Thursday, September 1, 2016

scrap wood...

Found a use for some of my scrap wood today.  Filled some foot deep ruts in the road with a collection of two-by lumber and chunks of left over power line poles.  83,88,69,0,B

11 comments:

Unknown said...

something there is that doesn't love a road

Margery Billd said...

Good grief. Well, that's one place to put your garbage. Maybe it will help.

Ronald Mahan said...

I think that John's neat repair job (being wood) will float away - the next time a hard rain occurs - and water washes across this sorry specimen of Terlingua Ranch roads. Of course - this is a temporary fix until the Terlingua Ranch Road Maintenance Crew arrives with their grader - to spread more bentonite clay on top of the worst erosion channels. Unfortunately, scrapping bentonite around certainly does not provide a much longer usable road surface. -----------------------------------------For a more permanent fix for these type road problems: Don - my bother - and I - haul very large rocks to form a low level dam on downstream side of the road erosion. This slows the flow of water such that sand and gravel settle out in the road surface and fill up erosion ditch cut across our road. A resident (Mr. Nowlin) that resides about 2 miles from our cabin also uses this method - with excellent results.

Larry G said...

actual plank roads were built in the 1840's in the East... not so good.





Ronald Mahan said...

Board roads were also used to provide access to oil drilling sites in lowland areas of Texas in the 1950's. I know - because I had a summer job laying and then picking up the boards. The latter job of picking the boards up was much more difficult - because of all the encrusted mud!

Larry G said...

and you reminded - that in the East board roads are also still used for maintenance of powerline rights of ways - where there is low lying land ... not laid by hand - these are
huge 10 foot long treated railroad-sized beams... that do the trick for heavy equipment over soft areas. They pick them up after and put them back on a truck.



mike said...

you need a grader

Stuart said...

Is that actually thick green grass I see in the upper left corner of the picture?

Joel White said...

A scrap piece of bar grate dragging behind the truck or go-cart will help smooth those ruts.

bob r said...

need a skid steer loader/grader

Ronald Mahan said...

An even more permanent fix would be a culvert buried underneath a three foot thick roadbed of gravel or crushed rock. That would let water flow under the roadbed and vehicles drive down the road. And reduce the need to scrape the roads flat - after every hard rain. But the Terlingua Ranch Maintenance Crews love to scrape our roads deeper & deeper - until the road bed turns into a drainage ditch and must be abandoned and new road cut in. Several abandoned roads - eroded into drainage ditches - can e viewed alongside of the current road going to the Field Lab!