I have decided to rid myself of the dust

Looking4new · Apr 20, 2016

I am not no expert on this, but I have been hauling the oil for 'chip seal' for the past 20 years or so. It is what I do for a living in the summer. Now my experience has all been on roads, but I do understand that c/s is way cheaper than hot mix. For either you MUST have a good base. C/S stands up very well to heavy loads as long as you do NOT go twisting and turning your heavily laden truck tires in one spot.

I'm not trying to 'sell' you on chip seal. I don't have a dog in this race, but I would take a serious look at c/s or surface treatment is what they call it up here. Just for the difference in money it is worth a look.

Tomtint · Apr 20, 2016

Looking4new said:
I am not no expert on this, but I have been hauling the oil for 'chip seal' for the past 20 years or so. It is what I do for a living in the summer. Now my experience has all been on roads, but I do understand that c/s is way cheaper than hot mix. For either you MUST have a good base. C/S stands up very well to heavy loads as long as you do NOT go twisting and turning your heavily laden truck tires in one spot.

I'm not trying to 'sell' you on chip seal. I don't have a dog in this race, but I would take a serious look at c/s or surface treatment is what they call it up here. Just for the difference in money it is worth a look.

Somewhere back about 2009-2010 our town has a CS company come in and cover a local ( heavily traveled ) road here. I remember the timeline because I drove past them via the duty cop directing traffic by the worksite, and had all the chips fly up under my truck from the tires. .. It got all I my breaks and squealed like crazy until I brought it to the garage to clean the chunks out. .. Stuff made a mess. Anyway, that product only lasted about 3 years before it started to pot hole and unravel. The town ended up tearing it out and paving the road. I have no idea why it did not hold up. Maybe the prep or road salt / cc that they use here killed it ?

Ford850 · Apr 20, 2016

Most twp roads in my area are CS every couple years or so. Over the years that adds up to a thick layer of tar/chip/tar/chip...
I never see drives being done that way though. It seems a driveway would hold up well with CS, and be much less expensive even if it was redone every few years.

GLyford · Apr 20, 2016

If the town puts CS over a potholed road without fixing the base, it is just cosmetic...but sometimes they are just doing that to get those 3 years you talked about until the have the revenues/grants/whatever to fix it right.

Other times, you will have a road that is structurally mostly good but the older hot mix is cracking, so they will run CS over it before it gets bad to reseal it. My current street was crack-sealed one year, but a bunch of new cracks opened up so a couple years later they chipsealed it (they used something more like crusher fines than the peastone sized stuff I saw used everywhere growing up)...and it has held up well for a handful of years now.

So different products, different behaviors, different goals. If you are comfortable with the durability of your base, it sounds like chipseal might work for you.

I know my hotmix driveway is dying (cracks when we moved in are now networks of cracks) and the base has always been iffy (wheel ruts where we park and a rock that pumps up out of the pavement in the winter/spring and settles again every summer) so I'm not super happy with it...but even in its current state I'm not tracking dust and mud in the house, so there is that. At least mine is shorter, maybe 40'.

All I even see advertised around me are the hotmix guys, I'm not sure if any of them even do chipseal, but I haven't called any to ask, either. I am curious to see what you can find, what you decide, and how this turns out.

KYErik · Apr 20, 2016

Drainage/ deep enough ditches and a water shedding crown are really important to chipseal roads. If the road base stays wet and mushy, the surface will flex and crack and it will fail in short order.

bdog · Apr 20, 2016

4570Man said:
An area 10x1000 poured 4" thick will require a minimum of 123 yards of concrete. He likely wants a larger area at the end for parking. Around here 10k won't buy that much concrete.

I was figuring 3.5" thick - 1 2x4 formed. My driveway is about 500' and is 3.5" thick. I drive loaded semi's and dump trucks on it and it holds as long as I stay away from edges.

lilranch2001 · Apr 20, 2016

I would never pour a 4" concrete slab of any kind
I have seen way to many fail......

CurlyDave · Apr 20, 2016

Tomtint said:
So I have decided paving my 1000 feet of driveway is going to happen this summer. I'm done with the dust and dirt. I have a very well compacted base, maybe need 1 more load of processed asphalt spread through out the length. I plan to do it in stages. First being a 2" binder course this year, then top it next year. .. What would you expect to spend on a 10ft X 1000 driveway base coat in your areas.

For about $2000 (parts and labor) I had a guy I hired install a sprinkler system that waters my 700' driveway. There are 5 zones and I run then one after the other 4 times a day in the middle of summer, less in the spring and fall. We no longer have any dust and the system is on its third year. The plastic pipe is laid on top of the ground, and there are grey pvc risers at about 30' intervals on one side of the drive. A wrap of reflective tape near the top and they do double duty as road markers also.

Just an alternative from a redneck country engineer.

5030 · Apr 20, 2016

I'm with you Dave... I can buy a boatload of stone for the rest of my days for what it cost for asphalt. I have a 1000 foot horseshoe drive by the house and around the barn, I spread some CaCl every spring and it keeps the dust down all simmer.