Building a bridge?

[ed_v]

There is a small ditch that floods at times that I need to build a bridge over. It would need to span about 20ft. Any ideas on what kind of contractor should I look for to do something like this?

I'm also considering having the area excavated to have it drain to a pond. Not sure what the better/cheaper option is.

Ed

 

[Torque1st]

Check with the Corps of Engineers. They pretty much have jurisdiction on anything that drains water into rivers and streams. The EPA also has an interest. The Corps will have bridge specs and contractor info as well as info on dams and ponds. Whatever you do will have to meet their specs.

 

[josall]

Bridge for what type of vehicle?

 

[buening]

You can check with local larger Contractors and see if they have any old square bridge box beams for sale. You'll need a decent size machine to pick them up to put in place atop a concrete abutment though.

If only for you to walk across and maybe a small mower, do a search on here and you may find some people using old telephone poles across a ditch with some 2x4 or 2x6 planking across the poles. My parents had one when I was young but it was only about a 12-15' span and about 5' wide.

 

[Falcon67]

There are several on the south end of town here because of a deep bar ditch that runs along that particular road. About 5~6' deep and maybe 10~12' wide. The one leading into the Catholic Church was done by the city, but the other driveways look mostly like steel structures with asphalt overlays. Nothing Corp of Engineers about any of it, they all look home grown and in place for a long time. Substantial enough to handle the normal one ton or bigger duallys and giant horse trailers, etc.

 

[Torque1st]

Old stuff frequently had no govt or engineering oversight but anything new has rules and specs to meet. Checking first beats having to tear it out. The govt uses satellite imagery to check for unauthorized bridges etc nowadays.

 

[dittle fart around]

Out on my brother in law's farm they used a 40 ft flat bed freight trailer. Stripped the axles and planted each end in concrete. Worked great.

 

[rburke65]

Ditto on the flat bed trailer....I have heard of using them before. I worked with a guy that also wanted to build a bridge across a pond to an island. He only wanted to get a mower out there and to be able to have little cook outs for his grand kids. He did a little research at the library on trusses to determine what would suit his needs. He then salvaged pipe from a greenhouse that they were tearing down. But now, he needed a large, flat area to lay this out and to weld it together. This bridge was close to 40' long. This guy was smart in a 'backyard' sort of way....a tinkerer. He waited until the pond froze, and used it as his lay out surface and constructed his bridge. When he had his concrete supports poured later, he used a couple 55gal. Drums on one end to float it out to the island, as he pushed it on the other end with his tractor. Guy was pretty ingenious.

 

[Krash Kadillak]

Do you have the option of using a corrugated irrigation pipe, say 48" in diameter or so, and fill in around it? Should be cheaper than constructing a bridge.

 

[trbomax]

the bridge over goose creek on one of our sled trails spans 40some feet and is a flat bed rail car set on concrete bulkheads. 4x4 and 2x6 railings and its been good for about 26 yrs now. we are replaceing it next year at a cost of almost 200k$. of that almost 20k was just for all the bs engineering studys.

 

[c39er]

A few years ago on this board there was a guy that put a bridge over the same type of small waterway. I recall he got a small county bridge and moved it to his property!

 

[jrhaines2]

You can check with these guys if you need a bridge,they can get you a good deal on one.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/10/bridge-stolen-and-sold-for-scrap/

 

[buening]

Good call guys on the flat bed trailer! For longer spans and ones that will have more load applied to them people are using flat bed rail cars.

My brother in law did as I was suggesting above and contact a bunch of the local contractors. He bought 4-4' wide box beams and his contractor set them in place on a concrete footing at each end. His bridge was going to have tractors cross it, so he needed it to be stout. When Contractors replace a county bridge, they are required to remove the concrete box beams. Many times only a beam or two on the bridge are bad, so they scrap those and keep the rest in a stockpile. Your local County highway department may also have a stack.

In regards to the Army Corp, if you go to their website you can find what is called a Joint Application Form. It looks a bit intimidating but let me know if you need help filling it out. I do about ten a year. For the most part, if you are not reducing the channel area (filling in a ditch) by quite a bit they really don't have a problem with it. With a flatbed trailer or the box beams, it has a thin profile that it will not adversely affect the upstream properties. Putting in a 48" round pipe and filling around it will cause the water to back up and possibly flood people upstream of you, and are the situations that are red flags to them. They also need contacted when you dam up a stream to build a pond, and I believe there is a dam height restriction before you need to pay for a permit from them....but that is a separate topic.

Soooo, first decide what is going to be crossing your creek in terms of loading and then get back to us. Obviously if you are just going to walk across it and push a mower across it, a flat bed trailer or concrete box beams will be a bit overkill

 

[NUTTSGT]

My step dad's parents had property on both sides of a creek. The other side had a rental house and behind that was their apple orchard. They built a bridge with concrete abutments and used old RR rails to span the creek. It was topped off with native cut 3x3 lumber and coated with some creosote or tar. The heaviest thing that went across it was the riding mower.

 

[Thruxton]

A few years ago on this board there was a guy that put a bridge over the same type of small waterway. I recall he got a small county bridge and moved it to his property!

That's pretty much what the previous owners of our farm did: they salvaged I-beams and decking timbers from a bridge the county was replacing. They built footers, unfortunately out of concrete block, welded up the I-beams, unfortunately not square, set the I-beam frame on the footers and set the deck on top of that. It all collapsed into the creek a few years after we moved in.

Contacted the "bridge guy" at the regional highway shed up the road. He originally recommended the culvert approach, but this bridge is right in front of our house and carries our driveway. I wanted it to look good, as well as carry heavy loads (lime trucks, concrete trucks, whatever). I came up with a plan and the highway guy helped me spec the footers for it.

First step, remove the old deck and frame intact, the crane came, lifted it up, and swung it 90 degrees into the paddock where it waited until it was time to put it back:

View media item 13168
Second step, carefully measure the old frame and pour footers to match:

View media item 13170
View media item 13171
The footers were poured in several stages: bottom of first footer, bottom of second and top of first, top of second. You can see why- the stream had to be diverted and the footer excavation pumped out. BTW, the PVC pipe is for the telephone line.

Finally, the crane came back and the frame and deck were put back on. Bullet-sweating during the project was caused by first, will my forms hold (they did, but for something like this they CANNOT be too sturdy- concrete delivery driver regaled me with great stories of DIY frames giving way in the middle of the pour), second was did I lay out the footers properly to accommodate that irregular frame? Worked out OK.

Since I put it in it has had 12 ton/axle over it, and now it looks like it has been there forever. Even the highway guys came to look and congratulated me on it, so I ended up pretty pleased. Took about 2 1/2 months, and the hardest part was working the concrete when it was poured, pretty hard physical labor.

Anyway this is one approach to think of! I'll take a pic today if you want to see the finished (weathered) product.

 

[Kevin54]

To the OP.....What kind of weight does the bridge have to carry? An automobile, a truck, or just something like a lawn tractor and foot traffic? If it is going to carry heavy traffic, then a semi trailer would work. You can pick up a used trailer for around $1000 if you shop around, then strip it down and sell off the axles and such for scrap to recoup some of your money. It it is going to just be light traffic like a garden tractor, look into a used mobile home frame, or an older worn out mobile home. Use what you need, scrap the rest to recoup funds.

 

[ed_v]

Thanks for all the input guys. I truely appreciate it.

I'm in the process of purchasing some additional farm property. It is too good of a price to pass up. The only problem is getting into it.

The owner of the land is subdividing into tracts. The tract I'm looking at floods where you enter, according to the seller. The problem is a dry creek bed that sits in a low spot. When it rains heavy, water drains to this area. I will take some pics next week. I'm in Illinois right now.

The bridge needs to be able to support heavy trucks and farm machinery.

Thanks again,

Ed

 

[onewaydave]

The govt uses satellite imagery to check for unauthorized bridges etc nowadays.

And everybody laughed at Mel Gibson's character in Conspiracy Theory a few years ago.

I say, wrap the bridge and equipment putting it in in tin foil!

Dave.

 

[ed_v]

Do you have the option of using a corrugated irrigation pipe, say 48" in diameter or so, and fill in around it? Should be cheaper than constructing a bridge.

This is the method I'm leaning toward.

Ed

 

[buddyboy]

if it's dry most of the time and only has running water in the spring or after heavy rains, then I would get the biggest culvert pipe I could find and bury it.

call your township or county road maintenance dept. they usually bid out jobs to local excavators to do culvert and ditch work for them. You will want to talk to one of these excavators as they will be experienced in building culverts and diverting water in your area and will give you great advice whether a dirt covered culvert would work for you or not.

good luck

 

[Old Moparz]

Any decent site contractor that installs underground drainage or other utilities would be able to perform what is needed here. It sounds like a simple culvert pipe is all you need, but there are several things you need to consider before installing anything. You stated it's a ditch, but is it simply a drainage ditch that catches water run off from a road, or is it some sort of seasonal water flow? Roadway run off may be less than a seasonal flow that could have a fairly large volume of water in the spring from more areas other than the road.

Maybe the existing ditch needs to be cleaned out by removing silt, trash, cutting & clearing overgrown brush or other vegetation. You can still have flooding issues after installing a culvert pipe if you can't get the water to flow because the ditch is filled in with whatever, from in from years of having no maintenance done to it. Another problem may be from another property owner who hasn't maintained the ditch, or modified it, or even filled it in to drive over it & created a dam type of effect.

 

[norcaljr]

go with a railcar bridge...

http://www.prsx.com/

http://www.rb-wardconstruction.com/