What are the best manual fixes for potholes and ruts in gravel roads?

[arakboss]

I am going to volunteer my labor to do some spot repairs in the roads leading to my Mtn property. Evidently the special road district is not going to have funds to do routine maintenance this year. They sent a grader through some of the more well traveled roads but didn't fix potholes. Some of the less traveled roads didn't even get a visit by the grader.

What are your favorite techniques for filling in potholes and ruts. I am willing to volunteer my labor but would rather not spend a bunch of my money on materials. Some of the potholes/ruts are 6 inches deep and some are on a steep grade. The road material is some type of crushed/decomposed granite, a very fine material.

I will have a pic, shovel, hand tamper and watering can for tools.

Edit: For material I can reclaim the material the grader put in the ditches. The SRD is not going to have money to do the ditches this year either, so the gravel will be there until at least next spring.

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[The Heretic]

It is my opinion, but not actual experience, that a coarser grade of rough rock - such as 1" or larger, is better for repairs. Fine grade just gets pushed out of a repair quicker.

 

[flylo]

Crushed concrete from when they replace a highway. You get the fines with the larger pc & when it rains it almost turns back to concrete. I did my drive 20 years ago & had a snow plow with rhe blade turned make a small hole that I put a bag of concrete mix it & it's like new. DON'T use limestone or orher large stone as it always crawls & moves when you drive on it. Hope this helps!

 

[arakboss]

Crushed concrete from when they replace a highway. You get the fines with the larger pc & when it rains it almost turns back to concrete. I did my drive 20 years ago & had a snow plow with rhe blade turned make a small hole that I put a bag of concrete mix it & it's like new. DON'T use limestone or orher large stone as it always crawls & moves when you drive on it. Hope this helps!

That sounds like a great idea but I don't have any reasonable way to haul in material like that. There are a lot of rocks down there that could be broken down with a sledge hammer. I am not sure what kind of rock it is but it cracks pretty easily, especially when wet. What I will have trouble finding is a material for the "fines".
We have a cinder (red) pit nearby. I might be able to get some fines from there.

 

[flylo]

We lived on a private road when I was a kid & my dad hauled a load of cinderes in & spread it every year. It should work fine.

 

[Certaindeaf]

Tom Sawyer wrote the manual on physical labor..

 

[DeanfromOregon]

Potholes are caused by water being retained in the same spot. For a mostly permanent fix dig a small trench off to the side and french drain them, fill the hole and trench with compacted gravel/rock. Takes a lot less than the "cover the whole road" method and arguably works better, depending on your surface.

Washboard is a whole 'nother story.

 

[Ruger Rich]

Perhaps 2 or 3 years ago I saw where in Oakland (yes, Oakland) an organized group of people who
called themselves "road vigilantes" or something similar would go out in the middle of the night and
repair roads in residential neighborhoods. I wanted a follow up on this activity but never came
across it.

 

[coop44]

Try this

Old tires have been piling up for a hundred years.

 

[arakboss]

Try this

Old tires have been piling up for a hundred years.

Very cool but I had something like this in mind.

 

[flylo]

Also keep the tree limbs trimmed & trees cut back so the road isn't shaded & it will stay dry & dry fast after a rain & in the spring. I had a very remote cabin 10miles of 2 track & kept trimming & it made a world of difference.

 

[joshkk]

Visually imagine the difference between a slope-sided pasta bowl and a vertical-sided cooking pot..... In profile, the pothole now naturally looks like the pasta bowl, you want it to look like the cooking pot, with a bottom corner that is close to 90 degrees.

You want to take the time and effort, with a pick axe or a steel breaking bar or something, to chip out the material around the edge of the pothole in order to give it a more pronounced bottom edge "corner" for the new material to bite into, instead of just getting squeezed right up the sloped sides under weight of traffic. It is also worth manually scuffing up (with those same tools) the bottom surface of the pothole, to give more texture for the new material to connect with and bind to. When you put the new material in, mound it slightly in the center so that as it compacts it will settle flush.

It sounds like in this case, you'll be using the material at hand for free, but in general, the bigger the rock you can use, the more surface area each piece has to mate up with its neighbors.... 1.5" stone is best in terms of overall durability for general use, 3/4" is next best, don't use anything smaller or round.

Best time of the year to do it is late spring so there's still some moisture to help loosen and work on the road and help settle materials, but that pretty much it's going to dry and stay dry for the season shortly after you finish.

 

[mrblond]

If I remember right, a few years back some guy repaired a pothole on a road by his house. I think.. the state came in and told him to unfix the ole as it was not authorized or some bubblegum.

 

[bigbearbear]

I don't have any experience with this but if you don't mind spending just a little bit of money, perhaps get some cheap concrete mix and use those to patch up the holes?

In any case, be sure to wear a safety vest when working on the road and also put out some flares or sign ahead and behind you to prevent drivers running you over. Safety first.

 

[flylo]

Here in Michigan you have to have 4 people. 1 working, 1 sleeping & 1 listening to the radio & 1 watching the one guy work. They change every 1/2 hour.

 

[pharmseller]

I don't have any experience with this but if you don't mind spending just a little bit of money, perhaps get some cheap concrete mix and use those to patch up the holes?

In any case, be sure to wear a safety vest when working on the road and also put out some flares or sign ahead and behind you to prevent drivers running you over. Safety first.

And flaggers. Flares and flaggers.

 

[arakboss]

If I remember right, a few years back some guy repaired a pothole on a road by his house. I think.. the state came in and told him to unfix the ole as it was not authorized or some bubblegum.

I had heard about that but our roads are not maintained by the County or State. All maintenance is the responsibility of the special road distict (aka the people who live there). We are suppose to have three members on the special road district board but currently have only one. The SRD operates sort of like an HOA but the money is collected on our property taxes and then forwarded to the SRD account.

 

[arakboss]

This is another duty the Special Road District is suppose to perform including taking down dead trees next to the road. I think they took out dead trees once in the 13 years I have owned property there. It's an issue for wildfire safety too. If brush and trees are burning right up to and into roadway way it could make evacuation even more dangerous.

Also keep the tree limbs trimmed & trees cut back so the road isn't shaded & it will stay dry & dry fast after a rain & in the spring. I had a very remote cabin 10miles of 2 track & kept trimming & it made a world of difference.

 

[Horatius]

i know of at least one SRD in Oregon that hires inmate work crews from the county jail. its actually an economic way of trimming that brush and cleaning ditches, when you have some SRD money. keeping the rock and debris out of the ditches and cleaning the culverts will cut down on future ruts. for now it sound like getting the rock out of the ditch into the potholes is your main goal. when I was a young man BLM (not the marxists) used to repair and maintain the forest roads and they used the grader to pull the rock out of the ditches back into the road before smoothing the surface. I know of no shortcuts that don't require money or equipment. hard work your shovel and tamper can at least help you get the worst of it for now. good Luck! the roads I see fall apart seem to start when the drainage fails.

 

[arakboss]

i know of at least one SRD in Oregon that hires inmate work crews from the county jail. its actually an economic way of trimming that brush and cleaning ditches, when you have some SRD money. keeping the rock and debris out of the ditches and cleaning the culverts will cut down on future ruts. for now it sound like getting the rock out of the ditch into the potholes is your main goal. when I was a young man BLM (not the marxists) used to repair and maintain the forest roads and they used the grader to pull the rock out of the ditches back into the road before smoothing the surface. I know of no shortcuts that don't require money or equipment. hard work your shovel and tamper can at least help you get the worst of it for now. good Luck! the roads I see fall apart seem to start when the drainage fails.

Most of the ruts and potholes occur during the spring melt season. We get quite a bit of snow there every winter and the roads turn to mush when that starts to melt. Then you have people fighting for traction on the mushy roads and it leaves a mess when things finally dry out. For some reason it has been especially bad this year and the SRD seems to be short on funds. I think we have more people staying on their property all year and that is contributing to more traffic on the roads during the spring melt season.