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Life off the grid in the SW Texas desert. An experiment in sustainable living. NUMBERS AT THE END OF EACH BLOG POST: temp at 8PM,high temp,low temp,rainfall,wind conditions(CalmBreezyWindyGusty). YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TheFieldLab Daily live streams at https://www.youtube.com/thefieldlab/live
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Blog Archive
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2016
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September
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- sedentary IV...
- Drone Wars
- 10 BULLETS
- putting it on...
- the tipping bucket method...
- from a distance...
- Who's the boss...?
- found my floor
- wild hair
- toothy
- on being sensitive...
- AS SEEN ON TV
- an expected end...
- from the webcam archives...
- Netgear
- strength training
- more tech woes
- technobabble...
- springtime in september...
- an easy relationship...
- boy's day off...
- this is about as exciting as it gets these days...
- some success...
- not so plug'n'play
- Webcam Timelapse Oldies
- Streaming Video
- A festival of earthly pleasures...
- weed
- joined the underground...
- scrap wood...
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September
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About Me
- John Wells
- The Southwest Texas Alternative Energy and Sustainable Living Field Laboratory
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11 comments:
something there is that doesn't love a road
Good grief. Well, that's one place to put your garbage. Maybe it will help.
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.
actual plank roads were built in the 1840's in the East... not so good.
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!
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.
you need a grader
Is that actually thick green grass I see in the upper left corner of the picture?
A scrap piece of bar grate dragging behind the truck or go-cart will help smooth those ruts.
need a skid steer loader/grader
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!
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