Looking at cattle guard designs. Want something set ON concrete footings that I can tilt up and out of the way to clean out blowsand and mud. Want to be able to run the tractor bucket between the footings after my kids grow up and move away from home. That means the fence can't permanently tie into the cattle guard square in the center.

Have a couple ideas, with the best being a fence terminating at the ends of one concrete footing. Then install a gate on each end that would swing open with the cattle guard being hinged on one side. The cattle guard itself would be offset from the fence line.

Thought I'd see if the all-knowing OB had any functional designs before I put too much additional thought into it. Bonus points for photos!

The tilt out feature sounds complicated.

How wide would you need it to be to run a bucket thru for clean out? Is that going to become too wide?

My tractor bucket is just a bit wider than 75". Would prolly need 76" to make it work.

Figure the grate will be pretty heavy, so something "hinged" would be easier than removing it entirely.

Thinking a weld plate set in the concrete footing with larger pipe sleeves around the outer grate pipe welded to the plate. If that makes sense.

Just my 2 cents.
If you are already going to use a bucket, just lift out the whole grate with your bucket and a chain, set it on the ground, clean the pit out, then set it back.

Easier said than done in my experience. Have a couple old cattle guards that have been in place for decades. We cleaned them out last about 20+ years ago. It took a big tractor and a Cat loader to get one of them out due to the movement of the concrete and roadway effectively pinching the support beams spanning the hole. These cattle guards were subject to 18 wheeler traffic at least several times a week or daily over their life.

Have also had to pry bulls hooves out of them over the years, as the cattleguards were only 6' across and some bulls jumped them, or tried.

Todd 02 said:

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My tractor bucket is just a bit wider than 75". Would prolly need 76" to make it work.

Figure the grate will be pretty heavy, so something "hinged" would be easier than removing it entirely.

Thinking a weld plate set in the concrete footing with larger pipe sleeves around the outer grate pipe welded to the plate. If that makes sense.

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I'd go wider than 76", but that's just me. I'd rather have that little bit of wiggle room versus it being too tight.

Also need to think about your approaches or access to get the tractor in the channel. The hinge idea is good IMO, just make sure you put some good j-bolts welded to your imbed plates or nelson studs welded to the plates to anchor them into the concrete.

May want to think about a lip on the non-hing side that sits on top of the concrete rather than just having the pipe sit inside, will help keep debris and what not from filling in that gap and making opening harder than it needs to be.

Also think about your hinge design - you want it to be able to go more than 180 degrees, and you'll want an anchor or chain or something to act as a safety mechanism to keep the guard from closing on you while you are in the channel cleaning it out.

I use a trenching shovel that easily fits between the pipes. Doesn't take that long to clean one out and it isn't a big production.

could you get a portable power washer and spray the dirt out?

To try and avoid the whole clean out problem, I had our cattle guard installed about 2.5' above grade with a 30 degree incline in the gravel road from either direction. I also had the area adjacent to it cleaned out and graded to allow drainage to quickly flow away from it. It's only been about 7 years since we installed it, but there is virtually zero buildup underneath it in that time.

For the OP - if you stick with your idea, you need to go wider than 76". It won't take much of a shift of the beams or a tractor shimmy the wrong way and you'll be tearing the beams up with the bucket or getting into some kind of battle to move anything with the bucket.

This and rock berms on the ends will do wonders for keeping silt and trash out. Personally, I'd prefer a cattle guard designed to survive a 10.0 earthquake and never sink or move vs mechanical parts that WILL fail over time.

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