Photos please.
If you have a tractor, box blade, and an open path for the road, you can do the job.
I built our driveway to our house which is about 500 feet from the road. I also maintain about 1/2 mile of gravel road. I also built a turning circle which is 60-80 feet around as well as a larger parking area behind the house as well as the driveway extension to connect. It has to be close to 1,000 feet 12 feed wide if laid end to end. All with fabric.
We have clay and our driveway winds up a hill and is in the woods. I made a mistake of trying to make the road bed smooth. This was a mistake because when have lots of rocks and along with the rocks is roots. Kinda hard to smooth that out.
Only took a pass or two to figure out I was making work for myself. :laughing:
I put down geotextile fabric which was 12/12.5 feet wide and was a bit less than $1 per linear foot back in 2004ish time frame. The reason I was trying to get the driveway grade smooth was because of the fabric. Smoother the better.
In NC road base is called ABC which I THINK is what others call crush and run. Whatever it is called, you want the stuff that is used to build roads in your area. ABC is a mixture of fines, which is dust/sand, and stone up to maybe 2-3 inches in size. You want the fines since it locks the gravel together almost like cement.
If you put down something like 67 stone, which is just stone maybe 2-3 inches in size but no fines, that gravel will roll around and not compact/lock together.
After the fabric is laid out, the truck can back up and dump or spread the ABC. I had them dump and then I spread it with the FEL and box blade. You just have to be careful to NOT touch the fabric with the box blade or FEL. It likely would have been easier and faster if I just had the guy dump and spread.
We only put down 3-4 inches at most of ABC at first. The plan was to let the house get built and then we would add more ABC to fix up whatever mess the house construction did to the road. We have NOT put down more gravel because the fabric has kept the gravel from being pushed into the clay. We do need more ABC to raise up the driveway to keep water from running off but we always spend the money on something more important.
The problem with fabric is that you cannot regrade the road, but then again, you should not need too. We have had two pot holes over eight years which I have touched up with the box blade. If I would drop the gravel to raise a portion of the driveway above grade, the water would not get on the driveway and we would not have pot holes. The fabric has worked real well. I am sold on it since it has saved us time and money.
Find the closest, local quarry and call them up to ask for prices. Truck time in my area is $55-75 an hour depending on fuel prices a few years ago. The quarry will sell by the ton. ABC in NC wetted to DOT standards is around 3,000 pounds per yard. It has been years since I bought ABC but it was $10-12 a ton I think. Or to put it another way, it was not $20 a ton nor was it $5.
You almost certainly will want to use the closest quarry. The truck time will increase your gravel costs quite a bit. I am lucky in that the quarry is only about 15 minutes away and I could sometimes get over 2 loads per hour depending on how fast the truck could get out of the quarry.
The quarry will give the driver a piece of paper saying how much is truck weighed empty, with the load, and the difference which is your gravel. Get the paper from the driver.
The first part of the driveway took some time since I had to put in a culvert and build up the driveway. I think it took eight hours of truck time to build the culvert and go a couple hundred feet. I think I needed another 4-8 hours to get back the other 200-300 feet with a turning circle.
If you can crown the driveway for runoff that is a good thing.
You can do this. It is not hard. Well, the fabric can be a PITA if you catch it with the box blade or FEL but it is not hard to do. Frustrating perhaps.
Later,
Dan
