2020

JSC “Latvia’s State Forests” is Building a Forest Road in a Peat Bog

The length of the forest road is 2.29 km. The road route is approximately 1.5 km long and it is designed on peat with a thickness of 2.8 to 6 metres. In the project developed by SIA “CK”, a solution was offered to build a road in a peat bog on a deck of wooden logs, which after its laying is preserved in its own, very special way. This method protects the logs from damage because this way air cannot access them. Moreover, such a horizontal plane design evenly distributes the weight of the road structure itself and absorbs the dynamic load of the transport. The deck of is covered with non-woven geotextile to prevent the base material from mixing with the cover structure. Above it, a road structure is built, which consists of a base of frost resistant sand cover, whereas on the surface, it forms a crushed gravel cover.

Construction works in such soil conditions were a serious challenge to both the construction workers and LVM as the project customer. The works were more complicated by the changing weather conditions, which affected the construction of the embankment in a length of 0.79 km from the beginning of the route, since the base soil at this stage was clayey, practically impassable by the construction machinery during rain. Without the construction of this section, it was not possible to deliver materials to the most technically complex section of the road through the peat bog.

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Construction process of the Rūja Bog first road

“Building a road in a peat bog using the peating method – covering reversed stumps and small logs with peat – requires new knowledge; for example, in order not to run out of building materials, the designer has to calculate the number of logs needed, not just the deck area and logs in cubic metres. In practice, logs do not have the same smallest end diameter, they are produced with different diameters,” tells Indris Stulpāns, Executive Director of LVM Forest Infrastructure, about the lessons learnt during the construction of the road.

LVM plans to put into operation 348 km of forest road facilities in 2020.