Maintenance tips

TIPS FOR GRAVEL ROAD MAINTENANCE ON A SHOESTRING

Low-budget road maintenance can be challenging, but it can be done. Careful observation and attention to small problems can head off major expenditures.

There are some good gravel road maintenance manuals available from the Maine DEP.  Also, I really like "A Ditch in Time," available for download here: https://ruralhometech.com/a-ditch-in-time/

ROAD MAINTENANCE TIP OF THE DAY - GET TO KNOW YOUR ROAD! 
Don't just drive in and out, but take the time to walk it as often as possible. And don't just walk it, but study what's going on. Walking it right after a hard rain, or even during a hard rain, will tell you a great deal if you are observant. Where does the water run? Does the road have enough crown to keep it running off to the sides, or does water travel down the road? Are tire tracks keeping the water confined to two channels? Where does water pool? Do tires splash water and "fines" out of the puddles, making the pot holes deeper? Where is the ground sloped enough to put in a drain? Are the ditches and culverts clear? Are there places that need to have ditches or culverts put in? How is the road surface holding up? Does it need gravel? If you can't afford to do much work at a time, what should be your priority? What is the one most cost-effective thing you can do? Can you crown and gravel the worst spot, and do another area next year? 
Sometimes if you just go out with a hoe during a rain storm, you can channel water off to the side and keep a whole hill from washing out. Or by unplugging a culvert, you can keep water from washing over the road. An ounce of prevention...


Hand Maintenance
It's surprising how much of a difference it can make to do some maintenance to a road by hand.  In the fall, make sure culverts are clear of leaves, and that there is not such a burden of sticks and leaves in the ditches that they will wash down into the culverts and block them.  It's a good idea to trim back branches that hang over the road, so they don't bend down under snow and smack you in the windshield.  This also allows the sun to get to the road to help melt off snow and ice.  But don't leave the cut branches in the ditch, or they can snag so many leaves that water backs up and flows over the road, leading to washouts.

If there is a culvert that is likely to freeze solid and allow spring melt water to back up and flow over the road, a good measure is to stuff a length of black plastic pipe through the culvert.  Tie both ends up well above high water level, and cap the ends to keep rain water out.  If the culvert does freeze and spring melt is backing up, uncap your black plastic, and with one person holding up on the downhill end, another person can pour hot water into the uphill end until the pipe is full.  Let it sit there until the water in the pipe goes cold, then let the cold water run out and do it again.  Warming the black plastic warms the ice around it in the culvert, and once a trickle starts to run around the outside of the black pipe, it will melt its way through in a hurry!

Once the road surface starts to thaw, a lot can be done to hasten the end of mud season by walking the road with a hand hoe.  If you have kids, give them each a hoe and teach them how to play "connect the dots" between the puddles, and then between puddles and the roadsides.  (Just watch they don't clock someone with the back end of the hoe handle - kids are good at that!)  If you can't get the water entirely off the road, often it's easier to dodge one puddle than several, so it's worth consolidating them.  If possible, drain ruts and puddles towards the downhill side of the road, not the uphill side where it will then have to find its way across farther down.  (If there's a good ditch on the uphill side and a culvert nearby to carry it through, that's not so much of a concern.)  Avoid over-working soupy areas, or they just become pudding that takes longer to drain out.  After a while you will develop a good eye for level, so you know which way the water will run, and whether it will be possible to get it to go the direction you want.  It's best to make the water take the shortest route possible, both because that gives it the steepest slope, and because that gives it less time to soak into the road surface.  But sometimes the easiest route is to drain it into a tire track and let it run down the road to a point where it's easier to get it to go off to the side.  Remember that if you want a puddle to drain dry, it's not enough to dig a channel just deep enough so the water spills over into it.  The only way to drain a puddle completely is to make sure the bottom of the channel is at least as low as the bottom of the puddle.  Often it's easiest to get the water started running, go work on another puddle, and then come back and clear any spots where the water is backing up.  That also helps if the road isn't entirely thawed, as a trickle of water will thaw the ground under it so you can dig away another layer.

If frozen snow banks are keeping melt water from running off of your road, it can be hard to chip a hole through to drain it off. Large puddles keep the road surface refrigerated, so it takes longer for the frost to go out. Besides, the longer the water sits in the road, the more it soaks in and softens the road surface.  To get rid of that lake, try punching a hole through the base of the snow bank with a crow bar or an ice chisel.  Or another method is to take a length of hose and siphon it over the snowbank.  If there isn't too high of an ice ridge along the edge of the road, try chipping a channel through with an ice chopper, grub ax, or crow bar.  If you can get the water to seep into the ice at the start of the channel for a minute, or if you can even splash some of the water up over the ice, it will soften it and allow you to chip the channel a bit farther of a bit deeper, and eventually you may get it to go through.  Or if it'a a sunny day, splash a thin layer of black mud over the ice and come back later when it's had a chance to absorb the sun's rays and melt the ice.


Use in mud season
At this season, it's time to plan your trips around the temperature. Make an effort to stock up on anything heavy (heating fuel, propane, gasoline for the generator, livestock feed, etc.) before the frost goes out. Then do your best to plan trips for early morning or late evening on cold nights when the road stiffens up. Keep in mind that if you have big snow banks, chances are the frost won't go out from under the road until the snow banks are gone. If the road surface looks dry before then, don't count on having gotten through mud season. You may have lost the surface water, but when the frost goes out from under the road, it won't be solid again until it has all settled.  It's also possible for a road to remain frozen, or to re-freeze, after the snow has all gone.  This can happen if there is a spell of warm weather that melts the snow, followed immediately by a return to cold weather.  If there are spots where you can look down into a hole in the road, or if the road surface is higher above the surrounding ground than usual, chances are it's still got some settling to do.


Avoid creating ruts

Keep your tires on the high spots.

One of the easiest things you can do to keep a dirt road from deteriorating into two ruts is to avoid driving in the same two ruts! Use the full width of the road, driving with one tire at the edge of the road and the other tire in the middle of the road, so your tires run on the high spots. If there are no high spots, then each time you drive the road, move over by one tire width so you use each strip of road equally. If you already have ruts, keep driving on the high spots until you wear them down even with the low spots. (This will also help keep you from bottoming out.) If you are not the only user of the road, encourage others to do the same, or you may be fighting a losing battle. Still, even if you are the only one following this procedure, your use of the little-used strips of road will slow down the road's deterioration, and will also help keep weeds from growing in from the edges, as roadside brush further forces people to drive in the same two ruts. When you are building or improving a road, try if at all possible to make it wide enough so you have room to put one tire in the middle of the road without running your other tire off into the ditch.

Doesn't driving in the same ruts save the rest of the road?
I had someone tell me once that it's better to stay in the same two ruts so as not to ruin the whole width of the road.  Here is what he didn't know:
1) If you keep driving in the same two ruts, those ruts just keep getting deeper and deeper.
2) If the road is like most of our low budget roads, there is only a thin coat of gravel on top of mud or clay, or a layer of each.  The gravel layer drains well, providing a relatively firm dry road surface to drive on as long as it remains intact.  The mud layer soaks up water like a sponge, and holds it.  The clay layer is pretty much impervious to water.  (They use clay to line farm ponds so the water won't leak out.)
3) If you drive in the same two ruts long enough, you cut through the gravel layer.  Then you no longer have a firm dry surface to drive on, and you sink deeper in a hurry.
4) Eventually you will sink so deep that you drag bottom on the high spots you have left in the middle of the road.
5) Once the gravel layer is compromised, the mud and clay from underneath get churned up to the surface and mix with the gravel, spoiling its ability to drain.
6) Water settles into the ruts, and because the clay won't let it drain out, it just sits there until there is a long enough spell of dry weather to evaporate it.  (Maybe in August!)
7) Wet clay gets splashed out of these pools onto the remaining gravel surface between the ruts, making it so slippery that those who try to avoid the ruts end up slipping into them.
8) When the ruts are shallow, a person with a hand hoe can chop a channel off to the side of the road to let the water run out.  But as the ruts cut ever deeper into the clay, it gets to where the bottom of the pool is lower than the land at the side of the road, so there is no way to get it to drain off.  Or if there is a lower spot to which to drain it, the drain channel across the road would have to be a foot deep - not fun to dig, and less fun to drive over.
9) If there is a slope to the road, the rut becomes a gutter, channeling rain water directly down the length of the road instead of letting it run off the sides of the crown before it gains speed and volume.  We've seen a heavy rain channeled down a quarter mile hill with no way to escape.  By the time it hit the culvert at the entrance to the road, there was so much water the culvert couldn't hold it all.  When we left that morning there were no ruts in the road.  We had been walking in and out because it was too soft to drive on without damaging it.  But someone drove in and out in our absence, (in their same two ruts,) and by the time we returned that evening, the entrance to the road had just a bare culvert pipe lying in the bottom of the ditch.  The two tire tracks had become two small rivers.
10) Even in dry weather, driving in the same two ruts slowly pounds the road into a sort of W shape.

While not as obvious as the foot-deep mud season ruts, this is still enough to ruin the crown of the road.  The result will eventually be washouts on the hills and puddles on the flats.  Splashing through the puddles throws the "fines" out with the water.  The fines are the glue that holds the road surface together, so the puddles turn into ever deeper pot holes.  Meanwhile, grass and weeds grow up in the parts of the road that are not getting driven on.  In the center of the road, the weeds hide the rocks that are beginning to protrude, increasing the danger that you will bottom out on something you didn't see.  Because only the ruts are packed hard, if you try to drive in a new spot when the ruts get muddy, you will sink worse in the soft unpacked parts of the road.  Eventually, brush and trees grow in from the sides, making the road narrower until there is no choice but to drive in the same two ruts.

Learn Where Your Tires Are
I have had many people insist that they do not drive in the same two ruts, or that they do not drive in the middle of the road, and yet their tire tracks tell me a different story.  My husband calls them "line of sight" drivers.  They drive in the middle of the road until they come to a curve, and then they cut the corner to the inside.  Maybe they just don't know where their tires are.

So here are some things you can do to learn exactly where your tires are.

1)  Stand in front of you car, and place a cone marker or other object in the road directly in line with each front tire, and far enough ahead of your car so that from the driver's seat you can just see it over the hood of your car.  Make note of what part of the hood each marker lines up with.  You may be surprised to find how close to the center of your hood the right-hand marker appears to be.  As you drive, put that part of the hood in line with the part of the road where you want your right-hand tire to travel.

2)  Adjust your right hand mirror so you can just see the side of the car, and then tip it down so you can see the road by your rear tire.  As you drive slowly down the road (with no traffic coming the other way,) try to guess how close your right rear tire is to the edge of the road, and then check your mirror to see if you are correct.

3)  As you drive down a lumpy road, look for spots where there is a bump or a ridge that you can aim for with your right tire and then feel it you hit it or not.  If there is a ridge that's been pushed up between ruts, try to run your right tire along the ridge and watch for your car to tilt to the left.  This will not only help you learn where your tire is running, but will also help press the road back to level.  You can do the same with your left tire, and watch for the car to tilt to the right.

4)  If you aren't comfortable driving close to the right hand side of the road because you aren't sure how much clearance you have on a narrow dirt road, then as long as no one is coming the other way, drive on the "wrong" side of the road.  It's much easier to stay close to the edge of the road on the left.  You can even roll the window down and stick your head out the window from time to time to check how much clearance you have.  If the road is soft enough or snowy enough to leave tracks, then when you come back, you can aim your left tire for the track your right tire left when you drove the other way, and know that your right tire will still be on the road.  Or drive the left hand side of the road on the way back to mark that side also, and then drive out and in again on the right hand side, following the tracks you left in the opposite direction.

One warning, though - If no one has been driving the edges of the road and keeping them packed, don't try to go too close to the edge too early in the spring, or you may find the edge is too soft to hold you up.  Instead, start with the middle-of-the-road tracks, and move out towards the edge by just one tire track width.  Avoid puddles and soft spots where you must, but then return to your one-track-over route.  As soon as the road is firm enough, move out by another tire width.  Keep moving over by one tire width as the road packs in, and you will end up with a much more even road surface.  Then, throughout the year, aim for whichever strip of road needs to be packed down to stay level with the rest.  If you start with a well-crowned grading job, you can preserve the crown much longer this way than if you always drive down the same strip of road.

York Raking and Grading

York raking should be done before roads get too dry and hard. The road pictured above was left too long. In order to keep the ruts from becoming a permanent feature for the summer, a tractor with grader blade was brought in. This one mile of road took over seven hours of work to straighten out, and it still isn't as smooth as one would hope to have it be. (A full sized grader would have done the job quicker, if one had been available.)  At a workshop offered by MARA, (Maine Alliance for Road Associations,) Josh Platt of Maine Environmental Solutions LLC gave excellent advice on evaluating the condition of a road and addressing one problem at a time in order of priority so as not to be too costly all at once. He emphasized that doing the job right can save money in the long run. One of his recommendations was to do York raking while the moisture content of the road surface is still high enough for the material to be workable. The situation shown in this photo is a prime example of how something as simple as doing the job at the right time can save needless expense later.

At the same MARA workshop, Pete Coughlan, director of the Community Services Division of the Maine DOT, spoke about the difference between "grader operators" and "grader drivers."  A grader driver simply drives the grader down the road.  He fills in pot holes with loose dust that will promptly pound out again, leaves a berm at the side of the road that keeps the water from running off, and drives too fast so that the blade chatters, leaving a washboard surface.  A grader operator, on the other hand, is a master of road construction and a magician at what he can do with his machine.  Instead of filling in the pot holes, he cuts the road surface down level with the bottom of the pot holes.  Then he goes back and grades the material back over so that the whole surface packs in again evenly.  He reclaims material that has washed off to the roadsides.  He creates the right percentage of crown so that rainwater and meltwater flow off the sides of the road before they accumulate.  He knows how to make the grader crabwalk down the roadsides so that he leaves no berm along the edge.  And he takes the time to work the material so it leaves no washboards.  Unfortunately, grader operators are hard to find, and may not fit in the meager budget available for maintaining our roads.  My husband manages to grade our road with just a blade on a farm tractor - but he applies the same principles as when he used to operate a commercial grader.   

For those on public easements, however, the question is, whose responsibility is it?  Constitutionally, private citizens cannot be forced to provide maintenance of public roads at private expense.  Yet the law absolves towns of any responsibility, in spite of the fact that the public retains all the benefits of ownership and use of the road.  The laws that allow this have been in place for so long, it may seem that a court challenge would be futile.  But according to the Maine Supreme Court,  “If a statute violates any provision of the state or of the federal constitution, its antiquity will not save it.” Browne v. Connor, 138 Me. 63, 64 (Me. 1941).  Some day, we WILL get these laws changed!

Vehicle handling badly, vibrating at certain speeds, or making odd noises after driving in mud?
Chances are you've got mud in your wheel rims.  It acts like giant wheel weights and throws your wheels out of balance.  Solution - First, remove your wheel covers before mud season, as they will trap mud.  (That also prevents getting a stone in your wheel cover and driving you nuts as it goes kalunk-kalunk as you drive along!)  Then, as soon as you get out of the mud, (assuming you make it,) take a screwdriver or a stick and scrape the mud out of the wheel rims, or use a high pressure hose.  Be sure to get the whole inside of the wheel, not just the rim where the wheel weights go.  Reaching the inside can be tricky, but in deep mud you can get an awful lot packed in there.  It can make the vehicle shudder like crazy when you hit certain speeds, and it will make your tires wear unevenly if you don't stop and clean the wheels out. Even a little clump of mud in the rim can affect handling - think of how small wheel weights are.

Turning the front wheels as far as you can to one side and then to the other can make it easier to reach inside, but there's not much you can do about the rear wheels. Depending on the style of the rim, you may be able to stick a tool through the wheel itself.  If not, you pretty much have to reach in under the vehicle and around the wheel.  Leave yourself an extra five or ten minutes when heading anywhere on a time schedule, so you can stop and clean the wheels as soon as you get out of the mud.

If you get a horrid high pitched squeal when you apply the brakes, you may have a pebble jammed in your brakes, or between the brake and the rim.  (If you get the noise constantly, you've got a real problem and need to get it out before it does serious damage.)  Try backing up and then applying the brakes, and you may be able to dislodge it.  If that doesn't do it, you may have to jack up the car, remove the wheel, and find where the stone is lodged.  Remember that sounds travel strangely, and the problem may not be in the wheel you think it's in.

If your local car wash offers a seasonal subscription where you pay a monthly rate for as many washes as you want, it's definitely worthwhile.  Make sure you include the "bottom wash," and either scrape what you can out of the wheel wells before you go in, or go through at least twice!  A putty knife works well, or go to a store that sells horse grooming equipment and get a hoof pick/brush combination tool.  Getting the junk out as often as possible will help slow the deterioration of the body, brakes, and suspension.

What's your most innovative road maintenance method?
We have seen a number of imaginative ways of dealing with road maintenance.  Here are some of our favorites:
The large homeschooled family who didn't have a plow truck - they just sent all the kids out with shovels.
The father who strapped a sheet of plywood to the front of his jeep to plow the road so his special needs daughter could get to school.
The young couple who harnessed up their half-draft gelding and their pony as a team and had them drag a tractor tire down the road to smooth out the ruts.
What's your favorite?

Here is the mismatched team in training at a low-impact forestry clinic put on by MOFGA.  Everyone was amazed how well they worked together - but they had already been grading the road with the tire.

Is there help?
For possible solutions to the problems of road maintenance, see the Solutions? tab.  In some cases, it may be possible to get help with road maintenance from your town or from other abutters.

(c) Roberta Manter 2016