In 2013, the ELG Neighborhood formed a formal Pond Committee to tackle issues with our community pond. The main work product of that committee is here:
http://gluelogix.com/ELG/Pond/
A subset of that information highlighting what to do year to year is here:
https://sites.google.com/site/elgmaintenance22/pond-water-quality-fish-and-weeds
In 2016, the ELG Neighborhood formed a formal Road Committee to tackle maintenance issues and build an online knowledge base for ourselves and future owners. The ELG Road page is here:
https://sites.google.com/site/elgmaintenance22/elg-road-drainage
Other pages will be filled into the Google Site as we go. More interaction can be had by joining the Google Group:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/elg-maintenance
In 2017 I bought an early 80's Kubota B5200 tractor with a belly mower, and a new rear blade, for road maintenance. The tractor was used on Craigslist, $2500 plus rollback fee. The blade was $350 at Tractor Supply. I've got about $4000 total invested in other things that are useful to me too, but I would probably not have spent the money if they were not also useful to ELG.
Here is a summary of my emails to the Road Committee up to now:
14Jun2017: Tractor broke during roadside mowing. Mowing would have been 4 hours if the steering knuckle had not snapped. I later upped that to 6 hours. That can be an annual thing to keep brush down. It also knocks back the bamboo grass so people can see the shoulder and know if it is safe to pull off in a given location, to let someone else by.
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/parts-repairs/381143-cant-get-steering-knuckle-off.html
15Jun2017: I relayed this information from Mark Robinsson, who worked withScott a bit on teh roads and picked some things up:
We should look for dead, diseased trees by the side of the road - pines
included.
At some point we may want to take out 2 trees near the mailboxes, not
because they are dead but they are close to the road and of course,
growing. It seems prudent to stay on top of impediments to navigation by
emergency vehicles.
Maples and oaks are particularly susceptible to uprooting when we have
heavy rain and wind. The surface roots lose holding power and the heavy
top of the tree creates the torque, If those trees are healthy and not
right next to the road we are likely fine.
There are too many variables to know when a tree will go, but if we err
on safe than sorry, I suspect we will be fine. The irony is that when
you remove a tree from the canopy, you expose the other trees more, and
for a few years those trees are more susceptible to wind.
24Jun2017: Posted documentation pics of Red Tail Run in the rain:
http://gluelogix.com/ELG/Roads/RoadDamage2017/
28Jun2017: Sent this letter to the main ELG board on behalf of the Road Committee:
Dear ELG neighbors -
With all the rain recently, there is a bad washout in Red Tail Run near
Reggae's driveway. Please go slow there while we sort that out.
The other big road issue is looming culvert blockage on ELG Road. Before
the culverts can be maintained, the brush must be cleared. Trace has
gotten some estimates for roadside brush clearing. His guy Mark Eide
says 4 days with a pole saw, at $500/day, will clear all the brush from
ELG roadsides, out 8 feet from the end of the gravel, including ditches.
Doing this is important for:
* visibility while driving,
* to keep the ditches from clogging with roots and leaves,
* and to prevent the brush from growing large enough to damage fire trucks.
Cut brush will be thrown back into the woods at least 10 feet from the
gravel's edge.
The road Committee is requesting funding for half of that work from the
ELG Officers. We propose to spend $1000 to have Mark Eide clear brush
as described on ELG Road in early August. That's $38.50 per tract, or
about 20% of our average budget.
Once the brush is cleared from the ELG Road ditches, we will be able to
see what needs to be done about silting of the culverts on that road. If
there is interest among neighbors in continuing that work ourselves, we
can save some cash and keep dues down for a while longer.
We think the brush on Baer Hill road is a problem too, especially on the
sharp corner by the power cut, but it's not as dense there and can be
handled by a combination of individual owner efforts and cooperative
work days. ELG Road is overgrown badly enough that we think we need a
one time expense to get it to a maintainable state.
If there are serious objections to this expense in ELG, please air them
on this list, and come help us figure out a better way. The current
road committee membership is Trace, Larry, Jack, and Tracie Little.
Thanks,
The Road Committee
02Jul2017: 4 hours tractor work, Rosendo driving:
Today, Rosendo drove my tractor for 3 hours, working on drainage for Red
Tail Run. He cut a shallow trench uphill of Jack&Lori's driveway and a
deeper one on their side of ELG, just downhill. I will bill Gail for
the $180 tractor time, including $75 for Rosendo. I watched him closely
and did a little digging etc., myself. We used no new gravel today.
Yesterday, Trace weed-whacked the sides of Red Tail run from Jack &
Lori's to Reggae's driveways. He may have gone further, I didn't look.
He also worked on digging a channel for water puddling above Reggae's
culvert to flow into the woods, so the road does not continue to soften
there.
I hand dug a new drainage feature on the west side of Red Tail Run,
meant to be a model for waterbars if it works out. I also rented a soil
compactor and used it to compact the bottom of the new drain as well as
compacting gravel into the washout groove. I used 10 buckets of gravel,
or $20 to ELG. I ended up with 5 gallon buckets filled to within 2
inches of the top, so each bucket is about 4.5 gallons and weighs about
40 pounds.
The soil compactor was an experiment I'm not sure about. It was very
hard to manage on the hill. On flat ground, it ran like a floor buffer,
but on the hill it was a beast. I think I may tie it off with a rope if
I have to use it on a hill again. It did pack the gravel into the
washout crease and it did make a nicely graded floor for the drain. It
did not compact down the raised shoulder on Red Tail Run below the new
drain. Rosendo thinks we have to cut that down.
Regarding the tractor, I have to figure out a quick way to get the mower
on and off, and to get control of the blade tilt. There is a turnbuckle
for the latter but it's frozen. Rosendo is used to using a blade with
builtin tilt, but those are over $1000. Mine with just one axis was
almost $400. So I have to figure out a way to control the tilt at the
hitch. I'm also thinking about unbolting the replaceable edge and
replacing it with something shorter across that goes down further.
Rosendo says I got the wrong kind of gravel for pothole work, so I will
be ordering a second pile of ABCs, which I will cover so the sand
doesn't wash away, and keep the same per-bucket arrangement with ELG if
that works for everyone. I'll also get a store of pavers from Adams on
Lasalle in Durham and sell them on to ELG for a little more than my cost
to cover my time and gas.
18Jun2017: Plan for Baer Hill Road washboarding:
Dear Road Committee -
As Trace noted to me last week, Baer Hill has started washboarding.
Scott's practice has been to grade down the high spots, and/or apply
more gravel. I want to try something different.
I have ordered another pile of gravel from Ferguson, this time ABCs
(smaller chunks with sand and rock dust). I think we can build up the
low spots with ABC material and a plate compactor like the one I rented
a few weeks ago. I want to try and get out there Saturday morning
before it gets hot. I might not make it if I can't get the new machine
working by then.
This is the compactor I bought:
http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200671386_200671386
Amortized over 100 hours, I think it's fair to rent it to ELG at $5/hr.
That gives me incentive to keep it greased and gassed. My time is no
charge. I think I will keep doing it that way, for a while at least.
Does that work for the Road Committee?
In other news I went out after tonight's rain and looked at our recent
work on Red Tail Run. Rosendo's long sweeping waterbar is working ok.
The area between Jack&Lori and Reggae's drives is improved but still
needs work. Only about half the water is going in the ditch. That's an
improvement from before, when none of the water was going in the ditch
and it all ran down the wheel rut. The funny thing is, where I
compacted 67 gravel into the washout, the water is still flowing through
the gravel. A lot of dirt is in the runoff water, so we really have to
be careful about erosion as we learn what we're doing. That's another
argument for additive vs. subtractive maintenance. Here are pictures:
http://gluelogix.com/ELG/Roads/RoadDamage2017/07_July/
On Sunday I recorded a "before picture" of ELG Road. It's a little
shaky but I think adequate for documentation. I'll repeat after Mark
Eide goes through. A "small" version (33 MB) is here:
http://gluelogix.com/ELG/Roads/ElgRoadBrush2017/Before/
As a datapoint for road maintenance services, a guy who does some work
for me says he got an estimate for reconditioning his driveway. New
gravel, compacted with a big machine, then graded and ditched. $1600
for a 300 foot driveway. We have about 2 miles of road or 10,000 feet.
05Aug2017: Plan for culverts:
Road Committee -
Now that the brush is out of the way, we need to do something with the
drainage, since that's ostensibly why we got the brush cut. I'm taking
more walks over there, and have started this page to get some facts
behind our decision making:
https://sites.google.com/site/elgmaintenance22/elg-road-drainage
The page points to still photos on imgur and videos on youtube. It
contains an image adapted from orange county online GIS.
After a couple of inspection walks, the ELG road ditches mostly look ok
to me. I'd have to see them when it's pouring rain to be sure, but they
don't seem to be clogged by brush, weeds, or even a lot of leaves in
most places. I think we can put out an appeal for owners to rake their
own ditches for the common good, and I can clean up whatever doesn't
happen that way on my walks.
The culverts are another story. The ones under ELG road look ok, except
the one at Tracie's end, where the runoff is blocked by a log so there
is no flow:
http://imgur.com/a/BqZcg
If we wanted to be very proactive, we could pick sticks from the north
side of ELG road and carry them to the south side so they don't wash
into the big culverts at Rusty's. But that's a little crazy.
I think the work for us is in the driveway culverts. Many of the
driveway culverts are at least half blocked. Some of those may be
nonfunctional anyway, with enough alternate water pathways to prevent
road flooding. The driveway culverts all down the south side of ELG
road fit this description. They are completely blocked, and look like
they have been so for some time. To me that means that we would have
heard of flooding if it were going to happen.
The culverts on the north side of ELG road, in Audrey's driveways at
4401/3 ELG and the unmarked driveway east of that, look like they are
just getting blocked. Tracie says she has seen flooding there over the
years. So let's talk about clearing them:
http://imgur.com/a/awEke
In 2015 we got a quote of $1000 from Mister Rooter to clear the culvert
at Jack&Lori's driveway. All they had was a 5000 PSI pressure washer
with a sewer tip. The tips are standard and cheap enough at Amazon.
The washer rents for $285/day at Sunbelt in Durham. They are closed
Sunday so you pick up Saturday morning and drop off Monday morning for
one day charge, as long as you put less than 8 hours on the counter.
https://www.sunbeltrentals.com/equipment/detail/1286/0160410/5000psi-gas-cold-water-pressure-washer/
The price goes down fast with lower pressure units. We may get off
cheaper. I need to organize the tips and a big water tank, then I will
try it out on my own culvert, on my own dime. If it works and the
Committee approves, we can start doing it on ELG money for Audrey's and
Tracie's. In the meantime, Tracie may be able to organize somebody to
cut that log away and restore drainage flow to the culvert at 4433 ELG,
mentioned above.
Sound like a plan?
Larry
P.S. If we do eventually need day labor, we have Rosendo. If he is not
interested in ditch work, he may be able to recommend somebody. Audrey
says she knows somebody who's back in town this month. Lori says she
happens to know that immigrant laborers congregate at a convenience mart
on Jones Ferry Road near 54. I'd say that would be our last resort.
26Aug2017: Tried out pressure washer on a culvert:
Title: 4000 PSI pressure washer cleans culverts
Body: But you need a face shield or at least goggles.
Dear Road Committee, plus Dick and Rusty:
Today I did a proof of concept using a rented 4000 PSI pressure washer
to clean out a culvert around back of my property on Shadowwood. It
looks good to me, and I think we can start planning to do it on ELG Road.
It took about an hour to set up, an hour to clean the culvert and ditch
a little downhill, and an hour to clean up. The "one day" rental from
Saturday to Monday morning (before 08:30 with <8 hours on the clock) is
just under $200 with accessories and insurance:
https://www.sunbeltrentals.com/equipment/detail/1286/0160310/4000psi-gas-cold-water-pressure-washer/#
https://youtu.be/l1Co4_tJMnU
https://youtu.be/JdmMs_Yrmac
http://imgur.com/a/ho3x5
It uses a lot of water. It takes a garden hose as input and has no
reservoir. I have 200 feet of hose. We'll need more hose to get to the
houses near the culverts, and their cooperation to hook to their hose
bibs. I guess somebody needs to get with Audrey about it, when we
figure out when we want to go. If we can't get hoses, Sunbelt also
rents water trailers for $250, same timespan.
Jamie&Katherine and Kim&Wade also have clogged driveway culverts but my
intuition is that they are not really blocking any water that wants to
flow. It looks to me like they have been clogged for a long time.
It splashes, so we should go while it's still fairly warm out. Who's up?
Larry
P.S. Just to confirm, per our arrangement this one is on my dime. I
will bill ELG for the machine rental when we do it on ELG Road.
