In case you missed it, the work on the road finally started a week after we were told it was going to, on November 16th, 2006. Much to everyone's surprise, a crew with a digger turned up and dug up the only road into the sub-division. I found out about it when I came home early int he afternoon. No big deal for me as I can park in the next road and walk a hundred yards to my house but anyone who wasn't out was mightily out of luck. (To be fair, Moores had left a message on my answering machine an hour or so before they started).
The only family in the neighborhood (let's call them the Glumms) who have a drive that can be used to get out of the subdivision refused to let anyone use it which was bloody nice of them.
It's now May 1st and our road has finally been done. It looks pretty good, too except for a couple of problems. First among these is that anyone doing a 3 point turn in the road removes a 6" square chunk of the road surface with their tires. It appears that the road hasn't hardened after more than a week. The mailman drove over the asphalt curb at the top of my drive yesterday and left a perfect imprint of his tires in it.
Much to everyone's amazement, the drains that were installed above the previous road level are still above road level so that, when it rained over the weekend, not a drop found its way into the drains. I'm waiting to hear back from Moores yet again.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Repairing the road in 2006
When the good weather arrived in 2006, we crawled out from hibernation and set about forming a home owners' association. The whole process was pretty easy as there were already covenants governing the subdivision and we adopted those as the rules of our HOA. To placate those with fears of everyone being fined for letting their grass grow or painting their front door the wrong color, we removed those restrictions and did away with the architectural design committee. All we wanted to do was to fix the road.
A road committee was formed and we called for quotes from 4 roading contractors. We knew what we wanted - rip the entrance road up, resurface the rest and put in some drains. Explaining that to the contractors was a thankless task and we needed to talk to almost all of them several times to get them to quote for what we'd asked for. At the end of the process, we had three quotes (one company being a complete dead loss - it wasn't their line of work, though it didn't stop them quoting) - all of which were within a couple of thousand bucks of each other. Courtesy of the rise in the price of oil (and hence asphalt), the cost per lot was now around $2,200, up by $600 from last year although we'd added some drain work to the spec. And so, in August 2006, we called Moore & Son Site Contractors Inc to get a final quote and a start date. We then let everyone in the subdivision know that work was expected to start in about 6 weeks and that they should make arrangements to park cars elsewhere for the 4 days it was expected to take.
Time to sit back and wait and then watch the action. Or so we thought.
A road committee was formed and we called for quotes from 4 roading contractors. We knew what we wanted - rip the entrance road up, resurface the rest and put in some drains. Explaining that to the contractors was a thankless task and we needed to talk to almost all of them several times to get them to quote for what we'd asked for. At the end of the process, we had three quotes (one company being a complete dead loss - it wasn't their line of work, though it didn't stop them quoting) - all of which were within a couple of thousand bucks of each other. Courtesy of the rise in the price of oil (and hence asphalt), the cost per lot was now around $2,200, up by $600 from last year although we'd added some drain work to the spec. And so, in August 2006, we called Moore & Son Site Contractors Inc to get a final quote and a start date. We then let everyone in the subdivision know that work was expected to start in about 6 weeks and that they should make arrangements to park cars elsewhere for the 4 days it was expected to take.
Time to sit back and wait and then watch the action. Or so we thought.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
START HERE - Repairing a private road
Coachmans Trail is a small subdivision near the beautiful city of Asheville, North Carolina. Like many such subdivisions, it is very neighborly, pretty hilly and served by a private road. That doesn't mean we've got gates or "Go Away" signs on it - it just means that the people who live here are responsible for fixing it. The road was laid about 20 years ago and while most of it is in good shape, the main entrance road leading into the subdivision had reached the stage of being 100 yards of potholes. So we had to do something about it.
A "town meeting" was called in 2005 where almost everybody agreed that we should all chip in some cash to get the road fixed properly. A committee was formed to get quotes from sundry roading companies covering a number of options ranging from bodging to ripping the whole lot up and starting again. A contractor was selected and everyone was asked to contribute about $1600 per lot. At this point, a couple of people refused to pay so it became obvious that we needed to form a home owners' association to force the objectors to pay.
Needless to say, talk of HOA nazis started going around, especially from a couple of people who had moved here largely because there was no HOA. So the whole thing wound up on the shelf for 2005 and the road continued to get worse (like I care - I drive a Forester).
A "town meeting" was called in 2005 where almost everybody agreed that we should all chip in some cash to get the road fixed properly. A committee was formed to get quotes from sundry roading companies covering a number of options ranging from bodging to ripping the whole lot up and starting again. A contractor was selected and everyone was asked to contribute about $1600 per lot. At this point, a couple of people refused to pay so it became obvious that we needed to form a home owners' association to force the objectors to pay.
Needless to say, talk of HOA nazis started going around, especially from a couple of people who had moved here largely because there was no HOA. So the whole thing wound up on the shelf for 2005 and the road continued to get worse (like I care - I drive a Forester).
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