Advice on repairing unmade road

[branwellm]

Hi guys

I live on an unmade and unadopted road in Hampshire. The road surface is not tarmac but a huge mix of dirt, rubble, bricks, concrete etc that people seem to have put down over the years. It is getting worse and worse with huge potholes forming all over the place and these days it is pretty hard to drive on without a 4x4.

As it is unadopted, the council will not repair it and so I had the idea of trying to get the residents to all chip in and work together to re-surface it ourselves.

I am not looking to do a professional job on it. Far from it in fact, but I am hoping that with a load of sub-base, binder and maybe surface courses we can fill in the major holes and end up with something that can be driven up without a 4x4.

I am hoping for an army of volunteers (20 people maybe) so the manual work would be taken care of.

I am after any advice that anyone can give me on the materials we should use and where we can buy them. I am really not looking for us to end up with a professional finish but I am hoping that we can fill in the big holes and make it at least easy to drive on. I don't expect it to last years and years but something that would maybe hold for 5 years would be useful.

I would be extremely greatful if anyone can offer me any advice.

Many thanks

Branwell

[dig dug dan]

the best thing (without seeing it) would be a load of road planings, spread them out in all the holes and voids, rake level and hire a big sit on roller for the day (£80 ish)
If its a hot day even better.
If the tipper driver is any good, he should be able to tip in several places up the track and leave the volunteers to spread it out .

You could of course get type one,or crushed concrete, but it will be more expensive

[lutonlagerlout]

how long/wide is the road?
what type of vehicles does it have to take?
how many vehicle movements per day are there
these 20 "volunteers" are they insured? are they experienced?
what happens if one of them goes through a service cable/pipe/duct?
a few questions for starters
LLL

[branwellm]

Hi Dan

Thanks for the reply. I've Googled road planings and they seem pretty cheap compared to type one.

Would I then need to put a surface on top of this or is a little 'sticky' so if we hired a roller (great idea) would it compact well enough to create a stable and durable surface?

The road is residential and at a guess has around 75 -100 cars going across it in a day. At the moment, it is like a pot-hole filled dirt track so any improvment would be good.

Thanks again

[branwellm]

Hi LLL

Thanks for the reply.

The section of road that is the worst is approximately 40m x 5m. I am not neccessarily looking to surface the whole lot but am looking to fill in the large potholes (some well over 1m squared and up 100mm deep) and put down something that keeps them filled for a while at least.

If I was assuming that 50% of the road would need to be filled to a depth of 50mm, could anyone give me an estimate of the materials I would need? I am guessing it would be more than I think.

The volunteers would simply be residents of the road so I am not sure many if any would have much experience. I am also not really expecting much digging to take place, just lots of filling really.

Cheers

[dig dug dan]

The road is residential and at a guess has around 75 -100 cars going across it in a day

thats quite a large number . i don't think my method will last as long as six months TBH.
The track down to the farm where i rent a unit was done a year ago the same way, it has about 10 vehicles a day max, and already potholes are appearing.

i guess if you can't get everyone to cough up for a proper surface, you have no choice.

[branwellm]

Hi Dan

How about if we used the planings as a sub layer and then laid a more durable tarmac surface? A Patwork effect is fine for us.

Cheers

[dig dug dan]

DaveL will advise, but i think the answer will be to use type one if you are to tarmac on top.

[Dave_L]

75-100 cars a day over a road is pretty heavy traffic volumes!

A very difficult project to achieve using inexperienced labour in my opinion.

How do you propose to deal with tarmac? You could end up with a big rock-solid mess!

How many people enjoy the use of this roadway? Could you not get everyones heads together and out some money in a pot and have the job done properly? For example, 30 properties using the access, at say, £200 each is £6000 - starts to look a lot more sensible then!

LLL raises some very valid points about insurances etc - you have to consider the worst case scenarios.

[GB_Groundworks]

our yard has a similar problem its on a hillside maybe 10 houses unadopted rd asphalt and pot holes, every job we have bitmac left over we patch some of the holes, last till the next heavy rains and gets washed away in same spots. same breaking point or accelerating point, even cutting pot holes out properly and patching they dont last.

needs relaying but getting everyone to chip in or agree (some are townies moved out to country side tree huggers), the only way to get a proper lane is to relay it, but you could patch it with cold plainings etc and consolidate but the pot holes always come back.

[branwellm]

This is sounding like it may be harder work that I thought. The issue with trying to get all of the residents to club together is I would expect that it would never really happen. You will always get some people who do not want to do it, others who think that they should pay less etc. I really cannot see that ever happening. However, if we did the work ourselves, at least we would get around the cost issue.

I still think that even if we just fill in the worst of the holes with with road planings, get a roller and maybe some coldlay tarmac, it would be a big improvement on what we have.

At the moment, individual residents seem to be occassionally filling in holes outside of their houses with all sorts of material (broken bricks, stones, sand etc). None of this lasts more than a week. At least if we try to do this together as a team, we should stand a better chance of doing something that lasts a little while.

Thanks for the comments. I think that the best option is as I mentioned above. Fill holes with road planings, compact with sit on roller and then maybe some coldlay tarmac in places.

I also think that I have over-estimated the traffic. It is probably closer to 50 a day. One of the main sources of traffic is the village social club, who I am trying to get involved in this scheme.

Thanks for the comments.

Cheers

[rab1]

can you not pay for your local council to adopt the road? ???

[lutonlagerlout]

so is it a private road or unadopted road?
I live adjacent to a private road and all 50 houses pay a voluntary levy of £300 per year which goes in to the residents funds
(i think there are 12 more that wont pay)
anyway this pot soon mounts up and every 5 years or so they get the road tarred and chipped
they also recently installed electric gates etc to stop chavs like me from getting in (only i know the secret combination :;): )

but the bottom line is it will cost some money
cheers LLL

[Dave_L]

can you not pay for your local council to adopt the road? ???

There's some serious money and work involved in getting a roadway adopted!

Waaay out of the question I think.

[Dave_L]

I still think that even if we just fill in the worst of the holes with with road planings, get a roller and maybe some coldlay tarmac, it would be a big improvement on what we have.

I'd forget the deferred set tarmac, that will be up in a week or so.