A nice neighbor has been using a bobcat to do some work around his place and brought it out to repair the road damage caused by an inconsiderate neighbor - a trench and berm that creates a new path for water during storms. Rather than flowing across a wide area, the trench fills and channels all the excess right across the road. Since the water caught in the trench only lasts about two weeks, it really serves no purpose other than destroying the road. Since he doesn't have to drive on this portion of the road, he never lifts a finger to repair the damage and the inconvenience it causes to the rest of us who have to pass through here. I came out ahead of the repair vehicle and pulled all my wood bits I had thrown in the ruts. Now it is smooth sailing again...till the next rain storm. 76,81,53,0,B
10 comments:
Road looks great.
hmmm... how much does a culvert cost?
;-)
I think a culvert would get washed out as well....a well constructed concrete bridge might be in order except when the bad neighbor diverts the wash to another section of the road, then the bridge would be high and dry and another creek would be formed.
I've seen what are essentially depressed concrete aprons... low-water "bridges" in the east and out west in arroyos... the thing is roads are fighting against nature and have to be engineered to remain in place - for known/expected runoff conditions - the caveat that flood that exceed the design will overwhelm them...
ditching along roads is how you get water to the side off the roadbed but then it will have to cross somewhere... using some kind of engineered solution ...
In Virginia, for instance, when you buy a parcel of land - and want access to it - you will usually have to cut through a VDOT ditch along the main road - and so a culvert or equivalent is required so that the VDOT ditch will still convey water to where they have designed it to drain.
Once or twice a year or whenever needed - they will come out and re-cut the ditch...clean it out... and clear the culverts - because if they don't even asphalt roads will get destroyed when the water overwhelms the ditches... so they are maintained to be able to convey the water they were originally designed for.
they do that for the roads they are responsible for. Private roads and their maintenance is up to the owners or homeowners associations... but the engineering standards are the same - it just depends on whether the owners want to pay to design and maintain to engineering standards...
Texas and Virginia are two of just 4-5 states where the State is responsible for county-level roads; in most states - that responsibility falls to the County itself.
Texas has the largest state-maintained road network in the US .. and Virginia is 3rd - because like Texas - it maintains the county type roads. If you go to Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or Colorado or most of the other 50 states - the state maintains the Interstates and major state roads that cross county lines... but roads that are specific to counties are maintained by the counties , private owners and HOAs.
Roads are one of those things that defines the difference between 3rd world countries and "advanced" nation countries... Texas has what are called Farm-to-Market roads which are worth reading about - because those kinds of roads connected ranches and farms to "markets" as well as provided rights-of-ways for electricity - to those farms and ranches...
I like the culvert idea. Maybe the ditch man would to? It would probably solve more than one problem.
you could actually dig a trench and then dump in rocks, cover with erosion fabric then cover and the water would flow under... the thing is - if you don't give the water some path to flow on - it will do it on the road surface and cut through it... as John surmised... that the repair will "last" until the next rain...
I wonder if Texas maintains Mailbox road to some specified standard... that would allow John to lobby them for a simple "cheap" drainage pipe...
this is probably a tempest in a teapot... except when it rains.. ;-)
The road is maintained by our property owners association. They only grade the roads - they do not put culverts in. This is a bad neighbor problem and has nothing to do with how the ranch maintains the roads.
anther neighbor "enemy" for this crazy eccentric guy, ugh
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