Bridge Over the Creek

[baymule]

My husband and I have 16 acres that we plan to build our dream log home on, but first there are things that must be addressed. There is a dry creek that cuts accross the front of our patch of paradise. We get torrential rains here and the dry creek turns into a raging 50' wide river and our 2-culvert road goes a couple of feet underwater. A 4'x30' 16 gauge culvert is $1300 and it would take 2-3 of them to handle the volume of water. It hurts my feelings to shell out $2600+++$ for metal culverts that will rust out in 10-15 years as our culverts are now doing. I am looking for something that will be around longer than that. Has anyone here built their own bridge and what type of construction and materials did you use? Any ideas?

[rdcrane]

No experience building bridges here, but would suggest checking with your county conservation agent(s). They will understand lots of the specifics needed in your situation (soil type, etc.). All I can say is that it sounds like an unfortunate situation in that whatever the solution is will be expensive, and probably require ongoing maintenance of some kind.

[JayK]

baymule,
I have no experience in this, but I can tell I'm seeing LOTS of these plastic culverts of various sizes, but mostly for residential. Maybe a few of those side by side would work?? If you need something bigger, I would call a local precast company or two or three and see what they tell you. If you're only doing a drive way, that's what, 12 feet wide, so you would only need a few sections of concrete tubing....worth checking out. Good luck.

[spiralsands]

I have a similar problem I have to solve on my 23.5 acre property in NY. I have two streams with a pond between them. One stream feeds into the pond and runs around it on one side. The other is coming out of the pond on the same feed end and runs around on the other side. The northside stream bed is deep and wide but the ground elevations on both sides are equal. The southside stream is also deep and wide but the elevations are hugely unequal. One side is nearly 6 feet lower than the other. I have to cross both streams to get my truck to the back of my property.

I thought about using large culvert pipes stacked on the northside stream but I would need too many because of the width at the top. On the southside, I think I'm going to need a bridge with a ramp structure. Either way, I'm probably going to have to have it engineered. I don't want my truck to end up in the drink.

[ragdump]

Ragdump
The lumber company that owns most of the land around me has been taking out allot of the culverts and putting in bridges made of old rail road flat cars. They even brought one big one in that was 90 feet long. They took a log trailer and extended it then had to follow with a low boy and excavator to move the back around sharp corners. They would use large cement blocks for footings or stand up large culvert pipes cable them together ,then fill them with cement.

[RockEngineer]

Whatever you put in to cross your creek bed, make sure it has adequate capacity for a concrete truck and a fire truck unless you plan on just letting everything burn if you have a fire.

[Timberwolf]

Most of the big commercial road crews are using them here now too.

Although with a good galvanized culvert, it shouldn't rust out in your lifetime. I've seen plenty that have been around 30+ years with no sign of giving out.

As Richard said too, make sure who ever does the work knows how to install these properly. They need to use the proper backfill and grading to make sure the culvert stays in place.

Good luck.

[baymule]

Thanks for the suggestions, especially for the concrete and fire truck capacity :) I considered the plastic ones, they are higher than the metal culverts. But considering that they have 3 times the life expectantcy, maybe they aren't so expensive after all. I will have time to kick this around while I save up the $$money$$. I will let ya'll know what I do-maybe it will help someone else in the same situation.

Log homes bring the outdoors indoor.