Not a civil engineer, but I have some experience with concrete pricing.
Redi-Mix concrete is about $70 per yard around here!
4" Is not enough for this use, unfortunately. Your typical highway is
12-15" thick, with subdivision roads being about 9" thick and look at how
well the typical subdivision road holds up! The WWII Concrete at Topeka is
19-24" thick with lots of steel rebar, etc.
You would need some kind of reinforcement at the joints at least, so figure
on some steel work.
For either concrete or asphalt you have to have good compaction in your base
fill. This means compacting the dirt very well, then adding several layers
of rock, compacting each to get a good base. This isn't the type of stuff
that your typical do it your selfer has access to.
I haven't bid much asphalt, but a good round number for concrete is $6 PER
SQUARE FOOT for the complete job. You might be able to get a better price
on a large job, but I'm talking maybe a $.25 change per foot!
Keep in mind that any concrete job bigger than a driveway involves many of
the following things:
1) Skilled workers who make in the range of $30 per hour
2) Bobcats, dozers, compactors and other equipment is fantastically
expensive to own and operate. A million dollars worth of equipment won't
buy enough to start a small company. Even when you rent, these items all
start in the $1000 to $5000 a month rental
Not trying to rain on your parade, juts trying to give you an idea of the $$
involved.
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: <dg50@daimlerchrysler.com>
To: <autox@autox.team.net>
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2000 1:53 PM
Subject: Any Civil Engineers in the House?
> OK, here's something else to chew on.
>
> It seems that I may be buying a farm soon.
>
> Niner wants a house. She wants to move out of our apartment, and get a
real
> house. I want a big-ass garage - actually, I want a proper race car shop -
> and I've worked in a shop that was a converted barn before, and that works
> well. So we're going out looking for hobby farms that are close to Windsor
> (of which there are plenty) that have decent houses with modern facilities
> and a big-ass concrete-floored barns.
>
> However, these farms tend to come with large slices of land attached. I'm
> not about to take up farming (although I may sub-let land to Real Farmers)
> so I may well find myself with a large tract of land 30min outside of
> Detroit sometime in the next few months.
>
> Hmmmm.....
>
> A 4wd chassis dyno costs $60,000 US. That's $100K CAN. That's a whole
lotta
> coin. So stuffing a dyno into my dream shop isn't a likely near-term
> possibility.
>
> But a back-of-the-napkin calculation says that a 200'X200' pad, at a depth
> of 4", works out to roughly 40 cubic yards of concrete. At roughly 10
cubic
> yards of concrete per truckload, and roughly $100 per truckload, then that
> pad costs $4000. Still not chump change, but a 200 sqft pad is a decent
> sized skidpad....
>
> OK, so 1/8 mile is 880 ft. Let's call it 800 to make the math easier.
> That's 16 "squares" at $4000 each, for a total of $64,000. Still cheaper
> than the Dynojet - but now there's 16 acres of concrete down. I'm thinking
> that's large enough to run a pretty decent sized autocross course on....
> and it's WAY cheaper than I thought. And I bet paving with asphalt is even
> cheaper per square foot.
>
> All of a sudden, the idea of building a dedicated autocross facility
> doesn't seem quite so far-fetched. I had always figured an initial price
in
> the millions, not the tens of thousands. Can building a facility *really*
> be cheaper than buying a Dynojet?
>
> This is all back-of-the-napkin stuff. An exercise in entertainment.
Playing
> a little "what-if" with some numbers. I certainly am not realistically
> expecting to build my own autocross site anytime soon.
>
> But still...
>
> Anybody know:
>
> 1) How big (lengthXwidth, in feet) the competition surfaces are at
> a) Harrisburg
> b) Petersburg
> c) Topeka, South Course
>
> 2) A rough price per square foot for asphalt paving
>
> 3) If 4" of concrete is thick enough. If not, how much thicker? How much
> more $ per square foot does rebar etc cost?
>
> 4) Any other important details that have been overlooked? Assume that
> unskilled/semi-skilled labour is available for free for really basic
tasks,
> like building forms, laying and tying rebar, digging drainage ditches,
etc.
>
> Any civil engineers in the house?
>
> DG
>
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