Milled my street down to dirt

[cdickrun64]

Lived here since 1995, house built 1938.
Hmmmmm...

 

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[Oddjob]

SO why you on here mate, get to MDing and bring us back some good pictures man.

 

[bologna321]

I'd be on it before the last construction guy left for the night.

 

[cudamark]

A lot will depend on whether the street was paved from the beginning or if it was originally a dirt road. Unless there was a dirt road or path for many years, it's unlikely you'll find anything worthwhile. Now, if they're tearing out the curb strip/sidewalk, that might be a more productive area.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

I work in the street re-paving industry, d/t I own a street sweeper company. And I can tell you that the grinding (aka "milling" ) they are doing, has probably NOT gone down below the yesteryear "DG" (decomposed granite compaction) layer. It might *look* like native dirt, but it's probably not. Whenever they do grinding (aka milling), they do not need to go deeper than the original compaction DG layer. So odds are, it's sterile.

And besides that, if you're talking 1938 as the origin of the neighborhood/houses, then it's not likely that there were "dirt streets" in the old days anyhow. 1938 is well into the heavy equipment and automobile era of paved roads.

 

[cdickrun64]

Area is called twin orchards....was a working farm before being sold lot by lot in the early 30’s

 

[Oddjob]

good info to have, thanks Tom.

 

[cdickrun64]

Well....did a couple quick passes....detector was acting up, of course. Got a pennyish signal, a foil signal and a nickelish signal. Dug the penny signal, nothing after 4”...gave up. Dirt was like cement, as they rolled it after milling.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

oldtown sidewalk tearouts are better than street tearouts. Because the streets were engineered to carry much more weight (vehicles, trucks, etc....). Whereas sidewalks only carry pedestrian foot traffic. So the sidewalks were often laid on little to no preparation. Contrast to the streets, where the DG compaction fill layer is much deeper. And grinding/milling rarely goes below that, to true native dirt. It can be deceiving, because it might look like dirt. But when you get it in your hands, the feel and look is not the same. That tells you they only ground just to the prior DG level. No good.

 

[Stringtyer]

@Tom in CA ... I grew up in the small town of Spring Lake, NC and we had dirt streets until I was about 6 years old (1957-58). I remember playing in the dust plume created when the sweeper came down the street right before the Barber Green (paving machine) did its thing. I also remember playing in the cloud of DDT they sprayed in the summer time to get rid of mosquitoes.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

@Tom in CA ... I grew up in the small town of Spring Lake, NC and we had dirt streets until I was about 6 years old (1957-58). ....

Yes, it's possible that some small towns didn't get their side streets paved till even the 1950s . Then there was some that had a chip-gravel "poor man's pavement" before giving way to AC. But even still , despite being dirt or gravel till times as late as that, still doesn't bode for the grinding/milling process of modern road re-paving to reach down to that. Because, as I say, they would have a layer of decomposed granite compaction material (I don't know how thick) that would have been put on to the native dirt, before the pavement went down. And the grinding/milling rarely goes down beyond that to native soil . In fact, a lot (most) of the time, it doesn't even grind down below the AC's thickness. So for example: The AC could be 8" thick. But they're only grinding out and re-filling 4".