This weekend I made a start on the driveway. I had been planning the drive for some time, doing numerous sketches in photoshop on a scale plan of the block to get the curves right, and put the carport in a practical place. There was no way we were going to do a straight driveway. We wanted something with shape, character and interest. The drive is about 70m long, and 3.5 m wide.
The weather was looking good, so I took the Friday off and marked it all out with stakes, and even backed my trailer along it to make sure it was easy enough to negotiate the curves I had designed. The carport goes in the bay that just out from the middle of the drive on the north side (top side in the image above). Directly opposite the carport is where you can reverse out of the carport to turn the car around and drive forwards out the drive.
So, on Saturday morning I hired a mini excavator, and dad came up to help. Dad drove the tractor and I drove the excavator.
We needed to cut between 150mm and 400mm deep, and get it relatively flat from side to side. Progress was initially a bit slow, and I thought I would not get the main cut done in the day. That would mean hiring the excavator for another day, and I didn’t really want to do that, at $390 per day.
But, we just kept plugging away at it, and by 5:30pm I had it all cut.
On Sunday, Aaron came up to help, which was great because he has real road building experience managing forestery road construction. So, he explained how we needed to crown the drive with a 5% gradient either side of centre. We discussed drainage and water flows, and decided where I would need to put crossover drains.
Then, after digging all the dirt out yesterday, we put a while bunch of it back in!
Once we had dumped the dirt back in, we used the tractor bucked as a grader and smoother, keeping the wheels of one side always in the low drains. That way, the tractor rode at an angle and we formed a crown in the middle. Its actually easier than I thought it would be.
Then, Aaron drove the Land Cruiser over the drive as a roller, and really packed it down well.
And, you end up with a pretty good drive!
In this shot you can see the crown.
So, now there is about 15m at the start of the drive that is left to do, then I have to flatten out the car port reversing area, form the drain edges, and move the remaining dirt.
All in all a good weekends work, thanks to dad and Aaron.