Packing/sealing a gravel road after 'resurfacing' / land plane

[jyoutz]

It is Often overlooked by people, but there is a good reason ditches and road side shoulders, as well as pond banks are grassed, and it's not for appearances. You need vegetation to hold the soils in place against water. There are a lot of people who seem to obsess about keeping grass out of the center of a gravel driveway? Why, as long as it doesn't build up enough that you rub in the center, that grass is holding stuff in place. (I get the guys dealing with snow not wanting it).

I just mow the road if grass in the center gets too high.

 

[jyoutz]

So, a frequent source of erosion is the edges of the travel way, ie shoulder and/or front slope of a swale/ditch. Those areas really do need to be stabalized, generally with grass, but there are also natural jute mats, and other things. Waters erosion ability is based on volume (gpm) and speed (fps). You can sometimes control volume, by retaining and slowly releasing/perking, but generally you can only really control speed, using ditch blocks, dissipators, as well as shape of ditches. A Long ditch, at a steady fall will wash, and soon take the front slope/shoulder and eventually the driving surface. You can break those long straight runs up, either by allowing multiple outfall locations, or ditch blocks, or even the general shape (straight let's it flow faster, and erode more).

Another source of erosion, no offense, is guys not leaving stuff alone. Once you have an established drive, Stop grading it, unless it really needs it. Every time you grade it, you loose moisture (need to keep it all together), you break up aggregates, you segregate aggregates, you loose compaction, and you loose fines needed to bond it all together. If you are regarding even 1/month, you really need to solve another problem.

I’m wondering if the OP’s gravel movement issues are due to having uniformly sized gravel with no fines mixed in? It’s impossible to keep that kind of gravel in place.

 

[oosik]

There is a rancher about 40 miles south of me. Six years ago he had his 200 foot driveway "resurfaced" with screened, washed, round river rock. About 1" to 1 1/2" inches in size. It was about a twelve inch thick layer. I was going to visit him three years ago. Went down on my BMW cycle. Took one look - no way was I going to get mired down in that mess. Parked at the county road and hoofed it in the 200 feet.

I see this year - as I make my normal loop down south - he has the entire surface redone - again. Fines have been added and the driveway is now hard as concrete.

Live and learn. Of course - this could have been his plan all along. I highly doubt that.

 

[paulsharvey]

I’m wondering if the OP’s gravel movement issues are due to having uniformly sized gravel with no fines mixed in? It’s impossible to keep that kind of gravel in place.

It Can work, but there are some wrong approaches. If you have a washed rock type material, and it gets slowly pushed into the natural soils, that will eventually stabalize. It's not ideal, but there is a trend of people wanting to use washed rock, And fight it getting pushed into the native soils (loosing your pretty bought rock). Stuff like placing a fabric, and then a washed rock... Thats never going to turn into a single cohesive base material. A typical construction entrance detail, is going to be like 3.5" crushed concrete, (for multiple reasons, to clean tires, to hold up heavy trucks, ect), and it eventually gets forced into the native soils, and becomes very stabile; but passenger vehicles tend to just push it around.

Washed rock is more expensive too (atleast locally, and it would be hard to explain a case that it wouldn't be?). It has its places, and works well in wet areas, that ground water can't be dealt with, it can bridge that, it also doesn't compact, so, it's already compacted, so wet pipe back fills, ect. As a general driveway material, look at what your local city/county/state department of transportation or public works specs for road base, and about 50% of the typical road base will work as a very good driveway.

Most threads are with people wanting a 1 and done solution, and that is great; however, generally, there are worse things than being in a load or 3 of material every 5 years to deal with trouble areas.

 

[paulsharvey]

So, our OP is in roughly Lexington Kentucky area. Attached might be helpful when our OP talks to material/trucking guys, for what the local names are. Kentucky DOT refers to it as CSB (crushed stone base) and DGA (dense aggerate base). Also attached are pictures, and brief material descriptions of the two materials from local rock mine, that probably helps picture the difference between base rock and "gravel"

 

[paulsharvey]

Here are two sets of two pictures each, of the material you don't want, from the same mine

 

[Williy]

The drive ways is the city were taxed if cement so what
we did was fill the drive way with crushed rock and then
mixed sand and cement and filled the drive way and watered it down this way you didn't see the cement
so you didn't get the big tax for a cement drive way

willy

 

[IndyIan]

I re-ditched and re-crowned most of our hilly 1/4 mile driveway this fall. I finally crowned it more than I would think you need, and now the water gets off fast and not run down the gravel at all.

Didn't get around to adding any more material as I am debating what to use. My driveway is mostly just pit run, packed flat by lots of big trucks during spring construction, with rocks up to football size and lots of fist sized ones, so disturbing that too much results in lots of picking stones off, filling some football sized holes...

The municipality uses grade A gravel, which 3/4" crushed with fines down to sand, and then apply calcium chloride, and their gravel roads can be smooth and hard as pavement. But Calcium Chloride bagged is ~$1300-1500/ton and I need a couple tons to do it properly. And it needs to be redone in a few years? And I need another $3-4k in grade A gravel to get a smooth base to salt.

THe other option that packs well is 1.5"-2.5" crushed stone, especially when it gets some fines mixed in and locking it up. That is even more than grade A gravel, but should never wash away, so its the most permanent.

The box blade is handy as I can ditch and it pretty much keep the dirt and gravel sperate in the box, so I can get a good pile of dirt, lift the box straight up and push the gravel to the middle, then scoop the dirt with the FEL and huck it down the other side of the driveway.

 

[jyoutz]

I re-ditched and re-crowned most of our hilly 1/4 mile driveway this fall. I finally crowned it more than I would think you need, and now the water gets off fast and not run down the gravel at all.

Didn't get around to adding any more material as I am debating what to use. My driveway is mostly just pit run, packed flat by lots of big trucks during spring construction, with rocks up to football size and lots of fist sized ones, so disturbing that too much results in lots of picking stones off, filling some football sized holes...

The municipality uses grade A gravel, which 3/4" crushed with fines down to sand, and then apply calcium chloride, and their gravel roads can be smooth and hard as pavement. But Calcium Chloride bagged is ~$1300-1500/ton and I need a couple tons to do it properly. And it needs to be redone in a few years? And I need another $3-4k in grade A gravel to get a smooth base to salt.

THe other option that packs well is 1.5"-2.5" crushed stone, especially when it gets some fines mixed in and locking it up. That is even more than grade A gravel, but should never wash away, so its the most permanent.

See if you can order some variable sized gravel with crusher fines mixed in. And I wouldn’t disturb your existing road bed; just add a new layer and pack and grade that.

 

[rScotty]

There is a rancher about 40 miles south of me. Six years ago he had his 200 foot driveway "resurfaced" with screened, washed, round river rock. About 1" to 1 1/2" inches in size. It was about a twelve inch thick layer. I was going to visit him three years ago. Went down on my BMW cycle. Took one look - no way was I going to get mired down in that mess. Parked at the county road and hoofed it in the 200 feet.

I see this year - as I make my normal loop down south - he has the entire surface redone - again. Fines have been added and the driveway is now hard as concrete.

Live and learn. Of course - this could have been his plan all along. I highly doubt that.

Nice. Here's an article about the inventer of that process. John McAdam. His compaction process was innovative enough to earn him a knighthood. Before him, all-weather roads were made of fitted blocks. He figured out how to use small stones, fines for filler, and compaction.

MACADAM – Advent of the macadam - New England Sealcoating

John Loudon McAdam (1756–1836) John McAdam John Loudon McAdam was born in Ayr, Scotland in 1756. In 1787 he became a trustee of the Ayrshire Turnpike in the Scottish Lowlands and during the next seven years this hobby became an obsession. He moved to Bristol, England in 1802 and became a...

www.newenglandsealcoating.com