Neighbor Woes: What Rights Do I Have To Maintain A Private Road...

[SlugSlinger]

Looking toward her driveway

Looking toward her driveway closer

Looking from her driveway down the shared road.

Wow, that looks like a mess, but it looks like there is a lot of substrate there.
Have you tried equipment like this instead of buying more gravel?

 

[John6185]

I had a lawyer tell me once that an $85.00 letter from a lawyer on his stationary and letterhead is often all that is needed to bring the other guy to his senses.

 

[dennishoddy]

Wow, that looks like a mess, but it looks like there is a lot of substrate there.
Have you tried equipment like this instead of buying more gravel?

I have a 35 hp diesel tractor with front loader and all the three point equipment you can name including a pull behind road grader that works incredibly to smooth it out under normal conditions. The issue is that there isn’t enough gravel to crown the road so rain can run off the sides into the ditches that I put in many years ago. It runs down the middle gaining velocity and washing gravel with it down to the exposed bedrock. It’s much worse than the pics portray.

 

[zghorner]

I have a 35 hp diesel tractor with front loader and all the three point equipment you can name including a pull behind road grader that works incredibly to smooth it out under normal conditions. The issue is that there isn’t enough gravel to crown the road so rain can run off the sides into the ditches that I put in many years ago. It runs down the middle gaining velocity and washing gravel with it down to the exposed bedrock. It’s much worse than the pics portray.

our road washed out every single year on a hill which is very steep and about 150ish yards long (neighbor is filling in the ditch at the bottom of said hill)...I paid a "professional" $5,500 to fix it several years back right before my neighbor moved in and it was destroyed the following rainy season. It has been really good now for 3 years since i did it myself and the trick was i borrowed a "skip loader" or landscape tractor (case model 570lxt or john deere 210) that had a hydraulic blade that had down force and could be tilted and held in that position instead of just floating like typical 3 pt. We put it at a tilt and angled it in cutting new much better ditches and brought the material back on the road which gave a really healthy crown then laid gravel and spread at a tilt to maintain that crown. I also went with 2.5" crush thinking it wouldnt wash away so bad on the hill and it is bumpier for sure but seems to have been worth the extra $50 per load. since then the water runs off really well and while those new ditches have taken a beating, our road has never needed less maintenance.

 

[dennishoddy]

our road washed out every single year on a hill which is very steep and about 150ish yards long (neighbor is filling in the ditch at the bottom of said hill)...I paid a "professional" $5,500 to fix it several years back right before my neighbor moved in and it was destroyed the following rainy season. It has been really good now for 3 years since i did it myself and the trick was i borrowed a "skip loader" or landscape tractor (case model 570lxt or john deere 210) that had a hydraulic blade that had down force and could be tilted and held in that position instead of just floating like typical 3 pt. We put it at a tilt and angled it in cutting new much better ditches and brought the material back on the road which gave a really healthy crown then laid gravel and spread at a tilt to maintain that crown. I also went with 2.5" crush thinking it wouldnt wash away so bad on the hill and it is bumpier for sure but seems to have been worth the extra $50 per load. since then the water runs off really well and while those new ditches have taken a beating, our road has never needed less maintenance.

It's dark so can't get a pic, but the pull behind road grader I have weighs around 500 lbs and I've added an additional 350 lbs of tractor weights. The 8' blade tilts, angles, and really digs to clean up washboarding on the flat part of the shared road. The tilt allows the gravel at the edge to be pulled to the center of the road and deposited for a crown. The wheels of the grader are behind the blade, so they are always running on previously smoothed out surface.
Almost never use the 3 point 7' grader blade anymore, but when I do I can take the 350 lbs of suitcase type tractor weights off the pull behind and hang them on the 3 point to give it additional weight so it's not just skating across the surface.
Put the ditches in with a mini track hoe I borrowed, and basically hand placed softball sized and larger rock in the bottom to prevent them from eroding. Worked for about 20 years, but this rain event the water was coming so fast that all of those rocks ended up in a pile at the bottom of the hill.

 

[NightShade]

Yeah the rain can really screw things up when you are trying to keep stuff clear.

Depending on how bad things are washed out you may want to get a good crown put in and compacted before adding gravel. Then lay the gravel in and run a sheepsfoot over it a while and regrade then sheepsfoot it again. Eventually you will be able to give it a final grade that should stick around pretty well for a while but you have to get either a good crown going or angle it to one side or the other if a crown will not work the whole goal is to get the water to drain SOMEWHERE other than down the road so even draining to a ditch on one side is better than it running down the middle. With the rain destroying everything you may as well get it made as best as possible but the grade has to be where it needs to be before adding gravel to it, if you grade the dirt flat the road will be that way as well.

The ultimate compaction device I have ever had the pleasure to work around was a great big belly scraper. The ones I was around were able to haul 15 to 20 yards of earth and they would take and nearly furrow an old hard compacted gravel road that a sheepsfoot would not even make a dent in with their weight. Then again when you start to do the math on the weight you can see why, 62 tons fully loaded will turn paved roads to gravel. https://www.ritchiespecs.com/model/caterpillar-627e-motor-scraper Seeing those things load up was interesting as well, pull up to the borrow and drop the pan all the way down and start digging in then the old push dozer would come up and shove them full in about a 100 to 150 feet or so.

 

[tRidiot]

(makes a mental note to not buy property with a shared, private road)

This is the ultimate takeaway out of all this for me.... I've always thought I'd love to have a place out in the country. Now I wonder if maybe not.

 

[Dumpstick]

This is the ultimate takeaway out of all this for me.... I've always thought I'd love to have a place out in the country. Now I wonder if maybe not.

It's the "shared, private road" part that causes problems.

Actually, most of the roads are not private, merely privately maintained. The difference is real.

I live on a privately maintained road. I live near the beginning of the road, not at the end. I've been here since 1992.
After many sessions of butting heads with the cabbagebrains that live further down, I just haul gravel in, and dump it up to my driveway. I consider it a cost if living here.
The rest of the folks on the road can fall off into a mudpit once past my driveway, I don't care.

Come to think, they have indeed been falling off into a mudpit lately.

 

[zghorner]

It's dark so can't get a pic, but the pull behind road grader I have weighs around 500 lbs and I've added an additional 350 lbs of tractor weights. The 8' blade tilts, angles, and really digs to clean up washboarding on the flat part of the shared road. The tilt allows the gravel at the edge to be pulled to the center of the road and deposited for a crown. The wheels of the grader are behind the blade, so they are always running on previously smoothed out surface.
Almost never use the 3 point 7' grader blade anymore, but when I do I can take the 350 lbs of suitcase type tractor weights off the pull behind and hang them on the 3 point to give it additional weight so it's not just skating across the surface.
Put the ditches in with a mini track hoe I borrowed, and basically hand placed softball sized and larger rock in the bottom to prevent them from eroding. Worked for about 20 years, but this rain event the water was coming so fast that all of those rocks ended up in a pile at the bottom of the hill.

i should have known you knew what you were doing, just throwing out what we did in case anyone needed to read it. I was really impressed with that skip loader and would love to own one. Only problem is most of those dont come with a PTO so they really are only good for roadwork/landscaping type stuff.

 

[Fredkrueger100]

I wonder if he’s charging the HOA for the work he is doing. If so, that seems like it would be a conflict of interest because of non-competitive bidding process. I’d ask him or if he provides financial statements, I would review those.

We are having our annual meeting in July. I am demanding the financials for our HOA. And he has to give them too. It says it in our rules. I am sure most of my neighbors have never even read our rules. That is why he has been able to control the addition for so long. They just believe everything he says and he is the type that tries to be intimidating and always tries to control the conversations. Sorry for hijacking the thread OP.