All Forum Posts by: Bart Libsock

Yeah they are'nt 1:3, 2:1 1:1 in places and this one of the least steep sections this pic is showing the size of base and the road mix, I did give the kid a cross section of the minimum design standards, he kept piling base and road mix on top. Today he said he is going to start cutting and reshaping the ditches, so that still puts us a week plus behind , and we missed out on alot of good rain for the hydroseeding. 

@Nate Barbee We used 6" depth of  3" base rock materiel compacted, then for the surface, up here we use a 3/4 inch road mix, which is 3/4 rock with a sandy binding material which when wetted and compacted gets very very hard.  The gravel in the ditch is not supposed to be there, we are supposed to plant grass on both sides of the ditch, grass does not grow on rocks, or on the the road mix which spilled off the road

Hey @Wayne Brooks we do not have to have engineered drawings for private roads, so I though i would save thousands of dollars and a ton more time by not have drawings, it was the first time the guy had cut a road, he is a young guy just starting out, so I gave him a chance figuring what could go wrong, its just a road right. We have minimum road building guidelines for roads in stillwater county, my mistake was not staying on the job and checking the pitch, i made a pile of mistakes on this supposed, to be a simple 900ft road. 

@Nate Barbee to get the pitch of the ditch cut, you can take a 4 ft or 6 ft level at the edge of the driving surface measure out 3 ft and measure down 1 ft and that should be the pitch of the cut, a 3:1 is the max. a 1:1 would be to measure out 1ft and down 1ft. a 1:1 would be measure out 1ft then down 3ft

Hey @Erik R. no did not get any hits,  looks like I'll have to go down there, just looking at realtor.com its hard to tell if anything is a good investment or not. 

Well its going to get incredibly interesting now, road building  contractor cut ditches on brand new road that he is building way, way to steep in our new subdivision. He cut them to a 1:1 not not a 3:1 which is  max steepness according to Stillwater county Montana road building regs. He claimed that what he cut is a 3:1. Road and bridge dept. superintendent  claims that they cut them backwards to a 1:3, since it is a private road the county cannot force him to recut, and in most places we are already at the minimum driving surface of 24' so recutting them less steep would make the road to narrow. There is no way to plant grass or even mow the ditches, not to mention the gravel on top will forever be crumbling into the bottom. Cannot afford any more delays on this project, engineer and surveyer have already milked this project into a two year ordeal, we are so close to getting final plat I can taste it. 

Hey @David L. I have wondered about the same thing several times, are you talking about out by Victorville, or Barstow area. Is there still on opportunity for homestead, I know years ago you could homestead around Twentynine Palms, we would love to do something around Twentynine Palms. The old timers tell me that there is alot of water under the area. 

@Dave Foster yes they were very expensive but worth every penny, a guy needs to keep his options open, if its 1031 or banking the cash for the next go round. Have you done 1031s into the USVI. If I, or a family member have to draw income from USVI in order to 1031 there, maybe we could adopt you and you could go earn income and find properties, of course when we get there you will have to get the boot.

Thanks for the replies. Hey Jay  I looked at selling the plat but Columbus is 40 miles from the blazing hot market of Billings, the big developers from there wanted to make 40% and were not all that interested in coming out this way, and for us make enough  money to pursue this endeavor  it worked out better to put all the infrastructure in, we are putting in the new road, power, gas and water to each lot, we are even dropping culverts in to access each lot. 

Hey again Dave I was'nt sure if  I could 1031 each lot so I hired a big big time CPA firm to look into it, they came back and said that there was no case law in Montana to either confirm or deny the legality of it. It is not without risk but the consensus was to go for it. Problem with 1031 in Montana is finding a replacement in the 45 days, then I thought how about 1031 into the USVI which is a whole different ball game.