter knife! It also wastes a large amount of gravel. If you take another look at the road cross section, notice how the subgrade was formed into a crown, and how that layer of gravel is distributed evenly on that crown from the peak to the shoulders. The most common way for a skid steer to achieve a crown is to use the natural slope of the mound after a truck has spread a load of gravel. This puts the skid steer on an angle (not the proper angle either, we'll get into that later), and he spreads the gravel on the angle set by the gravel pile. This can cost you up to 50% MORE gravel, as the center, or peak of the crown is much thicker than the lower edge of the crown. EFFICIENCY SAVES YOU MONEY, and that only comes from the equipment DESIGNED for the job at hand.
CROWN
Arguably the most important element of a road system, is it's crown. Referring back to the road cross section, the crown looks like the roof on your house, right? It has a peak and is sloped outward to the ditches to shed water. Problems develop quickly when you don't have a crown in your road. Water collects on the road surface, softening the hard surface and developing holes, mud, and stratifying the road materials allowing them to move downward and "sink".
How much crown do you need? This is where experience and knowledge come in. In our grader, we have what is called a slope indicator mounted in front of the controls. This is much like a bubble level, showing us what percent slope we are at, and allowing us to adjust accordingly.
A huge factor when determining percent slope on your crown, is the terrain your road passes through. Water velocity (the speed at which water travels) needs to be managed. On hills for example, water is already going to want to naturally flow down that hill. We still need to direct that water to the ditch, but we don't want to allow it to move so fast that it washes the gravel from the road. 1/2 - 1% slope on a hill is adequate, and should not be exceeded. Any more and water moves too fast, causing major damage to your road.
On flat, single lane roads, 3% - 5% slope moves water away efficiently. Two lane roads can be a different story at a 5% slope in areas that get snowfall. 5% is a pretty steep slope, and on a two lane road will push people to drive down the center of the road in fear of sliding into the ditch. Too little slope and too much slope can be issues, and should be decided upon on a case by case basis.
Referring back to use of skid steers during road building, the image below shows the effects of not using the proper equipment, and the parabolic crown is exactly what you end up with, and should avoid at all costs.
ROAD REHABILITATION
Just like anything else around your home, your gravel road requires maintenance, routine maintenance. At a minimum, every spring. Ideally, spring and fall.
Without routine maintenance, your gravel road will end up needing extensive rehabilitation. This means reshaping ditches, shoulders, and crown, and most likely adding more gravel.
I will say it loud for those in the back, ROUTINE MAINTENANCE IS MUCH CHEAPER THAN REHAB OF YOUR ROAD!!!!!! Gravel moves, EVERY time you drive on it in your vehicle, from winter plowing, and speeds to fast. The stones in your gravel get thrown to the outside edge of your road and tossed into the ditch. Routine maintenance blading brings that gravel back into your road surface, gets remixed with fines to hold it in place, and maintains the function of your road system. It takes ONE instance of skipping road maintenance to start seeing signs of major road damage. Pot holes get deeper, exposing your base rock and bringing it to the surface. Rutting increases in severity, and water stays on the road instead of flowing into the ditch. This is an all too common occurence with our customers. They will wait for years to have maintenance done. At that point, you have lost all of your nice top coat gravel that provides a smooth driving surface and creates a hard crust for water to flow off of. Holes and washboards are deep, creating more time spent cutting those out. You cannot blade a road and expect it to last if you don't cut to the bottom of the holes and washboards! If you simply fill the imperfections in a road, they will reappear in as little as two days. You have to cut them completely out, and redistribute the gravel uniformly. There is no way around that, and it's not saving you money. Why would you spend money on something that only lasts a few days? Yet that's what people are paying for, because they didn't do their research, and the guy they hired doesn't care as long as he gets paid.
Lack of experience, even on a grader, causes problems. We see this all the time in our county, meeting the county grader on a road just bouncing away as he's "blading" our roads at high speed. Properly grading a road takes time, and speed must be kept between 3 - 5 mph, as the geometry of a grader makes it naturally "lope" at speeds higher than that. While the image below is taken well after road maintenance, you will see these angled washboards directly behind the grader as it passes, and they get worse from there.
INADEQUATE OR NON-EXISTENT SUBGRADE AND BASE
Some areas where a road may be built, the soil type and terrain make it impossible to keep water away. Again, experience and knowledge come into play here. Did you build your house right on the ground, or did you give it a solid base with a concrete foundation? Your road is the same, and needs to have a solid foundation under it. Without it, IT IS GOING TO FAIL.
Another thing we see people paying for is inadequate base rock. A couple inches of base rock is not enough to provide a solid foundation. Every rock in that base gravel works together to form a mat, being uniformly spread and compacted, those rocks interlock, providing strength. In some areas, you may need feet of good ballast rock if it is prone to water intrusion. When we build a new driveway with a warranty, we ask what the traffic load is going to look like, the weight of the vehicles using it, and make sure it meets the specifications of Idaho's road construction laws for emergency vehicles. That base rock at a minimum should support 65,000 lbs during mud season. It is the law, and should be the standard for any contractor in their bid, but always reverts to a quick, expensive job that fails.
Many times when we are bidding against another contractor, I'll ask for the other bids, and ask if the homeowner knows what they are getting for their price. One job for example, had 3 bids. One guy was $15,000, and his build only included large pit run rock. The other bid was $35,000, only included 6 inches of base rock, and the guy rents all his equipment. I explained the standards we build our roads by, and why the other bids just wouldn't cut it for him. Our bid came in at $15,500, included road fabric on the subgrade, adequate base rock, and sufficient 3/4" gravel for the top coat. All areas with drainage concerns were addressed, we recommended ditching and culverts, and we would give a written warranty on it. Needless to say, he accepted our bid, and we began work immediately. At the end of the project, the homeowner was so happy with the job, he handed me a $1,500 tip! That was a good feeling, and he was appreciative that he wasn't sold an inferior road. Being in his late 70's, he needed something he could count on for the rest of his life, and make his access much better in the winter!
SURFACE OR TOPCOAT GRAVEL
Just the same as materials used in building your house, there are proper materials to use on your road surface. I have to frequently steer customers away from what they've seen on t.v. or the internet, wanting clean gravel on the surface. By clean gravel, I mean gravel that has been washed and is free of sand and fines. Why? Because it doesn't last, you don't get compaction, and in the winter every bit of it gets plowed off. You might as well flush a wad of $100 bills down the toilet, it's just as effective!
The quality of surface gravel varies from location to location and different pits. In general, your surface gravel should consist of 8% - 15% sand and fines (clay or sediment). This allows compaction to occur, giving a hard surface, keeping individual stones in place.
Clean gravel is loose, offers no compaction, and is not suitable for a road surface. Avoid it at all costs, and do not allow your contractor to use it.
Have you ever looked at your gravel road, and noticed that in the tire tracks, it is hard, compact, and there are no stones laying on top? Maybe you have some loose stones on the edges of the road, but driving on the road surface has kept that material where you drive in place, hard packed and smooth. That is what you are looking for on your gravel road, not loose stone. That's your money getting away! Don't fret, if you made the mistake of having clean gravel put on your road, you can fix it by bringing in fines, blading and mixing with a grader, and laying it back down evenly mixed. Yes, it adds cost to your road, but we wouldn't be here in the first place if your contractor hadn't sold you the wrong product. It is imperative that you have this knowledge as the customer! Just because someone has equipment or a contractor's license, DOES NOT mean they know what they are doing. You'll hear it often used as an attribute to someone's business, "I've been doing it like this for 20 years!". Well, first of all, that's an accomplishment, not an attribute, other than they've been doing it wrong for 20 whole years!
I could go on for days on this post explaining how so many people are not getting quality for their money. These are the standards we abide by here at West Wood, LLC, bringing full value to every dollar spent. If you would like to read more on road building standards, here is the link to the manuals I keep in my office, and refer to as my "Road Bible".
Thanks for reading, and remember, when it's time for your new road build or rehabilitation, you know who to call for a road built right, and guaranteed with a written warranty. Don't forget to schedule your spring and fall road maintenance to keep that road in good shape and functioning, saving you from costly repairs!
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