02Sep2017: Waterbars at 4143 RTR

The day after all that hoe work in the rain, I improved two of the rain grooves into full fledged waterbars.  It took about 3 hours to do both features.

 This is after using the Merry Tiller to scarify the area.  Even though the road is very well compacted, the tiller easily dug to about 2 inch depth.  It is important to use a Merry Tiller here.  An ordinary garden tiller will hurt itself.  But with the Merry Tiller, you don't need a backhoe, nor a lot of pick and shovel work.

I'm a Merry Tiller fan.  The times are 1/8 inch steel and the double reduction chain drive gives you torque to turn up 6 inch rocks and 1 inch stumps.

At this point:

• All the loose tillage has been pulled downhill into a 4 inch tall mound with rake and hoe,
• The resulting hole has been filled with 10 gallons of 67 grade gravel.

67 (aka sixes and sevens) gravel has no fines, so it makes good drainage.  Water slips right through the gaps.

This is the view after compaction.  The mound is now about 2 inches.  It's a water bump, not a speed bump.  The gravel is packed tight to minimize dispersion by car tires and catching of bike tires.  Weak water flow from the left drops into the gravel and filters downhill into the ditch (up in the photo).  Strong water flow overshoots the gravel but pools behind the bump, and still flows into the ditch.

This is the one on RTR east side, diverting Shadowwood water into Fran's woods.

Followup 2021: This silted up and needed to be redug in a year.  Some people disliked the bump.  The whole idea became less important after that stretch was crowned with a box blade, purchased Jan2020.

02Sep2017: Pothole Repair on Shaddowwood

After the big rain on 01Sep2017, Shadowwood had a big puddle that I thought was or would become a pothole.  I used it to try out a few things like using rocks for fill and transporting the 200 plus pound plate compactor with the tractor.

This is how it looked at the start, and the tools I started with.  I may not use the pickaxe again.  It splashed me pretty bad, and kicked one rock right up into my lip.  Bad idea.

This shows the holes after digging out with the pickaxe.  Reference manuals call this "scarifying."  Supposedly the new fill grabs dug newly ground better than ground that's been smoothed over by car tires.  By now, most of the water that started out in the puddles is on me.

Flattish rocks are laid in the scarifiedd holes.  This is my innovation.  I think the large volume of the rocks may help reduce settling of the fill material over time.  If nothing else, they will provide a telltale if the fill washes out.

Here are two buckets of gravel in the holes.  The buckets are 5 gallons, with weep holes drilled into the bottoms.  The gravel is "ABC," aka "crusher run."  That means that it has the "fines," which means sand down to rock dust, particles that come out of the crusher that makes big rocks into little ones.  The fines make ABC into good fill for potholes etc.
 

After about 5 minutes with the plate compactor, the gravel is both tamped down and spread out a little.

This unusual rock placed on the western bank is a marker.  There is a 12 inch diameter hickory just out of frame to the left.

Done and dusted, with the plate compactor on the tractor lifts.  Total time: one hour.

01Sep2017: Ditching

This evening I spent about 90 minutes in the rain with a hoe, working on drainage from Reggae's to the power cut and partway down Pond road.  The cuts I made were shallow and temporary, but served to divert most of the rainwater off the roads.  It is easier to dig when it's raining.  The water softens the dirt and carries the diggings away.

We need to install real waterbars in the places I scratched grooves, and improve the ditches so water is not kicked into the wheel ruts.

It was too dark to take pictures at the time.  These photos were taken the next day on Red Tail Run:

This is Red Tail Run near Reggae's culvert, below the washout from earlier this year.  Water was running down the west wheel rut and making a big puddle in the road over the culvert.  This groove diverted water from the rut into the ditch.  It had to be here because the berm is low.  For most of this stretch of road, there is high ground between the wheel rut and the ditch.  In some places, the rut is actually lower than the ditch.  Water can only be diverted into the ditch in the places where the berm is low, or at the top.

The berm is too dense for compaction (tried it).  It could be cut down with a tractor and blade, but the ditch would need to be deepened in turn.  I think it's better long term to:

1. Build waterbars to divert the water in the two locations shown here.
2. Build the wheel ruts up with ABC gravel and the plate compactor.

This is the top of the same ditch, just below Jack&Lori's driveway.  Before July, no rainwater went into the ditch here.  Tractor work in July cut down the area between the blue lines about half the water went in the ditch.  But in the rain it was obvious that about half the water was overshooting and running down the wheel rut.  This groove and the little downhill bank diverted all the water from tis area into the ditch.  Water here is what comes down RTR from my house, and what comes down Jack&Lori's driveway.

West side of RTR near the trailhead, looking south.The tree blocks the original ditch, kicking water from the ditch into the wheel rut.  A little hoe work got the water back into the ditch on the downhill side.   I did this in several places on Baer Hill during the same storm, and watched the road drain off in real time.

Two rain grooves on Red Tail Run just below my driveway combined to  dry the road out down to Jack&Lori's.  The water here is mostly from Shadowwood.

These grooves were replaced by waterbars the next day.