Slag for Driveway

[cowboydoc]

We have a steel plant a couple miles from me and all we've used for the last five years has been the slag. I've had really good luck with it and like it as much as gravel. There is no smell to it at all and the coverage chart looks reasonable for the projects we've done.

 

[MMM]

<font color="blue">Eddie I have a friend from Louisianna who told me that most of their rural privately owned roads from where he was raised were made from recycled concrete. </font>

Our local parish roads are either limestone/anhydrite aggregate, " iron ore" shale, or pit run gravel (worst of 3). The aggregate holds well on my steep drive, almost turning to concrete after it gets wet and is driven on a few times. Down in south LA, they use clamshells and that STINKS.

 

[Soundguy]

In rural areas.. we convert many dirt roads to slag roads by adding a stabilized limerock base, and then a couple lifts of slag and a road tar. As many have said.. slag won't compact.. but it will consolidate. A good bed won't migrate much if you have it in a decent box... no smell...

Soundguy

 

[Creamer]

MossRoad - do you get the dust in the summer like you do from limestone? I am thinking not.

 

[MossRoad]

MossRoad - do you get the dust in the summer like you do from limestone? I am thinking not.

Nope! Dust free.

 

[Creamer]

How is it for plowing snow off of. Does it lock down so you can just set the blade down and plow like pavement or will you scrape pieces off like a limestone driveway?

 

[MossRoad]

You will scrape. Not nearly as bad as a limestone driveway, but you'll still scrape. I had a slag driveway at my parents' house and I currently have one on our tree farm. I don't plow the tree farm. The parents' house, we had a 7' Fisher plow on a 71 Toyota FJ40. It had shoes that we kept about 1-2" up to avoid moving the slag around. My PT425 Power Trac tractor has wheels on the back of the plow, so when I need to plow grass or dirt areas, I just tip it back an inch and off I go.

My dad got a snow blower after I got married and moved out. He shot a piece of slag through one of his double pane picture windows, so there you go! :laughing:

 

[Gunny]

I had some steel slag laid down as a top layer over an established gravel lane down at the farm. It had a slight odor when first dumped, but that didn't last long and it looked really good.

The problem I had with it was that it wouldn't say put. As people drove over it, the tires kinda squished it out to the sides, before long the tire tracks were just about down to where they were before laying the slag with a loose hump in the middle and on both sides. Where you had to turn right into the drive it was much more pronounced, all the slag wound up on the left side of the lane. Since it's a private dead end lane, it doesn't get much traffic.

Our county used slag on some county roads and had pretty much the same problems, now they use gravel.

I wound up scraping up as much as I could and pushed it up around the garage area where it got very little traffic over it other than straight in and out of the garage, then had regular limestone (with a lot of dust) spread on the lane. That's pretty much set up like a concrete driveway now and it stays put.

Another thing I didn't care for was that while it was cheaper per ton than the gravel, it seemed that 10 tons of slag didn't cover as much area as 10 tons of gravel. Maybe the slag is heavier than gravel or maybe the scale guy messed up, but I wasn't impressed with the slag.

 

[Patrickdozer]

I used some about 15 years ago, was about 2-3 inches in size which was fine because I needed it for a tire scrubber on my Newly constructed driveway.

I am going to need material for driveway where I live now in the coming months, so I am looking at options.

There is a place called Harsco materials which is a national company I believe that handles slag from steel mills. I will try to post there advertisement that they have for my area. They have a website and there is a website for national slag institute below it.

Prices I have seen are 4.95 a ton for modified which would be 2A or[ 57 stone nationally I believe]. This is about half of the price for crushed stone.
I had gotten quote for $14 a ton delivered for crushed stone from local quarry, and I believe it was $9 or a little more per ton without hauling.

I should be able to save money by paying a local dump truck driver to haul material and possibly get there discount for material as most places will give independents a lower price per ton for material if they deal with them regularly.

You may have a third option which would be road millings. Which would be asphalt millings and they make an excellent road base. Some places will give away free and others will charge trucking or at least a lower rate per ton verses stone. If you have road work going on in your area you may be able to get a couple loads dropped off as this will save trucking company money not having to haul further away depending on where material is going.

 

[MossRoad]

I had some steel slag laid down as a top layer over an established gravel lane down at the farm. It had a slight odor when first dumped, but that didn't last long and it looked really good.

The problem I had with it was that it wouldn't say put. As people drove over it, the tires kinda squished it out to the sides, before long the tire tracks were just about down to where they were before laying the slag with a loose hump in the middle and on both sides. Where you had to turn right into the drive it was much more pronounced, all the slag wound up on the left side of the lane. Since it's a private dead end lane, it doesn't get much traffic.

Our county used slag on some county roads and had pretty much the same problems, now they use gravel.

I wound up scraping up as much as I could and pushed it up around the garage area where it got very little traffic over it other than straight in and out of the garage, then had regular limestone (with a lot of dust) spread on the lane. That's pretty much set up like a concrete driveway now and it stays put.

Another thing I didn't care for was that while it was cheaper per ton than the gravel, it seemed that 10 tons of slag didn't cover as much area as 10 tons of gravel. Maybe the slag is heavier than gravel or maybe the scale guy messed up, but I wasn't impressed with the slag.

Was it from a steel mill?