Wheelchair accessible path

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Wheelchair accessible path
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Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15998

Posted: Fri Mar 23, 18 8:00 am Post subject:

Make sure you put in edging before laying paths. You will need boards with stakes well into the ground otherwise everything will spread as you compact it. If you can do anything about the wet bits first, it will stop the path sinking into them.

I am not sure I would go with advise from the Woodlands Trust. They have made some big blunders in the past. Try a local woodland charity, and maybe take advise from several people. If you have a local agricultural college, they may be able to arrange for their students to do the actual planting as a practical lesson. I know son went out on a few; one in an iron panned very wet site. The lecturer hosed them down afterwards as they were such a state, but he still came home covered in mud.

Fee

Joined: 21 Mar 2005
Posts: 15922
Location: Earth

Posted: Fri Mar 23, 18 8:19 am Post subject:
Excellent idea, there is a local agricultural college, we will approach then!

Fee

Joined: 21 Mar 2005
Posts: 15922
Location: Earth

Posted: Sat Apr 18, 20 11:59 am Post subject:

Looking at paths again!

We've now planted half the meadow, 200 trees have gone in, mixture of birch, cherry, hazel, oak and hawthorn. I say meadow, it's a to-be meadow, but it's what we call it

The field we need to cross is clay. Sitting under water half the year and dried out cracks and lumps the other half.

Realistically, we only need to access it with Willow's wheels in the dry period because she doesn't deal with wind and rain well. Or cold. Despite being wrapped up!

She also has an all-terrain wheelchair so we can get her down there now, but it's still a bumpy affair for her.

Wondering about just hiring a roller and flattening a path!

Here's the little treasure earlier this year in her new chair down 'the field'. Ack, I'm on mobile browsing, will post it separately

Fee

Joined: 21 Mar 2005
Posts: 15922
Location: Earth

Posted: Sat Apr 18, 20 12:03 pm Post subject:

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46249
Location: yes

Posted: Sat Apr 18, 20 1:20 pm Post subject:

looks good, if a bit damp and rough even for a good off road chair

re the path might using a roller make a ditch rather than a path?

lots of rubble, medium size as a base and then smaller bits on top plus a backhoe and a roller(or a few roman military engineers) can make a decent path across most things

is there a cohort of the ermine st guard who could be persuaded to get some practical "road" building experience?
perhaps not just at the mo but it might be a goer if you ask.

with a shovel and a barrow and a tamper it is very hard work but possible, machines(or romans)are good.

Midlandsman

Joined: 22 May 2014
Posts: 116

Posted: Sat Apr 18, 20 9:54 pm Post subject:

This may be an option: https://www.sure-green.com/grass-reinforcement-mesh-medium-grade.html

I looked at it when we did the front of our house but eventually went with slabs instead. I should work out much cheaper than the square 500mm section ones. It's also a smoother ride in my experience.

Unless you've large casters on the front of the chair they bang against every hole on the square slab like ones I've been on.

The other option would be to have a word with Remap to see if their engineers can build an all-terrain chair that suits. That's a bit of a long shot though.

HTH

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15998

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 20 7:19 am Post subject:
As Dpack says, Roman road builders are the best bet. Having lived on that sort of clay, a causeway is the ideal solution, but it would take a lot of building. That mesh looks quite interesting and may make things a bit better.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46249
Location: yes

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 20 8:08 am Post subject:

if it is really wet and soft a lot, i mean a lot, of the right sort of brush wood, felted, under the rubble can float a road or railway or minster for that matter.

a wood causeway is possible but it would require a lot of decent hard wood trees and some major piling and big timber effort.

i recon my roman style option is probably the best way to get a long-lasting pathway that does the job for a wheelchair in any weather and will make all the other crossing the swamp things easier as well.

when we started dropping rubble into the tracks and spaces around the farm yard life got much easier, up until then it was only when it was frozen was it easy to move around, especially with feed and materials.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46249
Location: yes

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 20 8:15 am Post subject:
fee pm me, i might have lead on a fairly decent amount (30 car carpark to a depth of maybe 300mm )of suitable, re-usable rubble in june if you are not too far from york. roughly where are you? the issue is transport, it has to go somewhere but somewhere not too distant would be easier to swing:wink:

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45676
Location: Essex

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 20 8:45 am Post subject:
for wheelchair I think you could use bark/woodchip/rubble or tarmac plantings. Need to scrape off soil put a membrane down and then with woodchip you could either go100% woodchip or with a hardcore base (properly rolllered base). Wood chip will be more maintenance than planings or type 1 (or any other aggregate).

Fee

Joined: 21 Mar 2005
Posts: 15922
Location: Earth

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 20 2:27 pm Post subject:
I'll be back later to chat, we're in Nantwich Dpack!

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46249
Location: yes

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 20 2:48 pm Post subject:
ok , nantwich area, that is a bit far for this one, it would be at least 2 lorry days to haul it 120 miles. tt says A there is a fair bit of this stuff pulled from local authority and other sites B her chum might know of some much closer to you that needs a new home enquiries will be made

Midlandsman

Joined: 22 May 2014
Posts: 116

Posted: Mon Apr 20, 20 9:58 pm Post subject:

tahir wrote:

for wheelchair I think you could use bark/woodchip/rubble or tarmac plantings. Need to scrape off soil put a membrane down and then with woodchip you could either go100% woodchip or with a hardcore base (properly rolllered base). Wood chip will be more maintenance than planings or type 1 (or any other aggregate).

Sorry Tahir, woodchip's awful for wheelchairs. It throws your casters any which way.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15998

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 20 6:23 am Post subject:
A smooth surface is better. DILs pet hate is shingle as when she walks she can't lift her feet either, so makes life very difficult for her. I think either the blocks, carefully levelled, or the mesh, both with grass growing through might be rather better.

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45676
Location: Essex

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 20 7:31 am Post subject:

Midlandsman wrote:

tahir wrote:

Sorry Tahir, woodchip's awful for wheelchairs. It throws your casters any which way.

I'm not speaking from experience, we used to use it between veg beds and over a period of time it packed down quite well so assumed it might work.

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