Now that tour season is over, we should be free to move on to working on Castle Aaargh or other things we've put off while dealing with weeding and building outhouses and whatnot. But alas, another problem cropped up in our driveway in early June after our one hard rain this season:
Nope. A quick look in the ditch told me the sad story; our 1939 driveway culvert has finally reached the end of its lifespan, poor thing; it was here when we built the house. When our little dirt side road was widened in 1972, the powers that be (or were, at that time) installed a used forty year-old culvert for access to our farm field.
Since 1978, when we built our house here, we simply used the farm driveway as our driveway. We've had problems with the culvert many times over the decades, but Carl's always managed to fix them. This time, we have to admit defeat, though. The bottom of the pipe has rusted out and the water passing through during the high water in spring washed all the gravel to one end, causing a hole to open up on top of the culvert.
The culvert is going to have to be replaced. Which means we have to remove all the landscaping.
We had high hopes for the driveway landscaping this year; Carl had finally had the time to build me some heavy frames for the tree grates over the culvert. Time flies; the grates have been in place in our driveway for six years already. I always wanted them to hang from a frame, though, but Carl hadn't had the time to fabricate some until late this spring.
Below is a photo from while Carl and Joel are installing the grates in 2012:
The grates are heavy, around 425 pounds each.
The grates were situated right on top of the driveway culvert. When Carl brought the new frames home in April 2018 to hang them from, he removed the grates so he could attach them.
The frames Carl fabricated are lying to the left of the grates in the photos.
The cedars out by the end of the driveway took a beating this past winter, especially the one on the right. The driveway looked so empty with the grates missing.
I did my due diligence back in July and contacted our township about our predicament. A town employee came out and surveyed the situation and told me what size of culvert I need, 36" in diameter, 45' long, the exact same size we have now. I secured a permit for $25 and called around for an excavating contractor to put the new culvert in.
I talked to two contractors, and their general consensus was, "That is going to be one expensive culvert!" Yes. I know, culverts aren't cheap and the side flares required aren't either.
If all goes well, we have a contractor arriving in two to three weeks.
We could replace the culvert ourselves, but for once we've decided to hire the work done; it's a big job and we're short on time this year. We've fixed the driveway at least five times due to flooding in the forty years we've lived here; and frankly, we're tired of it. This job is going to come with a very high price tag as it looks like culverts our size run $30-$40 a foot plus flares and installation, but we hope it's the last time we have to deal with it.
Somewhere around here I have photos of what the driveway looked like in 1978 before we landscaped it but I'll be dipped if I can find them. Anyway, imagine cattails and willow brush and weeds in abundance. The ditch was not mowable and it was an eyesore to be sure. Over time, we removed the brush and when we acquired the tufa stone back in the mid-1990's, the first place we used it was to dress up the culvert.
This was a mid-1990's rendition of one side of the driveway with split-rail fences scrounged from the city dump. Carl made an arch out of an old tank to support the tufa stone and it formed a mock bridge look.
Same view below, 2018, after I started removing some of the tufa for the Outhouse Gabion (and because I knew we had to take it down anyway.)
The township rules on my permit read: Apron end walls shall be required on all culverts. Culvert shall be new and of corrugated material. Used culverts will not be accepted. Driveway side slopes shall be of earth material only. No concrete, stone or bituminous side slopes shall be constructed.
Oh, dear. No stone. Just earth. Phooey. (In case you were wondering, bituminous means blacktop. I had to look that one up. And, I wish the town had used a 'new' culvert back in the day when they installed it in the first place, but I guess, the culvert served us well for forty years.)
The view above was when Willie the Willow was still with us, sometime in the early 2000's.
Here is the same wall, taken August, 2018, just before we started to dismantle everything this past weekend.
We're very melancholy about this project; it took us years to get the driveway and ditch straightened out. People often commented on how they liked our driveway landscaping, too. The reasoning behind the new rules for culvert flares is to prevent fatalities should someone run off the road and hit the culvert. We live on a sleepy side road, but there are times cars go flying past here at high rates of speed and accidents do happen. I don't know if hitting any type of culvert would be 'safe' but we will comply with the rules.
On Sunday afternoon, we took a drive around the township specifically looking at people's driveways. For the most part, very few driveway culverts around here would pass culvert safety regulations. The vast majority of them have no flares, have blacktop or cement sides or stone, concrete block or other treatments that make them look very nice, but also I guess, very dangerous for anyone running in the ditch and striking them.
Most of the culverts we observed that had no 'not approved' landscaping stone or blacktop added struggled to keep the weeds trimmed as it is impossible to mow the steep angles, so tall grass and weeds were the norm. The culvert ends can be weed-whacked, but again, it's all more maintenance. I've been lucky the last twenty years or so, and could simply mow the ditch without any trimming.
I hope we have better luck with the new driveway. Because the road culvert that handles the farm runoff to our west is not large enough when we have very heavy rains, we have water running over our driveway and eventually, even the road, which has happened at least five times that I can recall. Our driveway is only gravel and high water washes the gravel off the top, exposing the culvert pipe, which we then have to fix. Frankly, I have to admit it is very scary when the high water comes within mere feet of our house.
Here's a link to one of my posts on flooding: On Golden Pond
A few years ago, when our road was being rebuilt, I asked the township to put in a larger road culvert just to our west and we even offered to pay for it, but they wouldn't oblige me. (And now I'm known as the Crazy Culvert Lady, sigh.) Luckily for us, we don't usually get that much rain (about five inches when the pictures in the 2010 post happened) all at once every year, but it's a given it will happen at least once a decade. But, there's nothing we can do about it, we'll have to make do with what we have and keep our fingers crossed.
This was a picture of the road culvert just before the water ran over the road in 2010. Since this happened, they raised the level of the road itself by several inches......sigh. If a flash flood comes up, we'll be safe once it goes over the road, but until then, it's a nail-biter. After using a transit, Carl assures me our house is still a good foot above the new road height. I hope he's right.
I know that in my last post I was lamenting the fact we have been so dry, and now they're predicting flash floods, so who knows what will happen....maybe my excavator won't have to dig out the driveway culvert, it will be all washed out for before he gets here. Might save us on some labor?
For the past week, we've been removing the tufa and getting ready for the new culvert. Above is the smaller west side of the driveway.
One last look before we started demolition on the east side.
We loaded the tufa onto pallets and I hauled them out to the Back Eight for now.
The steel frame Carl made out of a huge tank is coming into view again.
The tufa is removed and the arch of the tank and the galvanized sheet holding the soil back is uncovered.
I called Digger's Hotline and had the utilities marked, luckily, there are no wires to worry about.
The tufa was buried deep in the soil and had settled some, too, so poor Carl had to dig for it. We've put in some long hours out here this past week.
We bought a new handcart (on the left side of the
picture) and it has come in very handy already. Some of the rocks were
so big it took two of us to pull them up the ditch to the pallets.
Saturday, August 25, 2018, Carl digging up the last of the tufa. We'll have to move the hostas, too, but with a little luck, my excavator friend will simply scoop them up with his bucket and set them aside for me. He's worked for us before and is amazingly skilled, plus, he has a soft spot for plants. I'm hoping he'll dig the cedars out for us, also; we have a good place for them out back.
So for now, we wait. The excavator said he might be here in two to three weeks, but I'm glad we have most of the preliminary work done. The big job will be trying to make the driveway look nice again afterward.
I have all sorts of ideas of what we can do with our displaced tufa and tree grates, but until the new culvert is in, we're at a standstill. We'll have to see what the new area looks like before we can visualize the new arrangement. I'm hoping to replant the hostas around the new culvert, though they will suffer with no shade. I might work in some tall ornamental grasses as a backdrop to provide the hostas some relief, just having plants in the ditch shouldn't pose a safety hazard for anyone running off the road, but we'll definitely miss the tufa stone/bridge look. In a way, I have to admit this is exciting because it is a new challenge, but to tell the truth, it's yet another project we don't need.
Stay tuned: we'll think of something!
Yep. That's a hole, all right.
I was on my way out to the mailbox and noticed some of my marigolds were missing. Oh dear, what happened? Was it another pesky woodchuck, burrowing under the culvert?
 |
| All rusted out |
Since 1978, when we built our house here, we simply used the farm driveway as our driveway. We've had problems with the culvert many times over the decades, but Carl's always managed to fix them. This time, we have to admit defeat, though. The bottom of the pipe has rusted out and the water passing through during the high water in spring washed all the gravel to one end, causing a hole to open up on top of the culvert.
The culvert is going to have to be replaced. Which means we have to remove all the landscaping.
We had high hopes for the driveway landscaping this year; Carl had finally had the time to build me some heavy frames for the tree grates over the culvert. Time flies; the grates have been in place in our driveway for six years already. I always wanted them to hang from a frame, though, but Carl hadn't had the time to fabricate some until late this spring.
Below is a photo from while Carl and Joel are installing the grates in 2012:
 |
| July 2017 |
 |
| Waiting for their new frames |
We were going to bury the long posts in the ground, but when the culvert failed, we had no choice but to put the grates back out by the windmill in the rustic area again, where they are awaiting their fate.
I did my due diligence back in July and contacted our township about our predicament. A town employee came out and surveyed the situation and told me what size of culvert I need, 36" in diameter, 45' long, the exact same size we have now. I secured a permit for $25 and called around for an excavating contractor to put the new culvert in.
I talked to two contractors, and their general consensus was, "That is going to be one expensive culvert!" Yes. I know, culverts aren't cheap and the side flares required aren't either.
If all goes well, we have a contractor arriving in two to three weeks.
We could replace the culvert ourselves, but for once we've decided to hire the work done; it's a big job and we're short on time this year. We've fixed the driveway at least five times due to flooding in the forty years we've lived here; and frankly, we're tired of it. This job is going to come with a very high price tag as it looks like culverts our size run $30-$40 a foot plus flares and installation, but we hope it's the last time we have to deal with it.
Somewhere around here I have photos of what the driveway looked like in 1978 before we landscaped it but I'll be dipped if I can find them. Anyway, imagine cattails and willow brush and weeds in abundance. The ditch was not mowable and it was an eyesore to be sure. Over time, we removed the brush and when we acquired the tufa stone back in the mid-1990's, the first place we used it was to dress up the culvert.
This was a mid-1990's rendition of one side of the driveway with split-rail fences scrounged from the city dump. Carl made an arch out of an old tank to support the tufa stone and it formed a mock bridge look.
Same view below, 2018, after I started removing some of the tufa for the Outhouse Gabion (and because I knew we had to take it down anyway.)
Oh, dear. No stone. Just earth. Phooey. (In case you were wondering, bituminous means blacktop. I had to look that one up. And, I wish the town had used a 'new' culvert back in the day when they installed it in the first place, but I guess, the culvert served us well for forty years.)
We're very melancholy about this project; it took us years to get the driveway and ditch straightened out. People often commented on how they liked our driveway landscaping, too. The reasoning behind the new rules for culvert flares is to prevent fatalities should someone run off the road and hit the culvert. We live on a sleepy side road, but there are times cars go flying past here at high rates of speed and accidents do happen. I don't know if hitting any type of culvert would be 'safe' but we will comply with the rules.
On Sunday afternoon, we took a drive around the township specifically looking at people's driveways. For the most part, very few driveway culverts around here would pass culvert safety regulations. The vast majority of them have no flares, have blacktop or cement sides or stone, concrete block or other treatments that make them look very nice, but also I guess, very dangerous for anyone running in the ditch and striking them.
Most of the culverts we observed that had no 'not approved' landscaping stone or blacktop added struggled to keep the weeds trimmed as it is impossible to mow the steep angles, so tall grass and weeds were the norm. The culvert ends can be weed-whacked, but again, it's all more maintenance. I've been lucky the last twenty years or so, and could simply mow the ditch without any trimming.
I hope we have better luck with the new driveway. Because the road culvert that handles the farm runoff to our west is not large enough when we have very heavy rains, we have water running over our driveway and eventually, even the road, which has happened at least five times that I can recall. Our driveway is only gravel and high water washes the gravel off the top, exposing the culvert pipe, which we then have to fix. Frankly, I have to admit it is very scary when the high water comes within mere feet of our house.
 |
| Water, we get water, we get lots and lots of water..........this was in 2010 |
Here's a link to one of my posts on flooding: On Golden Pond
A few years ago, when our road was being rebuilt, I asked the township to put in a larger road culvert just to our west and we even offered to pay for it, but they wouldn't oblige me. (And now I'm known as the Crazy Culvert Lady, sigh.) Luckily for us, we don't usually get that much rain (about five inches when the pictures in the 2010 post happened) all at once every year, but it's a given it will happen at least once a decade. But, there's nothing we can do about it, we'll have to make do with what we have and keep our fingers crossed.
 |
| August 2010, here and gone in under two hours, the water was still rising at that point |
So for now, we wait. The excavator said he might be here in two to three weeks, but I'm glad we have most of the preliminary work done. The big job will be trying to make the driveway look nice again afterward.
I have all sorts of ideas of what we can do with our displaced tufa and tree grates, but until the new culvert is in, we're at a standstill. We'll have to see what the new area looks like before we can visualize the new arrangement. I'm hoping to replant the hostas around the new culvert, though they will suffer with no shade. I might work in some tall ornamental grasses as a backdrop to provide the hostas some relief, just having plants in the ditch shouldn't pose a safety hazard for anyone running off the road, but we'll definitely miss the tufa stone/bridge look. In a way, I have to admit this is exciting because it is a new challenge, but to tell the truth, it's yet another project we don't need.
Joel, in 2010, kayaking in the ditch.
For now, we'll hope the flood warnings don't materialize and we've bid a fond farewell to our former driveway.Stay tuned: we'll think of something!
6 comments:
Oh dear Karen ~ an unexpected, expensive project. At least this happened after your summer visitors have all visited.
I pray this culvert job will go smoothly, and I know you two will make it all look beautiful again.
Love, hugs, & prayers ~ FlowerLady
Kind of a buzz kill of a project. Sorry you cant keepnyour beautiful stone walls. Hopefully whatever you do next will be just as good.
Gee whiz, the fun just never ends at your place! Sorry that this has to be done as I know there are other projects you'd rather be working on. Hope all goes smoothly.
Oh no! That is too bad that it is one more thing you have to deal with. And to move all your landscaping. I never knew culverts could look so pretty. I'm sure you will think of something to make it look gorgeous afterwards, too!
So sorry to hear about your culvert problems, Karen. We have a problem too, but not on the scale of yours as it doesn't effect our landscaping and the township takes care of it. Our problem is to get the township to actually come and do it ... been waiting all summer. I'm sure you will come up with a fabulous solution! P. x
Your landscaping is incredible!
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