Tractors, Mowers, Chippers, Trailers, Chainsaws, Generators, Driveway Erosion Control, ETC.

Never had a Jeep of any size, but I did have a '79 K5. I always told people it was like driving a greenhouse with all the glass and visibility. For a big fullsize truck, it was very easy to drive, especially when I compare it to my FJ that was almost the total opposite.

Square body GM has to give a Jeep a run for its money in the rust department as well. Otherwise, dear god...

 

It was a little wet here last night. I think this is a record for a 24hr period since I bought this rain gauge. The rain actually fell in about 12 hrs, as it didn't start until 6pm yesterday. I haven't been up the driveway yet, but the neighbor already text me that there is some damage. It's not to bad.

 

We had an old scout with the v8 in it.. think it was a 392?

Cut the body off of it with an axe it was rusted so bad. Just kept the front fenders/hood & windshield.
Got pulled over a zillion times in that thing. But man it was a mud slinger!

 

Wow! How did your driveway hold up?

 

Not great. It's been worse, but not by much.

 

This is the culvert nearest my house. It took a fair bit of rock off the top of the pipe, and you can see weeds that mark the high water and all the rock in the grass that should be on the driveway.
https://youtu.be/69O9impDWrY

This is the spot on the other side of the hill where a natural spring feed dumps out from the hill top.
https://youtu.be/z5Mnw9ZAdRk

This is a full length video from the roadway up to my house. It's kinda long, and the tractors a bit to loud for you make out my comments on the video, but you'll see all the spots where the water reeked it's havoc. From the little spring, by the dropbox, the neighbors fence, that whole field would have been 18" underwater in the early hours this morning, and of course the culverts. Getting the rock back out of the grass is a butt load of work. I haven't spoken with my neighbor yet, but he did text me this morning. He wants to wait for things to dry out before fixing anything. I expect he'll probably bring home a grader from work. Thank the heavens for good neighbors!
https://youtu.be/gXUdh9Rd8sQ

On the upside, my little rock project from last month stood up really well!

 

So looking at that vid, there are multiple issues. One common solution to all of them is paving that area. Some of the culverts it looks like if you paved 20 ft each side. A couple of shots looked like they may be in a flood plane and good luck. Paved is the only solution. Around a culvert maybe rip rap. I noticed on no small amount of your vid there is a hill on one side of the drive. The only solution there is a ditch or paving.

Water is a bitch man. It carved out the Grand Canyon.

 

A friend has an 89 K5. A few years ago he cut out most of the floor and welded new sections in, then had the whole thing repainted while he was at it. It looks great now, but he doesn't want to chance it rusting out again so he puts it into storage in the winter.

 

Yeah, I've got plans to try and fix some of the issues, though I don't know if they would have helped against 7" of rain. We have already enhanced some of the ditch work but a lack of funds keeps me from paving it. If I win the lotto, paving will be on the table.

 

With the water doing that much "damage", id be wary of paving it. Feel like you would just risk erosion under the pavement and then end up with broken/cracks all over.

But not much you can do with 7" of rain either.

 

I'm not saying pave it all. I can see from the length of the video that would take a massive amount of money. Just strategically, starting with the worst and working towards the least. Leave the rest rock.

 

It’s not water that messes stuff up, it’s moving water

Hard to stop it when you get that much in such a short time.

 

To be honest with my experience if you trench out the lower side of the first video making it deeper and if you can swing those big concrete blocks that interlock. The haul fee kills you. The block come in 1700 and 3400#'s each. Like making a seawall /wingwall but going a little higher now much on all 4 sides of the pipe it might help a lot by funneling into the pipe and save some gravel. You might only need 4. But with all the water you had it wouldn't have helped too much. Water is the most powerful thing on earth it will find the weakest point and abuse it.

On the spring I don't know other than trying to find the main source and diverting it to the side into a ditch.

In your video's I know you know this but I have found in some places it's great to have a crown on the road and in other places follow the natural slope of the land. Something else we had done up hill is put old guard rails in the road bed to help divert to ditches.
Maybe this will help give you some ideas.

 

I've done a lot of access roads in wetlands and swamps. For low traffic roads like that we try to avoid culverts and instead install at-grade geoweb material in the low spots. Even if you do the drainage calcs to size the culverts appropriately, extreme floods that you can't account for are going to cause damage.

 

My K5 had easily the popular mod done, license plate floorboards. Carpet had more structural integrity than the sheetmetal by the time I was done with it. If I had a nice one, it would never see any kind of humidity.

Your friend is smart.

 

That looks interesting. Is it expensive?

 

We've been planning to put in a concrete headwall on that culvert, but I'll bring up the blocks with the neighbor to see what he thinks. It wouldn't be as pretty, but it might be cheaper.

 

I don't remember how much it costs, I never have to pay for it I'm just a wetland biologist (consultant), never get to see bid packages prepared by the engineers.

I have never had a client (agriculture, energy sector, state/local gov't) complain about the cost of the actual geoweb material because the only other option is bringing in fill, culverts, hiring a civil engineer to do drainage calcs, and paying me more money for permitting.