Gravel Driveway using Grid products to reduce washout

[EddieWalker]

Interesting, it was professionally laid and compacted and was plenty thick to start. That being said I've box bladed it 100 times since then. It did erode first before my first box blading.

I wonder if it makes sense to put down some gravel fines to help lock the loose gravel at this point.

How much rock is left on your road? Is it just a covering? I don't think you can add fines to it and get them to mix with what you already have. I think it's time to start buying road base rock and building the road back up so it's thick enough to lock together and stop box blading it.

Once the rock locks together, it will shed water. It will become so solid that you cannot break it apart with just a shovel. On my road, I've used my backhoe to remove it and it comes up in sections like concrete. It's nowhere near as solid as concrete, but it's too solid to break apart with just a shovel.

Another option to road base rock is crushed concrete. Here, it's harder and lasts longer. Limestone is the type of rock that we have in my area, and it's fairly soft, so it wears out over time. I got 20 years out of my driveway with limestone before I started adding crushed concrete. The big negative to crushed concrete is the junk you find in it. Sometimes small pieces of rebar, but mostly it's bits of plastic in a variety of colors. I just pick it up after it's spread, which seems to take several weeks to find all of it.

 

[2manyrocks]

Using one of your photos to illustrate, one of your basic problems is your road bed has become a stream bed during rainfall because it's trapping the flow of water due to being the lowest point. At the top of the grade, the road bed looks essentially level. Coming down the hill, the tire track areas look lower than the center and sides. As a consequence, water is trapped on your road surface causing it to wash instead of flowing over into a ditch to drain on the side of your road.

The easiest and most certain way of determining your actual water flow is to get an umbrella and walk the road during a good rainfall to see how the water is actually flowing. Make some pictures to show yourself where you need to correct the grade.

This is a link to a much better description of the problem at the Center for Dirt and Gravel Road Studies. https://dirtandgravel.psu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/TB_Raising_Road_Profile.pdf They have other good technical bulletins that have been useful to me, and I hope they are useful to you.

 

[jhendric]

Thanks again for all the replies. It sounds like building up and crowing is the right course of action. To 2manyrocks, what you described is my problem, I have been out there in the heavy rain and just as you describe the tire track area on the right becomes a stream.

 

[2manyrocks]

It would help your situation if you could drag the gravel that has built up on either side of your road back onto your road surface to fill in the ruts and to reduce the side berms that have accumulated. My initial thought is this would be easier to do with a dirt blade or landscape rake than a box blade.*

When you have more gravel delivered, there are ways for the gravel truck to block off the dump so you could have them dump more on one side to create a pitch from side to side instead of dumping equal amounts of fill over the entire road bed or block the dump so you are getting more fill only in the center if you want to try to crown your road from the center.
From there, you at least need to adjust your 3pt to create more pitch if you are only going to box blade your road. I've never really searched TBN to see if there are other methods of creating a pitch with a box blade. There might be a better way?

*I've never done this, but I suspect you could a bolt a section of motor grader blade at an angle to the front of your box blade to move material from the sides of your road back onto your road surface. But if you could find a dirt blade for cheap, then that might be handy to have.

 

[ruffdog]

IMO, that would be a waste of money at this time. Fixing the water/drainage issues should be your first priority. in the first picture, there appears to be little to no drainage away from the graveled area.

Beautiful property. Like others, I'd suggest more crown to your road and doing what you can all along the slope to divert it off the road. You don't want it to run a long way downhill on your road because it will washout.

Thanks again for all the replies. It sounds like building up and crowing is the right course of action. To 2manyrocks, what you described is my problem, I have been out there in the heavy rain and just as you describe the tire track area on the right becomes a stream.

^^^I agree. My crowned drive is probably 8" above surrounding soil so water doesn't stay on it for long. Very nice land, must be beautiful during the year.