Creating the home site and gravel drive advise

[BigMish]

Does any one have any advise or resources they could suggest (books, articles, websites, etc.) for the following tasks:
- Creating the home site: tree felling and disposal, stump removal, light grading
- Creating a gravel driveway

I'd like to do as much of this as possible my self but wouldn't mind calling in the occasional bulldozer, etc.

Thanks, Mischa

[glenn kangiser]

There may be something about it somewhere, but ultimately you are the one who decides where a drive will go -- how many treas will die - how much rock you can afford - etc.

One of the things I like to do is make my driveway crooked - no line of sight from one end to the other.  More privacy that way.  I also like to leave all the trees I can.  It takes 20 to 100 years for a decent tree to grow- only a minute to cut it down.  What if you change your mind.

There has been other recent info added about this question - check over the other postings.  Get to know your land - camp on it.  Walk it -- feel it -- taste it -- love it -- caress it.  Become intimate with it.  When you know about the soil types, the rocks , the trees, the water, the weather, the natural building materials and resources, you will best be able to answer some of your own questions.  

I would say the above applies to country land -acreage - you would have a hard time doing that with a city lot.  What would the neighbors say. :-?

[BigMish]

Yup, defiantly planning to do as you suggest, but I'm more looking for resources on the technique (i.e. how to get a tree stump out of the ground, how much gravel to lay, how to lay it, etc.).

I'll check out some old postings as you suggest as well.

Thanks, M

[glenn kangiser]

A tree stump out of the ground --

The easiest is a big machine - backhoe - Bobcat etc, before the tree has been cut down.  The higher up the tree you can push, the easier it goes over .  Next is backhoe to dig it out.  In the old days I watched a crew of loggers take a stump out of the ground with 12 sticks of dynamite.  That was cool-- part of the stump went into orbit -- part of it stayed in the ground.

Stump grinders - stump cutters , chemicals -

Ultimately there is this website

http://www.thestumponline.com/enemies.htm

[glenn kangiser]

How about making stumps?  Courtesy the above site.

[MarkAndDebbie]

Had two groups help with some clearing -
1. tractor, chainsaw, and stump grinder for road widening, lot clearing
2. excavator and bobcat for septic and footer

Group 1 left a muddy hole full of mulch where I didn't want it. It took a long time to grind the pines. It didn't get much of the feeder roots.

Group 2 was FAST. They left more of a footprint on the land (a dozer would even more). They tended to get most of the roots. You'll need them to dig your septic anyway.

[tc-vt]

Figure out how much room you will need around your building site and how wide the driveway should be, then make it bigger.  Have enough room for materials, trucks with equipment trailers, semis with trusses, lumber delivery trucks and cement trucks to get in and out and turn around to get out.  Leave headroom over the driveway if you have a tree lined driveway.

Do you get mud?  If not, just clearing may be enough.  If it gets deep and greasy with mud, trucks will not be able to have good access.  I had a logger tell me he had good success with a muddy drive by just grading when dry, laying down geotextile, and then a road surface like gravel, crushed stone, stay-mat, etc.  He was able to get in and out with a log truck.  But, when a farmer disked it to smooth it out and sliced up the textile, the mud came right through.  I have also heard of taking out some soils and putting in a bed of stone and then a surface on top of that.

Mine was cleared and building sites graded with a dozer for a day,  a small rental D3.

Get rid of any trees near the house before the house is up, unless you like trees near the house.  I have three close to the house I wish I cut before the house was up.

Tom

[tanya]

You can also burn stumps out just build a big bonfire on top of the stump the year after the tree has been cut.  Some people chop them up with maddox (sp?) type pick ax and then jsut level them off.  As far as the driveway if you have mud you have to put down a bigger size of shale rock the small stuff jsut gets swallowed up by the mud.  If you have LOTS of mud you need a roadbed of even bigger stuff then a layer of not so big stuff.  Gravel works too but put it on top of some bigger shale if you have mud because gravel is expensive and the mud gobbles it up.  Good luck.  

[glenn kangiser]

If you want them to burn a lot better put some of the chemicals (saltpeter) in holes in the stump lited  on the above site the year before you burn.  It is an oxidized and will go down into the wood to make it burn -- water is added in the holes to disperse it.

[MountainDon]

The best way to deal with stumps is to avoid having them if at all possible. Push the trees that you need to totally clear out with a machine (dozer, skid steer, whatever). It took us an nearly an hour with a skid steer and a back hoe to remove one 14 inch stump that had been cut a number of years before.  :'(  But the skid steer pushed over and tore out the root ball of some similarly sized trees.

I like the dynamite idea but it's hard to come by thee days. Maybe a fertilzer bomb?   :-/

[fourx]

Careful what you say, Don- the cyberwalls have ears As for burning out stumps, the aussie way is to place an old car tyre over the stump- a tractor tyre for larger ones, and light it- it may burn for 12 hours or so, right down to the roots. Then the hole that is left, not much usually- is filled in or a fruit tre planted in the potash-rich soil that is left.

[desdawg]

Here we have two different types of material we use on driveways. One is called AB. It is a mixture of sand and 3/4 gravel. The combination tends to ride the surface and stay in place rather than going down into the underlying soil. The other is called GSA, or Ground Stabilization Asphalt. It is asphalt that has been removed from roadways that are being resurfaced. It weighs less than AB so one ton covers more square feet of driveway than the other material. I mention the weight because both materials are sold here by the ton. And the price per ton is identical for both. I usually try to get 3"-4" of depth on my driveways.  
In Northern AZ a popular material is volcanic cinders. I haven't used any of that so I can't speak to how effective it is to work with. But I do see a lot of it around up there. I see both red and black depending on where it is mined.

[Kodakjello]

Stumps are a real pain, even the little ones  . For the driveway I would suggest using an excavator or mini-dozer to dig the path down about 4"-6" to remove the vegetative layer (piling it together so it composts into yummy black topsoil) then laying 2" crushed stone as a base. It's very very important that the driveway base uses large diameter gravel and that it's compacted at least every 2"-4" if you're using a plate compactor or every 4"-6" if you're using a big vibratory roller. After that, you can spread and compact a layer of 3/4" crushed stone or a layer of 1/2" crushed stone. Make sure that whichever one you chose has stone dust in it so it binds together when you wet and compact it.

I just finished our driveway about a month ago using a 2" stone base and 1/2" stone topper with rock dust. It stands up really well to car traffic...not so much to 32 ton gravel trucks though  

Kodakjello

[BlueStone]

I just completed a 1,500 feet drive with rising elevation from 700 to 1,100 feet.  Here is what I learned.

1. Remove all vegetation - usually 3 to 4 inches deep. Fill back in with clay type soil and pack it down.
After first packing, before leveling and instead of constant grading at first, fill the low spots, pack again then grade level.
2. Drainage of water from the drive should go sideways to the shoulders then to the ditch. This means the driveway surface must be higher than the shoulders. We went for 1 inch higher and provided frequent runoffs to the side and on to ditches. .
3.  Plant grass seed as soon as possible, We used a mix of annual rye and fescue (North Carolina). We even planted on top of the gravel and now have grass everywhere. And it is already helping with soil runoff.
4. If you have ditches use rip-rap or even short cut logs to slow the water down. It's the fast movement of water that takes your land with it.
5. We used regular crusher run gravel for the surface. It packs solid and is pearmable.

On clearing trees - My limited experience shows it pays to know what type of roots the trees have if digging the stumps out. Then you know where and how to dig quickly. Pines for example have 3 to 4 roots that spread out near the surface and usually one longer central root that may go 2 to 3 feet down. Try to grab the central root at the stump level and yank it out. Everything else will come with it. Pine trees growing over rock or rocky surfaces fall easy. Wild cherry can have roots that go on forever but must be removed for a road or house.  Some hickory and oaks can have roots from He-l-. Some require starting the dig 3 to 5 feet from the stump.

If you leave stump parts and roots in the ground just make sure it is not where your structures go. If you happen to dig a large hole when removing a stump and that hole is where your foundation goes don't just fill it in and think it will support a normal house load when the footings are dug. Footings should rest on undisturbed soil.

About clearing the lot. I used a rental , 25 hp, mini excavator, on tracks because of the incline, with 18 inch bucket. After cutting over 100 hundred trees on the lot I simply dug the stumps out with the back hoe. The only time consumption was on buck oaks growing from old stumps. Usually 5 to 6 large trees connected to one stump 6 feet deep. I cut over 400 trees for the new driveway- laid in 100 tons of red clay and 50 tons of crusher run. All with the Mini Excavator.

You can do it yourself and save some serious money. Our cost for driveway and lot clearing was $7,000. Quoted cost for driveway alone was about $30,000 and lot clearing at $200 per hour and $3,500 to remove debris.

If you notice most of the folks on this forum have some great solutions.  A lot have learned by trial and error, like me I am sure. If you make a mistake just learn and keep moving ahead.