Long access road/track - Is DIY doable and using a borrow pit?

[Galileo]

I had a moment four years ago and bought an 8 acre big plot, well, a croft, which currently has no access (boat count?) and I need a sanity check about my thinking. I'll set the scene first. I have an easement for an access road across a neighbours land whose been very helpful and has talked over options of old pathways to the ruined croft house and potential new ones. I've settled on a simple almost straight line down the 170 meter incline from the road using an existing field entrance following the boundary fence to my land where there is also an old entrance, then a turning and parking area. So far so good, the land type is scrub peat, but right by the coast so not too deep, maybe 700mm in one small area. I've PP in place for a 3m wide road, veg strip, textile and 250mm hardcore, joining the road will need to be bitmac dressed for the first 6m.

I've had some quotes, £12k plus stone, and therein lies the problem, I only have access to one quarry and they are flat out with other work, plus, £12k plus guessing somewhere around £6k+ for stone (240 tonnes if I could ever get any) is a lot of money and a big proportion to the cost for the land for just access. I realise that's probably a laughable amount for some people, but I've limited funding and so have to work with a tight budget out of my salary. I thought about doing it myself, so spoke to a local haulers about stone delivery who thought I'd need a much bigger excavator than the 3t one or backhoe/loader I had in mind, and experience to pull something like this off, let alone a big issue with delivering to site along a single track road with nowhere to tip, saying their lorry would get bogged down without a solid base. 

 

Casual Sunday reading some old posts and I stumbled across someone mentioning that they used a borrow pit to provide the stone for a track on their build and that set me thinking I wonder if I could do the same, at least to get a drivable track in place that I could dress with better stone at a later date, we're talking very low frequency traffic here, not the A9. I'd still need someone to do the entrance as well, that would be a few too many tarmac drive repair buckets. That's a lot of text to get to the point of wondering what my success would be in identifying an area to dig for a stone, as a complete novice, what plant I would need, as a novice, and if I'm just dreaming and should just sell the land or save up like everyone else? I'm not completely useless, spent many years driving tractors around, general horticultural machinery, do my own vehicle maintenance etc. so feel that I might be able to learn enough to do basic stuff with a digger, slowly. This is nice writing it down, feels like therapy!

Edit: I'm not sure what all those straight lines are, apart from the obvious fence lines, I'm assuming drainage but some are vertical which makes less sense, it's not very apparent on the ground at all, they pop out when viewed from above like this.

 

Edited July 17, 2022 by Galileo

[ProDave]

I can't help with guessing where to dig your own quarry, but if you can find the stone it is very DIY able.  I would want to be buying a much larger tracked excavator, remember you will get back most of what you pay for it if you sell it at the end of the job.

 

And while you are digging the track think at the same time of what services you will want, e.g. electricity, water, telecoms that can go in at the same time under the track?

[Temp]

1 hour ago, Galileo said:

options of old pathways to the ruined croft house and potential new ones.

 

I'm not sure what the planning status is but I'd get that sorted first.

 

 

[Galileo]

57 minutes ago, ProDave said:

if you can find the stone it is very DIY able

That is extremely heartening to hear! I have an idea on a suitable place, it's in-between the house ruin and what looks like a raised square in the top photo, the house area has been dug out of the hill and sits on a rocky shale type surface, so I think that's what might be under the peat.

 

Temp, I have PP in place for the track, along the dotted line in the photo, the previous track routes were by foot only and to the croft house shown in the bottom photo, which was last lived in '82, roof and rear extension removed by the previous owners who wanted to renovate it but only got as far as demolition. I have not decided on a house location yet as I'm undecided on how to work the croft to get some income out of it, when I do, then there's a grant for that, and whilst PP is not guaranteed for a house, being a croft it is normally not an issue if sized correctly and fits in, no 6 bed mansion and more a 2-3 bed single story. The old croft house is a very small single story butt and ben; my neighbours say knock it down and rebuild, I'm a bit more sentimental, as after all it's been there over 200 years and part of the croft, minded to re-roof and use as a store, windows and the front door are still in place to keep the draught out, even if the roof is not.

[Thedreamer]

It may have been my post about the borrow pit.

The ideal rock for an access is called rotten rock. The rock can be removed by a bucket rather than a pecker. You can actually break the rock into pieces by hand and eventually it becomes a dust which is rock solid and water permeable.  

Our road has been in seven years and it has never had a single pot hole. I'm going to spread a thin layer of chips, later this year.

On our croft, we extracted the rock from a raised area. We took a thousand tonnes out for our 120 meter access and for the site. The borrow pit was then infilled with clay and tree stumps. It's quickly regrew to the original condition. 

 

 

I asked our planning officer on the borrow pit and it was fine if it was returned to the original condition.   

 

If you don't have access to rock maybe a neighbour might let you take some for a price. 

 

Do consider utilities and foundation design as earlier as possible. 

 

More stuff at the first entry of my blog.

 

 

[Galileo]

It wasn't, but that's going to be a good read, thank you. Geology around my croft is "Till and Morainic Deposits - Diamicton, sand and gravel", apparently. There is definitely a lot of very good gravel on the shoreline, not least an entire spit of it, but it's a marine protected area and not only that but a local English landowner dredged the bed and made off with a lot of gravel in the late 19th century upsetting the local fishermen, there's a bit of sensitivity around doing that!

 

Not sure I'd be able to buy a big digger, certainly not in the 5-6t bracket, being in Shetland there isn't really a second hand market. Still, I'm feeling a lot more confident about all this now, I dithered about posting as well.

[saveasteading]

If you can get sand and gravel, then you don't need much rock: just some on top to resist abrasion.

the principle of constructing a road is  to start with the poorest fill and increase the quality as you get nearer the surface. This applies to the biggest motorways.

In your case there is a risk of the peaty ground settling under the weight of the stone/sand fill, let alone the vehicles..  The simple answer to that is to float your road on the surface...that is how the railway is built across Rannoch moor.

 

So I suggest chatting around and finding what material is available, then get back to us.

 

Check out Macadam and Telford road constructions...no bitumen used then. A Macadam (not tarmacadam) Road is probably what you need. You have the modern advantage of a membrane beneath that prevents the mud from mixing with the stone. 

 

Also chat with the quarry some more, as they may have lesser material that they can supply.

 

As to the tarmac site entrance...the point of this is to prevent mud and stones being carried onto the carriageway. The tarmac bit on top doesn't need to be very thick, but the LA may have their own view and standard on this.

 

 

[Iceverge]

For this kind of job I wouldn't buy my own machine. I've had an 8t excavator and now a Massey backhoe. Again about 8t. They're absolutely fine for poking around, clearing scrub etc however when you take on the ground it turns out theres an awful lot of it and it's very heavy. 

 

You'd need something at least 13t and to get something serviceable probably spend £30k+. Anything cheaper will work for light jobs but once you start digging hard it'll break your heart. Seals and hoses will break daily and heavy equipment is very tough to work on. Everything seems to be inaccessible and incredibly heavy, and inevitably when it breaks it's stuck outside in boggy ground in the rain ( Ask me how I know!) 

Also parts are an order of magnitude more expensive than automotive/agri stuff.

 

Get in touch with local farmers. They'll have a number for a man with an excavator who does this this every day of the week. Employing him you not only gain a digger but also his expertise. 

 

By all means buy machinery for lighter jobs, I use my digger all the time, but for serious earthworks pay for an expert man with a big reliable machine . I do. 

 

 

Edited July 18, 2022 by Iceverge

[Galileo]

I'm trying to source a digger for a week to do some preliminary digs to see what's under the peat, this is also proving to be an issue as they are all out on hire with various construction work going on (wind farms to space ports). Be down to a seaside shovel and a bucket at this rate. Island life is great, except when you want anything done.

[Galileo]

Thanks for cautionary tale Iceverge, I've been trying to do just that for 2 years! It's a thing up here, the local construction people get in with the big projects, ignore the local small jobs, until they end and then they will be chasing around for work. I've rung them all, a few times, some can't even be bothered to return calls. Local crofters hire diggers and do it themselves, there's very much a self sufficiency culture thing here when you need something done. I'll hire as big a machine as a can, buying second hand is just not an option anyway without a lot of expense of getting it to, then shipping it up from Aberdeen.

[Hobbiniho]

first thing i would be doing is getting a "podger" a thin bit of round bar with a T bar handle on the top and finding out how deep the peat is, you will also be able to tell if what is under is hard or soft, i cant really tell from the photos what you own but if you own most of what is in the second photo those raised bits in the foreground will likely be old dry stone walls so would be suitable to be reused for road construction, without digging trial holes you wont really know if what you have underneath will be hard enough or if it has too much clay and will turn to soup, i presume you are in unst given the reference to 1 quarry and the spaceport

[Galileo]

On 27/07/2022 at 18:29, Hobbiniho said:

first thing i would be doing is getting a "podger" a thin bit of round bar with a T bar handle on the top and finding out how deep the peat is, you will also be able to tell if what is under is hard or soft, i cant really tell from the photos what you own but if you own most of what is in the second photo those raised bits in the foreground will likely be old dry stone walls so would be suitable to be reused for road construction, without digging trial holes you wont really know if what you have underneath will be hard enough or if it has too much clay and will turn to soup, i presume you are in unst given the reference to 1 quarry and the spaceport

 

Ah, close! Top end of Yell, the water is Basta Voe looking out to the East. And you're right, bottom picture is mostly mine, top one neighbours land that I'm cutting across. I've done a poke around, seems to hit the hard at around 200mm at the thinnest, 700mm for a few meters at the deepest. Been looking at getting an old Backhoe digger, like a MF 50B or JCB 3CX to have a poke around before hiring a bigger excavator but logistics is not fun, without a trip down on the boat its taking a gamble and getting something sent up freight somehow. Doing things on a shoestring is not for the feint of heart.

 

There is a drop along the fence lines, so assuming that would be the remains of either stone or a peat dyke. Here's a side to side with the 1843 map, well almost, the left side needs to drop down a bit. Just curiosity more than anything else as this stuff fascinates me, I'm guessing livestock enclosures of some kind that have disappeared almost completely at ground level but stand out very distinctly in the aerial shots. All those horizontal lines must be field drains...