best way to put in new gravel road?

[donn12]

I have a paved driveway but I want to put in a gravel road and parking area off to the side. It will go down hill for about 400 ft (8feet wide or so?) and then end up with hopefully enough space for a few cars.

it will run through the woods. Do I use the box blade and dig down 2-4 inches to contain the gravel? if so do I cut through the tree roots or work around them? or do i just spread the gravel on top of the ground?

Thanks for the help!

 

[KYErik]

The best way would be to remove the top 2 inches of soil and then put down a road building fabric (geotextile sp?)- then pour about 3 inches of gravel- the fabric will keep the mud and gravel from mixing.

 

[donn12]

I might have to think about that. I have no doubt it would make the road better but that just might put it in the "so much work I never get to it" category!

 

[KYDan]

Erik gave you some good advice. The keys are a good base and drainage, drainage, drainage. If you can get it creek gravel makes a good base for a road as it bonds together well and is usually a good bit cheaper than quarried gravel. Dense grad aggregate makes a good road as it contains a lot of lime dust and small rock and bonds well.

 

[Western]

I think it will depend on your soil, rocks/sand, where your at. I personally wouldn't remove any soil unless I had to because of terrain, no point giving the water a place to "sit". Here where I live it is a mix of sand and clay depending on where your standing, so even a "hard core" road is spread on top. I haven't seen the fabric used here much. usually just 4" of #1 road base. After it gets wet (let it dry after the 1st rain before driving on it) it will dry almost like concrete. On my brothers "sandy road, they put in 6" of larger crushed rock for the base, then a topcoat of road base. If I was going to dig anything, it would be ditches , or whatever it took to get water away from your road. Just my:2cents:

 

[RDrancher]

Using geotextile fabric is the ultimate way to build a gravel road, driveway or parking area, but the majority (99%+) of my customers won't go to the expense of putting it in. And most of the soil here is heavy clay and really needs the fabric.

I usually put in a good 4" of compacted 1.5"-minus road base for a new gravel area and use a vibratory compactor on it if the customer has it in their budget. If not, I wheel roll it. A others have mentioned, what's under the road base is very important. The sub-base (dirt) needs good drainage, a crown and compaction as well. If your sub-grade is heavy clay, watch the wheel rolling. Over compaction will cause clay to "pump" and you'll end up with a pothole or rut in the area.

Recycled, crushed concrete makes a good road base since the fines don't "muddy up". You do need to check out the material before you order it though to make sure the supplier makes sure that rebar, plastic rebar chairs, vapor barrier and other junk has been removed. I don't use crushed concrete for a finished driveway but it does make a good base when used under a nice gravel topping.

 

[TripleR]

I am not saying this is the best way to do it, but we have put in driveways on several of our properties as well as several miles of roads and we just put crushed rock down from 1" to 2" depending on the soil and slope. This is pretty much how everyone in my area puts driveways in.

 

[deerefan]

Using geotextile fabric is the ultimate way to build a gravel road, driveway or parking area, but the majority (99%+) of my customers won't go to the expense of putting it in. And most of the soil here is heavy clay and really needs the fabric.

I usually put in a good 4" of compacted 1.5"-minus road base for a new gravel area and use a vibratory compactor on it if the customer has it in their budget. If not, I wheel roll it. A others have mentioned, what's under the road base is very important. The sub-base (dirt) needs good drainage, a crown and compaction as well. If your sub-grade is heavy clay, watch the wheel rolling. Over compaction will cause clay to "pump" and you'll end up with a pothole or rut in the area.

Recycled, crushed concrete makes a good road base since the fines don't "muddy up". You do need to check out the material before you order it though to make sure the supplier makes sure that rebar, plastic rebar chairs, vapor barrier and other junk has been removed. I don't use crushed concrete for a finished driveway but it does make a good base when used under a nice gravel topping.

All good points. One thing I have done and it worked for me...I installed a small parking area using #57 limestone, installing in 1/2" lifts and compacting, up to 4" thick. I dampened the area when done and it has not moved, hard as a rock.

 

[dmccarty]

Unless you have a very good reason to remove the top few inches of soil, I would smooth out the soil as much as you can, put down fabric followed by road base, ABC or whatever it is called in your area.

Our driveway goes about 300 feet to the house, up hill from the road, with curves, and some wide turning areas. At the house we have a turning circle that cars can turn around in, my truck's wheel base is too long, so I need to slightly expand the circle and we have a parking area. From the circle we have more drive way going back another 200 feet or so but part of the area is for turning around and is at least 35ish feet wide.

Point being I put down quite a big of fabric. It works VERY well.

All of this was in woods. The area around the house was in woods before we built. If you try to dig down to remove soil in my area you hit rocks. With the woods you hit lots of roots. Both making putting the fabric down flat a PITA. You want the fabric flat because if you grab it with the FEL or box blade it will pull up out of the gravel. Then you have to rebury the fabric with a shovel. A shovel is NOT tractor seat time.

We need to add more gravel to the driveway on the first 200 feet or so which is heavily slopped. When we built the house I put down just enough gravel for the driveway figuring the construction traffic would mess up the driveway. This did NOT happen. :thumbsup: We had a line item in the house budget to put down more gravel but I can add gravel anytime so we spent the money else where.

Parts of the driveway only have a couple inches of ABC. Traffic on the driveway is not an issue at all. The problem is that since I ended digging down a couple of inches clearing the driveway I created a ditch. It also made putting down the fabric more difficult because of the roots and rocks. But the bigger issue is that the top of the driveway is at grade level in places so water gets on the driveway. This has caused a few problems on the side of the driveway and in one low spot where the water puddles.

If I had NOT removed soil I would not have this problem. Once I decide to add some gravel I will not have the problem either. But that costs money.

To put down fabric and gravel, I would roll out the fabric and anchor with rocks, bricks, 2x4's whatever I had on hand, then when the truck showed up I would have him just dump it. Then I would use the FEL and box blade to spread the gravel. I could have had the truck drive on the fabric and spread the gravel a bit but the soil was wet and I did not want to have any problems. The truck would take about 45 minutes to make a round trip to the quarry and I could easily keep up with him.

When our soil gets wet it can turn to jello. It can rut up quickly once wet. With the fabric the driveway, with the exception of the low area with the culvert that collects some water, has not required a bit of work. Even the area that gets water I have only had to touch up twice in 8-10 years. If I would spend the money for a load of ABC I would not have to do a thing. Which tells you the puddling is not worth the money for a truck load of gravel. :laughing:

Later,
Dan

 

[EddieWalker]

Be careful of advice that does not address your soil and run off conditions. While everyone is tellling you what works where they live, some of the things that you have been told can be very bad if you live in an area different then theirs.

First thing you need to do is identify your soil type and if you have topsoil. The reason for removing topsoil is that it will never compact and over the years, it will always settle on you. It will hold water and it will move on you. This is a big reason that all roads and quite a few house foundations fail.

Next you have to deal with the water. Water and roads do not mix. If water can get under the road material, it will fail. If water can get through the road material, it will fail. You must get water away from the road. The best way to do this is dig a trench on either side of the road. If you can't do that, then you need to build a crown. In most applications, both is done, but remember that if you add dirt to your road, it must be compacted before you add anything on top of it or you will just have mush once it rains.

Road fabric is used to overcome poor soil conditions and not having the right equpment to prepair the road or being in a hurry to get it done fast. Over time, the material will break down, but until that happens, it's a good way to hold the gravel from sinking into wet or soft soil. It never hurts to use it, but it doesn't replace proper road building methods or compacting the soil.

To get water from one side of the road to the other, you need culverts. Bigger is better, but it costs more money and you need more soil above a bigger culvert then a smaller culvert. Rule of thumb is that the thickness of the dirt above the culvert needs to be half the diameter of the culvert. A 12 inch culvert needs 6 inches of dirt above it.

Once the dirt is read, you need a minimum of 4 inches of crushed rock to accomplish anything. More is better, but there is a point of wasting money. In places where it freezes, you need more, depending on the freeze and local conditions. Before buying and spreading the rock, be sure to know how much is needed!!!!

The rock has to have sharp edges and vary in size from very fine dust all the way up to several inches thick. This variation in size is what gives it all the strength and ability to shed water once it's locked together. When done right, it will become a solid mass that will shed water and support heavy loads.

Once is is spread and compacted, NEVER NEVER NEVER go over it with a box blade!!!!!!!! This is the worse thing that you can do to a road. If you find that you have a pot hole or a low spot, add new rock to that area. Break up the surrounding rock, mix it all together and compact it together. The box blade breaks up your compacted gravel, thins it down and causes you to lose rock from your road every time this is done.

Eddie