Cost of surfacing a road

knithryn

I'm thinking of buying a property that lies 1/3 way along a 3 mile unadopted road. The road has never been surfaced.
Before I get too giddy about the property and what I could do with it, bring me back to reality please with some approximate costs of putting some sort of pot-hole-filling on the road. The road will carry agricultural vehicles etc too - there must be about a dozen houses/farms on it in total.
In it's current state, I would have to buy a 4x4. Deep potholes and ruts.
Yes I KNOW it shouldn't be my responsibility as there are lots of people living on it, but humour me please.

savemoney

The unadopted roads I been on they tend to have pot holes filled in with hardcore every now and then, I can only assume its the cheapest way.

ic

A colleague at work lives on an unadopted road - him and his neighbours did talk with the council about adopting it and getting it made up properly with paths and drainage. The council would have adopted it and done the work if every resident was prepared to pay (something along the lines of, I forget the exact figure) £500 per meter that their house fronted on to the road. So if your garden gate, wall, driveway, etc added up to 5m, you'd pay £2500. Not everybody was willing to pay, so it fell through. This was a short road, as opposed to a road like you're describing.

MrYorke

fill with hardcore/rubble

knithryn

Thanks for the replies.
Hardcore/rubble is probably the best solution I think, should we go through with this. As the lane leads down from a moor, the amount of water flowing down after a storm might wash away anything small.
Ah well... you still haven't managed to put my head off thinking about this property...

olias

I used to like in a (rented) house in a similar situation to this. The farmer was always putting down hardcore and every winter it was washed away again.

If you are serious about this, I would suggest you need a couple of drains at several points crossing the road to divert the water flowing down the road off to the side. You may have to pay for the drains and hardcore, but I'm willing to bet the farmer(s) will provide use of their heavy machinery and maybe a bit of labour for free, if you are willing to pay for the bits. I reckon you can probably do a half decent job for about £1500 so factor this into your offer on the property.

Olias

Cknocker

Its hard to give an approximate cost as it depends how potted the road is, I had a road similar to what you are describing patched and resurfaced last year (Only about 400 yards mind), The patching cost £7000 (IT was in an extremely poor state) and teh a new overlay costing another £14,000.

If you are serious, you are gonna be far better off getting a couple of quotes as opposed to asking on here as it is extremely dependant on the road condition. As an example with my road last year it was a close decision bewtween patching and ripping up the whole lot.

olias

Cknocker wrote: »

Its hard to give an approximate cost as it depends how potted the road is, I had a road similar to what you are describing patched and resurfaced last year (Only about 400 yards mind), The patching cost £7000 (IT was in an extremely poor state) and teh a new overlay costing another £14,000.

If you are serious, you are gonna be far better off getting a couple of quotes as opposed to asking on here as it is extremely dependant on the road condition. As an example with my road last year it was a close decision bewtween patching and ripping up the whole lot.

I think the OP has stated the road has never been surfaced. If it just a track leading to farms, it is likely to be just a gravel/hardcore rough track. You seem to be referring to a tarmac road.

NB the last stuff I bought was about £30/ton, however this was only about 4 ton, I would guess it would be a lot cheaper if you bought about 50 ton

Olias

Cknocker

You want to infill the road with 803 material (Don't worry about the term quarries etc know what it is), clean out the pot holes etc and square them out so you are not surfacing to nothing, infill with 803 and make sure it is very well compacted (Vibro Roller probably the best for the size you are talking).

803 if you are buying it by the lorry load should be about £20-£25 per tonne, see if the farmers will do the cleaning out.

AdrianW2

We had an old (wartime, concrete) road that had become potholed resurfaced about 15 years ago. About 1km cost £15,000 (we also had quotes of £100,000). It lasted about 5 years before needing patching, and about 10 before it really needed to be done again.

Concrete patches don't last at all, a year at best before the road collapsed around then and then you end up with concrete lumps in the road. Filling the pot-holes with hardcore is even shorter term, a couple of weeks at most before it gets thrown out.

If you do get it resurfaced than it's important to keep on top of patching, once a hole develops rain washes the supporting layer (lime?) away from the surrounding areas and then they fail.