grading

Potable water is stored in a large cistern inside the dwelling unit. We do not yet have a filtration system set up to make use of water from the pond for drinking, cooking and bathing, hence water has to be trucked in.

driveway ~ 03AU

A temporary covering of highway mixHighway mix is similar to the kind of gravel used in concrete, except that it has a high clay content. While it is as hard as concrete when dry it is extremely soft when wet. It works fine on highways which have a crushed rock base, but not on driveways with a clay base. gravel had been put down on the driveway by the previous owner to make the property look good for selling it. This gravel was very insufficient to the need. Following a heavy rain the driveway became soft enough that even the minivan caused ruts in it. When water was delivered on wet days, the weight of the truck made such a mess of the driveway that the man bringing the water often did not want to come to the site; he was worried about getting stuck during especially wet periods like spring thaw.

out with the old

Before adding crushed rock to the driveway the highway mix had to be removed. Then the soil had to be graded, particularly the parking / turn around area in front of the garage. This wide area sloped towards the structure, which meant the garage was always wet inside, even ankle deep with water in spring.

driveway ~ 06MR31

driveway ~ 06AU19

Grading this stretch of the yard proved to be a challenge. It was a dry, dry summer in 2006; it rained all of once between mid-June and mid-September. The soil under the highway mix was very hard. After many days of seeming to accomplish nothing, neighbour Irv Penner suggested using a cultivator. He came by with his tractor and the appropriate implement to demonstrate what he meant. He was right. In the meantime a bracket on the tractor, where the loader is attached, had been broken. The welder who did the repair happened to have an old cultivator sitting on his yard that he couldn’t use. Tearing up the soil of the driveway first made it possible to grade it.

driveway ~ 06AU19

The parking / turn around area in front of the garage was scraped to about 13 cm lower than it had been, level with the inside of the garage. It was then crowned and gradually sloped away from the garage. This took many passes with the cultivator (which did not dig very deep, the soil being so hard) and the bucket. All of this was later fine tuned with a rear blade on the smaller tractor. This critical area was watered several times to make sure that it drained properly. It was then left to dry out and re-graded where necessary.

in with the new

With the ground almost bone dry, crushed limestone rock was delivered in late October. First a 22 yard load of 2 inch rock to create a base, then three 22 yard loads of ¾ inch down.

It seemed that spreading crushed rock level over a wide area would be a simple task, but it is not an easy thing to do. Any variation in level means that the tractor tips forward or back; the blade is extended out the back of the tractor which means the tilt of the vehicle is exaggerated when it reaches the blade. The level of the blade while dragging the crushed rock had to be constantly adjusted. This required watching both behind, to see what the blade was doing, and forward, to keep the tractor moving in the correct direction. A whole new skill set was acquired along with a very stiff neck.

As they were causing problems, the larger rocks were picked up and placed along the edges of the driveway and used to continue the paths where they cross the driveway. However, this was not the best of ideas; in winter these rocks get dragged by the blade on the tractor and make snow removal tricky, to say the least. In 2009, we started picking the 2 inch rocks up again and have been using them elsewhere on the yard to prevent soil ersoion: on either side of the small culverts through the paths and in the ditch through the mini-dike where the pond drains into the east ditch.

The task was compounded by the fact that the larger rock was not driven in and packed down first. When spreading the smaller rock on top, many of the larger rocks kept coming to the surface. The same thing happened the following summer when some dips were filled in, first by re-spreading the rock with the blade then attempting to smooth it out with a drag behind the garden tractor. In the end, the larger 2 inch rocks have almost all been picked out of the driveway where they have come to the surface.

driveway ~ 06OC28

driveway ~ 06OC27

driveway ~ 06OC28

The driveway was finished, including spreading rock inside four bays of the garage, in time to have overhead doors installed before snow started falling in earnest.

driveway ~ 07NO07

grading

out with the old

in with the new

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