Gravel driveway repair tips sought

[CoyPatton]

You all ready have a lot of organic material in the drive. It becomes embedded as time goes by. In order to fix this I think you need to break up the base that is there at least down to the bottom of the ruts. Once that is done and and rough graded then add the new gravel grading to finish. I have to do the same on my place this summer. I am going to rent a big roller to get it finished.

If you are buy any wild chance looking at a new implement, consider a land plane with scarifiers. Use the scarifiers to break up the road base anywhere there are ruts. Failure to break up around the ruts means your new gravel will soon be beat out and the ruts are back.
While a standard rear blade has great uses like pulling gravel out of your ditches, the land plane is ideal for maintaining a smooth surface. Also pull that grave back up as soon as possible after it is push into the ditch, even if you move it to a pile for later redistributing.

You can find land plane usage videos on youTube to see the effect you can get.

 

[pgeorge33]

Organic material is not your friend. It will freeze and heave during the winter making it almost impossible to plow without pushing some of the gravel off. If the organic stuff was not removed completely before the first gravel was added, and you don't want to bring in an excavator to remove it now, just add some gravel and be prepared to make repairs every few years. I have a 300' driveway in central NH and even though I removed the organic stuff, I still have to add gravel about every 5-7 years... It doesn't rut, but the bigger rocks in the base gravel (3" minus) start popping up due to the freeze cycles.