Building a track behind the shop, need dust and concrete suggestions

4ward · Sep 25, 2008

I've been building a rockracing/ motox track out behind the shop. It's burning up approximately 2.5-3 acres of land. I'm building it more for buggys than bikes as I don't really ride anymore. I don't own a bike anymore either, but I don't own a buggy right now- go figure :

I'm having a huge problem with dust. After 2-3 laps on the quad, you can't see more than 20'. After 1 lap in Pete's dilapidated heep, it's just as bad. I don't care, but there's a new housing development across the street. I know water is the easy solution, but we're on well water here and I'm not gonna burn up a well pump for playtime. About half the track is on clay, the other half is some of the blackest topsoil I've ever seen. We're only about 2/3 of the way through building the track. I don't know of any other solution besides water, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

Also, anybody ever rented a setup for throwing down some gunnite? I can't even find anything around here. I've got a 9' tall x 15' long tabletop I want to convert into a obstacle for the buggy and covering it in concrete is the only solution I'm coming up with.

Willymutt · Sep 25, 2008

Look for places that do in ground swimming pools. They use shotcrete a lot of times to do the good pools.

InDaShop · Sep 25, 2008

shotcrete degrades pretty fast with the type of abuse our equipment does to it. I have been on the WeRock GN course from last year and its pretty ate up.

check out what Longfield did to his backyard. I like how he just dumped concrete around the base and in between some of the boulders.
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=685967

B Gillespie · Sep 25, 2008

The clay content in the dirt should help somewhat with stability and dust. There are also chemicals you can mix with water to control dust. Many petroleum companies will dump/spray excess liquids from their operations onto your land that would also help with this.

We used shotcrete on our course in Boyd, TX. It held up well to the abuse, but we also used old cyclone fencing and rebar to stabilize the shotcrete and dirt. It was an extremely intensive process to spray the shotcrete, and I cant imagine they would be able to spray a small area very cost efficiently. The process involved many different trucks and machines. Gunnite might be more cost effective from the installation point of view, but I have no knowledge of material cost. Most companies spraying gunnite are probably more geared toward small jobs on small properties, instead of an operation like the one we used that works on very large construction projects. To repair the smaller problems we had with the course, we used mixed sakrete and it is holding up very well. Areas that we sprayed thicker are obviously holding up better, but the installation of cyclone fencing and rebar has made it much more stabile than other courses, in my opinion. Giving the concrete a finite edge also helps to decrease cracking from the edge inward. Dont have them just spray the edges thinner to taper it off, and if you have to do this, cover it up with enough dirt to provide stability. On our course, there is hundreds of square feet of shotcrete that is covered with topsoil.

4ward · Sep 25, 2008

I saw longfields pile back when he posted it. Unfortunately, I live in the land of no rocks any ****in' where. When you do find them, people think they're gold. I've got a pretty good pile of decently sized chunks of concrete that the previous owner had dumped out on the property. I'll use those where I can. I've had them arranged in a "trail" for a couple of years, but now it's time to go fast. I'm going to spread them into a couple areas on the course, but they need to be held somehow. That's why I was thinking gunnite.

The dust is the killer right now. When I lived in CO, they used to spray some sort of petroleum product on the passes to keep the dust down. I'm looking into chemicals, but we get back into the well water thing. I don't drink it, but the neighbors on either side of the shop do. There's never a simple solution.

**** it, figure it out later. I'm heading out to spend a couple hours on the dozer, then get some more work done on mom's buggy.