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This, and trust me i love driving down a country road every once in a while, I wouldn't mind having a camp or cottage on one. but living on one day to day, no thanks.
Well that's ironic, not even 2 years later and I now live at the end of a 1 mile long windy dirt road through the woods.
And with my limited experience of 5 months living there I can say there isnt much to add for the pro's column.
The Dust can be crazy as other have said, fortunately we are at the end and only average 10 cars a day max and the speed is very slow due to the windy/hilly/narrow nature of it. However the other end of the road is wider and after a week of no rain its like driving through a dust storm if you get the pleasure of going behind someone.
The snow/ice is horrendous, One would think that a dirt surface road has an ample supply of dirt/traction underneath it after the snowplow goes by, WRONG! For starters, being on a dirt road means a less traveled road, which means your one of the last roads to get plowed, this means all the snow on the road gets well packed into the road creating an icy sheet that the plow wont plow up. add some rain and warm temperatures to the mix and you just get layers and layers of ice.
I am certain that the top 3" of my road is currently ice and layers of sand from the town sander. The sander which has to drive down our road in reverse nearly 50% of the time it sands the road to give itself enough traction. The same sander which has also slide off the road.
If it Rains in the winter time and the ground is frozen and its below 40 degrees out, your road WILL turn to a sheet of ice and if your LUCKY the town will spend all RAIN storm sanding these dirt roads. Which makes me question the cost savings of a dirt road.
The Mud, haven't really had the pleasure of experiencing Mud season yet, but I can already tell its going to be bad, one section that sees directly sunlight all day long has already turned to ruts with ice underneath. good luck steering on that section. Will need an alignment come April.
With all that said, the road does provide that country feel, its enjoyable to walk down (when not dusty) as vehicle traffic tends to be light and slow.
Gravel is fine if you go slow. Dirt roads can get badly rutted, and then there's the mud, and possibly streams during rainstorms, if the roadwork was limited to just getting rid of the trees. I guess if you have a high clearance 4WD though, it could handle anything except serious flooding/runoff.
We owned an old farmhouse 2.5 miles back a dead end dirt road for 12 years. Once we got home in any season it was beautiful. The neighbors up at the end of the road thought they were driving a rally and there were several blind turns, that we'd have to make quick turns to avoid a collision. It was the last in town to be plowed because it was a dead end. I always left the studded snows on until the later part of April, because of the quagmire of deep slop I had go through until the dryer weather hit. When the 2008 ice storm hit we were out of power 13 days and the last place in town to get power back. We had a gravity fed well and a good wood stove, so we survived alright, my wife tends to disagree though about the surviving alright part. Did I mention it was a great place when we got home yet? Dirt roads are nice, but we now live on a paved road in town and love it.
I live on a dirt road without any issues. This is a private road so the people that live here can keep it well-maintained. My town does a lousy job of maintaining any of its public road, but I've found that most towns do a better job of maintaining their dirt roads than their paved roads.
The snow/ice is horrendous, One would think that a dirt surface road has an ample supply of dirt/traction underneath it after the snowplow goes by, WRONG! For starters, being on a dirt road means a less traveled road, which means your one of the last roads to get plowed, this means all the snow on the road gets well packed into the road creating an icy sheet that the plow wont plow up. add some rain and warm temperatures to the mix and you just get layers and layers of ice.
I am certain that the top 3" of my road is currently ice and layers of sand from the town sander. The sander which has to drive down our road in reverse nearly 50% of the time it sands the road to give itself enough traction. The same sander which has also slide off the road.
If it Rains in the winter time and the ground is frozen and its below 40 degrees out, your road WILL turn to a sheet of ice and if your LUCKY the town will spend all RAIN storm sanding these dirt roads. Which makes me question the cost savings of a dirt road.
You describe pretty well the dirt roads around here in late winter and early spring. Long before they go soft in mud season, they are layered in ice and water, long after the paved roads are clear and dry.
Many of our friends live on dirt roads like this, and they keep those crampon-like overshoe things in their cars for when they can't get up the road.
I'd love to have more land, and be less on top of my neighbors, but I couldn't do the rural dirt road thing.
We live on a dirt road, actually a gravel/sand road, with no problems. We get priority plowing for some reason, regular maintenance after storms or soft pavement, which happens more than one a year, like right now. The big plus is that it's a beautiful road, with high embankments that remind me of hedgerows in England.
As others have said, the road keeps speeds down too. Because of the way the road is built up, we don't have loose stones except immediately after grading. Even then, not many.
Yes, the car is dusty, but we leave it out in rainstorms, which do a good job.
aye.... I thought my road was bad this morning. Needed to put it in 4wd to make it through a few of the spots but after seeing that I guess we are doing alright!
All those people rejoicing over the record warmth yesterday must not live on dirt roads. Because its going to be hell once these ruts refreeze for the next 6 weeks.
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