Gravel Driveway Maintenance

[pauly]

Looking for some thought regarding maintenance on a gravel driveway that has a fairly steep hill in one area. First a little background.
The drive is a quarter mile long. I recently had 3 quad loads of recycled asphalt mix put down and rolled/compacted. The drive is not crowned to the center and in some areas is lower than the surrounding fields. It has a straight approach than a sweeping right up hill about 150 yards long to a sweep left and then leveling off. The up hill section is cut into the side of the hill. The problem we have is in the spring with a quick snow melt off or during the summer during a heavy rain we get runoff that causes gullies to form in the down hill sections of the drive.
I realize that building up the drive so it is higher than the surrounding area would be good, but that's not practical. Putting a slight crown on the drive would help but then I would have issues with snow removal in the winter. I use a blower/rear blade combination for snow removal. I could try cutting a trough next to the drive with the rear blade so the water would have a place to runoff. Is there anything I can put on that would help keep more of the base material from running off? Like tramp oil, cement mix?
I currently maintain the drive with a home made drag harrow that works fairly well. I was looking at the Land Pride GS15 grading scraper. Would this be a good choice? Realize I do not have a roller to compact the drive.

Thanks in advance.
Paul

 

[Grouse Feathers]

Paul

I have the same problem including the driveway being below grade. Where our driveway comes down a hill we have crushed limestone with the fines included (locally called stonemix) with heavy rains it would erode into gullies. Usually driving over the gullies for a week or two would level them out until the next downpour. Eventually we would need more stonemix and have it compacted with a road roller. This year I started grading it myself with a grading scraper and a rear blade. I tilt the rear blade as far as possible by adjusting the three point hitch and make two passes in each direction to crown the driveway. I then grade with the grading scrapper. The crown has greatly reduced the erosion and forming of gullies. I had to grade my neighbor's hill without a crown three times this summer and was just starting to see a little erosion on my hill from the last downpour. I may be able to further reduce the erosion by digging some shallow ditches to channel off the runoff near the top of the hill.

I also use a snowblower to clear the driveway, but have not used it since crowning the driveway. I don't believe the crown will be enough to cause a problem with the snowblower. I normally start out with the blower shoes all the way down to build a base on the driveway. I also use the rear blade to plow the snow in places if I start picking up gravel with the blower. The last two winters, before I had the tractor, we went into the winters with potholes and ruts in the driveway. After a base of snow was built up, the driveway was always smoother in winter than any other time.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

Cloth, ditches and large base rock all come to mind.

 

[ShaunRH]

Not an expert here, but the only way you can make water do what you want it to is to give it a more attractive target. You can either raise the road or dig ditches and pump it out if the road is a low spot in a low spot.

On the hill, sounds like you need ditches as well with outflow drains away from the road. You can try something like waddles and plastic sheeting to make a drain but those have to be replenished/maintained annually.

All of this really depends on the slopes you have, the distances you a running on your switchbacks, and how much budget you have to fix the issue. If you can't afford an engineer, find a neighbor that has resolved the problem and see what they did.

My father would probably advise just buying what you can afford every year in heavy gravel materials and putting it in the 'low spot' and erosion ditches so eventually the road builds up pretty high and a gravel drain naturally builds. That's probably the cheapest but slowest solution.

 

[Diydave]

Not being able to see the problem, here is my general approach to no budget roads we have on the farm: Water wants to go straight down hill, the absolute shortest distance to get down the hill. What I generally do is to build what we usedta call thank-you ma'am's in the road, to lead the water off to the low side , in such a way as to have the erosion potential limited to a couple of spots. After it is off the road, the road lasts longer. These thank-you-ma'am's also keep speed down, but are hard as hell to plow snow off, without digging dirt up. Just assume you are gonna have to put some material into it, now and then...

 

[olthumpa]

some light reading:
Water Bar Basics

http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5322689.pdf

 

[Corney]

Post pictures of your areas of concern.

Remember water is lazy and will take the easiest route so direct it where you want it. Put controls in place to deal with it there to prevent erosion and ponding.

Wolfman and the others offered great suggestions, problem is every where refers to things in a different way. I have been a road builder all across western Canada and even though the terms are different everywhere I get the principals. You may not be a road builder? Lol

 

[D2Cat]

Corney, I have had folks tell me, "You're all wet."

Is that a nice way of saying I'm lazy and take the easiest route?

 

[bxray]

I saw this on a park hiking path and tried one.
Will put on more.
Marked it off and lift the blade when plowing.

Ray

 

[bxray]

With just one it moves alot of water!
Now just need to add two more.
Ray

 

[ItBmine]

I can't see what you got, but I have done a few driveways with recycled asphalt (the stuff that is ground up off the road with a roto-mill) and if that's what you got, here is the trick.

Rent a roller or packer. Have it spread out smooth and water it heavily, then pack. it will end up just like a paved driveway and you will never be able to cut into it with a compact tractor and blade.
But lots of water is the trick to make it pack hard.

 

[dandeman]

Also maintain about 1/2 mile of private gravel roads.. Got to keep a crown on the road (and ditches clear) to keep water from running on the roadbed itself, or puddling on the road which really weakens it.

I use a rear mounted blade for both keeping the crown and snow removal.. I always have the blade at an angle while scrapping and have the inner (close to road centerline) blade foot set down so the blade is dumping rock in the center to build up the crown and with outer side blade set lower than the inner. Always amazing how much gravel tends to get thrown toward the ditches, that if pulled back on the road is plenty enough to build the crown back up.

For snow removal the blade angle is swung the other way to cast the snow off the road; with the drag foot lower on the inside of the road, it doesn't take the crown off. You really have to know where the snow stops and the gravel begins in terms of depth.. Also helps if the road ground itself is frozen, the blade won't dig into it.

I've also educated my neighbors to always drive their vehicles with the tires placed on the high parts of the gravel instead of following the ruts that vehicle traffic tends to make.. The road self levels with no long ruts for water to run in, if they do this.

 

[cerlawson]

Adding lots of water may not work for this site, depending on the silt content in the gravel. If much silt, it will not compact, but will get sloppy.

You should know that the ideal moisture content of most base courses is when it is moist, what we civil engineers call optimum moisture content. Too much and that water takes up space that otherwise would be soil particles. For typical gravel base course mixes it is about 6 or 7 percent of dry weight.

Compact by driving a car up and down, taking new paths. At least 3 passes on all places. Tractor weight is not usually sufficient, but with a loaded bucket the front tires can do pretty good a job.

If you can afford it, obviously paving it will cure all the grief. In the meantime be prepared to drive up and down the hill with that rear blade doing its thing.

 

[ItBmine]

Don't water the dirt.....water the asphalt grindings after they are spread, then pack. gets hard as cement. Done many driveways like this. They came out just like new asphalt done with a spreader.

Engineer's? I've seen how some of them work. Presently doing a highway rebuild by my house. They called for a culvert that is about 3 feet in diameter across the highway where a 90 acre swamp drains into the river. AND they put it well below the river level when there is rain or spring run off.
It rained for 15 minutes this morning and the culvert is already buried with mud, LOL.

 

[cerlawson]

ItBeMine: Don't confuse engineers with contractors.

 

[bmblank]

I'd say don't confuse engineers with "engineers"... And most of engineering is educated guess work, followed up with the math to back it up. Difference between a good engineer and a bad one is the ability to guess correctly.

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[Grouse Feathers]

I'd say don't confuse engineers with "engineers"... And most of engineering is educated guess work, followed up with the math to back it up. Difference between a good engineer and a bad one is the ability to guess correctly.

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The engineering in your tractors did not include any guess work, neither does a well designed drainage system. The guess work is done by non engineers.

 

[ItBmine]

ItBeMine: Don't confuse engineers with contractors.

Contractor is doing it to engineers spec.

 

[Daren Todd]

Don't water the dirt.....water the asphalt grindings after they are spread, then pack. gets hard as cement. Done many driveways like this. They came out just like new asphalt done with a spreader.

Engineer's? I've seen how some of them work. Presently doing a highway rebuild by my house. They called for a culvert that is about 3 feet in diameter across the highway where a 90 acre swamp drains into the river. AND they put it well below the river level when there is rain or spring run off.
It rained for 15 minutes this morning and the culvert is already buried with mud, LOL.

We had similar issues here with the county. They diverted a stream to run down the ditch out front. Makes a 90 degree turn by the neighbors then has a culvert installed running up hill to take the excess water to the other side of the road they then installed an 18" culvert for a right of way down at the end of the road. Everyone else has either two 24" culverts or a 36" culvert to handle all the water coming down the ditch. All they succeeded in doing was allowing all the water to flow down one side of the road. Then gets backed up by the 18" culvert and washes the road out Took 5 years to get them back out to fix it


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[OldeEnglish]

I'm not bashing engineers but I haven met one yet that didn't make a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes and it always looks good on paper. Recently had to deal with one in FL at a condo complex where my family owns one. It's newer construction where they were having some drainage problems and water was backing up into some ground units because there was too much volume for the pipe to handle. The engineer's solution was to change the pipe out from a corrugated to a smooth pipe of the same exact diameter . I couldn't believe it! We were able to persuade the board to consult with a different engineer that increased the size of the pipe which fixed the problem, who knew .

OP I deal with the same issues with an access road we have. The key is to flatten out that crown and pitch the road to the inside of the hillside and cut a ditch all down the inside. Sometimes there can be so much water you need catch basins to divert the water through a pipe back across the road dumping down the hill side. I have a steep hill like this and I let the water cut the ditch for me and scoop up the stones and gravel at the bottom of the road. After a few good storms the ditch will be deep enough to line with large stones and filter fabric.