early season gravel driveway methods

[smalltown]

Nhbotanut I liked your idea. I checked Home Depot only see 4" HDPE pipe not sure of the wall thickness. Is that something I can get local?

 

[leveled]

I got a 6' piece of HDPE pipe with a wall thickness of 1\2". ran it thru the table saw and then hammered it onto the plow's cutting blade. Works great! No more digging up the driveway or lawn. Have had no problems plowing MIL's paved driveway either.

After 2 seasons, very little wear.

How do you keep it on

 

[spruce Deere]

I have not tried the pipe trick, but Iron pipe works too, Even less wear I bet.....

I have left a little snow floor before.... Big sheet of ice later after a warm spell and back to cold.

I set my shoes on my rear-blade pretty low when pointed 'forward' to get a close shave.... Spin'it around for a not such a close cut when pushing in reverse.

My drive is a big horse shoe with a large draw on one side. I plow 95% of snow off into the draw, across part of the lawn. I loose very little grave from drive in lawn and have no piles to deal with.

 

[NHbotanut]

I do not weld, nor do I have any friends that do. After reading about the iron pipe trick, I tried using the gray Sched 40 pipe from Home Depot. It worked great until the pipe shattered from the cold. In researching plastics that can withstand the cold, I found HDPE can go down to -275 degrees. This is the same stuff the white plastic cutting boards are made of.

I got mine from Graingers. I want to say it was something like $50-$60 for the 6' section. This worked so good, that I got a second piece and did the same thing to the cutting edge on my rear snowblower.

 

[NHbotanut]

I want to say the pipe I got was 1 1/2 OD. I ran it thru the table saw twice to cut a slot.
Then I had to hammer it on to the cutting edge with a 5 lb hammer. It sits on the cutting edge so tight, I have been able to back drag when I get close to the garage.
I will see if I can get some pics for you when I dig out the plow from storage.

 

[leveled]

Sorry I was thinking that you were using this on a buckets cutting edge. I can see why it would work really well on a plow blade.

 

[pacerron]

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.

We find driving and packing until there is no more ground clearance under the vehicles to be best, at least with 4WD vehicles. Trying to grade it off usually just makes it slick and is a waste of time and fuel. Snowdrifts are better handled with the FEL.

 

[Jay4200]

When the walk-behind blower finally gives up the ghost, I will replace it with a snow blower for the tractor.

When that time finally comes, you are going to hate yourself for not getting a 3pt blower sooner.

JayC

 

[ilander]

We have roughly a 1/4 mile to do, using a 3 pt blower. My opinion is that gravel is too expensive to blow it off the road. We allow a snow/ice pack of about 2 inches, then cut down to that thereafter.

Also we quit blading the road about mid summer. The idea is to let the lose gravel to pack into the road surface during the wet season. This really minimizes what gets thrown off the road.

 

[smalltown]

I have the same experience as whistlepig and jgayman. My drive way is gravel and so far (past seasons) I have tried to leave a base by driving over the small snow amounts to help build up a base. At some point my driveway and area in front of my doors becomes a skating rink and I need to sand. This year I am trying a rear blade to see how much I can scrape down. Judging by the forecast this week I might be scraping real soon