Another muddy ground question

[optionguru]

With New Hampshire's unseasonably warm weather we have what seems to be a 6 month long mud season.  I had previously asked for advice regarding the logging road to my future cabin site.

Todays questions is slightly different and unrelated to the cabin.  I own a lot of land with a freestanding garage on it that I use for my garbage business.  The lot is mostly grass and up until now I have only stored my 1 ton dump truck and a few trailers on it.  I recently bought a large packer truck and dumpsters and it appears that I have finally ruined the ground.  I now have about 8 inches of mud covering most of the lot.  Apparently I can't pave or put concrete down becuase the town will then need to rezone and tax accordingly.  

I was thinking of scraping the mud off with the loader bucket on my tractor but I'm sure there will still be some left.  Does anyone know of any product that won't sink down too deep and will pack well to form a solid base for my trucks?

Thanks,
Peter

[glenn-k]

You can stabilize the mud with lime if it is clay.  I have been on jobsites that were gumbo when mud but with lime tilled in about a foot deep, they got harder than the back of my head.

Sounds like you would be into truckload quantities so you may want to experiment with a small section to check it out.

The Portland cement association also claims to have the best product for this type of problem, so stabilizing the mud with cement may also be an option.  You don't put concrete in -you just stabilize the soil with cement powder.  I think for lime or cement it would be about a 4 to 7 % mix.  I would get a bag and play with it a little.  See what happens experimentally first.

Google road stabilize lime cement for lots of info.  

We use a layer of crushed slate on the top here to make lots of roads drivable in winter.  Drainage is important also -try to drain water from the lot if possible.

http://www.lime.org/publications.html#SoilStab

http://www.owr.ehnr.state.nc.us/ref/11/10605.pdf

[jraabe]

A most interesting option for soil stabilization. Lime and fly ash...

Thanks Gleen for that informative link.

[glenn-k]

I studied up a bit on it when I was looking into driveway repair along with my general earth building studies.

The large jobsites I saw were at the port of Stockton and Cordelia - North of the bay area. The guys in Stockton were complaining because the ground got so hard they couldn't drive concrete stakes in.

[optionguru]

As usual, thanks for all of the help and ideas.  I'm going to try the lime and the cement powder and see what happens.  As far as drainage I've done a decent job of grading.  It seems that before the water can build up enough to run down the hill behind the lot it absorbs into the muddy ground.

[glenn-k]

Sounds like you have enough clay in the ground that this may work.  If not and you can get the fly ash and  it will make the ground take a set with the one of the powders.   It is a by product of coal burning and seems to be available from some of the concrete companies in areas where they burn coal at power plants etc.

Please keep us posted on your degree of success.

[Amanda_931]

Ash from burned rice hulls might work too--a couple of hundred miles from me, but we'd have to wait for a lot of global warming to get few shipping miles to New Hampshire.

In any case they seem to be pozzolanic.

http://ferrocement.net/pozzolans-uwe.html

[glenn-k]

They were stabilizing the ground at my jobsite the other day so I snapped a couple pictures.



The giant truck spreads powdered lime over the entire site about 3/4 to 1" thick then the giant rotovator comes in and tills it into the ground about a foot deep adding water from a water truck as it goes.  Compactor and grader puts it all back into place and rams it down.