A Man and His Hoe

After moving the logs out of our way, it was time to clear out and prepare a solid foundation for the driveway. We decided to clear out for the storage shed foundation at this time as well.


The first day I spent marking out the driveway with stakes and clearing out a couple of large piles of dirt created when the previous owners cleared some trees off the property. I also worked to cut down and shape the edge of the front of the driveway near the culvert to help with control of rainwater runoff and hopefully prevent the water from washing over the driveway.

Here are some pictures before we started (05/24/2012, morning):

Day 1 - Some pictures at the end of the first day (05/24/2012, evening), you can't tell from the pictures but there was a lot of work performed to the left of the driveway resulting in the large pile of dirt you see in the last picture:

Day 2 - More work on the dirt piles and drainage near the culvert. I ended the day with some back dragging of the front driveway and clearing the rest of the brush out. Some pictures at the end of day 2 (05/25/2012, evening):

Day 3 - Clearing out for the shed and removing some of the larger shrubs and bushes from the back part of the driveway. Some pictures of the back part of the driveway and shed area before clearing (05/26/2012, morning):

 

 

Day 3 - Creepy looking insect I dug up (05/26/2012, mid afternoon):

Day 3 - End of the day (05/26/2012, evening):

Notice the dirt and compost piles growing larger.

From some internet research I determined that the most important thing for the driveway foundation is to dig down past the topsoil to the hard dirt underneath.We didn't have to dig down too much to reach solid clay; in most places less than 2 inches. But since we didn't have a proper grader to do the work we used the front loader bucket on the backhoe to doze a couple inches off the top. I ended up digging some ruts into the clay, but we can just fill this in with the gravel and level out of the gravel. The important thing is that we are laying the gravel on solid clay and so that the gravel won't sink into the dirt and create potholes.

Day 4 - Dug out the shed foundation and back part of the driveway to solid clay (05/27/2012, end of day):

Notice the size of the dirt pile!

Just have to dig out the front part of the driveway, rake away some miscellaneous debris, and touch a few spots with a hand shovel and the driveway if ready for gravel.  The shed will still require placing the foundations and some more work.