Maintaining an Unmade Road

[David87]

I live on a private unmade road that serves a few houses. Bloody thing is a pain in the arse really… in the summer it’s dusty and in the winter it quickly becomes pothole city.

Until now we’ve kind of got through by chucking some old tarmac grindings (not sure what the proper name is!) into the holes and whacking them down with a brick. It lasts well in the summer, but at this time of year washes away after not too long.

Any ideas how best to do it? Feel like some kind of tool to really flatten it down would be good. Or is there a better material for the job?

Spent ages doing it yesterday so hopefully latest effort makes it beyond Christmas.

The road surface pictured for reference. Thanks!

[POIDH]

Road tamper

https://www.screwfix.com/p/roughneck-10-tamper/

[LooneyTunes]

Unfortunately it’ll never be perfect. As soon as you get potholes they will just grow and multiply.

It’ll last longest if it is properly rolled with a bit of camber to stop water pooling.

[Red9zero]

Have you spoke to your neighbours ? My sister lives on a private, unmade road and her partner filled up some of the pot holes to make it slightly easier to get to their house. This then upset some of the neighbours, as they liked the pot holes, as they slowed delivery drivers down !

[snotrag]

The surface needs to be crowned so you dont get puddles - because puddles are what makes pot holes. As the tyre drives over, it displaces the water which pushes outwards.

[Nick_MSM]

We grade ours once a year with a box grader, works really well (an unmade lane, no tarmac/concrete etc). Tried all sorts before and like yours, nothing lasted more than a couple of months. We don't put a camber on it as nowhere safe for the water to run off - but dragging the grader 6-8'' deep seems to keep the pot holes at bay for about a year.

[blueg33]

Along with our neighbours, we bit the bullet and paid to have 100 metres of private road properly surfaced with soft spots filled etc

[Snow and Rocks]

As above - you either need to keep a loose (ish) surface and regularly grade it or get someone to put a reasonably substantial camber on it to prevent water pooling.

I redid our forest track a couple of years ago by putting a cambered surface of road planings down and then rolling the crap out of it with a big vibrating roller. Seems to be holding up well so far despite various lorries, tractors and postie vans doing their best Colin McRae efforts on it.

[Glosphil]

blueg33 said:

Along with our neighbours, we bit the bullet and paid to have 100 metres of private road properly surfaced with soft spots filled etc

I live on a private road of approx the same length. Can you please give an indication of the cost for the resurfacing.

[fourstardan]

I used to rent on an unmade road, absolutely horrendous.

Is there long term health implications of breathing in the dust?

Also why do they exist if you pay council tax?

[Skyedriver]

fourstardan said:

Also why do they exist if you pay council tax?

Because they are not constructed to a standard suitable for adoption by the Highway Authority.
Whoever built the development was a cheapskate.

[skeeterm5]

It depends if you want it done right or cheap.

Cheap, fill the potholes, roller or whacker plate. Rinse and repeat as the pot holes reappear

Right,, grub the whole road out, replace sub base as needed, resurface with decent surface eg tar planings

Edited by skeeterm5 on Tuesday 24th December 21:04

[David87]

Thanks for all the advice here, guys. Really interesting. I’ll have a chat with the neighbours and work out what we want to do. The box grader option may be the best compromise between longevity and cost by the sounds of it then.

The road is approx. 160 metres long and I know some of the miserable sods who live here won’t want to contribute so does anyone have a rough idea of what it might cost for the handful of us who are bothered?

[Snow and Rocks]

Cost is a difficult thing to say because it's varies so much depending on where you are and who you get to do the job.

What costs very little here in Aberdeenshire with a hired in digger and retired friend doing the driving and making the most of his contacts could end up costing several k if you get some bigger contractor in.

[blueg33]

Glosphil said:

blueg33 said:

Along with our neighbours, we bit the bullet and paid to have 100 metres of private road properly surfaced with soft spots filled etc

I live on a private road of approx the same length. Can you please give an indication of the cost for the resurfacing.

It was in 2019. IIRC around about £50k but we had a mostly decent foundation and no services to lower.

[Snow and Rocks]

blueg33 said:

Glosphil said:

blueg33 said:

Along with our neighbours, we bit the bullet and paid to have 100 metres of private road properly surfaced with soft spots filled etc

It was in 2019. IIRC around about £50k but we had a mostly decent foundation and no services to lower.

What do you mean by properly surfaced? I'm assuming tar or something at that price?

[cliffords]

blueg33 said:

Glosphil said:

blueg33 said:

Along with our neighbours, we bit the bullet and paid to have 100 metres of private road properly surfaced with soft spots filled etc

I live on a private road of approx the same length. Can you please give an indication of the cost for the resurfacing.

It was in 2019. IIRC around about £50k but we had a mostly decent foundation and no services to lower.

We had 160m done to a very high standard. Top is tarmac and it was £18k. This was one year ago.

[renmure]

We had a similar looking shared bit of road at my last house although the problem area was probably only 25m. Over the years it was patched up with tar (sometimes we even got the council workers to do it for cash if they were working locally) but eventually even that became a waste of time as there wasn't any real solid surface or substructure for the tar to key into. 2022 we were given a couple of quotes around the £18-20k mark to effectively dig it up and start again. I ended up moving before the work went ahead.

[blueg33]

Snow and Rocks said:

blueg33 said:

Glosphil said:

blueg33 said:

Along with our neighbours, we bit the bullet and paid to have 100 metres of private road properly surfaced with soft spots filled etc

It was in 2019. IIRC around about £50k but we had a mostly decent foundation and no services to lower.

What do you mean by properly surfaced? I'm assuming tar or something at that price?

Tarmac to adoptable standards so the bin trucks don’t trash it.

Of course the correct way to compare cost is to look at the area not the length and the construction, we ent for a reasonably fine grit wearing course as it looks a bit nicer than the coarse stuff. We also installed some additional accos and re shaped one area to manage runoff.

[Snow and Rocks]

blueg33 said:

Tarmac to adoptable standards so the bin trucks don’t trash it.

Of course the correct way to compare cost is to look at the area not the length and the construction, we ent for a reasonably fine grit wearing course as it looks a bit nicer than the coarse stuff. We also installed some additional accos and re shaped one area to manage runoff.

Was just clarifying as the previous posts had been discussing compacted recycled tar planings and other less formal finishes that will obviously be orders of magnitude cheaper.