Radhe Webster

One of the reasons I want to use rumble strips is to move the water off from the first 6 feet of asphalt. It will be coming into the asphalt from a gravel road that is very flat and I want to make sure the water doesn’t run down the asphalt any longer than it has to.

I could try pitching the road but I’m concerned the angle is just going to dig a channel on the side of the road and I want to move it to a low enough spot where it could never get back to that channel.

Does anyone have experience using rumble strips to move water off an asphalt road?

Details:
I’m in the process of putting in a new asphalt road. I really don’t want to get in a debate about asphalt versus natural building. Let’s take the road as a given. The road collects a significant volume of water from about 8 acre watershed and slowly moves it at around a 1% grade to the top of my property. I was originally thinking of putting in a culvert but was thinking that a series of rumble strips and a speed bump on a 30 degree angle to road might be useful to move that water off to a swale that’s already there.

How well do rumble strips or speed bumps slow and move water? What are the gotchas with this idea?

Thanks!

Chris Spewock wrote:This year was the rainiest year on record for Maryland (ie, wettest year since they started tracking rainfall, approximately 130 years ago). That could be your reason.

Yes it’s sure been wet! Though I’m not complaining too much about it. It’s been great for the fungi!

Cristo Balete wrote:Radhe, why is it you want the swale to drain?   I thought the reason for swales was to hold the water back, not let it go downhill off the property.  What's your location?  Are you in summer or winter now?

I’d like the swale to drain so that it can sink more of the water rather than letting it run off. If that swale is full there isn’t a lower swale (yet) to catch it. It’s going to happen next year but I didn’t have the ability to complete the full project earthworks yet.

I am in Maryland, USA. We are just starting winter but have had a pretty wet year with some very large rain events. All year the swale has filled and drained within 24 hours of filling up. It’s just in the past month that it’s been taking much longer to drain. This last time it was almost 3 days.

The site averages a slope of around 6%. I’ve tried doing daikon in the swale but they didn’t seem to like getting flooded. There are some volunteer black locust loving in the swale and I haven’t disturbed them. I previously did add mulch but a lot of it washed out when the swale filled.

There could be some gleying. I’ll check them once they water has completely gone to verify.

Thanks everyone

Thanks for the replies. I suspect that I haven’t reached the high water table because the swale is on a slope and there is still at least 30 vertical feet and 250 linear feet to the low point at the valley. I haven’t seen any indication on the lower elevation of springs forming which I would expect if we have fully charged the ground water.

We also haven’t had unusually high rain. In fact it’s been lower than it was in the summer when the water drained within 12 hours. The biggest difference is the temperature that has gotten quite cold and is averaging around 32 Fahrenheit 0 Celsius.

I was wondering if it could be that the clay particulates in the soil have sorted themselves into a pattern that makes them more impervious to water. I was thinking about throwing more mulch into the swale to try get some additional bio breakdown to help disrupt the clay if that’s what is happening. Does that sound plausible or should I focus on trying to plant bulrush and other water loving plants into that swale.

Thanks all.

My swale isn’t draining anymore and is acting like a mini pond. What would cause this? How would I remediate it?

Details:
I installed some swales approximately 40 yards in length in March. All spring and summer we got a lot of rain and they did what they are supposed to and drained once filled. The top swale is still draining properly but the bottom one is just holding water now. Soil composition is clay so not totally surprising but I’m unsure why it has all of the suddenly happened. Bottom swale that’s filling up isn’t getting a lot of sediment. That’s all going to the top of the system. Water is filtering through woodchips on the way through the system.  We last got rain 3 days ago and it’s still full. Swale is approximately 2 foot deep and 4 foot wide.  

My stuff does not appear as an option on the mobile version of the site. Was trying to figure out where it was and saw it correctly showing the 3 candies when I changed to full version. Just an FYI.