Gravel Driveways

[Conservation]

What tips are there for creating a good gravel driveway? Seems like this time of the year, the frost come out, the snow around the drive melts, and the drive can become a mushy mess. How do you avoid this?

 

[DWCox]

If water is allowed to stay on a gravel driveway, it will turn to soup regardless how good the base material. In areas where there is no natural slope (drainage), you will need to crown the middle to shed the water away from the road. You also want to make sure the water can keep moving on after it flows off both sides of the crown. A blade or box blade (lowered on one side of the linkage) will accomplish this fairly well. I do not recommend trying to rough cut these crowns with a tractor's FEL. Track and skid loaders can do this nicely with no problem, but not tractors (at least not easily).

 

[escavader]

What tips are there for creating a good gravel driveway? Seems like this time of the year, the frost come out, the snow around the drive melts, and the drive can become a mushy mess. How do you avoid this?

Good ditching helps.Acrown in the middle ,or as i do in my round drive,i lean it like a race track,so the water runs off.A good thickness of gravel[mines about 10 inches to a foot ]keeps it away from the clay and will be more solid.
When im building over wet areas i try to lay a fabric down before i lay the drive,to keep the clay-dirt from pushing up into the gravel.Choice of proper gravel is important,types will differ from different areas of the country.
Stone dust on top will harden to a cement like texture.
I think most frozen drives will have a wet period ,but the better you make it the shorter that time will be.Mine lasts about a week.
Hope ive helped
ALAN

 

[Thumper & Buttercup]

We rebuilt our driveway a few years ago with a Ford 9N and a blade. I drug everything off the drive way to use as fill for the ditches to help smooth them out. We brought in 14 semi's of good gravel. We drove our equipment and packed it in good.

In the spring I take the tractor and cut the edges to reclaim the gravel that has moved to the edge by dropping the outside blade edge down. I'll cut out and then cut back, then I do a light crown cut, I'm more moving the gravel that is piled up over the crown to make sure my crown is built up and does not loose material.

I now have worked my gravel to my left side of my driveway going out, I now reset my blade to even the height and reverse my pulls to redistribute the gravel evenly over the whole driveway. This leaves the driveway with a good crown and no edges to allow water to sit on.

Been working for several years, you need a good base of gravel, our driveway has had many a person come down it thinking it's a road because our driveway is wider and better looking that the township road that goes by our place. Hope this helps.

PS I like to work my driveway when the gravel is moist, enough that under the gravel is good and moist but not too much that you end up with a mess.

 

[skidoo]

Depends on how mushy. I had a low area where it was almost like a spring and the mud could easily develop to a couple feet deep. Tired of that one year, I had about 10 yards of boulders 3" to 10" dropped on top of the muddy area. Instant dryness. I can't believe that I successfully smoothed it out with a garden tractor and middle grader blade. At first, I could barely get the tractor to even drive on top of the pile. Anyway, after smoothing it to have about 6" to a foot of rock layer, I had some regular road gravel poured on top, then smoothed it again. That area has been dry for over 10 years now...

 

[Gary Fowler]

Escavator has the right idea. Lay down a geotextile-fiber for your rock bed to lay on. You can then then decrease the thickness of your rock bed to 4-6 inches and not worry about it sinking into the mud. It still has to be properly contoured for the water to drain, but the fabric base will last for several decades if not lifetimes and keep the rock separated from the soil. It isn't cheap but then neither is the rock so I think it is about a wash in cost on the amount of rock that you can save. Check out this website for more info.

Driveway Fabric - US Fabrics

 

[LBrown59]

Been working for several years, you need a good base of gravel,
our driveway has had many a person come down it thinking it's a road because our driveway is wider and better looking than the township road that goes by our place.

I've lived here for 43 years and people still occasionally mistake our driveway for the way to get to the homes in back of us .
It happened the last time just the other day.

 

[Soundguy]

What tips are there for creating a good gravel driveway? Seems like this time of the year, the frost come out, the snow around the drive melts, and the drive can become a mushy mess. How do you avoid this?

have good drainage, of fthe road,

undercut the road bed, fill with coarse then fines.. consolodate it,, then crown it a lil.

soundguy

 

[Jeff244]

When I was still in business, a typical proposal for installing a gravel driveway would look something like this:

Excavate the entire area approx. 8" below final grade.
Roll and compact the subgrade.
Lay 4" of No.3 stone
Lay 4 compacted thickness of CA-6 Limestone.


It is important that the subgrade be fine graded and compacted before adding any base material(a smooth drum roller would be best, but your tractor tires would work also). The finished driveway should be slightly higher than the adjoining landscape so that the water will drain off. As others have mentioned, be sure to do any work along the drive to keep water away. If you run into any soft or wet areas while excavating, you should dig it deeper and add more of the 3"(or larger) stone.

I don't know how big your driveway is and this could be overkill if you have good clay and good drainage in the area.

Also, it wouldn't hurt to rent a vibratory roller after it rains to compact the driveway. Just be sure to go slow with it, maybe 1 or 2 mph.

Good Luck,
Jeff

 

[forester2]

Conservation, I don't know where you are, but if you have soils with wet ,heavy clays like ours, geotextile fabric is the ONLY way to go. Removal of upper soils,lay fabric, then I use bank run gravel screened to #2 to get the clunkers out that always seem to heave eventually (no fun for the snowblower) then a topping layer that a couple of the pits put together that have enough fines that the compact nicely. The road to my house stood up 8 years before I retopped it; that includes running a snow blower up and down it dozens of times each winter. I have also created road beds utilizing a gray, shaley clay we have about four foot down for a base. Gets very hard when dried and got a couple ponds made in the bargain.