Mud mud glorious mud.

[Russell griffiths]

Not on my bloody site there’s not

as the seasons start to change I thought I would add my opinion on mud on site

nope don’t want it, your trades will walk it through your new house, their van will drag it down the road, and it makes for an unhappy environment to work in. 

When I did the site scrape I extended it for 5-6 m in all directions from the hose footprint, I removed all topsoil and replaced it with recycled crushed hardcore and a blinding of local stone, the cost was 3 truckloads of crushed at £145 per load and 1load of stone at £165 

the outcome is priceless not a drop of crud anywhere. 

[epsilonGreedy]

Lorries in Lincolnshire must be smaller, my three loads of hardcore only went this far.

 

 

[lizzie]

Nice....we had a lot more than that down lost count if how many loads and we had do go down circa 1.5m over the whole site so no top soil left anywhere.......we kept topping up the hardcore must have been a foot thick by the end but the weather beat us and no matter how hard we tried mud became a fact of life through the wettest winter.  Fingers crossed it remains dry and pristine, it looks lovely.  Lucky you are not on clay either, vile stcky stuff.

[Ferdinand]

5 hours ago, Russell griffiths said:

Not on my bloody site there’s not

as the seasons start to change I thought I would add my opinion on mud on site

nope don’t want it, your trades will walk it through your new house, their van will drag it down the road, and it makes for an unhappy environment to work in. 

When I did the site scrape I extended it for 5-6 m in all directions from the hose footprint, I removed all topsoil and replaced it with recycled crushed hardcore and a blinding of local stone, the cost was 3 truckloads of crushed at £145 per load and 1load of stone at £165 

the outcome is priceless not a drop of crud anywhere. 

 

My previous experience with a long drive in the country says you have 3 or 4 years to build it before that all vanishes into or under a layer of mud.

 

Long enough, I hope !

[Cpd]

Mud...... when I first got my place it was mud hell, a few hundred years of neglected drainage and livestock using the buildings as shelter...... I did not have a digger.... but I had lots of willing helpers and we just spent a few weeks shovelling it up in buckets.... into even bigger buckets..... into a power barrow and then tipped it into a low area out the way. There were pre existing roads and hard standing but it had not seen the light of day for at leat 100 years....... once the mud was cleared the rains and lack of drainage cleared the rest and we were able to repair the hardstanding and roads. It was a great feeling when one day we realised that we were no longer traipsing mud around and could wear our boots in the house again ! 

[Triassic]

I’ve not got many muddy bits, however I kept some rolls of carpet cut into 3 foot wide strips, these get rolled out as and when there’s a problem, it’s helped keep the mud down.

[Russell griffiths]

15 minutes ago, Cpd said:

Mud...... when I first got my place it was mud hell, a few hundred years of neglected drainage and livestock using the buildings as shelter...... I did not have a digger.... but I had lots of willing helpers and we just spent a few weeks shovelling it up in buckets.... into even bigger buckets..... into a power barrow and then tipped it into a low area out the way. There were pre existing roads and hard standing but it had not seen the light of day for at leat 100 years....... once the mud was cleared the rains and lack of drainage cleared the rest and we were able to repair the hardstanding and roads. It was a great feeling when one day we realised that we were no longer traipsing mud around and could wear our boots in the house again ! 

 

OMG that looks horrible, what a bloody legend dealing with that. 

[Bitpipe]

Even hardcore will eventually go muddy in rain as the fines work their way to the top - it's inescapable!

 

Worse, when it dries out inside it reverts to a fine grit which can scuff floors - we had a strict shoes off at door policy since moving in which we maintain today.

 

They day we finished our resin bound driveway was glorious - I could walk from door to road in my socks

[dpmiller]

we did most of the site in 4" crushed rubble, then a strip around the footprint blinded as a nice firm base for the scaff. Everyone that visits remarks on how clean and level it is.

[ToughButterCup]

Not being as well organised as @Russell griffiths, but having an inkling that mud would be a foe, this is what we did.....

 

First, try not to get it on yer shoes in the first place

 

I found that if I laid the mat(s) at a slight angle, the rain rinses the mat clean. An occasional brush with the same stuff we use to rinse the dog pens is perfect.

 

Next: accept the the inevitable - so I bought a 5 meter off-cut of Astro Turf and put it down in front of the door; put a hose sprayer and brush next to  the sluice..... Yes, that's a Dock leaf growing through the plastic. You can scrape your boots to your hearts content on Astro Turf. Best £50 I ever spent.

 

Ashamed to admit I asked Rollo to mow it. ? 

 

 

[Ed Davies]

For a site which is near permanently water-logged I've had very little trouble with mud. The access track and parking area is built up above the surrounding ground with uncountably many dumper-truck loads of rotten rock from my neighbour's borrow pit (https://edavies.me.uk/2014/05/access/). The actual house site was scrapped down to clay (only a few 100mm below ground level) then covered with 12 tonnes of 20mm Melvich stone (https://edavies.me.uk/2015/06/still-here/). As long as I stay on the parking area and the immediate house site mud hasn't been a problem. Step off that, though, and wellies are needed; ordinary ankle length boots are liable to flooding from one wrong step unless it's been mostly dry for a few weeks.

 

The skylarks which were nesting nearby last year seemed to understand this: they weren't bothered at all by my using power tools only a few metres away from their nests but the moment I stepped off the hard ground I was invading their territory and they were up in the air giving alarm calls. Haven't seen anything like as many this year, I think the beast-from-east weeks earlier in the year stopped them breeding so much.

[redtop]

an old topic, but talking of mud...

[scottishjohn]

at least thats one problem i will not have as its all granite --

but i think it will work out worse in the long run  --could be a lot of "pecker " work for drains etc

we will see --

[redtop]

photo was 2 days ago, got worse since then.  Groundworkers keep scraping slop and dragging the drilling machine out but its a bit of a losing battle.  Think we are going to get more stone on the ground, not easy as narrow access means lorry parking 800m away and 3 t dumper doing runs up and down the hill. Oh and where the lorry would park the council are doing road works... arghh