early season gravel driveway methods

[nctacoma]

Hi all,

For those of you who have gravel drives and live in snow country, how do you handle the first few snows of the season after the ground freezes? Do you try to pack down the first couple of snows to build a base across the whole drive? Do you plow down to bare ground as much as possible while keeping the plow shoes down to not take up any gravel?

What works best for you? I like to build up a base at first and then let the plow ride on the frozen surface. I am in central Vermont. I am curious as to what others do as well.

 

[MIKE R]

I like to pack a base until 3 inch thick.

 

[dave1949]

I guess it depends on what size gravel you have. I have 1" minus, which is a few pebbles and lots of sand/stone grit basically. If that is frozen, most of it will stay put when plowing. If it isn't, then I prefer use my blower or FEL bucket and intentionally try to keep it an inch or two above the gravel. If I miss, I try to pile it somewhere out of the way but still on the driveway. By spring, I usually have a pile of gritty snow or two, but they can be backdragged with the FEL bucket in spring, I hate raking stones out of the grass.

If you have larger and looser gravel, then I would try to get a packed base the first couple of snows. Drive on it if you can before snow removal to do some packing.

Of course, there will be winters when your packed snow turns to ice, and sanding is the best thing for that. It doesn't take a lot of sand to get traction. I keep a pile of filled sand bags--like they use for flood control--in my garage in case I need some, it isn't frozen.

It also depends on how your driveway is oriented to the sun, or maybe shaded a lot by trees. The sun will continually work on a south slope driveway which can be good or bad, but usually gooder than badder.

 

[whistlepig]

I try to keep it plowed down to the gravel. I tried leaving a base once. It warmed, thawed, and then flash froze into solid ice and stayed solid ice for a couple of weeks.

 

[rekees4300]

I try to keep it plowed down to the gravel. I tried leaving a base once. It warmed, thawed, and then flash froze into solid ice and stayed solid ice for a couple of weeks.

Same here (down to gravel), the best method depends on location's weather. Before the first snow I walk the lane and manually remove any large gravel that might damage the blower. Also have the blower tilted so it rides on the back of the skid plates to keep the cutting edge higher.

 

[jgayman]

I try to keep it plowed down to the gravel. I tried leaving a base once. It warmed, thawed, and then flash froze into solid ice and stayed solid ice for a couple of weeks.

Ditto. I've been snow blowing / plowing my gravel driveway for decades and I always clean it bare enough so the Sun will melt it bare. Like others, any time I left a base of snow it just melted down and formed thick ice that took weeks to melt. Once I had to go buy several hundred pounds of sand to spread on the ice as it was impossible to even walk from the cars to the house..

I keep the pads on my blower just high enough to avoid most of the rocks.

 

[mrmikey]

I just did mine yesterday with 4-5" of soft fluffy snow on top of a loose gravel base. Backblade going forward (curled forward) was tearing up the gravel as I couldn't keep it adjusted up or down close enough. It either dug up the loose gravel or left the snow. Ended up pushing it backwards with the back blade (curled the same way) and it worked great. Probably wouldn't work as good on heavy wet snow but for this it did....Mike

 

[flyingcow]

Set my top link short, so the cutting edge of blower just skims the gravel driveway. Than after a few storms roll the top link back out and keep it cut clean. As pointed out above, any build up for me ends up in being a mess at some point. My blower does not have "shoes".

Right now, we've had a good ole' fashioned cold snap(it's -3 out right now), the gravel is setting up pretty good. Which is good, but I didn't get my stakes put in on the edge of driveway before the frost set in, which is bad. My driveway is 650ft in the middle of a field. Lets see where it ends up by spring.

 

[radioman]

It all depends on the weeather. each season seems to be bit different. Sometimes I have to be careful plowing backwards my woodchip covered path till i get a snow base, but sometimes it doesnt freeze enough till midseason. other times I can just plow straight over it after one snowfall since it been below 30 before the first snowfall since path is frozen. Same goes for the gravel drive, or grass area path to barn or garage. Going slow the first few times will give you the tattletale signs what you can do.

 

[PILOON]

I always pack down a base over my gravel. If first snow is 3" or less I just drive on it a lot and or back grade to pack it down for a base.
The most dreaded first fall is 8-10 ins of heavy wet snow on unfrozen ground as it is hard to leave a couple of inches but you need to get rid of most 'cause you cant drive thru it.
In fact even the tractor compresses it in clumps.
My solution is to blow it away with the blower about 2" high and then compact the remainder for a base.
And LOL, you then hope that there will be no sudden thaw as all you have is clumpy slush and pray that the temp don't take a sudden dive.
Ain't winter fun!