One of the things I LOVE about this job is sharing with genuine enthusiasm a landowner/homeowner's excitement for where they live (or will soon live). Such was the case with this project halfway between Piedmont and Cashion.
When possible, I like to start every project at my favorite time of day. Ideally, I get to work before the sun does. On these cold mornings, I let the hydraulics warm up while the sun makes its entrance and I enjoy the show.
The driveway started out rutted and rough, to say the least. These pictures were taken on my first surveying trip to the property.
Notice the hackberry trees there running right through where the landowner wanted their new access. I removed over 30 trees, a few of which were 4-5 inches in diameter, in 15-20 minutes using the loader. I'd normally like to use a backhoe for this task but this was one of the many times where we had to call an audible with the project barely underway.
Midway through tree removal.
Shooting some grades with the 360 degree rotary laser.
Let the grading begin.
What to do with all that dirt? The landowner had a low spot that was suffering from a LOT of erosion. I used the extra dirt to build about a 2ft swale to re-direct the water off his property and back into the county drainage. The red lines I added show where the water originally dumped left (in the picture) onto this land. My hat in the left of the picture shows the elevation change and the tractor is sitting in the middle of the new runoff area. Prior, most of the watershed in this area dumped straight onto his land.
Some before and after pics of the main grading project. The picture does a good job of underestimating just how much dirt was re-located down the hill. It was A LOT.
BozHog rides again to the next jobsite! :-)
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