The 20 acre portion of land we inherited from the wife's mother did not have a driveway access point to the road.  In the past we have been using the drive into the old home place to move equipment in & out. However, the house has recently been rebuilt and is now occupied by the wife's brother.  Rather than keep using his drive to access our property, we are finally getting things changed.

Just made arrangements with the county DOT for laying culvert & setting up a driveway onto the property.  Our plan is to build a drive that goes back to one of our storage buildings & make a wide circle or loop at that point that connects back onto the drive .  This will let me pull the trailer with tractor straight in through a bit of the wooded area, unload - do work - reload, then continue around the circle & back out the drive without having to do any 3 point turns with trailer attached.  The proposed path is pretty much clear of trees & brush & will hopefully be not too difficult to grade.

The culvert is just stage one.  They will be putting in 28' of 15" concrete culvert (about $385 delivered) sometime the first of next week.  DOT does the install & associated grading immediately by the road for no cost, you just provide the culvert they specify. With that in, I can start with establishing the drive bed in preparation for gravel.

Pics will follow as real work begins.

Nick

take lots of pics while their doing it please.

if you have any areas that are soft or wet at all.

USE GEOTEXILE

Culvert materials delivered Sat.   DOT might get it installed Monday, have to wait & see (may be weather delay).



Yellow arrow points at the opening I intend to use for the driveway.  Basically will go in until past the trees & create the circle/loop on the left side, toward the back of an existing storage building w/lean to shelter that is pretty much hidden by trees from this perspective.

Nick

GEOTEXILE IS THE ONLY WAY TO GO!!!  My drive is 900'. I put rock on it 10 years ago during initial install and just grade it once a month. Without the fabric, I'd be buying rock every year.

I just built 150 feet of driveway in really a wet swampy area.  

I cleared out as much mud as possible and then dumped about a foot of (RAP) recycled asphalt.  It packed down and is solid.  

RAP is the grindings from the road when they resurface.  

never heard of this before...where do you get RAP? approximate pricing? process to lay it? thanks...

OK, DOT finally did the install.  Wet weather had kept them off for a while & even today, their fill dirt supply was too wet to bring any out to cover the culvert.

Anyway, this is the install sequence:



a  pocket transit was used to get a ditch bottom that tracked with the road







after pipe was down, local dirt pushed over for cover.  I showed them where I would be grading so they could use that as cover material.









A couple of small truck loads of crusher run were brought in & graded









The upper edge was graded a bit & grass seed was sown on all exposed areas






Final product from the road -



Nick

Cool.  So you say that you worked with the county DOT and they covered the culvert install, minus cost of pipe?  I'm in NC too.  How do you find who to contact?  

Thanks for posting this.  I'll be following your progress.





CHRIS

You fill out an application for residential driveway permit (no cost) at the local county DOT office. The guys there can give you the spec for your situation. You generally want to put visible stakes at the proposed location so they can evaluate requirements.  In my case, I could get a 28' span with a 15" pipe. I had to make my own arrangements for purchase and delivery to site. You may or may not need to supply fill/cover material. Their shortage of their usual fill material worked in my favor a bit as they scraped off some material for fill that I would have been moving anyway.

Nick

in the northeast its usually called regrind, generally costs similar to gravel, spreads like gravel, packs well, especially if rolled. generally around here, geotextile, gravel, surface layer of stone dust or regrind.

Got started on the drive.  Dropped the scarifiers down just a bit on the box blade & started working the ground some with the 3038e.  After the major roots were handled, moved the scarifiers to their storage position (upside down).   Made the loop at the end too small (just around a burn pile), need a shallower turn for the trailer to negotiate it easily.

Cut into the birm above the entry area:



A view back toward the road.  The dogleg was required to protect SWMBO's dogwood ... (all dogwoods are her personal property)



This is the end area near the storage building - too sharp a turn for the 18' car hauler to manage.



Nick

Nice.

Need pics of the tractor next.

OK,  this is what I've been working with so far, a 3038e w/60" box blade.  Scarifiers are in their storage position (upside down).



I enlarged the turn circle today, it follows a path I actually drove pulling the car-hauler.





This is a view from back up towards the storage building



Nick