At the risk of further derailing my own thread, I’m happy to report that just a few days later VDOT put some road base down, and we’re now able to get into and out of the driveway.
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Here it is from the outlet side:
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After noticing that the culvert wasn’t completely draining, I determined that (contrary to my earlier assertion) it is, in fact, at least partially blocked. I’m still not convinced that the culvert is large enough, but I’m also not going to ask VDOT to dig it up and replace it just yet.
Two factors contribute to the partial blockage: 1) When VDOT added some rip rap a few months ago (at my request) so that I could build a rock wall at each end of the culvert, they raised the bottom of the ditch in relation to the culvert.
Here’s the outlet, with a grubbing hoe for scale. It’s about half full; water is backing up because the ditch at the outlet is higher than the culvert.
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2) Looking at the inlet side, I discovered that in addition to the bottom of the ditch being higher than the inlet, some of the rip rap had found its way into the inlet.
I’m not sure if this happened when they added the road base, or if the torrential rain washed the rip rap into the culvert; but it has to be fixed. The end of the culvert is also deformed, further contributing to the reduced effective diameter.
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The mission, then, is to remove the offending rip rap from the inlet, and lower the ditch level at both ends of the culvert. Simple.
However, lowering the ditch level is going to take some sustained grunt work on my part, since I don’t have access to a machine to help me. I’ll take my time, and do some stretching before each session of rock therapy. If I’m careful, it will help me get into better shape.
I’ll also use this opportunity to build the aforementioned dry stack walls around the inlet and outfall, to keep the road base where it belongs.
A bit of progress on the outlet end:
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Good times.