This details a local project to upgrade part of a road from a long-standing
dirt surface to asphalt, including new drainage structures underneath
and some regrading. It was done ancillary to the construction of a new
subdivision nearby, as improvement of its main approach road. The project
also included the
water main tap a few months
before to bring water to the future new houses.
While the abutters (*ahem*) actually didn't mind the dirt road -- if anything it lent a more rural feeling to the area and helped keep traffic speeds a little more in check -- it spent a lot of time being a bumpy mess, especially after all the freeze/thaw cycles in winter. Large potholes would just magically form and grow on a fairly random basis. Oddly, the most impressive effect of this would come when the UPS step-vans drove by a little too fast and emitted some very distinctive booming. [Thumbnail pictures are linked to larger ones.] |
Over many of our objections, the town planning commission voted to approve
the upgrade plan basically because they'd get a paving job for free.
The developer wanted it done and would fund this piece even though
it lay in a different *town* from his subdivision -- as the only vehicle
access it would still pretty much make sense for the potential increase
in traffic. Thus we failed to use disapproval of this as a wedge to impede
the rather unpopular subdivision itself, but it was definitely thought of.
Long story short, we the peasants brought our pitchforks and torches
to a lot of planning hearings over the years, ultimately to no avail.
So it eventually came time to engineer the improvement, and our town asked for a solid, durable design for it. Changing to an impermeable surface would affect all the drainage characteristics, especially for water flowing down the gentle hill, so stormwater management was key. As the nearest land lower than the street was a wetland preserve that already had zero drainage, they weren't going to send it there. The only other choice was sufficient volume of deep soil infiltration to basically just make all the water go away. Including the amount that could be anticipated to come in the typical "hundred year event". |
One morning the drainage structures got delivered, and then sat there
for another month or so before being used. These weren't from our local
concrete company
as anyone hereabouts would expect; they came from some different
source and were a casting design I hadn't seen before. All this stuff
had to go in under the road surface, so it was clearly going to be a lot
of digging. And our existing water main was sort of in the way of it
all -- that's the "--W--" line in the plan.
The road going away to the right is the new subdivision road, generously festooned with unfriendly "no trespassing" signs from the developer. Abutter relations were still not exactly what you'd call warm, despite occasional attempts to placate the residents on the corner with small frivolous gifts. |
Day 1a
Then the excavator guy spent a while on the phone, after which they
dropped a steel plate back on top of the drywell and covered it back up.
Turned out that they hadn't waited for some sort of 48-hour notification
window related to the "street opening" permit to elapse, and would have
to button up and continue the next Monday instead.
So this was sort of a false start, although a little progress had been made. The catch-basin parts were still lining the side of the road ready to go, so they just put out a few cones around them and left them there rather than try to move them all back to storage. |
Day 1b
It looks like a long reach with a heavy weight, but this was well within the excavator's lifting limit and the guy just floated it right over and into the hole. |
Day 2
The town water department was called to come evaluate things, and meanwhile
a round of outdoor faucet-checking happened. But everyone around still
had water pressure, so it remained a complete mystery what this pipe was
actually for.
The guys tried to crimp off the end of the pipe as best they could to temporarily stop the leak, but it kept dribbling a little bit wherever the end happened to be at any moment during subsequent digging. |
Height checking was done with a laser level, using a transit set off to the roadside at a known height and spinning a flat plane of laser light and a ruler-mounted sensor from the bottom of the pit to indicate the exact intersection point of the plane. Typical survey stuff used these days, and obviously makes the whole alignment job easier. The only minor problem that the sensor was supposed to have a nice loud beeper to indicate the detection point, and it was apparently broken leaving only the visual LED indication. The guy at the bottom of the pit couldn't really see that, so they had to talk back and forth to determine where the hit was. |
_H* 140516