Hi all - I'm looking for some advice. I have a long driveway - 1,100 feet. The first 1,000 feet runs along the edge of a level pasture. The last 100 feet slope down to the house (moderate-to-steep slope). The soil is red clay. What kind of gravel would you put down?? I've been told two different things. One - a layer of 3" rock and then a layer of 'crushed-run' gravel. Two - just a thick layer of the 'crushed-run' gravel. There's disagreement about the value of the 3" rock. I've been told that it will not sink as much into the ground. But I've also heard that it doesn't make a difference. Anyone had any experience with this??
I would start with large and later top off with crush and run. Tried the crush run, did not work as the base.
Howdy Tater's Pa Is your driveway sloped. also. Ours is, and the large rock was suggested as a "foundation", also. I believe the idea is the crusher run gets packed between the large rocks, and stays in place better.
Put down the large rock and drive on it for a while, 6 mo. Then put down crusher run or washed gravel.The large gravel for the base will slow down the disappearance of the smaller gravel. Crusher run is just gravel that has been crushed but not washed so it will have a lot of gravel dust in it. Some say it packs down better some say it doesn't. I've used both and for a better finished drive I would use washed gravel. No matter what you do with a drive that long be prepared for furthur maintenance. Be sure to grade the drive for water runoff before you start with the gravel.
Call me cheap but here is what I have done. I located a concrete plant that had hired a crusher to come onto their property and crush waste concrete. This product was the size of baseballs and I used it for the base on a new cut road on red clay and built last winter during an extremely wet season. This crushed concrete was ultra cheap compared to quarry stone. At a few feet distance from the road you could not tell the material was not stone. After completing the base and driving on it during the winter with feed and egg trucks (road tractor/trailer rigs) the road held up admireable. There was no need to do anything afterware other than to touch it up with a boxscrape. To date, I have not had to add any stone.
I'll try and explain what we used, but since my dh is not here to clarify my words I'm going to use....this might not make sense. We have a driveway that is 1200' long and it goes from flat to moderately steep to very steep and then leveling out. After clearing and putting down the black material thingy we then put 1 1/2 minus down. On the very steep part though we were losing rock after awhile. We were then told about a rock that is 1 1/2 minus but has NO round sides. You see the first time we did it if you looked really close it looked like gravel but a lot of the rocks when picked up had one round side or round corner. This makes your rocks slide. Anyways....I don't know the name of the rock but I'm sure if you describe it to someone they will know what you are talking about. It's stayed in place wonderfully and makes that part of our driveway much easier to drive up. mljjranch
Our last driveway was sloped fairly steep and hard red clay, I used only crush and run without any problems, We did grade off the drive initially. After about 5 years i went back with another load of crush and run. I can see that some may suggest the large rock foundation, I didnt see the need for it myself, the gravel packed down quite well and I had no problems with washout. Since then we have moved, our driveway is pretty level and was done 13 years ago with crush and run. It does need a little attention now but nothing more than a good scrape with a blade.
LOL!! I have to laugh - so far the responses seem to be split pretty evenly. I was hoping for a definitive answer one way or the other - but I guess there isn't one. (Thanks for mentioning the '1 1/2 minus with no round edges'. I'll have to check into that one - never heard of it before.)
