Slag for Driveway

[MSU_Keith]

I am planning to put in a 650 ft long driveway. I am currently exploring the various materials available in my area. One of the resources am using is:

Edward Levy

I would like to put a good stable base of 21AA crushed concrete, slag or limestone 6"-8" deep. My questions are:

Has anyone used slag and does it give off any smell (dry or wet)? Do the SY coverage/compacted depths/tonnages for the individual 21AA materials on this website seem reasonable?

 

[rdln]

That is the best material reference site I have seen.

I use slag sand under brick pavers/flagstone and have never noticed any smell.

using 3200 lbs/cu yd which is probably measured loose, weight estimates seem good.

 

[Mansker]

Keith: In my opinion slag is much better than lime stone, especially grade 8. The slag on my driveway lasted for years and years, their is no smell but it is heavier than rock so you won't get quite as much per ton.

 

[EddieWalker]

I'm not sure if there are differnt types of slag or not. It's available here from Tyler Pipe as a resdue from casting the pipe. My neighbor has the contract for it. It is a glass type material that doesn't compact or lock together. It is strictly for top coating a solid base as an alternative, or inexpensive opption to nice stone or a solid seal surface.

I personally dislike it. When you walk on it, it sticks to your shoes and you bring it with you wherever you go. It doesn't lock, so it's constantly shifting and moving.

Limestone is the standard road base used here for all road building. 4 inches is usually plenty. I couldn't imagine why you would want to pay for more. Especially on a residential application.

I was told about recycled concrete recently and how well it works for base material. It was explained to me that it locks together better than limestone, and that some limestone can break down faster than other grades.

The key to base rock is the ability to lock together with the fines filling in the gaps during compaction.

Depending you your conditions, you might want to use a synthetic material to help keep your rock from sinking into the ground.

 

[MossRoad]

I have used that company for slag from the steel mills. They have an office in South Bend, IN. When I bought it the price was about $300.00 for a 20 yard load. I had 5 loads delivered. It makes an excellent road base. The pieces vary anywhere from 1.5 inches to 1/4 inch, are very jagged and lock together really well. There is absolutely no smell or runoff. It is a nice gray color. Kind of reminds me of volcanic rock as it has lots of little air pockets in it, but is heavy compared to volcanic rock. I like it better than crushed limestone, as limestone will push around after a while. This stuff stays put.

 

[SPIKER]

we can get it here as byproducts form coal burning elec power plants. it is not used for compaction and does not compact well, it does LOCK together well which is why it won't compact. sticks to keep from filling the voids.


good for roads and parking lots though!

MarkM /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[stevenf]

Eddie I have a friend from Louisianna who told me that most of their rural privately owned roads from where he was raised were made from recycled concrete. He said they'd call the concrete company's around them and they would deliver their truck cleanout piles to their house at about .40 cents a ton. That sounded like a great idea but when I called the company's around me they said the EPA had decided that it was toxic waste or something and they couldn't sell it in Texas. Was I mislead or maybe have you checked on some recently around Tyler I don't know how long this has been the case but my buddy told me it worked great after it rained on it a bit and you drove on it for a while it would turn into what appeared to be a solid surface concrete drive.
Steve

 

[MSU_Keith]

Turns out there is not much difference in price between slag, crushed concrete and limestone. There is a noticable difference in price between delivery methods ~$15/ton delivered with a 25 ton 3 axle but only ~$12 per ton for a double trailer road train that carries 50 tons a trip.

MossRoad: Did Levy spread the load fairly well along the drive with a gate dump or was that price one big pile? Not sure if they could be very accurate spreading with the road train setup.

 

[RobS]

That's pretty good pricing Keith. Our drive is crushed concrete. Large (fist sized) chunks as a base then smaller stuff and fines to top it. We drove on the big chunks for a while during house construction to work it in some. I need to top coat again, it's been two years. I'd like to use limestone as I think it looks better.

Can't run the road trains in Indiana (where Mossroad is). That's a Michigan thing although they didn't use them for our drive. I asked at one point and they were pretty reluctant to use them on a residential project stating they need a lot of room to turn around.

I've used a lot of crushed concrete around my place since moving in. Added a rear drive and RV parking pad, bases for retaining walls and the sub base for our patio. It's great stuff to work with. Packs really well. You will find various bits of rebar here and there /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[MossRoad]

<font color="blue"> Did Levy spread the load fairly well along the drive with a gate dump or was that price one big pile? </font>

I had to use the Tri-axle dump trucks because that's all they offered here. That was OK, because a long trailer would have had no place to turn around on our place and I wouldn't have wanted them blocking the highway to attempt to back into the drive. I also didn't want them to spread it for me... are you nuts? That would have taken away my tractor seat time! But they would have spread it if I wanted them to.

I have also heard that the crushed concrete works well, too.

Some folks here are taking about slag from other sources. The slag we are talking about here is from steel mills, not anything else. It is unique stuff.

 

[cowboydoc]

We have a steel plant a couple miles from me and all we've used for the last five years has been the slag. I've had really good luck with it and like it as much as gravel. There is no smell to it at all and the coverage chart looks reasonable for the projects we've done.

 

[MMM]

<font color="blue">Eddie I have a friend from Louisianna who told me that most of their rural privately owned roads from where he was raised were made from recycled concrete. </font>

Our local parish roads are either limestone/anhydrite aggregate, " iron ore" shale, or pit run gravel (worst of 3). The aggregate holds well on my steep drive, almost turning to concrete after it gets wet and is driven on a few times. Down in south LA, they use clamshells and that STINKS.

 

[Soundguy]

In rural areas.. we convert many dirt roads to slag roads by adding a stabilized limerock base, and then a couple lifts of slag and a road tar. As many have said.. slag won't compact.. but it will consolidate. A good bed won't migrate much if you have it in a decent box... no smell...

Soundguy

 

[Creamer]

MossRoad - do you get the dust in the summer like you do from limestone? I am thinking not.

 

[MossRoad]

MossRoad - do you get the dust in the summer like you do from limestone? I am thinking not.

Nope! Dust free.

 

[Creamer]

How is it for plowing snow off of. Does it lock down so you can just set the blade down and plow like pavement or will you scrape pieces off like a limestone driveway?

 

[MossRoad]

You will scrape. Not nearly as bad as a limestone driveway, but you'll still scrape. I had a slag driveway at my parents' house and I currently have one on our tree farm. I don't plow the tree farm. The parents' house, we had a 7' Fisher plow on a 71 Toyota FJ40. It had shoes that we kept about 1-2" up to avoid moving the slag around. My PT425 Power Trac tractor has wheels on the back of the plow, so when I need to plow grass or dirt areas, I just tip it back an inch and off I go.

My dad got a snow blower after I got married and moved out. He shot a piece of slag through one of his double pane picture windows, so there you go! :laughing:

 

[Gunny]

I had some steel slag laid down as a top layer over an established gravel lane down at the farm. It had a slight odor when first dumped, but that didn't last long and it looked really good.

The problem I had with it was that it wouldn't say put. As people drove over it, the tires kinda squished it out to the sides, before long the tire tracks were just about down to where they were before laying the slag with a loose hump in the middle and on both sides. Where you had to turn right into the drive it was much more pronounced, all the slag wound up on the left side of the lane. Since it's a private dead end lane, it doesn't get much traffic.

Our county used slag on some county roads and had pretty much the same problems, now they use gravel.

I wound up scraping up as much as I could and pushed it up around the garage area where it got very little traffic over it other than straight in and out of the garage, then had regular limestone (with a lot of dust) spread on the lane. That's pretty much set up like a concrete driveway now and it stays put.

Another thing I didn't care for was that while it was cheaper per ton than the gravel, it seemed that 10 tons of slag didn't cover as much area as 10 tons of gravel. Maybe the slag is heavier than gravel or maybe the scale guy messed up, but I wasn't impressed with the slag.

 

[Patrickdozer]

I used some about 15 years ago, was about 2-3 inches in size which was fine because I needed it for a tire scrubber on my Newly constructed driveway.

I am going to need material for driveway where I live now in the coming months, so I am looking at options.

There is a place called Harsco materials which is a national company I believe that handles slag from steel mills. I will try to post there advertisement that they have for my area. They have a website and there is a website for national slag institute below it.

Prices I have seen are 4.95 a ton for modified which would be 2A or[ 57 stone nationally I believe]. This is about half of the price for crushed stone.
I had gotten quote for $14 a ton delivered for crushed stone from local quarry, and I believe it was $9 or a little more per ton without hauling.

I should be able to save money by paying a local dump truck driver to haul material and possibly get there discount for material as most places will give independents a lower price per ton for material if they deal with them regularly.

You may have a third option which would be road millings. Which would be asphalt millings and they make an excellent road base. Some places will give away free and others will charge trucking or at least a lower rate per ton verses stone. If you have road work going on in your area you may be able to get a couple loads dropped off as this will save trucking company money not having to haul further away depending on where material is going.

 

[MossRoad]

I had some steel slag laid down as a top layer over an established gravel lane down at the farm. It had a slight odor when first dumped, but that didn't last long and it looked really good.

The problem I had with it was that it wouldn't say put. As people drove over it, the tires kinda squished it out to the sides, before long the tire tracks were just about down to where they were before laying the slag with a loose hump in the middle and on both sides. Where you had to turn right into the drive it was much more pronounced, all the slag wound up on the left side of the lane. Since it's a private dead end lane, it doesn't get much traffic.

Our county used slag on some county roads and had pretty much the same problems, now they use gravel.

I wound up scraping up as much as I could and pushed it up around the garage area where it got very little traffic over it other than straight in and out of the garage, then had regular limestone (with a lot of dust) spread on the lane. That's pretty much set up like a concrete driveway now and it stays put.

Another thing I didn't care for was that while it was cheaper per ton than the gravel, it seemed that 10 tons of slag didn't cover as much area as 10 tons of gravel. Maybe the slag is heavier than gravel or maybe the scale guy messed up, but I wasn't impressed with the slag.

Was it from a steel mill?