If You Have a Long Driveway to Maintain ......

   / If You Have a Long Driveway to Maintain ...... #1  

Gordon Gould

Super Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2007
Messages
6,205
Location
NorthEastern, VT
Tractor
Kubota L3010DT, Kubota M5640SUD, Dresser TD7G Dozer
If you have a long driveway to maintain then a Land Plane Grading Scraper with Top and Tilt will certainly help you do it.
I graded today for the first time this year. It is so enjoyable to use this equipment. Some how I forget over the winter how easy it is to do a good a job.
 

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   / If You Have a Long Driveway to Maintain ...... #2  
Sweet rig, nice gravel you have there too ! :thumbsup:
 
   / If You Have a Long Driveway to Maintain ...... #3  
So that's what a lane looks like without weeds growing in it! :thumbsup:
 
   / If You Have a Long Driveway to Maintain ...... #4  
Can someone help me understand a question that's been bothering me for a while? I see lots of members here who really like the use of land planes or box blades for maintaining gravel driveways. But it seems to me that what either mainly does is move gravel along the length of the driveway, as show by the OP's first photo. That would be good for filling potholes or washboarding, I'd think.

But that's not my problem. I have a quarter-mile driveway, fairly steep, in the mountains of western North Carolina. Here's a photo of a part of it.

driveway.jpg

My problem is moving the gravel back on the road after it's thrown to the side by traffic or plowing snow. I find an angle blade works well for that, once one learns how to use it. I'm having trouble seeing how a land plane or box blade would work as well. What am I missing?

Terry
 
   / If You Have a Long Driveway to Maintain ......
  • Thread Starter
#5  
My problem is moving the gravel back on the road after it's thrown to the side by traffic or plowing snow. I find an angle blade works well for that, once one learns how to use it. I'm having trouble seeing how a land plane or box blade would work as well. What am I missing?

Terry

You are dead on - not missing a thing. I also use a blade. It is a great road tool. If you want to chage the road contour or move material across the road a blade is the way to go. Just like you said.
But once the road contour is set you can maintain it very easily with the land plane. The secret is to not allow the contour to get ruined by rain or plowing. In the winter I never plow down to the gravel. I keep the plow up until a solid packed snow road is formed. I actually make the snow road much wider than the gravel. With the solid snow road I don't throw gravel off to the side when I drop the plow. I guess we are lucky we can do that because things freeze up so well here. Handling runoff on a steep road can be tough. It seems some time along the line there is always a storm big enough to cause trouble but if you can get your drainage set for the vast majority of storms you won't have so much blade work to do fixing washed out gravel and the land plane can then become the go-to day in day out road tool.
 

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   / If You Have a Long Driveway to Maintain ...... #6  
Can someone help me understand a question that's been bothering me for a while? I see lots of members here who really like the use of land planes or box blades for maintaining gravel driveways. But it seems to me that what either mainly does is move gravel along the length of the driveway, as show by the OP's first photo. That would be good for filling potholes or washboarding, I'd think.

But that's not my problem. I have a quarter-mile driveway, fairly steep, in the mountains of western North Carolina. Here's a photo of a part of it.

View attachment 317790

My problem is moving the gravel back on the road after it's thrown to the side by traffic or plowing snow. I find an angle blade works well for that, once one learns how to use it. I'm having trouble seeing how a land plane or box blade would work as well. What am I missing?

Terry

Terry, your drive is long enough that if you can at all afford it, you should get yourself a (LPGB) land plane grader blade. Each implement has it's purpose and excels at what it is designed to do. You need your rear blade to pull gravel back onto your road. But once it is there, it is tough to beat a LPGB for simple maintenance. The other thing that you will find is that the grading time is quite a bit less, and with it taking less time, you find yourself doing it more often. When you do it more often, the road simply never gets bad. So what ends up happening is that you need the other road implements a lot less often than you do now.

This is what has happened in my circumstances and of course everyone's conditions are different, but sort of like grapples, there are NO BAD ONES
and everybody seems to be happy with what they have. Zero complaints.

Just my :2cents:
 
   / If You Have a Long Driveway to Maintain ...... #7  
I'm fairly new at this, so take my reply with a grain of salt, but I had the same concerns & I too was considering a back blade when I ran across a deal on a York Rake. It had gauge wheels & the price was right, so I thought it was worth a try. I was also concerned that the back blade might be too aggressive in my inexperienced hands & roll out some of the larger rocks that were supporting the edge of the drive.

I angled it to one side & drove up one side & down the other for a while and to soon looked better than I expected. Because of the flexible tines, the base stayed where it was, & looser stuff redistributed where it
belongs. Beginners luck I'm sure, not sure if this applies to anyone else's situation.




Can someone help me understand a question that's been bothering me for a while? I see lots of members here who really like the use of land planes or box blades for maintaining gravel driveways. But it seems to me that what either mainly does is move gravel along the length of the driveway, as show by the OP's first photo. That would be good for filling potholes or washboarding, I'd think.

But that's not my problem. I have a quarter-mile driveway, fairly steep, in the mountains of western North Carolina. Here's a photo of a part of it.

View attachment 317790

My problem is moving the gravel back on the road after it's thrown to the side by traffic or plowing snow. I find an angle blade works well for that, once one learns how to use it. I'm having trouble seeing how a land plane or box blade would work as well. What am I missing?

Terry
 
   / If You Have a Long Driveway to Maintain ...... #8  
You are dead on - not missing a thing. I also use a blade. It is a great road tool. If you want to chage the road contour or move material across the road a blade is the way to go. Just like you said.
But once the road contour is set you can maintain it very easily with the land plane. The secret is to not allow the contour to get ruined by rain or plowing. In the winter I never plow down to the gravel. I keep the plow up until a solid packed snow road is formed. I actually make the snow road much wider than the gravel. With the solid snow road I don't throw gravel off to the side when I drop the plow. I guess we are lucky we can do that because things freeze up so well here. Handling runoff on a steep road can be tough. It seems some time along the line there is always a storm big enough to cause trouble but if you can get your drainage set for the vast majority of storms you won't have so much blade work to do fixing washed out gravel and the land plane can then become the go-to day in day out road tool.
Thanks for the reply, Gordon.

We are at 3500 ft. so it gets cold enough to snow enough to plow several times most winters. But we are on a long narrow mountain range in the midst of southern lowlands, so we generally get periods with above freezing night-time temps in between. As a result, we often have plowable snow when the ground isn't frozen. But for the same reason we can't leave the snow above the gravel - it thaws enough to freeze to ice, which is a real issue with a drive with an average grade of 14%. As long as there is some gravel poking through the ice we can get up with no problem with 4-wheel drive, but if it gets above the gravel we're done until it melts.

The result is unless the ground is frozen I can't avoid pushing some gravel off the side as I plow. I suspect the grade also encourages vehicles to throw gravel, especially pickups that don't have or refuse to engage 4-wheel drive. UPS trucks are the worse - they use the little ones with single rear tires here and they really tear up the gravel. We have pretty good ditches, so only rarely does rain runoff carry enough gravel off to clog the ditches.

Sounds like I've got the right tool for most of what I need to do. I'll have to think about whether a land plane would be a worthwhile addition.

Terry
 
   / If You Have a Long Driveway to Maintain ...... #9  
Your question about the box blade matches my experience. A box blade is all I've got for maintaining my driveway, and it is no good at all at pulling the gravel in from the sides. If I had my pick, I would get a landscape rake (a.k.a. york rake) because I think if it was angled 45 degrees inward, it would do a good job of pulling gravel back into the drive without messing up the grass too much. I would worry that a grader/scrape blade would dig into the dirt too much... but maybe not if it was turned backwards or something.
 
   / If You Have a Long Driveway to Maintain ...... #10  
I purchased a Land Plane early this year to be ready for spring. I am very pleased with the results the land plane leaves. As soon as the gravel dried out I attacked my 1000' driveway. In the past I have used Box Blade, Back blade and landscape rake in combination and usually in that order. I have been very pleased with what I could do with those implements. It has definitely been a good learning experience.
With that said. The land plane seems to pull up gravel and puts it back on top surface, Larger rocks get buried unless there are too many, It smooths out the surface better than ever, and it cuts the time and fuel spent on maintaining the drive a lot. So bottom line I am very happy with my purchase, I do not think it has made me the perfect driveway but in time it will be the best it can be.
 
 
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