liquid applied soil stabilisation

[monkeysmate]

OK.
I have a personal project where I need to stabilise a highly organic soil for use as a radio controlled car track. Because it's so organic, it's quite spongy and will cut up easily when the cars get on it.
I was after a liquid applied solution that I could effectively water on to the track surface, that would have some sort of stabilising effect, at a not too extortionate cost.

I know i'm asking a lot here, but does anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you

 

[Ron]

Not much you can do with organic soils. You can try treating with lime to a depth of about 6 inches. This will provide enough calcium that you won't affect the set of portland cement for the next phase of treatment. After the lime treatment, put in about 2 percent by weight of portland cement. That's not a lot, but you only want to stabilize, not particularly strengthen enough you could drive a vehicle on it.

This is a very inexpensive way to treat the soil, but will require some manual labor and preferably a small rotary tiller.

 

[oldestguy]

Ron has it pegged. Years ago B.K. Hough, Cornell Prof. experimented with waste liquid from paper mills for road gravel stabilizing. The papers mentioned chrome lignin. However, check out this link.

http://petrowiki.org/Water_soluble_materials_in_cementing

 

[oldestguy]

This link might help also.

http://www.google.com/patents/US3387965

 

[monkeysmate]

Thanks chaps. How would directly applying powdered hydraulic lime be expected to fair? Would I get similar results to the hydrated lime and cement process?
Thanks again for your time.