New water bar design

[OneWithWood]

I have grown weary of putting in the standard water bar by mounding up dirt, only to wear it down every time I traversed over it.  I found this solution in a book by Thom McAvoy entitled Positive Impact Forestry.  These bars are perfect for use on woods roads that will see occasional use.

The squeegees

The wood is white oak, the rubber blade was made from used conveyor belting.  The original design calls for 2x6 oak with a 12" blade.  I could only find 18" belting so I modifed the dimensions to 2x3 oak with a 9" blade.  Each 'bar' is 16 feet long.

The bars are placed in a trench at a minimum of 10° to the road.  I used a mini excavator to dig the trench, placed the bar by hand, and filled with the excavator and a hand shovel leaving 3" of blade above grade.

Here is a pic of two of the installed bars
 

I have traversed the bars a number of times and the blade springs back after you cross it providing a great water diversion.


We placed 19 of 24 bars in one day.  The last five go on the other side of a creek that I need to make a crossing for.  I wish I would have stumbled on this design a long time ago 

[Stephen1]

I have a question, is this to prevent water erosion on the sides of the creek bed where you are driving in and out of the creek.

[beenthere]

OWW
I saw that similar design at a forestry expo/demo/field day last fall, and sure looked like a good way to go. Should last a long time, and will be interested in how they resist eroding out over time. We are just over 3" of rain here since this morning about 3am. Would be a good test.  Thanks for posting.

[Frank_Pender]

I have been using such a design out here for 25 plus years.  It sure works great, till you puund down the wood with 80,000 pounds of logs and a truck.

[Ron Scott]

Yes, I've seen them used also and they seem to hold up well and do the job, especially if the road doesn't get a lot of heavy use and traffic. They work quite well on temporay roads after they're closed to heavy vehicle traffic.

[Phorester]

Looks like you have a good solution for getting water off a woods road and still allow vehicles to travel, but just to comment on water bars........... they were never intended to be used on roads which would be used for vehicular traffic.  They should be used only on roads and skid trails that are permently closed off.

On woods roads where vehicles will continue to be driven, we use rolling dips.  These are mounds of dirt placed exactly as a water bar; at an angle to the road to divert water off, and maybe a little higher than a water bar to be more maintenance free.  But they are shaped wider than a water bar and gently sloped on both sides so a vehicle will "roll" up and over them like going over a low hill, which is basically what they are.  A rule of thumb we use is if a bulldozer's tracks stay on the ground the entire width of a rolling dip as it travels over it, it is installed right. If the dozer "flops" over one, where the front end raises up off the ground until the back end gets far enough over the mound of dirt so the front end slams down, (like it does going over a water bar) it is too narrow  and needs to be reshaped.

Rolling dips are permanent, easy to drive over, and if installed as described above and at proper spacing according to % slope, they are practically maintenance free.

Not critizing your idea, I like it, just commenting on water bars.

[Onthesauk]

We use water bars here in the NW the same as Phorester describes.  A tract is logged and then water bars put in to block the roads although it also routes the water and reduces erosion.  Down side is that Forest Service has been putting in water bars on existing back country roads the last few years, less and less access for hunting or anything else.

[thecfarm]

I've seen them used on a steep hill in the ditch.It washed out a few time so the town filled the ditch with rocks and put in them water bars.That way the snow plow won't plow them out of the ditch.Been there 5 years and working great.

[Tillaway]

We have a few roads with the belting here.  It works good enough and we have them on one mainline road.  The problem we have is maintenance, you can't run a road grader over them so there is a bit of hand work to maintain them.

Rolling dips are better, if properly constructed they are virtually maintenance free.  We only use water-bars on closed roads, skid trails or spurs without active operations.

[beenthere]

Mentioned seeing the similar type water diversion method last fall. Found a pic of the sample displayed and the 'bar' buried.



Just like OWW's.

[OneWithWood]

Thanks for the comments. 

Stephen1 - no, these are placed on my main woods road.  The terrain here is ridges and gullies.  These bars are to keep the road from washing and becoming rutted.

Rolling dips - rolling dips are great if you have the dirt to build them and the slope is not too great.  The soil here is very thin.  I do have rolling dips installed on a path that is used very little now.  The biggest problem other than acquiring the dirt is that coming up the slope is more difficult due to the increased angle of even the flattest bar.

My woods road is only used by me.  There are no 80,000# vehicles and the traffic is light because I do all the work myself.  Not the highest in efficiency or profit but deffinately the highest in the satisfaction column 

I am glad to see this idea has been around and is proven.  My big test will come with the next gully washer rain. If the soil stays put and I don't see bare rock I will be elated! 

[sprucebunny]

Great job, OWW and thanks for reminding me about them.

I have a similar lack of dirt and building broad-based dips with mud hasn't worked very well

[breese]

I work for a conservation district in upstate NY.  We have installed this same type water bar detail on a number of farm access roads with good results.  I have some that I've watched for about 5 years on a road that sees heavy tractor and manure spreader use almost every day and they have held up great.  They do take some hand work during the install.  Biggest problem here is convincing the old timers to try something new.

[Phorester]

Slope certainly is a problem with rolling dips.  You have to make them deeper on the steeper slopes.  But the power company installed a couple on on of their access roads through a mountain property we have helped the landowner manage for decades.

The dips are on a 20% slope.  They are about 4 feet tall and I'd guess about 10 feet wide, but they were built so they are very easy to drive over and are maintenence free.  They never stop up, never wash out.  Commercial fruit orchardists also use rolling dips quite a lot in their orchards here.

Two more points, I was mistaken when I said they are the same angle as water bars.  The rolling dips are put in almost perpendicular to the road, which makes them very easy to drive over.  They drain because the uphill side is outsloped a few percent, so the water hits the dip then goes off the outsloped end.  Being perpendicular to the road, the water doesn't rush out of the dip like it does a water bar and threaten to erode the dip.  It comes down the road, hits the dip and slows, since it is sort of a dam, then travels gently along the outslope and off the road.  Anoither advantage is that you can get a good stand of grass on these dips and their outlets since both slope so little.

Also, I am speaking of rolling dips, not broad based dips.  I realize all these names are used interchangably, but a proper broad based dip is used on flatter terrain and is actually designed to be long enough to fit the entire length of a log truck into it.  They slope gently down about 75% of the length of the dip,  then slope gently up the remaining 25%to the level of the road at the end of it.  There is no hump. They drain where the grade reverses direction in the dip, which is outsloped a few degrees.  That way the truck doesn't twist as it goes over it.  Some broad based dips are 75 - 100 feet long. You hardly know its there.

We can't use broad based dips in the woods in my area.  The logging roads are too steep.

[SwampDonkey]

Looks like you have a good solution for getting water off a woods road and still allow vehicles to travel, but just to comment on water bars........... they were never intended to be used on roads which would be used for vehicular traffic.  They should be used only on roads and skid trails that are permently closed off.

On woods roads where vehicles will continue to be driven, we use rolling dips.  These are mounds of dirt placed exactly as a water bar; at an angle to the road to divert water off, and maybe a little higher than a water bar to be more maintenance free.  But they are shaped wider than a water bar and gently sloped on both sides so a vehicle will "roll" up and over them like going over a low hill, which is basically what they are.  A rule of thumb we use is if a bulldozer's tracks stay on the ground the entire width of a rolling dip as it travels over it, it is installed right. If the dozer "flops" over one, where the front end raises up off the ground until the back end gets far enough over the mound of dirt so the front end slams down, (like it does going over a water bar) it is too narrow  and needs to be reshaped.

Rolling dips are permanent, easy to drive over, and if installed as described above and at proper spacing according to % slope, they are practically maintenance free.

Not critizing your idea, I like it, just commenting on water bars.

Just commenting from some experience and observation here and not knocking on OneWithWood.....I also think it's great idea on a woodlot with low traffic and light vehicles.

My experience with water bars on the BC north coast and Charlottes is the same as Phorester has described. We are talking about areas that get over 6 meters of rainfall anually. Also, along the ditches on steep hills (15 %+) there are diversions to take the water away from the roadside ditches. Otherwise, you may start with a 3 foot ditch that grows so big that it engulfs the road and erodes deeper into the ground. I've seen some bad messes. Wanna see what sand on top of boulders looks like after 2 or 3 inches of hard rain? Doesn't even have to be on hilly road.  I see diversions used here in the east, but I never see waterbars. This has resulted in some woods roads eroding so bad that the original road bed becomes covered in cobble or larger stones making it impossible to drive on sometimes.  I've seen slow moving streams that once had a gravel base that glittered like gold in the sun, turn into silt and muck bottoms.