Posts Tagged ‘excavation’
Driveway 2.0
Our next big project is now underway. We have committed to spending too many of our hard-earned saved dollars to fix the driveway that has been crumbling since the first few months after we arrived here. That was almost ten years ago. In the ongoing saga of our adventure of leaving the suburbs to create a sanctuary of rural bliss that we call Wintervale, this improvement on the land might be the least important but the most visible.
The old dilapidated pavement was still driveable, but it looked completely neglected (it was!) and was becoming increasingly more of a nuisance by the day. Smooth new asphalt will be a joy to have and it will make this place look even more amazing than it already did despite the lousy driveway surface.
We are contracting with two different companies that have worked together many times before. Yesterday, the excavating company that has supported us on multiple projects in the past, started the process of removing the old asphalt from a majority of the length. Specifically, the portion just above the shop garage all the way down to the road.
The asphalt company will overlay new pavement on top of the old asphalt in front of the shop garage and up to the house where little deterioration was evident.
After the excavators pulled up the first chunks of asphalt, they deduced the material used for the base looked like it was not as coarse as they recommend and it was not applied as thick as it should have been, especially in the low area where wetness and our clay soil combine to create a potential for problems.
Watching the process was mesmerizing for me. I stared in wonder like a little kid. The man operating the backhoe was an artist, deftly manipulating the controls to efficiently pull up and then break chunks of asphalt in one smooth motion.
After the first load of broken asphalt was hauled away, the truck returned with a full load of gravel to slowly pour out over the length of the excavated section. Then, that truck would be positioned beside the backhoe to receive more removed asphalt.
Eventually, a second truck showed up with gravel and joined the rotation. By quitting time, they had torn up about three-quarters of the length. They should be able to finish the entirety of their portion of the work before the end of the day today.
The asphalt company has us on their schedule to start next Monday with their work. When the quote was made this spring, the man said it would be best if they could lay the pavement during the hottest days of summer. It is looking good at this point with high temperatures in the 90s°F expected.
When your driveway is 900 feet long over two rolling hills, it becomes a significant feature of the overall property. I’m really looking forward to having ours updated to a new and improved version 2.0.
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Natural Results
Despite all our efforts to influence outcomes toward results which match the visions in our heads, the universe continues its reluctance to conform to our exact specifications.
A year ago I paid an excavating company more money than I really wanted to part with, to have a drainage swale shaped across our property. The plan was to have me plant grass in the new spillway to control erosion, but the excavation didn’t happen until too late in the year and my effort to cover it with grass was only partially successful.
Meanwhile, the earliest series of spring rainstorms testing the new swale turned out to be extreme gully washers that initiated a distinct washout crevice. The topsoil that flowed down stream from then on began filling in the swale, spoiling the plan to have a clearly defined trough to constrain runoff and drain water from our property without obstruction.
Maybe I could apply for a partial refund.
The good news is that the desired flow of runoff still seems to happen well enough, despite the deviations from the ideal we envisioned. However, I prefer to not have the growing canyon in that pasture and would like to reclaim the originally planned swale from the sediment that has accumulated.
I’m considering the possibility of digging it out myself next summer, and bringing the soil from below to fill in the crevice. I would want to wait until later in the summer, in hopes of finding a time when there is a reduced likelihood of heavy rains, but early enough that I would have plenty of time to get it covered with newly planted grass.
Another option is to leave it go to nature’s design, until such time that it fails to function as we want. It might just be an exercise I need to experience: allowing it to be a little rough around the edges and not so refined as I envisioned.
It seems odd to me that I find myself wrestling with the different extremes that I am drawn toward. On one hand, I prefer to have things be as natural as possible, so the naturally carved drainage ditch should be appealing. On the other hand, I don’t want things to look neglected here, or function faultily, so digging it out, filling in the crevice and covering the entire length with new grass would appeal equally well.
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Relative Something 