Paul and I just recorded a series of 4 podcasts reviewing this book to be released sometime soon...so here's a
thread where we can discuss this info and other road building adventures and concerns that people have encountered.
the book is by Bill Zeedyk who also wrote Let the
Water do the Work on Induced meandering which can be discussed in more detail on this permies thread
https://permies.com/t/15484/permaculture/Induced-Meandering
Here is a link to the free pdf version of the book
http://quiviracoalition.org/images/pdfs/1888-A_Good_Road_Lies_Easy_on_the_Land.pdf
This book is geared towards
land managers and broad acre land owners such as farmers and ranchers and gives guidelines and details for how to decrease maintenance, improve effective use of water, and mitigate issues with erosion, impaired water quality, and landscape health. A good portion of it is a how to manual, and it has lots of great pictures and drawings. it is set up for low-standard roads aka dirt roads and not paved scenarios, which we assumed would be the types of roads homesteaders and farmers are building.
I think the info presented here can be applied to homesteading and even to garden pathway design for high use pathways. In particular, I think the keyline design method of siting roads in the landscape as part of the water harvesting system and the good road information are complimentary. and both focus on how we can use roads to fit multiple functions as well as minimize cost and maintenance.
Three of the keyline
books can be found at soil and health.
The Keyline Plan
The Challenge of Landscape
The City Forest
Yeomans Water for Every Farm can be purchased from Amazon or directly
Water for Every Farm
For more info on Keyline, you can also come to our
class this August.
Keyline Design Course August 2012
These books are tough to wade through though, whereas a good road is a quick fairly simple read.
roads have the potential to be very valuable and very destructive in our built landscapes and there are some simple things to consider
location in the landscape: ideally at the toeslope in the uplands
drain the water off at every good opportunity to a location that can process it (infiltrate or store) effectively
only use a culvert when you really have to
as you traverse a landscape try to have the road alternate between uphill and downhill stretches freqeuntly (grade reversals)
keep the road as narrow as possible for a given use or vehicle type
Crown high use roads, whenever possible
outslope low use roads, whenever possible
there's a lot more, and these are some of the basics.
I'd love to hear stories or see pictures.
