Well the loggers are making quick work of the soon home build site. Next will be getting the road cut on in. At the road we will need a drain culvert/tile

What’s better. The heavy duty corrugated plastic or aluminum????

Looking for advice from guys in the know. I haven’t spoke to the excavator in a minute and wanted to know what would be best long haul

Size wise the county has code I have to follow but doesn’t matter which material. I believe it’s 15” or bigger.

The only drawback to plastic is fire. My oldest son lost about 5 plastic culverts spread out on his property when the Camp Fire in Paradise roared through last year. The wind driven fire even melted his sewer outlet pipe coming out of the house and melted it back under the slab. It's a wonder the house didn't burn down.

Plastic is what most use.

Make sure you shore up the ends so water can't flow around the culvert.
One easy way is to lay bags of ready-mixed concrete like a brick wall.
If it's tall you can drive rebar supports through them.

In a very short time it will harden in the bags, creating a firm wall.
Putting a few layers of plastic down before you stack the bags makes it even better.

Nothing beats corrugated steel. Also, "bigger is better" We live at the bottom of steep hills on three sides, and the runoff after a heavy rainstorm converges on our house with no place to go on occasion. We have had to rebuild twice in two years after being flooded nearly a foot deep in part of our house during several days of heavy rain. If the minimum culvert diameter is 15", I strongly suggest using a 24" or larger. The extra cost in both labor and materials will be minimal, compared to having to rebuild after experiencing flood damage. BTW, federal flood insurance covers things a normal homeowner's policy simply refuses to address! Buy it!
Jerry

The good news is we are on a hill, and the drainage ditch on side of road is all we really have to worry about there. We are only 400 yards to top of hill. Have had some good rains this year and we don’t get all that much water in the drainage ditch on this side of road as the road has fall to the other side. I assume keeping ditch cleaned out would be a good idea as well.

Fire isn’t much of a concern here thank the good lord. Mainly just wanna make sure what I use lasts.

I’ll definitely be puring concrete on both ends of it. Could even brick it myself for looks if I wanted/needed. Dads a brick mason and I did learn a little over the years!

Thought about a concrete section at the road as that is the only hill going into our driveway that has much angle to it at all. Figured that would ease long term maintenance of the driveway. The rest would be gravel until you get to the house which would be concrete again

We use concrete pipe down here with stabilize sand under and all around it.

We have many on the farm. I've always bought used. I'll vote steel, and as said the bigger the better, and depending on how deep the creek bed is, a long enough pipe for a nice wide road is a must.

ADS double walled polypropylene pipe.

I too vote flame retardant steel.

This, I have put miles and miles of it in.

Me too, hope I never touch another piece!

Lol, I retire in four years :-)

Don't use steel. We had a 24 inch steel culvert on the driveway, put it in in 2002 for $800.
Last year, it rusted in two. We replaced it with plastic and the replacement cost was $1700.

^^^THIS^^^

The expensive part is digging the hole twice.

Oh, I meant to say, the 24 inch steel pipe that got replaced, was 40 feet long. Two pieces joined together.

Exactly right,, silt and or water sits in the corregations and rusts out the bottoms,, unless it is a bitumious coated corregated pipe,, theres a fiberglass pipe out that is mostly fire proof and the best pipe out there excluding concrete pipe,, advice if u want it,,, get the biggest dia pipe u can fit under your road,,, if it calls for for 15" get 24" sticks and trash wont clogg it up as easily,, and a min of 1.0% fall,, smooth interior pipe rushes the water on thru,,

Good quality galvanized steel will last many years. Watch out for cheaply made culvert.

We like plastic.

One of many on the farm. I bought this one on an auction sale. I'll guess the county took it to the sale.

Ok. Well tomorrow I’m gonna do a little pricing and discuss with county options. I’ll go as big as I can. Looking at it I don’t think 24” will fit. It’s not that big of a ditch( could be wrong as it’s not exactly my expertise). But the leaves and sticks here are a concern as lots of trees. I may have a lead 2 pieces of 18” concrete pipe that were purchased 4 years ago and just been sitting unused. Might try to get those!

I build roads and we typically use concrete. I don't believe I've ever seen an aluminum drainage pipe culvert.

The best of luck with it. It ain't rocket science.

Btw. Fire is not a problem here. We did have a big fire in the mountains few years back that took out gatlinburg, but this area not one to be concerned for fire
Soil is red clay. Doubt I need stabilizing substrate of any kind. One thing I wander is will the ground push the culvert back to the surface over time with some time of hydraulic force from expansion and contraction. Is there a way to anchor to ground if this is something that actually happens and not my imagination to keep it from moving

We bed them with compacted crusher run gravel to keep them in place. Underneath, and half way up the pipe.

Thanks Greg.

The steel one under my driveway is 30 years old and still in good shape.

The one problem I have with corrugated steel is mud. If the water is muddy and slow moving, it will settle out into the corrugates and slowly fill the pipe. It needs some slope to keep the water moving.

Those corrugated plastic pipes (tile) are tough. I’ve personally seen a tandem axle LOADED truck get stuck resulting in sinkzing down on the end of. I heard they are flammable though. The metal ones are much more expensive (double)

Concrete needs less cover than plastic or metal but it needs a better bed if it settles too much it will come apart.If if you have any kind of acidic water or acid rain metal wont last very long I've put metal pipe in three times in 35 years at one place the last time used plastic.The new galvanized is about 1/3 as thick as older metal pipe.If it was mine and I could get around 10" of cover I'd use double wall smooth bore plastic you can use one size smaller than corrugated and it will handle the same or more water.The pipe won't come up out of the ground never saw one with enough cover do it in 43 years.1/4 inch fall to the foot minimum.You can cover with whatever you want but seal the end especially the inlet you don't want water flowing under or along the pipe

They call them tin horn's for a reason.

Metal for me.

Reinforced Concrete Pipe (RCP)

Concrete would be great if budget allows, though I’ve pretty much only used them on city street type jobs myself.

I’ve set lots and lots of corrugated steel pipes in driveways and on ranch roads, have not seen problems here with them deteriorating quickly. Steel is what most anyone here would use on a rural project, And these are galvanized steel, not aluminum. Concrete end treatments are always nice to prevent crushing. We typically use pre fab ends now up to 24” as they’re usually cheaper than having them poured in place. But if you could wait until you have a concrete crew onsite for other work they may pour the ends for a reasonable price. In that case use the corrugated sloped ends. The pre fab concrete ends are heavy, I believe the 24” 6:1 sloped ends are around 5000#.

As mentioned ADS corrugated poly pipe is good also, it’s stout stuff. I use it often for buried drain lines and to sleeve PVC water lines under roads. I’ve only used it for culvert pipe on a few small drives where a 10” pipe was all that was desired, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work fine for 18-24” culvert if that’s what you want.

PVC is no bueno for culverts, it will shatter easily

I am in the NC mountains. I guess we have acid rain because like I said, we lost a 24 inch steel pipe in 17 years. The bottom was rusted out, there was a five inch wide rusted hole along the entire bottom of the pipe.

CMP will be the cheapest by far. Also easiest to handle and get. Galvanized should last nearly 50 years and unlike plastic pipes will not burn if you burn your ditches.