K. Bryan Morgan Posted August 19, 2013 Share Posted August 19, 2013 If I were to do a dirt floor this is the way I would do it. This is a construction technique I learned over 30 plus years ago. I would first dig out 6 to 8 inches below grade. After that I would compact with a plate compactor. I would then lay a layer at least 2 inches thick of crushed limestone. Then compact. Then 2 more inches of crushed limestone. Then compact. Repeat until I get a level substrate. At that level which should be about 4-5 inches below grade I would switch to course clean sand. Yup, you guessed it, about 2 inches then compact, repeat until 3 1/2 inches below grade. Then I would stop. Get out the chop saw and start cutting 4x4's four inches long. Or actually now that I think about it 3 1/2 inches long so they are square. precision at this is needed so the flooring is square and level. Once the floor is filled in with wood squares fill all the small gaps, and they will be there, with fine patio polymeric sand. And compact. The last step is to get the polymeric sand wet. It doesn't take a lot of water. Just enough to get it damp. The sand will set up and lock everything into place. Your floor will be stable. Won't move and won't burn. Even though its wood. You could even use pressure treated lumber. Its treated with copper these days and is much safer to use than the old stuff was. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinobi Posted August 19, 2013 Share Posted August 19, 2013 Coyote, that's a very different product from UMO. Its part of the preparation for the structural section of the road intended to act as a water barrier and binder to help the next layer (base or AC) 'stick' to the subgrade. see the 'primecoat' section here for example: http://www.pavementinteractive.org/article/subgrade-preparation-for-new-pavements/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted August 19, 2013 Share Posted August 19, 2013 When the roads were dirt around here(most are now paved) , a guy down the road used to pour used motor oil on the road to keep the dust down. He got in a bit of trouble for doing that, and in the end, wished he never did it. The odd thing is, right before they put the asphalt down, they sprayed the dirt with oil. maybe it was special oil, I dunno. My shop floor is dirt. I want to put paver's in someday. Yeah, starting about 20 years ago they stopped using waste oil as such and started using emusified asphalt (tar) or thinned asphault. The thinned stuff went out a long time ago too, nobody liked the fumes of white gas evaporating not to mention the fire hazard. It's still pretty cool to see about 1/4 mile of roadbed burst into flames and burn merrily for half an hour or so. That was the subject of a safety film explaining why RC-800 wasn't used anymore and why we had to treat what we had as an explosive hazmat. Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinobi Posted August 19, 2013 Share Posted August 19, 2013 Frosty if you have a title for that (or some good descriptive keywords for a thorough googling) I would love to get ahold of a copy/link to the vid :) would make for a good training film! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted August 20, 2013 Share Posted August 20, 2013 Frosty if you have a title for that (or some good descriptive keywords for a thorough googling) I would love to get ahold of a copy/link to the vid :) would make for a good training film! That was so long ago the movie was on film with a suitably dramatic narrative by a voice I recognized but that's about it. The tack coat they were removing from use was RC-800 to be replaced with emulsified asphalts CRS-1 and CSS-2. The designation RC-800 stood for Rapid Cure and the 800 stood for it's viscosity. It was usually used for tack coating asphalt for overlays. the GVT or industry was trying to get it off the market but it was so much more effective than the emulsions they were having trouble. This is where the burning road movie came in or so I believe, It seemed just too staged and convenient having a film crew on hand to just happen to catch the spray truck pass and shortly afterwards whoosh up it goes. Now you have me wondering if it got put online so here's what I'm going to start with for search terms. RC-800 burning road hazard movie. Or, Rapid Cure -800 asphalt tack coat and so on. I'm thinking (burning road) (Road on Fire) (Fire hazard) os some such might be the magic terms but I don't know. It'd be fun to see again though. First search turned up some MSDS sheets for RC and Cutback asphalts. It warns of explosion/fire hazards and inhalation hazards. cool, that old movie may still be floating around. Let me know if you find it please. http://www.asphalt-emulsion.com/documents/products/cutback-asphalt-rapid-cure_msds.pdf Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinobi Posted August 20, 2013 Share Posted August 20, 2013 I dunno man, el google is coming up dry for as many permutations of your description as I can think of, so is youtube for that matter =/ sorry for the thread derailment :) moral of the story: don't use oil! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DSW Posted August 20, 2013 Share Posted August 20, 2013 Plenty of incidents of places that used to spray down roads with oil to control dust having major issues now. Some companies used PCB oils from old transformers, some mixed the oil with other types of chemical waste. Just one example of many... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach,_Missouri Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeviC Posted August 23, 2013 Share Posted August 23, 2013 I saw a recipe once for hardened clay floors. Basically the guy dug up the top 6-8" and screened it through 1/4" screen, then added rock salt (although I imagine ice melt would work). Don't remember how much he added. But then he very lightly moistened the clay and put it back, tamped it in, and I guess it is pretty darn hard now. Once the salt is in the floor, I don't know if it would affect steel in the vicinity or not. On the other hand, you could treat it like rammed earth walls. Dig out the top foot. Mix up some sharp sand and small (preferably sharp crusher material) gravel with your clay, moisten slightly run a hand rammer or jumping jack over it in 3" or so lifts. Once you are up to level and very solid, let it dry about a week or two in dry weather, then spray it down with boiled linseed oil. First time, straight. Next time, 1/3 mineral spirits by volume, then once mixed half and half. Should be harder than XXXXX, fairly waterproof and sweepable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chestnut Forge Posted September 3, 2013 Share Posted September 3, 2013 If there is a steel mill anywhere near you. Ask them if you can have some of the mill scale. A guy not far from me used some on his driveway. It fused into a solid surface. The gas company came through to replace a line and couldn't did through it with a backhoe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
notownkid Posted September 13, 2013 Share Posted September 13, 2013 In our area of VT, NH and CT there is a stone dust product also known as Driveway pack that when rolled a little and used for a while becomes almost as hard as Pavement. The towns use it for town roads and works great. The other thing is they grind up the old pavement on the roads and usually dump it somewhere. They are suppose to reuse it but it doesn't seem to happen all that often.. If you can get a load of that and get it spread on a nice HOT day it will also set up and become very hard again. We used that in an equipment repair yard where we had to run around with track vehicles and worked fine, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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