J. Calvert

John and others, thanks for your comments.  I'll leave it here for now, and try to remember to update the thread if and when we try geotextile on our road.

I found some helpful information by googling:  "geotextile fabric" "road maintenance" rural

have a great day!

John C Daley wrote:20L buckets are plentiful, old paint containers 10, 15 L also can be 1/2 filled to suit.
n the test bed  would try 11/2 rock and 1/2 and 11/2 inch road base with fines on the other 1/2 and observe the performance of both.

Good idea on the side-by-side comparison.

OK, I think you are saying for the whole length of the fabric, try 1-1/2 drain rock on half, and 1-1/2 base course on the other half?

Do you think 4" of material over the fabric is sufficient?  I just read that 6" is recommended.  ...now I will have fun calculating the cost difference :-)

It's a good question... which is better over the fabric, drain rock or base course (rock down to fines)?  Intuitively it seems like base course would be better, but I'm not sure why.

EDIT:  OK, did a bit more research... 1-1/2 "base course" would be the preferred to place on the fabric, and then "surface course" or "top course" on top of that—3/4" base course would do.

thanks again :-)

Hey John, thanks for your responses.

I hope you can by just 11/2 inch aggregate which has no fines. It is large enough to press into soft soil and form a strong lower base. Anything with fines will not consolidate to a hard firm base.  

Thanks.  No worries on that... we have some options for purchase here.

Culverts allow water to gravitate to the lowest area.
If water banks against a raised road it can soak the base and allow the road to sink.
culverts are not perforated and are usually 12 inch diameter.
Perhaps look at a few well made roads nearby.

Culverts need a minimum amount of cover usually another 12 inches.

Yeah, there's no way we can build such things.  We'd need to raise the road bed quite a lot, and the water would need to drain away from the road.

I think the best way to describe our road situation here, in the flat areas, is that the rain soaks everything—road and surrounding earth.  And there's nowhere for the water to drain away to, and it just sinks into the earth.  The water on the road pools some before sinking in, and those areas develop ruts.  Strangely, puddling occurs on the road more than it does anywhere else.  The soil in our area is volcanic and very porous.  It's rare to find puddles anywhere.  No lakes, no streams.

A trial with geo textile and road base on half the length and 11/2 aggregate may be worthwhile, with no culverts installed.

This is the main reason I posted to this forum... to see if anyone had specific info about the installation of geotextile fabric, for a situation such as ours—as you say, a retrofit.  How's this for a trial plan... for a 100 -or- 200 ft section of rutting road, fill existing potholes with 1-1/2 rock, lay down the fabric, put a 4" layer of 1-1/2 rock over the fabric?  How do you think this would hold up?

The advantage of dropping aggregate from a trailer is that you are not double handling it, and the trailer can be located right at the pot hole, try it with a few buckets of stone 11/2 inch.

Understood... those buckets would be very heavy.

thanks!
JC

Gravel is not 11/2 inch rock or aggregate.

Sorry... I was just using the term "gravel" loosely.

What we have here are blue rock aggregates of various sizes.

We can get 3/4", 1-1/2", 2-1/2" "base course", also called "minus" (e.g. 1-1/2 inch minus).  This is called "rock down to fines".

We can also get "drain rock"... 3/4", 1-1/2", 2-1/2", also called "clean or wash rock".  For example, 1-1/2" drain rock is 1-1/2″ to 3/8″ rock with no sand/fines.

Thanks, John.

Having ditches along the flat section of the road will need to drain somewhere, which sounds like it cannot happen, so any pavement will need to be built up with culverts to allow water movement.

Wow, OK... so some kind of perforated drain pipe under the road surface?  PVC?

Do you mean bury 4" perforated drain pipes in the existing road bed, such that they are slightly sloping to the road edge, and then build up the height of the road surface using gravel?  It seems like a gravel mixture would be good... maybe "rock down to fines"?  About how much height do you think?

Geo textile works best when used over large areas, not patches.

I'm looking at 12.5 ft x 100 ft for $200. HERE

Do you think that's a large enough area?  I think we could afford maybe 2 or 3 of these at a time, plus the cost of covering it with gravel, maybe 4 inch deep.

I suggest not bothering about it and see how my suggestion works.
I get a trailer load of 11/2 inch clean aggregate, about 3/4 cubic yard and cruise along the pot holes filling them and leaving them heaped about 11/2 inches.
Sometimes I have plastic buckets I fill with rock and carry a few feet to the pothole from the trailer to speed the process up.

I'm still liking that solution, except for us it would be piles of gravel on the side of the road, in convenient locations.  That way we can stop the car, grab a bucket and fill holes, or bring out a wheelbarrow.  Maybe someday I can also look into getting a trailer.

I'll likely propose to the neighbors that we try out a stretch of geotextile as a test, and then use your hole filling suggestion as well.  We'll find out if the geotextile works out, and if it does we can continue to install more sections going forward, as funds permit.

John, from an engineering viewpoint, considering the nature of our particular road surface, do you think filling the existing holes—which by the way seem to appear in the same areas over and over again—will be as effective, or more effective, than for example laying down a thin layer of gravel over the whole road surface (in these rutting areas)?

RE: filling the potholes by hand... Is it best to just fill the holes with the gravel, heaped slightly as you say; or is it a good idea to disturb (rough up) the pothole and a bit around it with a pick axe (mattock), and then fill and mix in the gravel?

thanks and aloha from Hawaii!

John C Daley wrote:Jay are locals happy to help?
I think one thing may help, in the absence of heavy road equipment.
I use it on my own driveway is to place loose 11/2 inch rock into each pothole, slightly heaped.
Traffic will push it in, but because its bigger it will most like not disappear.
And repeat later if needed.
I have it loose in a trailer and just cruise along off loading the rock at each hole.
I am surprised people travel at 20mph, in Australia it would be 45 to 60 miles per hour

Hey John, John C. here... the OP.

Yes, locals can help, and I like the idea of gravel in the potholes.  Good advice on 1-1/2" rock.  I was thinking keep piles of gravel along the bad parts, on the side of the road., and everyone can pitch in and distribute it.

Do you have any more thoughts about the geotextile fabric?  Could you maybe elaborate on this a bit?

Geo textile is best covered by road material and is usually applied during construction, retro installing would involve a lot of road material
needed to be purchased or moved.

Wouldn't it just involve filling the existing potholes, laying down the fabric, and then adding a layer (4"?) of gravel on top?  What I'm thinking is to localize this treatment to the pothole areas only, and one area at a time as we can afford it.

thanks,
JC

paul wheaton wrote:Rutting and potholes are the sign of softer materials.  Materials that can be shaped to a crown the drainage ditches on the sides.

no crown. No ditches.

potholes.

Math.

Yep, we've established that already.  The problem is, a soft roadbed, and heavy rains, also translates to erosion.  Potholes.  What we really need is to move some of the soft material out of the way, and create a hard road bed with new material.  Keep in mind that decades of soft material were dumped on this road bed, which was only switched up to hard material in the last maybe 6-8 years.  All absorbed.  As I said before, the road wasn't engineered properly from the very beginning.  Yes, ditches would be great.  But it takes a firm surface for the crown to be effective and lasting.

Add to the equation that it's a loose community of neighbors responsible for this road, not one person.  So there's a human, group factor, involving group politics and money issues.

Add to that all the traffic the road is getting (even though it's a dead end).

Add to that 80-100 in of rainfall per year, and sometimes very heavy rains.

Over the last 7 years let's say, shaping of the surface has been attempted in areas where that's possible.  And gravel applied.  But the money factor prohibits the "bigger moves" from being made.  Potholes start to reappear mid-year.

In short, this road needs to be resurfaced... and the money for that simply doesn't exist.

So, give up?  ... or geotextile fabric. :-)

By the way, to any of the good folks receiving emails from this thread...

Please don't feel compelled to answer.  I know this is a tough problem, and I'm just looking for any insight from folks who have knowledge of the application of geotextile fabric.

Thank you Paul for providing this great permaculture forum... one that until a few days ago I didn't know existed.  I will spread the word.

I've been a permie for about 20 years, and the last 12 of that, a homesteader as well.  I've met in person some of the big names in permaculture.

peace out.

No need to guess there, Paul.  I've described the situation in quite a bit of detail.

About 38% of the road is problematic, because that part of the road is built on flat land, where water collects in some places.  This 38% amounts to about 2,000 ft of road.  In that space, there are areas of rutting, and areas of no rutting.  Some of the rutting areas (the most serious) are strings of potholes.  There are also some more isolated potholes here and there.

These areas with the rutting (potholes) need something done differently than has been done for decades, which has been to dump gravel on the road surface in these general areas.  In these areas the road bed is soft, so the gravel sinks in when it rains, and potholes are eventually formed once again.

There aren't 15% of this and 5% of that... these are the areas that need attention.  There aren't 500 of these areas.

If I've got a string of potholes in location A, and another string of potholes in location B... I should treat those in different ways?  No.

I'm trying to come up with a system that breaks us out of this cycle of having to continually fill potholes, year after year.

Yeah, the problem is not me... I'm just a guy trying to maybe do the impossible, instead of just repeating the same thing that doesn't really work.

Is it impossible?  Apparently geotextile fabric will provide a solution.

Hi John!  Thanks for chiming in.

Geo textile is best covered by road material and is usually applied during construction, retro installing would involve a lot of road material
needed to be purchased or moved.

I was thinking to make these improvements in sections, so that we can afford it over time.  So for example if a 200 ft stretch of road had one or more of these problem areas, like in my photo above, we would fill the ruts and lay the geotextile over those areas, and then lay on blue rock gravel (hard, high-grade).  I hear that 4" is the minimum.

At the same time, we'd continue to fill potholes individually, from piles of gravel on the side of the road.  There's actually even free gravel from a nearby area where road construction was done.  It's volcanic, hard, and irregular.

will the other landholders help with the repairs?

A subset of the landholders have been donating every year.  I'm hoping more will donate if they see an affordable plan that will increase the lifespan of the gravel.  I think we'd have volunteers for the labor as well, no problem.

why is no money available?

Money is available, but we live in an economically depressed, remote rural area.  This pattern of lack of funds has been going on for decades.  Even if there were some neighbors with deep pockets, everyone knows what's been going on with the road situation for decades, and nobody has stepped forward to fund a full resurfacing of the problem areas.

do they spend it on other items?

ha ha... I have no idea.  The fancy homes here are just basic homes.  The non-fancy ones are relics from the 1970s that people are still living in, or inexpensive, unpermitted jungalows.

a bad road will add to the cost of maintenance of all vehicles?

Oh yeah, for sure.  The road is a killer of older cars—I am a direct recipient of that unhappy eventuality.  It's not a 4x4 road, but it can be on the threshold of that at times.  4x4 trucks can easily handle our road.  The thing is, mostly non 4x4s use the road.

I am doing an assessment and analysis of this whole problem and documenting it, in order to put forth a new plan that's better and less expensive than what's been done up until now.

what speed is done along this road?

I would say 12-15 mph is about the average.  You can go 20 in some places, but not for long.  There's just a lot of rough spots.  Also rock outcroppings, which nobody has really dealt with, and that's part of my new plan to deal with those as well.  (Another potential can of worms, but I think way easier to deal with than the rutting.)

A couple of other things, delivery can never be free, the total price you pay is the important figure.

Of course, and we all realize that gravel needs to be purchased and hauled here.  That's what's been happening every year for decades.  If geotextile is a good solution, and straightforward to install it, with gravel over top, then it looks like we can greatly reduce the overall cost of gravel and delivery over time.  Perhaps a test is what's needed, but the show must also go on because the ruts are in full swing now, and the rainy season is approaching.

Thanks for your help, John!