Thursday, July 3, 2014

Driveway, step one.

Step one of course being, the beginning. And in the beginning, there were trenches.
It may be difficult to tell from that photo, but that's a 100 foot long trench, for most of it it's only a few inches deep. Below the cut I'm going to get to the worse areas, and then Step 2, delivery of raw materials.

 This is sort of the normal depth problem. 3 - 4 inches. The problem isn't so much that this isn't something you can drive on, you can. It isn't good for the car, and it will quickly get worse if left unattended. The water will tend to go the way that gets it there fastest, and a drop off is a sure way to do that. The drop off coincidentally means more damage to that area, so the water goes faster . . . see the pattern? Below is getting into the really bad area, near the bottom of the driveway water is now moving faster, and it was already in a bit rough shape after the winter. It turned into what you see there. What is hard to convey is that it wanders enough that at some point you have to cross it with the car, and straddle the trench instead of driving beside it.

 This is probably the worst area, again, due to the colors and the lighting it's hard to give a real feel of how big a hole that is, it's about 8" deep, and spreads out a few feet in width. Not unusable yet, but it is getting there. Below Right I thought of using my foot and leg for scale in one of the narrow ditches, I'm not sure how clear it is, but that one is about 3" shallower than my knee, and a little wider than my foot is wide. I suspect this area is so deep because the side walls held up well enough to keep it from blowing out width wise.
Bottom is the state of the driveway now. Entirely not driveable due to the delivery of the crush gravel. In the photo you can see 4 of the 6 piles the dump truck driver made for me to now spread out. I'm taking a break now because after knocking down about 1/4th of one of the piles I was panting and aching. So right now as I write this I'm thinking of better ways to work. So, now for breakfast, then back to it. If anyone feels like coming to help, it would be welcome, bring a shovel, an iron rake, or a tamper! (Or machinery!)

1 comment:

  1. We're also trying to get some earlier carrots going for summer and fall eating in addition to another block of carrots to winter over. We've not yet managed early carrots due to cutworm and winter moth issues, but we'll make a more concerted effort this year. wood fence panels

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