KBGkicksazz wrote: ↑September 13th, 2020, 11:04 am
Have you had issues with the plow pushing the stones or gravel around?
Our Town road agent will not allow putting those stones in the right of way.
I’ve got the same issue trying to keep the edge between lawn and road a nice clean look. I’ve started maintaining mine like a mulch bed edge.
I, too, have been concerned about the cobblestones in the town right-of-way and dealing with plow damage.
Long ago, we used to have just crushed rock along the roadside border, about 4 feet wide, using pressure-treated landscaping timbers to retain the crushed rock. Yes, we had problems with the plow tossing the stones into the lawn. Back in those days, we didn't even really care about the lawn, but getting rocks tossed into there really bothered me.
When we renovated the front lawn in 2013, we got rid of the crushed rock border (that was A LOT of work) and instead tried to grow grass right to the pavement. That worked okay, but the town plow would shave the topsoil off the ground there during the winter, and then there wasn't enough good soil right at the edge of the pavement to keep the grass from being thin. With thin grass there, and hot, shallow, gravelly soil, crab grass would move in and make for an eyesore right along the road. So, in 2014, I did an
experiment of laying cobblestones a couple feet back from the road to have a "sacrificial zone" that I would just keep as hard-packed gravel ("nitpack"). That ended up working pretty well.
Initial install of first roadside cobblestones in 2014:
In 2016, the cobblestone edge with no rock worked well and never had any plow damage, but was well below the roadway elevation:
In 2018, when we renovated the front lawn, we laid cobblestones along the entire length, keeping the "barren wasteland" between them and the road:
In the winter of 2018, we did have the plow clip the cobblestones at one point before they were frozen in and shift about a dozen of them. We had to fix that in the spring. I noticed other folks in town with nice lawns putting orange marking poles along the road edge to provide guidance to the snow crews, so I put in orange markers between the road and the cobblestones - just inside the cobblestones about 18 inches from the road - for the remainder of 2018-19 and again in the winter of 2019-2020. I didn't have any cobblestones get shifted by a plow after that.
So, I thought I had a good permanent solution, until this year, when the roadway got raised about 4-6 inches. I was concerned that the town would be mad about the cobblestone treatment. Rather, when the town's road work superintendent came by during initial road reconstruction planning, I was relieved that he thought the cobblestones looked great and wanted to know how they should work with me regarding the roadway reconstruction. He explained that with the increased roadway height, the town was planning to raise the shoulders with either topsoil (for folks with lawn to the road) or crushed rock (for folks that had crushed rock along the road.) Rather than bury all the cobblestones, he wanted to talk to me about how to proceed. He offered, that if I wanted to raise all the cobblestones, that they would grade topsoil out into the lawn (basically starting at the cobblestones and proceeding well beyond the right-of-way into the lawn) to smooth it all in. They'd also bring in crushed rock to put in the new "valley" between the road and the raised cobblestones. However, that was back in June and I really didn't want to kill off all that lawn and have to renovate it again this fall. Plus, I'd need to raise sprinkler heads, too. Lastly, I remembered how much work laying those cobblestones required -- I am pretty slow and meticulous, so my progress initially averaged only about 10 minutes per cobblestone. There are 175 of them in that stretch along the front lawn.
After talking about it for a bit, the town superintendent and I agreed that we'd just leave the cobblestones and lawn lower than the road. The town wouldn't bring in topsoil or crushed rock for the section in front of my house, and it would just be the case that the shoulder gravel would slope down sharply to the lower cobblestones and the lawn. Months went by, eventually the asphalt topcoat was laid, the contractors came through and did their shoulder regrading, leaving our shoulder "unimproved" as we had agreed, and I thought it was all done, except the repaving of the apron of our driveway.
Then, however, while we were away on vacation, apparently the contractors came back and they thought the section in front of our house would look a lot better if they laid crushed rock between the road and the cobblestones, even though I had agreed with the town superintendent that they would leave it as it was. The contractor really did seem to just have good intentions, as I later spoke with the guy who led the crew that did it. He was all excited about how great it looked and expected me to be real happy about it. I agree that it
looks awesome. I know, though, from experience, that a shallow section of small crushed rock along the road can be a major maintenance challenge because of multiple problems. I was pretty upset to get back from vacation and find what had happened while we were gone, but I've already written about what we ended up doing earlier in this thread...
In any case, for this winter, I'm going to try to put orange plow markers basically right at the edge of the pavement (at the beginning of the crushed rock) to keep the plows from disturbing the rock. I'm skeptical of that working out -- I think the plow crews will want to clear beyond the edge of the pavement, but we'll see...
If it doesn't work out, I'll likely have to do the cobblestone raising next fall, which will require raising the grade of the front lawn too, and thus the irrigation heads as well, and result in at least a partial renovation of the front lawn, yet again...