Desperately need to fix driveway

   / Desperately need to fix driveway #31  
Best hilly driveway I ever had was in the hills out behind Paso Robles, CA. Not a high rainfall area so that's a consideration. The driveway I'm referring to was 6 inches of crushed white shale. Once it got wet and driven on, it stayed put for years and needed only occasional touching up with a reversed back blade. I had it "tailgated" in then smoothed it with the back blade and then wet it down and ran my pickup up and down several times and done. This is on land that would sink tires to the hub immediately when it rained. I have a crushed rock driveway now, not so steep and I started it with 1-1/2 inch crushed rock for the base which has worked out well. If you start with smaller rock, it will give way after a shorter time.
 
   / Desperately need to fix driveway #32  
Whoa whoa whoa. Every one take a deep breath here, lol. OP's head must be swirling with all this advice. (driveway threads are the best).

I concur with the correct assessments of improper grading (no ditches, no crown, etc) and type of stone used so far (large, round, no fines). It will obviously keep leading to this problem.

However, I also don't see any obvious erosion in the pics, or muddy spots. Might be a pretty deep layer of this large rock. You have a good start here.

But the OP has an MX5800! Just get a nice HEAVY land plane, and start pulling that driveway back and forth. You'll get it smoothed out in no time. If it were me and money wasn't a problem, I would definitely get that nice base rock covered up with 3 to 4 more inches of finer gravel. If you have sandy soil and dont want to buy any new gravel, you could even mix in a light amount of sand with those large driveway stones, and keep working it with the land plane. Drive up and down a bunch of times to pre-compact it before you get your next UPS guy doing 20 mph on it, lol.

Lots of folks advocating for crusher run, with fines. Certainly a solid way to go, but just realize that the fines that help lock the rock together also trap water, so you get pot holes and puddles eventually. If you want to keep that low sports car clean, maybe not the best way to go. My 1000' driveway is 3/4"-minus CLEAN, no fines, over a well compacted base of larger rock. Yes, it moves around a bit and starts to washboard when people drive too fast, but 10 minutes on my tractor with the rear blade or box blade has it perfectly smooth again - maybe 2 or 3 times a year. I also want a land plane eventually though.
 
   / Desperately need to fix driveway #33  
Is that "concrete to rock" picture really your main driveway though? That looks more like a logging trail, lol. No dirt work to set a contour or grade, no ditches, just a dump of rock curving around a tree and up the hill?

I'm not going to tell you to start over, but, you kinda should. A contractor is going to charge several thousand dollars. You have the right machine yourself already, if you can devote a couple dozens hours of seat time to this project.
 
   / Desperately need to fix driveway #34  
S h e w a n t s t o k n o w w h a t i m p l e m e n t t o get, n o t w h a t g r a v e l p i t t o v i s i t o r b u y.

Beg, borrow or steal an 8' rake. Sold mine for $800. if it doesn't work, add more money and get a land plane, or a box blade. Then just tune it up a few times a month until it is what you want.
 
   / Desperately need to fix driveway #35  
Check around for some place with asphalt millings way better than gravel.
 
   / Desperately need to fix driveway #36  
I think the OP needs to identify what's happening before trying to fix the problem. Is the gravel moving to the sides which is creating ruts? If so round rocks are like marbles. They roll and move and without something to hold them in place, often called fines, like small pieces of broken rock you're always going to have a problem. Or is the gravel sinking into the ground. As in is the ground under the gravel turning into mud and swallowing up the gravel.

As for water, what happens when you get rain? Does water run down the driveway or if the ground is flat pool up? Running water will wash away the fines I talked about so it's best to find a way to stop it. Puddles (standing water), when a tire goes through it and splashes it'll throw smaller pieces of your driveway off to the side. Puddles just get bigger and deeper and require a lot of work to properly repair (just filling them in rarely works).

My best advice is to get your rain jacket on the next time is rains and watch to see what the water is doing.
 
   / Desperately need to fix driveway #37  
The main road does not need to be higher than the surrounding terrain...As long as the flow line of the ditches is below the driving surface and they are wide and deep enough to carry the capacity of runoff...
 
   / Desperately need to fix driveway #38  
This thread gives me an idea. I have a 650' gravel drive with curves, well drained but with loose gravel. I need to grade it a couple times a year mostly because of our friends at UPS and FedEx drive about 20mph and throw gravel to the side on the curves and turn it into a washboard where they come off the asphalt street. I bought a 5' Land Pride box scraper 25 years ago and tried using it for 10 years, then finally put it away for this purpose and started smoothing it with my front loader going forward in float mode and the bucket tilted all the way up, which presents a nice curved surface to the irregular surface and does a decent job, but takes too long. The problem with the box scraper is that the height has to be adjusted above grade with the hitch control or it wants to move massive amounts of gravel (as is its purpose), and once adjusted it will only make the washboard worse as the tractor rear end rocks up and down on the existing hills and dales. It really needs to float on the surface.

I'm not interested in buying additional attachments, so I'm thinking that I could fabricate and attach sled rails to the sides (easy for me to do) and use it like a grading scraper, removing the front or rear facing blade and/or rear facing flapper as necessary (whichever works best). If I remember right the rear facing blade bottom edge is about the height of the bottom edge of the sides but the front facing blade is an inch or two lower. It wouldn't be as nice as some other implements like the grading scraper and would not help me with moving gravel from the edge to the center, but would be a lot cheaper!

Comments?
 
   / Desperately need to fix driveway #39  
The main road does not need to be higher than the surrounding terrain...As long as the flow line of the ditches is below the driving surface and they are wide and deep enough to carry the capacity of runoff...

Read your replay again, just this time really slowly.

Report back.
 
   / Desperately need to fix driveway #40  
Read your replay again, just this time really slowly.

Report back.
LoL...Exactly what is it you don't understand ??...an open storm water sewer is not so different than a contained system (pipes/catch basins etc...)...it all about gravity and flow line elevations...

If a road bed is significantly higher than the surrounding terrain...if the road, lane etc is crowned there is no need for ditches...
...try cutting a road through the mountains and making the road higher than the mountain...LoL...!
 
 
 
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