Road Grading

[crokett™]

I have a 1/4 mile private gravel road up to my house.  There's a fairly good grade on one section down to a stream, across it and up the other side.  Earlier this year the county visited the site as part of a building permit my dad filed and decided he needed to do some regrading - there was a channel down the side of the road that the county said was allowing runoff into the stream.  He regraded and planted grass but after the first heavy rain this happened.



So, question is what can be/should be done to correct this and prevent the washout? Before the regrading was preferable, since it was not washing away the road....

[CLETUS]

You need a channel along side the drive.

[Chip N Dust]

I can not see your picture, but after you re-construct the ditch (channel) you can put what are called check dams in the ditch to help slow down the water. Here is a link to a pdf of what they look like.

http://udfcd.org/wp-content/uploads/2014...ck-Dam.pdf

They do not really have to be imbedded into the ditch bottom like some of them show.

After the dams are built, you could re-seed where needed.

Hope this helps,

[JosephP]

Sounds like they do not want the water going straight to the stream. That is reasonable under clean water act stuff. Check dams would reduce the water's momentum, but it would still end up there.

I can't see your picture either. You need to get the water off of the road so it doesn't build up speed and volume. What is beside the road? I deal with woodland roads and skid trails. If we can get the water off of the road which is compacted and into the woods everything works out really well...

[crokett™]

they don't care if the water goes into the stream, they don't want it washing clay into the stream

what's beside the road is about 5' of grass. I think Cletus is right though and that needs to be regraded to be lower than the road so the water can run off the road. There used to be a V-shaped ditch, that was the problem, water was just running down there and taking clay with it. the road wasn't washing out though.

[blackhat]

What's their suggestion for an answer?

[crokett™]

What's their suggestion for an answer?

they wanted the ditch filled in, which we did. now the road is washing out. so either a) they don't know what they're talking about or b) we messed up. It's probably a combination of both. My county doesn't have the sharpest guys working for it in some of the offices.

the consensus from WN and other places seems to be put at least part of the ditch back and fill it with large rock. probably also will bring in more crusher run to build the road up some.

[CLETUS]

Cant  see your pic now. But yeah, i'd try to get it graded so the water flows into that grassy area. Either build up the drive, or get a ditch reinstalled. Water is going to take the easiest path.

[Kmucha16]

You could put the ditch back in, then backfill it with a larger gravel.  Something that is more porous than the surrounding roadway, it will act kinda like a French drain and allow the water to get to the stream, but will slow it down and filter out the fine materials first.  I would suspect that it might need maintenance, but that would be several years down the road and the County would likely forget about it by then.

Kevin

[fishhh4]

you need to back fill the ditch with 6-inch Rock.