Seeking "Dirt Road Upkeep" Suggestions

[Fillie]

We live on a flat, dirt, 1/4 mile long private road in the county, and every year after the rains it gets deep potholes in it. Year before last, 8 of 20 homeowners got organized, paid for and hired a guy to scrape and grade down a foot, grade a good crown on it and then we had 25 truckloads of dirt-rock dumped, graded and steamrolled. This held for two seasons with patches of same material and a using a rented tamper. It cost us about $6500.
We are not organized into a homeowners assoc, most people here dont have a lot of extra cash, most are unwilling to form a dues-paying association, the County doesn't take "road donations" any more and we can't afford to have it paved ($150,000 est.). It is also very dusty in the Summer.
So, here is what I would love discussion on:
1. Good road upkeep ideas/experiences
2. Community organizing in a 20 house community, 3/4ths of which is resistant to help/cooperate and did not contribute to the last big fix or the patching.
Thanks for the input, much appreciated.

[Tars]

Even black-topped road has to be maintained, filling potholes, cracks, etc. So paving isn't a solution in itself. As it happens, I have about 1/4 mile of dirt road here that I maintain. I maintain it using a John Deere 37-horse diesel tractor, using the loader on front, and a 3-point adjustable grading blade on the back. I use about two "double-dump" truckloads of 3/4" roadbase on it per season - which costs about $600, delivered.

The road gets potholed the worst when there's standing water on the road. So the first step would be to give water a drainage path to follow away from your road. Find the low spots along the path of your road. Angle the grading blade, and scoop out a shallow drainage alongside your road, and guide the water to the low spot, away from the road. You'll have to clean out this drainage at least annually, before it starts raining.

Crowning the road was a good start. But potholes will need to be filled. Best time, in my opinion, is a couple of days after a rain, when the road surface is almost-but not-quite dry. Use the loader, dump roadbase near the pothole. Drag the bucket, pushing
the fill into the pothole; use the bucket to compact it as much as you can. Put a bit extra over the pothole, and encourage residents to drive on the bumps to pack it down. This is a neverending process. Over time though, you'll raise the surface of the road, and make it more uniformly compacted. If you're consistent at it, the job will get easier over time.

Grade & re-crown the road in Autumn, before it rains. At the same time, clean the weeds & stuff out of your drain gutters. Allow a couple of weeks of driving over it before rains, so the loose gravel can be re-compacted into the road surface.

Noone on your road owns a medium-sized tractor? If not, consider forming a "tractor co-op" with your neighbors. With a bit of craigslist shopping, you should be able to buy a used tractor, quite good enough for fairly regular use, for around $5000. That price may well include a "brush hog" which will be good for keeping the weeds down along your road. Add another $1k for a decent grading blade. Ad another $1k on top of that, and you can get a good 3-point rototiller, and everyone can use it for their gardens! :wink:

Driving tractor is fun. They're relatively easy to maintain. You won't have any problems finding people to drive it to take care of road maintenance chores!

[MsTerry]

the most important thing in road maintenance is to go out there when it rains, I mean POURS.
Only then you can see where you runoff comes from and where it goes.
I use a shovel and a mattock and a wheel barrow to redirect the water with strategically placed dams (or speedbumps). For a person my size and gender it is all I have to do to maintain access to my property. No tractor, no trucks . Just never try to change where the water wants to go.

[mykil]

There is one thing you can do and you will NEVER have to upkeep your road again. DRIVE ON THE LARGER BUMPS. May sound weird but is spreads things around. Hit the high notes to say. If just you do this by driving in the brush a little to the left or to the right you will notice a huge difference in a matter of dayz. If you make a game of it to see how you can only drive in the high points you will never need to maintain your road except as the game! LOL! Try it it works wonders and is self-amusing in the process of enlightening the others about the driving on the high spots. This also demotes bottoming out in the trenches so it is really better for your car…



We live on a flat, dirt, 1/4 mile long private road in the county, and every year after the rains it gets deep potholes in it. Year before last, 8 of 20 homeowners got organized, paid for and hired a guy to scrape and grade down a foot, grade a good crown on it and then we had 25 truckloads of dirt-rock dumped, graded and steamrolled. This held for two seasons with patches of same material and a using a rented tamper. It cost us about $6500.
We are not organized into a homeowners assoc, most people here dont have a lot of extra cash, most are unwilling to form a dues-paying association, the County doesn't take "road donations" any more and we can't afford to have it paved ($150,000 est.). It is also very dusty in the Summer.
So, here is what I would love discussion on:
1. Good road upkeep ideas/experiences
2. Community organizing in a 20 house community, 3/4ths of which is resistant to help/cooperate and did not contribute to the last big fix or the patching.
Thanks for the input, much appreciated.

[Sara S]

Hmm; I've been maintaining my 1/4 mile driveway for over 30 years, and for the first 20 or so years could only afford mechanized maintenance and more rock every 5 years. This meant a lot of hand work during the rains (and it rains a lot out here west of Cazadero!) which consisted of using a mattock to make angled ditches to direct the flow of water off the road (my driveway is mostly steep, and it's easier to do this when the rain is streaming down it, since the flow helps make the channel). Now the surface is much better, and I only have to do a little minor ditching during the season, and clean out the side ditches where the #$**! wild pigs have rooted in it.

Maybe the scraping off of a foot of your surface wasn't the best thing to do; the lifelong resident out here who actually built the main (dirt) road as well as my driveway said that was not the way to maintain it. Our ranch Association had hired some people who were inexperienced, and who just scraped off the top to even it out. He said that if they kept scraping off the top they'd break through the crust, and never be able to keep the potholes filled. And this happened. They finally had to make a new surface, which is what it sounds like your guy did. I always hired the same guy who helped build my driveway for the maintenance, until he retired. If you want that info, email me; an estimate or second opinion doesn't cost a thing.

Granted, the soil may be very different where you are, and there may never have been a crust on your road, but the really great road people I've seen out here never grade off the top, but scrape up the rock that has sluffed off to the sides, and put it back on, along with some more.

As to organizing, well, we always had an Association, which is mainly for road maintenance, but does a bunch of other stuff too. If your neighbors don't want to do that, try having a potluck to talk about the advantages of mutually maintained roads; maybe get the cooperation of some of them who can't afford money, but perhaps can do some hand work. I don't know how far out you live, but I recently was part of a "Disaster-Preparedness" push, during which I contacted about a third of the people in my area of the ranch here (maybe 10-15 households) and we had a potluck, got our contact info, and then distributed it. You might want to do that at the same time.

Also, sometimes, if those people who are reluctant to contribute see a lady out there in the rain working on the road, they just might feel guilty enough to help!

And what Mykil said is absolutely right! I call it "driving all over the road,"
and I tell all my frequent visitors to do the same thing: never drive in the ruts. You can tell your reluctant neighbors that they can at least help by doing this fun sort of maintenance!

Sara




We live on a flat, dirt, 1/4 mile long private road in the county, and every year after the rains it gets deep potholes in it. Year before last, 8 of 20 homeowners got organized, paid for and hired a guy to scrape and grade down a foot, grade a good crown on it and then we had 25 truckloads of dirt-rock dumped, graded and steamrolled. This held for two seasons with patches of same material and a using a rented tamper. It cost us about $6500.
We are not organized into a homeowners assoc, most people here dont have a lot of extra cash, most are unwilling to form a dues-paying association, the County doesn't take "road donations" any more and we can't afford to have it paved ($150,000 est.). It is also very dusty in the Summer.
So, here is what I would love discussion on:
1. Good road upkeep ideas/experiences
2. Community organizing in a 20 house community, 3/4ths of which is resistant to help/cooperate and did not contribute to the last big fix or the patching.
Thanks for the input, much appreciated.

[Hotspring 44]

MsTerry Said: "the most important thing in road maintenance is to go out there when it rains, I mean POURS. Only then you can see where your runoff comes from and where it goes."

If, you are willing or end up having to to do the road maintenance yourself you pretty much have to know which way the water courses.

Even though you say the road is flat, unless it's a lake bottom, Obviously it's not perfectly flat.

The most critical thing is the way the water goes (the erosion factor.).

A quarter-mile isn't really that far.
How wide is the road?
The wider it is the more water in actual volume you have to deal with.

You definitely do not want to redirect the water in any major way.


Tars Said: "Even black-topped road has to be maintained, filling potholes, cracks, etc. So paving isn't a solution in itself."
Yes, very expensive.
($150,000 est.) according to Fillie.
With the price of crude oil so high now, it could be a whole lot more than that at this point in time.

If you think the price of crude oil is a major problem. Think again!
At least it's pretty easy to predict what the price of crude oil is going to be. Pretty much it's going to keep going up.

I would think that paving is not likely going to happen on your road anytime soon.
Tars Said: "Angle the grading blade, and scoop out a shallow drainage alongside your road, and guide the water to the low spot, away from the road. You'll have to clean out this drainage at least annually, before it starts raining."


If that stretch of road or any part of it is really level, and there is too much standing water on it you can put in what they call a "drainage tile".
It's basically a drainage pipe that is buried underground at the correct grade angle to drain at one end of the pipe.

I was just searching the Internet a little bit to try to find an example. This is the best example I can find within a few minutes. < https://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://www.fultoncountyoh.com/swcd/gallery/Fgallery2-6.jpg&imgrefurl=https://www.fultoncountyoh.com/swcd/gallery2.htm&h=960&w=1280&sz=208&hl=en&start=6&um=1&tbnid=rQ5ACUnlRjDj0M:&tbnh=113&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3DDrainage%2BTile%2Bmachine%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN >

Tars Said: "No one on your road owns a medium-sized tractor? If not, consider forming a "tractor co-op" with your neighbors."

I think it would be a real big mistake to have a property owners Association or group of property owners owning a tractor!
I have firsthand personal experience with that. I can tell you many stories.

Basically, it goes like this:
if you think it's difficult now getting neighbors to pay for the road as it is today, just imagine how difficult it would be to store, maintain, insure, etc. a tractor with 20 owners!!

To make a very long and painful but very educational story short.

I think the neighbors that get along with each other are going to end up paying for the road.
Believe it or not, you're far better off not going through all of the trials and tribulations of dealing with any irate neighbors over potholes.

The neighbors that actually get along, whom actually get something done on the road are going to end up maintaining the road.

Property owners Association's, so called road committees, and so on always end up in litigation.
Then, the neighbors that got along previously will never get along as well as they did before any litigation. Some could even end up as bitter neighbors with ongoing conflicts in excess and hard feelings that may never cease.

I can assure you that no matter what happens. Committees associations aside, there will always be somebody that will never pay. Even when there is a foreclosure lean on their property.

Some people even let it go all the way to a final foreclosure.
It could really get nasty.
Property owners Association's and road committees: I highly recommend against it!

Co-Owning a tractor is a bad idea also.
When you co-own a tractor. You are also co-owning the liability!
Liabilities are not always shared equally.
He who has the most skin in (so to speak) loses the most skin (so to speak)

So it ends up for insurance purposes, somebody is going to have to be a licensed heavy equipment operator that is adequately insured against liability in case something bad happens or otherwise someone would be sticking their neck out.

You don't really want to risk your house and your property (so as to cover a liability lawsuit that turns bad against you) just to maintain a quarter-mile road.
I used to own property, where there was a property owners Association.
They (the proverbial) "we" bought a dump truck. (Not to mention the politics that gets interjected into things like that.
That is another long dragged out story that involves politics and specifically road maintenance with property owners.).

It (the dump truck) worked for two seasons, spring and fall, and then it broke down.
Nobody there knew how to fix it. So it sat for about 15 years on somebody's land, getting filled with 5 yards of garbage!
Hence
They eventually sold that dump truck for pennies on the dollar.

Then, like idiots they went ahead and bought another dump truck! Idiots! That was the second dump truck they bought. It was crapier than the first one they bought!
Actually, the diamond T was a very good quality short dump truck, perfect for short narrow steep mountain roads.

The first one was actually a good one, it was a Diamond T.
The second dump truck was just a Ford 1 1/2 Ton with a box Dump Bed on it.

That one almost completely lost its brakes on the steepest grade within our subdivision almost causing a wildfire in the dry weeds with the red hot Brake Drums!
That's when the driver panicked with the bed in the up position.
It torqued the frame.
Totally, bent its frame beyond a reasonable cost of repair.
Whom would have had to pay the excess cost over and above the one million-dollar (minimum required by law as far as I know) insurance coverage if it did ignite a fire that got out of hand or if there would have been an injury accident?...

…(in that case, because it was a commercial vehicle [dump truck] weighing over 10,000 pounds gross vehicle weight rating. (It had to be insured. At that time. It was a minimum of $300,000 liability coverage now it’s $1 million.).


If you or a neighbor have a tractor you wouldn't really need insurance If whoever owns the tractor is skilled enough not to screw anything up, and smart enough or wise enough to not piss off the neighbors.
Some neighbors are born pissed, and they never get over it!

Until you've had to deal with many neighbors about the myriad of road maintenance issues that you never seem to notice until you become the one responsible for everything negative or otherwise, you would most likely not even know that the term road rage has many twists in it that a majority of people are probably to keenly aware of.

If you have ever heard jokes about Caltrans workers being irresponsible, lazy, slow, stupid, overpaid, etc. and so on… well you get the picture.


Now imagine that frustration and madness focused on you times, however, many people on that road that are dissatisfied, because their front end alignment got knocked out by a Pot hole or that they drove (they'll say slid) off the road or that mud / water came into their house or something like that.
Or that what "you" (supposedly) did maintaining the road caused erosion on the property, and then they may want to sue you for damages.

Some people even believe that they themselves are engineers but they do not and never will have the credentials to back it up.
Of course you would never know that until you start doing road maintenance on your own.
Then and for some odd reason only then they come out of the woodwork with all of the complaints.
Of course, you could always just tell them go take a hike!
Or take it out on the gravel and the road and do some road work themselves.

The whole key is getting along with as many neighbors as it takes to actually get the road up to standard and to maintain it.

It does sounds to me like you were fairly successful having somebody else coming to do your road. Especially if it was 2 years ago since any major tractor work and graveling has been done on it.


Fillie said: "8 of 20 homeowners got organized, paid for and hired a guy to scrape and grade down a foot, grade a good crown on it and then we had 25 truckloads of dirt-rock dumped, graded and steamrolled. This held for two seasons with patches of same material and a using a rented tamper. It cost us about $6500."

So that comes to approximately, $105 a year each for eight people.

Obviously it would be about half that if everybody paid.

If there were a way that you can demonstrate or somehow show to the neighbors whom don't usually pay, how much more they would get out of it If everybody paid, all at once for a contractor to work the Road correctly, you know, like with an engineer, contractor, or at least somebody that is experienced at that kind of road.
You get a lot more bangs for the buck that way.

If you do end up incurring more expense then you and your neighbors can handle then the least expensive thing to do would be for each of you to buy a hummer!
Yes! A Hummer!
It would cost far less to buy a brand new hummer and pay for the fuel then it would be to go through a lawsuit over that roadway with your neighbors.
seriously. I am not exaggerating.

Maintaining a one quarter mile level roadway is pretty darn easy to maintain actually.
Most people Just drive on the road without thinking about it.
So however much of your own personal energy that you put into that road is really going to be on you in the end.
You'll never get paid what it's worth. So you got to enjoy it a whole lot, if you do it all. Otherwise you'll end up feeling abused (minimally.).
You can even end up broke because of it.

For $100 a year or maybe $150 a year each with the neighbors that are willing to pay without a law suit is probably the best you are going to be able to do.

As far as actually going out and physically doing the work yourself is concerned unless you really like doing that sort of thing. I highly recommend against it.
You probably won't be able to actually do all that work by yourself with your own back and pick, shovel, pickup truck, rake, hoe, chainsaw, Limb saw, loppers, all the other tools, loyal and dance wear and tear on your personal equipment, etc.. when you need any major ditching trenching or drainage work done.

When all is said and done at some point, there will need to be some heavy equipment use and tonnage of road base hauled in.
I am sure you won't want to do that with your spine, and pickup truck.

I spent over 20 years, maintaining 15 linear miles of roadway on a subdivision in Lake County.

Most of the roads were on steep hills.
Some roads had Seeps underneath the road.
Some roadways were level in places. There were dozens of low spots that filled up with water in the winter.
If the drainage on both sides of the road is good just keep adding fill. Just make sure that the fill is actually road base. Not pure gravel or just fill dirt but real bona fide road base. Blue rock from pocket Canyon is excellent. It is very heavy, and it won't wash away. It packs in really tightly, and it pretty much stays put even when the water runs fairly fast across the top of the road surface.

Of course, if you're into lawyers, which I'm pretty sure you are not it would still probably cost less money for you and the neighbors that do get along with each other and have enough money to bring the road up to county standards. Then go to the Board of Supervisors and have them deem your road a county road.
Then they will charge everybody on their property tax bill evenly.
Monetarily speaking, It would be more “fair". I think, the county thing is undesirable.
There are no easy solutions for that.
All in all, I think it's best for neighbors to get along and make things work, especially the access to their own property.

The suggestion about where to put your wheels when you drive on that road is a pretty good one. I did that in Lake County allot.
However, it did not make up for the ditching, graveling, culverts, grading, tree trimming, brush limbing and road base fill.

Nobody even mentioned any road hugging, rooting, or falling trees or overgrown foliage. Last year I spent about two weeks doing that on roads up in Annapolis with three of us using chainsaws, power Limbers, and loppers. However, most of the time. Two of us were dragging brush.
It was about a two one ratio chainsaw person to brush and dragger.
That cost the property owners Association, several thousands of dollars by the time it was all done. I was not there every time every day for the limbing.

The cost of a paved road to maintain is actually at least three times as much as a graveled road.

Also, if you make that road too smooth people would drive to damn fast on it and tear it up!

So it's not a bad idea to have some bumps in the road to keep people from driving too fast anyway.

I cannot emphasize enough about liability when you decide to do the road yourself.
You open yourself up to litigious abuse.

You and the neighbors that get along with you, whom are responsible enough to pay real money for the road are all better off paying a licensed contractor to do anything more than minor surface repair and covert clearing and maybe some brush clearing, that depends upon how much there is of the brush, because you may have to haul it away. That is costly and is a big pain in the butt.
I don't know maybe there's already a county or local ordinance we you are, so your neighbors may have to clear the brush from their own property. But sometimes it's almost impossible to get them to do that. And if it's not a fire hazard. I don't think any official is no one a do anything about it.


Odds are, half of the people that don't pay probably would if it was organized and shown to them that their money really did go into the road 100%.
Even running your own chainsaw on a private road when you are on somebody else's property you may be inadvertently setting them up to get sued.
If it's just a pick and shovel operation and a few pickup loads of gravel, and you don't fire up any loud chainsaws on other people's property without their permission, or leave large piles of flammable brush alongside the road. You'll probably do just fine.

In fact, some of your neighbors would probably kind of respect you a little more (as if they don't now). Then on the other hand, some others may not give a rat's hind quarter.

Note: most private roads in this area have easements that basically say the property goes to the center of the road. So technically, you are on somebody else's property When you are operating a chainsaw on that road when you are not on your own property.

I've heard of stories about people getting sued over the most ridiculously lame-assed crap!
The forest service or any deputy could give you a ticket to make you stop working immediately with a chainsaw that is not up to strict code even on your own private property.
Not having a spark arrester installed these days is a pretty big deal especially during fire season.

It may seem like a good idea at first to do the road work yourself.
But if something went wrong. Do you think you could afford to pay for it?

I don't want to monkey wrench anybody's (thing) or wishful thinking, but reality bites!
"All good deeds don't go un punished"!


Fillie said: "then we had 25 truckloads of dirt-rock dumped, graded and steamrolled This held for two seasons".


I don't know what you mean by dirt rock. Hopefully, it's good "road base", and not shale, if it has mostly shale it will turn to mush and silt.

Fillie. Good luck with your road and your neighbors.



We live on a flat, dirt, 1/4 mile long private road in the county, and every year after the rains it gets deep potholes in it. Year before last, 8 of 20 homeowners got organized, paid for and hired a guy to scrape and grade down a foot, grade a good crown on it and then we had 25 truckloads of dirt-rock dumped, graded and steamrolled. This held for two seasons with patches of same material and a using a rented tamper. It cost us about $6500.
We are not organized into a homeowners assoc, most people here dont have a lot of extra cash, most are unwilling to form a dues-paying association, the County doesn't take "road donations" any more and we can't afford to have it paved ($150,000 est.). It is also very dusty in the Summer.
So, here is what I would love discussion on:
1. Good road upkeep ideas/experiences
2. Community organizing in a 20 house community, 3/4ths of which is resistant to help/cooperate and did not contribute to the last big fix or the patching.
Thanks for the input, much appreciated.

[llovejoy]

We drive eight miles on dirt to get to our property and have to fill in the deepest pot holes on the less rainy days with dirt or gravel so as to keep the road passable... driving on the high spots also is great to keep the potholes moving around instead of in the same spot each time.
As for having a more receptive community, host a gathering somewhere nearby and invite all the folks who live there to come and meet each other. It always helps to put names with faces. We did this last fall and included a local park ranger to speak about wilderness issues-- animals, safety tips, etc., since we live far from medical attention in case of emergency and there are bears and cougars out here, it was good to know.
Hope it works out for you.
liz

[pagan]

I have about 500 feet of dirt road that the county owns but refuses to maintain. I've put about 20 yards of gravel on it and smoothed it by hand which has been rare over the last 15 years.

BUT: I mostly avoid any regular heavy truck traffic. No garbage or propane trucks. A very rare utility pole truck, which is usually lost. I can do this because I'm the only house on a dead end street.

[Braggi]

...
Note: most private roads in this area have easements that basically say the property goes to the center of the road. So technically, you are on somebody else's property When you are operating a chainsaw on that road when you are not on your own property.
...

OK, Hotspring 44, most of what you say is true and I don't have time to respond to all of it, but I thought I'd add this: if you own an easement across someone else's property, you not only have the right, but the OBLIGATION to maintain that easement. If your neighbor sues you for maintaining the road and you have not caused damage to persons or property THROUGH NEGLIGENCE, they will lose. You don't even have to defend yourself beyond showing up in court.

When you are maintaining your own easement on someone else's property you are there legally.

A property owner's association is actually a good idea. I've been on the board of directors of our association for about ten years now. As of January, I'm the president. (That's right, Ms. Terry, I AM the president.)

We hire out all the heavy equipment work. Individuals may use heavy equipment on their own, but not under the auspices of the Association.

Liability is a huge issue but an Association is a way to distribute that liability. Associations can also purchase insurance to cover them in general or for specific projects. The simpler way is to hire licensed insured contractors.

BTW, crowning a road is almost always a bad idea. That's a last resort. I'll post information on "the book" by Danny Haagans later on when I get a minute that will teach you all about maintaining country roads. He's the man and his is The Book.

-Jeff aka The President

[Hotspring 44]

Braggi Wrote "if you own an easement across someone else's property, you not only have the right, but the OBLIGATION to maintain that easement.
If your neighbor sues you for maintaining the road and you have not caused damage to persons or property THROUGH NEGLIGENCE, they will lose."

Yes, obligation but without a bona fide property owners Association contract (C C & R) approved by the county that obligation is even more arbitrary than one within a P O A.

What I mean by "more" arbitrary is when there is not a specific written, notarized, legal, and certified with a "county seal" contract it becomes more arbitrary IE when it "goes to court".
It won't really go to "Court" necessarily.

It will go to "an arbitrator". If there's a problem with that arbitrator's decision for some reason either party can appeal.
Then it goes to a panel of arbitrators.

That panel will get the paperwork, but you won't see the panel. It's like being judged without necessarily seeing your accusers.
That really sucks.

You were still only talking about the situation where either somebody is not paying their fair share to maintain the road or somebody making a mistake and causing what somebody precives as damage to their (someone else's) property (or person I suppose.).

I wasn't so much talking about personal injury. but I do remember mentioning it however in regards to chainsaws and other motorized equipment use.

Things can and sometimes do go bad, however. Also, the "burden of proof" is costly.

Remember, you're not likely to get any interest money.

Only direct damages and maybe lawyers fees.

Not necessarily all that either.

Then it is your burden to bear to somehow "collect".
You may not necessarily be able to "collect" a single dime.


Braggi Wrote:"When you are maintaining your own easement on someone else's property you are there legally".

Not necessarily!

Braggi Wrote:" A property owner's association is actually a good idea.

No it is not a good idea it is a very bad idea!

Braggi Wrote:" I've been on the board of directors of our association for about ten years now. As of January, I'm the president. (That's right, Ms. Terry, I AM the president.)"

I hope you don't get too big headed about that! Being the "president" and all.

It sounds to me that you may have an "incorporated" property owners Association.

I don't think that one half or three-quarter mile length of dirt road is worth the lawyer fees, filing fees, stationery, tax preparers, and all of that expensive stuff, the list goes on a little.


I won't get into all of those minor details, because I don't really want to start an argument over minor tiny details.

I'm sure there are a few specifics that have changed since I have been a "property owners committee member".

But the most important basic things are still the same as they have been since the 1970s. Like the "sterling's Davis act". Yes, there have been amendments.

You can just get together with your neighbors, so that at one time you have an engineer specify what the roadway is and what the roadway needs as far as any necessary improvements are concerned.

Also, to specify a basic maintenance schedule, including approximations of quantities of materials like road base for example.
There may be other surface issues that may require some kind of special drainage or surface preparation or conditioning.

There may also be some subsurface water that you are not aware of that the engineer may find.

The bottom line is the bottom line.

How much money and how much time are you willing to spend out of your personal life?
Can you make it home on that Road? That's really the main issue.

Braggi Wrote: "We hire out all the heavy equipment work. Individuals may use heavy equipment on their own, but not under the auspices of the Association."

Yeah, we did that one too.

When that heavy equipment operator screwed up the road just before a huge rainstorm. It was so bad that you could not even get a crawler through it!

That road at that time stayed closed for the rest of that winter until part of the spring.
It is a good thing that nobody lived on the other side of that closed road that year.


That was a very long time ago, and I'm sure, absolutely positive, that would not happen on a level 1 half to three-quarter mile long level road in Sonoma County in 2008.

I'm sorry, I'm having such a hard time making this one point: if something like that were to happen and you have a "property owners Association"

("home owners Association") what ever you want to call it I call it a "P O A" it does end up involving everybody!
That's one of the part's that I'm referring to that sucks! When somebody else makes a stupid a-- mistake everybody ends up paying for it!

Anyway to make a long story short, if the equipment operator is a licensed contract, equipment operator, like I had mentioned before, (is that) they are insured and you won't have to worry about getting sued if they screw up.


The odds are, if the contractor screws up the contractor usually comes back to fix it.

Then you won't get sued.

You won't have to attempt to sue somebody that (potentially) has no money in the first place only to realize that the money you spent on the attorney....

...Odds are you could do the road work with that same money better than you intended to in the first place, rather than paying all those attorneys fees upfront.

That is not the worst of it.

The worst of it is that I don't know of any insurance companies that would cover a un-incorporated property owners Association.

It costs thousands of dollars to have lawyers correctly right up a "CC and R".

Then you cannot force anybody to become part of your want to be P.O. A. that does not want to become burdened with that & all of its implications.

You are quite likely to lose some of the property rights that you now enjoy If you start a P O A.

If you do find it necessary to do something that is more legally binding so your neighbors pitch in their fair share then you should make absolutely certain that the only obligations,

"Power Over" and responsibilitys, of the "P.O.A." are strictly & unchangeably specifically for the road upkeep and nothing else, except the road and access to the mutual access road period.

Otherwise, you'll have people trying to make the rules like rules that you can't even park your car outside of your garage for example.


Yeah People actually do abuse their clout or use nonresponsiveness when they are in positions of power over others.
Even in the smallest way.


The place I was at in Lake County They actually let three roads stay washed out for over a year.

One of them was out for 3 1/2 years.


One of those roads could have been fixed by FEMA, but all the members of the commity were either out of town or on a vacation.

Some did not even live within the subdivision or even the county.
That set that place back by about six years.

Nowadays, if that were to happen.

The individual committee member or members would get successfully sued. (In my opinion, successfully).
I am not a lawyer.

But lawyers call those responsibilities "Fiduciary obligations" they are somewhat binding.
They are relatively easy to get out of as far as being a committee or board member is concerned.

Then there is the dreaded "general meeting" where everybody goes and elects the "board members" and discuss their options.

If there have any disagreements you can be sure that you will hear all of them before, during, and even more so after the general meeting is over. That really sucks!

Now it will come to the most important point I have to make. when you are a committee member that is absent, that is one thing, but you are at that point absolutely obligated bound to that responsibility.

Yes, even if somebody sues you and you "win" you are still out all of your time.

Plus the interest that you will not be able to recover from all the lawyer fees and filing fees that you will incur if somebody were to sue you. Not to mention the gasoline going to lawyers meetings, hearings, and all that legal crap.
That sucks!

Braggi Wrote: The simpler way is to hire licensed insured contractors.

I do agree with that 100%.

Braggi Wrote: BTW, crowning a road is almost always a bad idea.

I do agree with crowning a Road is"almost always" a bad idea.

That is where the engineer comes in when there are any major concerns about crowning versus grading, plus the proper drainage, and watershed issues.

Good luck. Once again!

[Braggi]

Braggi Wrote "if you own an easement across someone else's property, you not only have the right, but the OBLIGATION to maintain that easement.
If your neighbor sues you for maintaining the road and you have not caused damage to persons or property THROUGH NEGLIGENCE, they will lose."

Yes, obligation but without a bona fide property owners Association contract (C C & R) approved by the county that obligation is even more arbitrary than one within a P O A.
...

You didn't actually address the issue I raised. I do appreciate your passion and experience and your willingness to share, Hotspring. My point is that if a person, let's say a visitor, is harmed because a road is impassible to emergency vehicles, and you own an easement for ingress and egress, you can be sued for not maintaining that easement. So you have the obligation to maintain that road. How it's maintained or to what condition is beside the point if someone is harmed because it's not good enough. You are negligent.

Again I appreciate your experiences with all this.

Our association is incorporated and has been for nearly three decades. It's a 501c3 (amazingly enough) so donations to our association are considered tax deductible by the IRS (according to one of their minions although some of the association members' accountants disagree). All donations to the association, beyond a $50 a year dues, are voluntary. Membership to the association is voluntary. Nobody will ever be sued for not participating in any way. We send out a letter to residents every year asking for donations to the road fund and almost everyone sends in some money, usually about $250 a year on top of the dues. In a year where there is a special project, people are asked to chip in more and again, most do.

Because it's all voluntary, it's a pretty easy going organization. As far as "a plan" for road maintenance, we've had our road engineered by Danny Haagans of Pacific Watershed Associates. He's the guy who wrote the book "Handbook for Forest and Ranch Roads" which is the sacred text used by just about every state agency in California. We have about 9 miles of dirt/gravel road in our area. The association handles care of about 3 miles of it directly which is the portion engineered by Haagans. Our road is a showcase for Pacific Watershed and groups from all over the state come here to see how a well designed and maintained road should look. We've been told we have the best road of its kind in the area.

That doesn't mean we are without problems. We have a bridge that needs repair and we have an area on our road susceptible to slides. The road is being undermined from below. That's the big one. But our community really does work together. There are a couple of neighbors that grumble pretty much all the time, but everyone else understands and gives them the space to do that.

On my own road, I have a mile that I maintain on my own. I don't own a tractor and I don't recommend any association own one. It's so easy to rent one for a couple of days and then all the headaches of ownership belong to someone else. I do rent a tractor for a day or two every year so my road sees incremental improvements on an ongoing basis.

Back to Fillie's original comments and questions: I wouldn't suggest organizing any kind of formal association to deal with the road. I would just ask the half a dozen or so most active neighbors to pitch in and buy some road base and keep the potholes filled. There is no need to rent a roller or tamper. Just overfill the potholes a bit and start running over them with your cars. No matter how good a job you do on the road, you will always have some potholes and the treatment is fill them sooner rather than later. The sooner they get filled the smaller they will stay.

As far as engineering and the questions of crowning vs. outsloping or insloping, on a truly level road where both sides of the road are at the same elevation, there ain't much you can do but crown it and fill the potholes as they form. If there is a change in elevation from one side to the other, outsloping from the high to the low side so the water can follow its natural course makes the most sense. Get a copy of Danny Haagan's book and study up for more details. It should be available at any library.

The neighbors that won't talk to you or refuse to contribute should just be notified by mail of any major work to be done just to keep the peace. What really pisses people off is being left out of the information loop and having to deal with an inconvenience without being forewarned. Don't try to make them contribute because it isn't worth the hassle or expense.

Fillie, if I can be of any assistance feel free to write me.

-Jeff

[Fillie]

To all you who so generously gave time and expertise to my questions, I totally appreciate you all and am very grateful for this community service. I will get Danny Higgins book, I will put out a letter to all homeowners for regular yearly donations, we will fund more road base (what I referred to as dirt-rock), overfill the potholes one or two more years while we amass a bigger fund from donations to hire a licensed contractor. In my letter to homeowners I will include info on their liability for emergency vehicles not getting through if it gets too bad. These are all excellent suggestions.
Thank you all so much!!!

[Hotspring 44]

Braggi Wrote : "You didn't actually address the issue I raised. I do appreciate your passion and experience and your willingness to share, Hotspring. My point is that if a person, let's say a visitor, is harmed because a road is impassible to emergency vehicles, and you own an easement for ingress and egress, you can be sued for not maintaining that easement. So you have the obligation to maintain that road. How it's maintained or to what condition is beside the point if someone is harmed because it's not good enough. You are negligent."

I do not entirely disagree with that point it's a very important point.
But you can sign the road "closed road" and you can put up addiquit D.O.T approved warning signs in appropriate locations, and you can give registered mail notice to property owners about the specifics.

There also is of course what the legal term is exactly I don't know but what the judge that I heard in court, said.
He called it "common sense".
In regards to driving on a road that looks and and is obviously dangerous and somebody actually driving on it.
Common sense, is a mitigating factor. That means in essence somebody with common sense would not put themselves in that kind of danger in the first place.

Responsibility then usually falls back on to the driver behind the wheel and the actual property that the incident happened on.
That is one of the reasons why easements go to the center of the road.

You can notify the county also.
there are things you can do if a road washes out or is somehow temporarily damaged or dangerous.
We did that stuff nobody got hurt fortunately.
One road was washed out, and it had a 60 foot drop straight down that went the entire width across the road.

Like I said, I don't want to get into an argument, but there are numerous different situations and numerous loopholes.

It is not an absolute that a road must be a year-round road.
That all depends upon the subdivision and the purpose of that subdivision.
Some Subdivisions are not intended for residents, but they still have roads to maintain and they still have P. O. A.'s.

Braggi Wrote : ..."Because it's all voluntary"...:dancingrose:

that is a big (and wonderful) difference from the place I came from they were threatening to do foreclosures on people even though they did not technically have the power to go that far.

Honestly, the place in Lake County was so bad that I moved out and sold the land cheap just to get away from it!
We started having our general meetings in a public place in town just so the sheriff could be close by because there were numerous credible threats.
Our P.O.A. had about 100 20 acre parcels, 15 linear miles of dirt road and about 3 1/2 miles of steep, curvy with blind spots, paved road.

It was like the wild wild West in some respects. :yossam:
I actually liked that part of it for the most part
what I didn't like was all the lawyer talk and lawsuit talk.


Yeah, I pretty much did all of it. The hand work on the roads using shovels, picks, paving rakes, Whackers, hoes, hand saws, chain saws, pickup trucks, different dump trucks.

I even owned a tractor for a while and used it extensively on the roads for a year.

I've hired contractors, heavy equipment operators, laborers, a lawyer, Lang Brothers Paveing, surveyors, Cal trans, AT&T, book keepers, & Graphic artists to name a few I probably left out one or two but that was the most of it.

Braggi Wrote : ..."We have a bridge that needs repair"...

That is the only small road thing I think that we did not have on our subdivision!
Of course there were no overpasses or anything "big" like that.

Braggi Wrote : "Back to Fillie's original comments and questions: I wouldn't suggest organizing any kind of formal association to deal with the road. I would just ask the half a dozen or so most active neighbors to pitch in and buy some road base and keep the potholes filled. There is no need to rent a roller or tamper. Just overfill the potholes a bit and start running over them with your cars. No matter how good a job you do on the road, you will always have some potholes and the treatment is fill them sooner rather than later. The sooner they get filled the smaller they will stay." :wink:

That is very good sound advise!:thumbsup:

Braggi Wrote : "What really pisses people off is being left out of the information loop and having to deal with an inconvenience without being forewarned. Don't try to make them contribute because it isn't worth the hassle or expense."

:2cents: Oh, how true it is!:juggle:



You didn't actually address the issue I raised. I do appreciate your passion and experience and your willingness to share, Hotspring. My point is that if a person, let's say a visitor, is harmed because a road is impassible to emergency vehicles, and you own an easement for ingress and egress, you can be sued for not maintaining that easement. So you have the obligation to maintain that road. How it's maintained or to what condition is beside the point if someone is harmed because it's not good enough. You are negligent.

Again I appreciate your experiences with all this.

Our association is incorporated and has been for nearly three decades. It's a 501c3 (amazingly enough) so donations to our association are considered tax deductible by the IRS (according to one of their minions although some of the association members' accountants disagree). All donations to the association, beyond a $50 a year dues, are voluntary. Membership to the association is voluntary. Nobody will ever be sued for not participating in any way. We send out a letter to residents every year asking for donations to the road fund and almost everyone sends in some money, usually about $250 a year on top of the dues. In a year where there is a special project, people are asked to chip in more and again, most do.

Because it's all voluntary, it's a pretty easy going organization. As far as "a plan" for road maintenance, we've had our road engineered by Danny Haagans of Pacific Watershed Associates. He's the guy who wrote the book "Handbook for Forest and Ranch Roads" which is the sacred text used by just about every state agency in California. We have about 9 miles of dirt/gravel road in our area. The association handles care of about 3 miles of it directly which is the portion engineered by Haagans. Our road is a showcase for Pacific Watershed and groups from all over the state come here to see how a well designed and maintained road should look. We've been told we have the best road of its kind in the area.

That doesn't mean we are without problems. We have a bridge that needs repair and we have an area on our road susceptible to slides. The road is being undermined from below. That's the big one. But our community really does work together. There are a couple of neighbors that grumble pretty much all the time, but everyone else understands and gives them the space to do that.

On my own road, I have a mile that I maintain on my own. I don't own a tractor and I don't recommend any association own one. It's so easy to rent one for a couple of days and then all the headaches of ownership belong to someone else. I do rent a tractor for a day or two every year so my road sees incremental improvements on an ongoing basis.

Back to Fillie's original comments and questions: I wouldn't suggest organizing any kind of formal association to deal with the road. I would just ask the half a dozen or so most active neighbors to pitch in and buy some road base and keep the potholes filled. There is no need to rent a roller or tamper. Just overfill the potholes a bit and start running over them with your cars. No matter how good a job you do on the road, you will always have some potholes and the treatment is fill them sooner rather than later. The sooner they get filled the smaller they will stay.

As far as engineering and the questions of crowning vs. outsloping or insloping, on a truly level road where both sides of the road are at the same elevation, there ain't much you can do but crown it and fill the potholes as they form. If there is a change in elevation from one side to the other, outsloping from the high to the low side so the water can follow its natural course makes the most sense. Get a copy of Danny Haagan's book and study up for more details. It should be available at any library.

The neighbors that won't talk to you or refuse to contribute should just be notified by mail of any major work to be done just to keep the peace. What really pisses people off is being left out of the information loop and having to deal with an inconvenience without being forewarned. Don't try to make them contribute because it isn't worth the hassle or expense.

Fillie, if I can be of any assistance feel free to write me.

-Jeff

[Braggi]

Again, thanks for your comments and your willingness to share them, Hotspring 44.

Here's a place you can buy the book:
https://www.buildersbooksource.com/cgi-bin/booksite/15708.html

It's $30. I tried to find it on Alibris.com, but they don't have it. Perhaps another used bookseller will have it. You can do a search on the book title and see what other people say about it.

Having the book on your shelf, and actually reading it, will give you more information than you need. But it will also give you some clout with the neighbors because you will know what you're talking about if an issue comes up regarding what's best to put on the road or by what method.

I will share that the best material to fill potholes with is a mixture of clay soil and road base. (Also called 3/4" minus or #2 road base). The clay has molecules smaller than water and will form a watertight seal when mixed with the road base and compacted by traffic under wet conditions. Most folks just use the base and fill them repeatedly. I like to cure them if I can so I often scoop a little clay into the mix. It dries like concrete.

And Hotspring 44, you've really done it, that I can tell. Your story reminds me of Greenfield Ranch in Mendo County. Our situation is a lot less contentious and I hope to keep it that way while I'm involved.

If anyone wants to drive out west of Healdsburg and check out a well designed and mostly well maintained country road, drop me a line and we'll arrange it.

-Jeff

[saysni]

RE: Dust
Some landscaping company (name unknown) told me about an outfit that sprays a brine solution, mostly in vineyards, to keep dust down on dirt roads. I called them and they told me the salt content was not sufficient to cause problems with soil or water. It wasn't cheap, about $350 per 1,000 ft application (my best guesstimate from sketchy memory, can't remember the company name either). I did not do it. But every time a UPS truck or thoughtless motorist blasts down the road leaving a huge dust cloud in their wake I sure wished I did/would.
I think I prefer ruts and holes to huge dust clouds.
Please pity the "poor souls" living alongside dirt roads and DRIVE SLOW. Anything over 10 mph kicks up serious dust.
Thanks for reading.

[llovejoy]

I believe that product is called 'Dust off' and is available at feed stores and some landscaping companies also use it. I have been on roads where it is used and there seems to be no problems using it, and it really does keep down the dust for a good while. It will run off when there is a decent rain, so it needs reapplication when that happens.
liz

[Sciguy]

The "brine" you are referring to is calcium chloride (can be applied as granules or as solution). CaCl2 is deliquescent - it picks up water vapor from the air to such an extent that it will dissolve in its own water of hydration. It's widely used to hold down dust. It's very cheap. But it will rust your vehicle just like sodium chloride will. And will eventually dissipate into the environment. At least it supplies calcium which is better than sodium for plants.

Paul


RE: Dust
Some landscaping company (name unknown) told me about an outfit that sprays a brine solution, mostly in vineyards, to keep dust down on dirt roads. I called them and they told me the salt content was not sufficient to cause problems with soil or water. It wasn't cheap, about $350 per 1,000 ft application (my best guesstimate from sketchy memory, can't remember the company name either). I did not do it. But every time a UPS truck or thoughtless motorist blasts down the road leaving a huge dust cloud in their wake I sure wished I did/would.
I think I prefer ruts and holes to huge dust clouds.
Please pity the "poor souls" living alongside dirt roads and DRIVE SLOW. Anything over 10 mph kicks up serious dust.
Thanks for reading.