How do you guys compact your gravel driveway?

[Robert_in_NY]

If possible I try to keep every vehicle off the drive till a good soaking rain and it dries out. After that it is pretty hard to hurt the driveway. If I can't do that I have used the F-250 and just drive back and forth over it moving a little each time and allowing the tires to compact the drive. I have also used the excavator on narrow drives. I use the blade for spreading the gravel on my farm driveways then just go back and forth compacting the area. I am in the process of building up the drive behind my house. There is a lot of water here so I am using bank run gravel with big stones and putting it down 8-12" thick. Just working on short sections as I have time as I am digging the gravel on the farm. I am going to run a tile along the side of this driveway in the spring to help with the water as well but there is no hurry on it. The first section I did this summer and it packed great with the excavator, did the second section late fall and that packed great as well using the excavator. I have driven my tractors, the harvestor and the trucks over the driveway and never have had any issues even with as thick as I am building it.

 

[Red Horse]

use a full bucket of dirt and back drag with the bucket almost level. can also use down pressure if you can keep things heading in the right direction.

Good advice-works well-also best way to level if you don't have a box blade.

As for a roller, if you are going to rent one, go for a vibratory roller. i'm lucky as a buddy has a small Ingersol Rand with about a 50" front drum and rubber tires in rear. Having spent my time in my "youth" doing driveways with a small one ton non-vibe, nothing like a vibe

 

[EddieWalker]

Compact and smooth are two different things with gravel roads and you have to be careful on what others are telling you.

Depending on conditions, quality of the gravel and the drainage of the road, you need a MINIMUM of 4 inches of crushed rock. It has to be crushed because the different sizes will interlock and form a solid surface that will shed water and support the load of vehicle traffic. When you have less then 4 inches, you get pot holes. The rock can no longer remain intact and it starts to come apart. The WORSE thing you can do is drag a good, solid road to fix a pot hole. All this does is weaken the rest of the road. NEVER tear up what is working to try and fix what has failed. When you have a pot hole or a low area, buy more rock. Loosen just that area and add road base rock, then compact it.

If you do not have enough rock already, nothing you can do will accomplish anything. You have to have enough rock for it to work.

To compact it, you will need it to be at a certain moisture content. Water is very important to get it to lock together. Then you need weight and movement. Ideally a vigratory drum roller, but heavey tires work good to. Not if it's dry, that wont accomplish anything. I've found that the best way for me is to spread the rock, then after it rains, drive over it until it packs together and gets hard. Once it dries out, it is very solid.

A well compacted gravel road will hold together in such a way that if you try to take it apart, it will come up in large chunks.

Water is always the biggest enemy of any road or building. You absolutly have to have it runing away from your road. I like wide, shallow trenches on either side. If you can only get it to go one way, then put in plenty of culverts. They are cheap in the long run and you will never regret doing it right.

Eddie

 

[KYDan]

Not to belabor the point, but a good base and excellent drainage are critical. I have a 1,000+' drive. I used creek rock with a lot of sand and small gravel for the base, approximately 12" and then had it graded and rolled with a commercial vibrating roller. Topped it with 3-4" of traffic bound dense grade aggregate and then rolled it with the compacting roller again. That was 15 years ago. All that I do now is add a little dense grade and then roll it with a 6'6" 36" diameter roller filled with waste anti-freeze about once a year. Unless we have a gully washer of a rain storm that's it.

 

[vtsnowedin]

Different parts of the country have different access to various road building materials. Some areas have no or very few natural deposits of clean stony gravel which is an excellent material and even better if it has been run through a crusher. This breaks down all the over sized cobbles into sharp faced pieces that lock together like a puzzle that resist rutting and displacement by heavy wheel loads. Lots of other deposits have much to much silt and clay mixed in and turn to mud when wet.
Specs usually call for the silt (passing a no 200 screen) portion of the sand to be less then 12% of the sand portion which should be no more then 55% of the mix. Crushed rock costs more to blast out and crush but if there is no good source of gravel it is your best bet.
A sub grade shaped to drain and compacted with any roots ,stumps ,topsoil or clay pockets removed and replaced with good fill should be topped with a uniform layer of clean well graded material, gravel ,crushed gravel or crushed rock. The layer should be as thick as you can afford.
Interstates in the north frost zone have usually four feet of clean material place on it's sub-grade. two foot thick layers of clean sand followed by a foot of clean bank run gravel and a foot of clean crushed gravel topped by eight inches of Hot Bituminous pavement placed in three layers or more.
Driveways of course are much thinner but the fuel truck doesn't weigh any less when it pulls off the highway onto your drive so I would go with eight inches to a foot of gravel or crushed rock and an eight inch layer of sand underneath the gravel would be better.
As to compaction a heavy load on rubber tires works well and sense everybody here has a tractor you might as well use it. Wait for a rain so the gravel has the right amount of moisture in it to compact easily then drive your fully ballasted tractor covering every bit of ground with repeated passes of the rear wheels. When your R1s stop leaving lug grooves your done. This will take time and is boring but it is the cheapest way.
I've shaken hundreds of gravel and stone samples over the years checking to see if they met the spec.
Good luck with your project.

 

[jenkinsph]

i use a vibratory roller on some jobs but on small jobs I use a 12 yd dump fully loaded to pack the drives base. I spread the base course with a boxblade or landplane between the deliveries and the trucks will pack down the surface before dumping and adding more material. This way everything gets packed in thin layers while building up the base, cheap and it works for me.

 

[crazyal]

Usually cars is enough to compact the road but if I'm looking for a reason to take the backhoe for a ride I have a couple of different rocks the size of a large ATV that I'll pick up with the fel and go for a ride. I usually will pick out one that'll make the front tires squat just a little.

 

[MHarryE]

Vibratories are good for new construction but the drum is solis and bridges soft spots resulting in potholes. Rubber tired rollers teamed with graders make good teams in most of the Midwest areas with lots of gravel roads, but that is major size and $$$. The best equivalent is to grade (box blade, rear blade, grading scraper) when the gravel is damp (you can do a Proctor test to determine the correct moisture content but another thing 99.9% of the homeowners aren't set up to do) and then pack it with a rubber tired vehicle. I use my pickup. Works best if I put a big round bale in ack but that is an option most homeowners don't have. The rollers that look like a tub run about 2 tons per tire for compacting gravel.

 

[handymansvs]

Hello,

I agree with the information and advise from Eddie Walker on the need to have the correct moisture content for the rock. I also agree with his thoughts on smoothing up a driveway with potholes. Without the addition of more rock in the potholes you will just ruin the good portions of your driveway.

The one thing I did not see mentioned was the use of Filter Fabric such as Typar. Here in the Pacific Northwest, filter fabric is widely used. Especially if you have wet and muddy areas. It allows moisture to escape, but does not allow undesirable material to enter and mix with your rock.

Respectfully,
Benjamin J. "Joe" Browning
Handymansvs

 

[vtsnowedin]

Hello,

I agree with the information and advise from Eddie Walker on the need to have the correct moisture content for the rock. I also agree with his thoughts on smoothing up a driveway with potholes. Without the addition of more rock in the potholes you will just ruin the good portions of your driveway.

The one thing I did not see mentioned was the use of Filter Fabric such as Typar. Here in the Pacific Northwest, filter fabric is widely used. Especially if you have wet and muddy areas. It allows moisture to escape, but does not allow undesirable material to enter and mix with your rock.

Respectfully,
Benjamin J. "Joe" Browning
Handymansvs

While the geotextiles do work they are usually quite expensive. Often the cost is equal to an eight inch sand layer complete in place and in most cases the sand will do the same job as the fabric and just as well. Where they shine is over a wet organic soil that is too deep or extensive to remove and replace. Careful installation of both the fabric and the base is required and a four inch sand cushion gives a smooth surface to spread the fabric out on.
Also respectfully:
Vtsnowedin