Qustions on using Recycled Asphalt Millings to refresh old gravel private drive

[Paystar]

Found a pic with the water truck and roller.

 

[bdog]

I have a equipment lot of sorts at my place. Maybe 100’ x 200’ just guessing. It has been used as this for many years and the ground is packed solid. No real pothole or rut issues. I put a 3” layer of crushed material on it originally and it worked fine for a long time but was wearing thin in places. I added 3” of asphalt millings in the dead of summer, leveled it with a laser machine controlled grader and rolled it three times in 100 degree sun. It originally set up like a street. You could bounce a basketball on it and not tell the difference from a street. I was so happy. This was last summer. Our semi, trailers turning, and worst of all our rubber tracked machines have destroyed it. It was falling apart in so many places I just grade it out like gravel now. It has zero cohesion anymore. Maybe on a straight road that no one turns sharp on it would work better. I will say there is very little dust and it supports things fine but it looks just like gravel.

1/2 mile of road can be graded in no time especially if you do it frequently before it gets bad. That expense of the paving would sure cover a lot of grading. I have pretty much given up on making my area robust. I instead made a drag with a chain harrow and some pipes that I can pull behind my UTV. I try smooth it out weekly if we are driving a lot of things on it. It takes maybe 15 minutes to do.

 

[BrokenTrack]

Pot holes form when water is sitting on a gravel roadway, and in wet weather, traffic pounds into these pockets of standing water. That tells me you have more issues than just a sandy gravel base, it tells me you lack a crown/inslope/outslope to your roadway. That has to be established first, just putting down hot-top grindings is not going to be the silver bullet, and paving it means the pavement will break up in very short order because the base is messed up.

Always start with drainage. Do culverts need to be placed in the worst locations to keep the water moving from one side of the road to the other? Ditches made? Ditches cleaned out?

Once that is addressed it may be time to think about geotextile fabric. I hate the stuff, but I do not have sand so I can fortify my heavy haul roads with rock. With sand geotextile fabric will do wonders because it will keep your gravel from mixing into your sand. Again, you probably will not need to use it along the entire roadway, but just in the problem areas.

Once those problems areas have been dealt with, it is time to take a long hard look at the roadway. Most likely, years of maintenance have meant the crown of the road has been taken out, or there is crown where inslope and outslope should be and it is not there. There is no one size fits all for road surfaces, they can change from crowned, to inslope, to crowned, and then outsloped and back, or any combination thereof. Just be wary of outsloped roads if you live where there is snow and ice a lot, and the road is 4 season. Still, getting that water to shed off the road surface will go a long ways to preventing potholes in the first place.

Written down, this probably seems overwhelming, but I am sure you only have a few problem areas. Most of the time pot holes come about the entire length of a road because people have a box scraper and drag the living crap out of their roadway. Sure it fills in the pot holes, but takes the crown out of the road too, making pot holes form quicker, so they scrape it again, and soon they have pot holes all the time. It is a vicious cycle. Getting the water off the roadway as soon as possible is what stops that, so crown or slope is critical in a road.

Here is a after and before picture of one of my Heavy Haul Roads, showing proper crown. This was done with a 2500 Kubota Tractor and a dumptrailer, so it does not take a lot of specialized equipment.

 

[NonTypicalCPA]

Thanks folks, a lot of good information. I'll admit our biggest issue is not enough crown/poor drainage right now. I have a Landpride grading planer that works pretty well when there's gravel to work with, but over the past 15 years of use with only band-aids when problems arose, the road is in need of major repairs. We have have 5 people, one of which is an elderly lady who isn't contributing, another is a vacation home and he hasn't committed yet. So we have three residents willing to go in on the project - we need 4 if we go with the paving route. In anticipation of getting just the three of us, we're looking into the RAP.

 

[Rustyiron]

So we have three residents willing to go in on the project - we need 4 if we go with the paving route. In anticipation of getting just the three of us, we're looking into the RAP.

If I were "investing" in the paving solution, I would want the drainage situation squared away first. Of all your options, a good well drained base is essential for this one (paving) to give you the proper return on your money. Asphalt is NOT structural and rely's on a solid stable base. A "spongy" base will not help your RAP much either esp. with poor drainage and frieze/thaw cycles.

 

[TractorGuy]

I've been talking with our county road department on doing some work to our private road. We have paid them to grade the connecting road. Our agent recommends crushed concrete. He said they won't allow him to use road millings any more. I think he was sighting environmental concerns? Maybe from oil content from cars or something?

He claims crushed concrete has a compaction rate 200% greater than gravel.

 

[NonTypicalCPA]

Concrete would be DUSTY! I use concrete sand in my cattle dry lot and it puts off a lot of dust.

 

[NoTrespassing]

My neighbor used millings and hated them. It never did settle down and always shifted worse than crushed limestone that we normally use here. Like others have mentioned, there must be a range of filings as his were very dry and they never stuck together at all.

We had about an 1/8 mile done with fabric and crushed limestone a few years ago. It held up pretty well compared to prior years. We have a clay base and the spring was always terrible on the drive. It serves 3 households and the thing that tears it up the most is UPS and FedEx. Right now it has potholes developing and they will be filled next week by the neighbor. One thing about the fabric is now, unlike before, I'm afraid to do any box scraper work for fear of snagging the fabric.

Kevin

 

[CajunRider]

I live on a 1/2 mile private drive that serves 5 residents. We're sick of dealing with the existing gravel road and potholes. We add gravel every year to the problem areas, but in reality we could use 6-8 inches of new gravel over the entire road to get better drainage. We've got sand below us and the gravel just disappears over time. We've gotten a quote of $52,000 to have it paved, with additional gravel as needed to get a good graded base. Now we're looking into possibly going with recycled asphalt millings. Our goal is to reduce the pothole maintenance required and knock down the dust level from the existing gravel. Would millings be a good option? Are they typically graded then rolled, or just graded?

I used to have the same problem with my 1/4 mile driveway. Mine is over swampy land and the gravels kept sinking into the mud in the wet season. I've used gravel, recycled concrete, recycle asphalt milling to no avail. My problem was solved when I use the OPF42 (coke fired CFB calcined limestone product) OPF42 - Products
The stuff once laid down kinda stick together and forms a semi-solid driveway. I can still dig it out with a shovel but it behaves like a solid drive way so it won't sink into the mud. This costs quite a bit less than doing a solid black top driveway.

 

[PILOON]

One problem is that the better quality goes to the cities and we private users get what's left over.
Good recycled is a great product heaper than crushed stone.
My drive 22 years old (recycled) and just now needing some attention mainly due to frost heaving buried large tones, not a recycle problem.
All in all I like it.
City also uses it a lot here with good results.
Unlike crushed stone recycled sticks together and will resist washouts much better.
In my area recycled is also 10-20% cheaper.