We live in MI with a long, hilly, circular driveway that probaly started with
road gravel. The guy that did ours used limestone. He put big rocks in the
muddier holes (we did this in the spring when it was easy to see the problems)
maybe 6-10" and smaller rocks in the smaller holes. He finished with the
powder/stone mix. I've forgotten what they call it, 24 something?. I think it's
1" or less stones. We've added the mix over the years until I finally wised up
and crowned it to allow the water to run off and since then it's been pretty
good. MI has started using limestone on the dirt roads. It a terrific
improvement in smooth surface in general. I later added some parking space that
needed to be raised a bit. I started with 6-10" (I think) stones and then
covered it with the mix. It's good as new after 10 years or so. So it seems,
that putting the bigger limestone rock underneath seems to help a lot.
Brian
>
> I had a local excavator make me a gravel driveway to use to park my 18'
>enclosed
> car trailer. My conditions are very wet, mostly a swamp. He dug pretty deep
> and used a cheap bank run gravel, a composite of all kinds of sizes. To keep
>it
> from pressing down in to the soft subsoil, he put down a membrane to keep the
> gravel away from the soil. Seems to have worked; the driveway is still solid
> after 4 years, including some years of lots of rain and snow.
>
> Mark Andy wrote:
>
> > Howdy,
> >
> > Ok, some questions for the ever-knowledgable folks here about gravel/dirt
> > driveways.
> >
> > I've got some area that I want to make into a parking/turn around area for
> > my truck/trailer, along with widening out the existing asphalt driveway.
> > I'm planning on doing this with gravel vs. asphalt due to cost and the
> > ability for me to do the work myself.
> >
> > I've got an older Kubota L185dt with a rear blade, dirt scoop, and
> > landscape rake, along with a small 36" roller for our lawn tractor. I'm
> > also willing to buy other equipment up to a point.
> >
> > Whats involved with creating a decent gravel driveway? I'd been figuring
> > on roto-tiling the existing lawn in those areas and removing much of the
> > topsoil (which we can use in other areas), then getting truckloads of
> > limestone or some other material to spread around, then compacting it with
> > the roller and possibly just by driving on it.
> >
> > Is that way too simplistic? What sorta depth should the driveway
> > typically be? How about if I want to pave it later? Anything special I
> > need to do to keep stuff from growing in the driveway?
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Mark
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