Gravel driveway

RocketJSquirrel · Apr 21, 2002

I have spent the last hour reading the archives on gravel driveways. /w3tcompact/icons/hmm.gif
Here's my situation. Yesterday I used my box scraper and tore up my packed but pothole infested gravel drive. The gravel is what we call "road mix", some of you call crusher run. I.e. larger and smaller stones plus fines to pack it all together.
When I finished I had a beautiful looking drive. It looked just like a gravel truck had tailgated off fresh road mix for the entire length. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
However, before it could get packed by driving over it, we got a long overnight rain. Now today we've had to drive out several times and it's like a bowl of mush. /w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif It is so bad we had to call other people who were coming over and caution them to change plans or else get their cars covered with slop.
Should I have rented a small ride-on roller to compact it at the end of my job? Or am I just a victim of bad timing?

Argee · Apr 21, 2002

RJS....You don't say where your from in your bio. Sounds like you have poor drainage. That's what my drive does when we get warm days and the frost is still in it not allowing the water to escape. Once the frost is out of the ground it gets cement hard. I have basically a mixed sand/clay based drive with (Afton Stone) crushed lime stone and binders (road mix) topping, I also put in a crown to assure adequate drainage. The fact that you have potholes (are they recurring?) would denote that you have a base material problem. Did you remove all the topsoil when you did the original grade? What do you have for a base now?

Thomas · Apr 21, 2002

I put at least 4" of crusher run on my driveway and its held together well,also crusher run can be dusty when first working it into place,once in place and pack also a nice rain,the crusher run dust should vanish.

Did you ditch your driveway,also crown your driveway,for that would help.

beenthere · Apr 21, 2002

All other things being okay (not the problems mentioned in the other replies) I find the best packer after grading the driveway is the car or truck. Just drive back and forth until it is completely packed (lots of trips). Beats renting a multi-wheeled packer. As long as the rain didn't wash out the fines leaving 'marbles' on top, then I think you could re-shape it when it dries, and wheel pack it right away.
The rain didn't help you any, but letting the fresh-graded gravel dry out before packing does not work well either. Hope this makes some sense, as this method of grading and then packing has worked well for me the last 35+ years here. Maybe this year I will blacktop the 600+ foot drive.

kbarrett · Apr 21, 2002

RJS.

You might be looking at putting in some base material (packed sand) and then the laying some gravel over that?

I recently had a contractor peel off about 14" of clay from my drive and then lay in some sand in it's place.

I'm hoping they'll be laying down the 8" of road gravel on of this base this week. They told me they would be building in a crown for drainage as well.

chim · Apr 21, 2002

Rocky, before we bit the bullet and paved it, our gravel drive was maintained mostly with a homemade implement constructed from a short pair of wideflange beams. These "H" shaped pieces of steel are arranged like this:

H=H

The "equals sign" represents 3 pairs of 1/2" threaded rod (total 6 pieces) that are double-nutted, and make the assembly quite rigid. This was dragged behind the tractor with two chains, one at each end. The chains were connected to the beams via repair links, and there are 4 different holes for connecting the chains. The higher the chains are connected, the more cut you get. At the lowest set of holes, it does mostly just drags loose material into holes. Fastening one chain shorter than the other allows excess material to be cast to the right or left. The nice thing about this toy was that it didn't dig deep enough to loosen up the good material. My first tractor didn't have a 3PH, so picking it up was manual labor. The second tractor had a 3PH, so one of the first projects was a lift boom. This allowed easy pickup via the center set of allthread.

Most of the driveway wasn't a problem, but there was a section up a hill that I kept dragging back where it belonged after a heavy rain............chim

dmccarty · Apr 22, 2002

RocketJSquirrel,

Just drive on the drive. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif That is what I do at least. I rip the
road with the teeth on the box blade to get the gravel up and then
smooth everything down with the back of the blade. Its mushy until
it gets packed back down.

I'll be doing this again in the next month or so when we get some
rain to get the road a bit wet.

Later...
Dan

RocketJSquirrel · Apr 23, 2002

Thanks for all the replies.
It's now about 3 days since I made the mess. It has been cold and cloudy, not good weather for drying out. The driveway is as bad today as day 1. I never would have imagined that gravel would get that mushy when saturated. It's not the base that's a problem. There are obviously a lot of "fines" in this mix. Today looks like a better day for drying. Hopefully I'll be able to attend to it later this week and try again. This time for sure I'll be driving up and down to pack it. What a mistake it was to not do that before the big rain. I might add some gravel that does not include the fines. If anything interesting happens, I'll post it. Thanks again.

djradz · Apr 23, 2002

I don't think you did anything wrong. Our country road, maintained by the county road commission does the same thing. Until it all gets packed or goes through a couple of wet/dry cycles, I think you will be getting that. Best thing is not to make too much loose each time. Or else, while its' still quite moist, get it packed. We used to use the tractor and cars to pack it down right away after grading, and while it's still damp, so that when it rains, it doesn't get so sloppy. If you can add some crushed stone along the way, you won't have quite so much of a problem. Don't use round stone however, it just moves around like marbles.

RocketJSquirrel · Apr 25, 2002

Here's a follow up report.
A couple of sunny days dried it right up.
I knocked the ruts down with a blade and called it a done job till next time. We had some rain after that and it handled it normally, like any packed gravel road. Next time I'll make sure to pack it before it rains.