How To Repair A Gravel Driveway Pothole

Fri, February eight, 2022 8:48:00 AM Categories: Difficult Landscaping Home Improvement Tips

In this article, yous'll learn

• The usual issues that homeowners experience with gravel driveways.
• Footstep past pace instructions on how to properly care for a gravel driveway.
• Reasons why yous may want to consider a paved driveway in the futurity.
  

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Nosotros live out in the country. Like all things, our choice of where to settle downward has its pro's and con's. One of the annoying con'southward is that we had to create our own driveway, which ended up being long and on a gradient. When we checked into all the possible options, we realized that a gravel driveway was the cheapest, only we would take to maintain information technology more oftentimes than a paved drive.

DRIVEWAY OPTIONS Comparing Chart

Cost of Driveway Construction	Driveway Maintenance
Paver drive - nigh expensive	Gravel - most maintenance required
Physical - next in cost	Cobblestone - second-about maintenance
Cobblestone - a fleck more than costly than gravel	Concrete - a scrap less maintenance than asphalt
Gravel - most economical	Paver drive - least maintenance required

No problem! We said happily to each other. We're retired, nosotros've got time, it'll be fun!

Information technology was non fun.

Oh well, it was our outset land home, information technology'south understandable. What did we know near shovels and rollers? Tractors? Aren't they for farmers? We wanted to savour nature, not grow it.

Beneath are some tips nosotros picked up forth the way. If you have a gravel drive, then you know how ofttimes it needs attention. Hopefully, you lot'll find some good ideas hither.

Maintaining a Gravel Driveway: 10 Tips that Won't Drive You Crazy

1. Become the right mindset - Mother Earth News , a popular DIY magazine that's been going strong since 1970, says that this is the get-go affair you need to do to maintain your gravel driveway. You want a expert grasp on the idea that what y'all're trying to produce is a smooth, level surface. And and so you want to take that a perfectly polish surface is something you'll never attain. The reality is that whatever undulations will cause a vehicle to bounce. Over time, this creates larger, deeper problem areas that will eventually be too big to ignore. There'due south no way around it, just get for that table-top, shine surface anyway, even though information technology'due south impossible to achieve.

2. Get the stats – Here are some of the stats from The Gravel Expert that y'all may or may non have run into when you first congenital your gravel driveway. Even if y'all didn't have this data and then, knowing it now may be a great help in maintaining your gravel drive.

   How to Calculate the Amount of Gravel in Cubic Yards

   Ideal thickness = 3"-8"

   1. Length x width x desired thickness

   2. Separate the resulting number by 27 to obtain the cubic yards

   3. Add together four% to the number of cubic yards to compensate for compaction.

   How to Calculate the Per centum of Form

   Ideal  = 2% - 5%

   Split up the elevation by the horizontal length, and so multiply by 100

3. When ownership gravel for fill – The all-time gravel for your driveway will be about every bit big as a pea, c. ¼", and have sharp edges. Large or flat gravel pieces or smooth, roundish rocks cause problems such as pits. The pea-sized gravel tends to clump when pressed downwardly by a tire, which is helpful.

4. The "quick fix" approach to gravel driveway maintenance – Over time, your gravel drive will inevitably develop potholes. You tin get a pick and shovel and even out the gravel, so tap it down, only this solution leaves a weak surface area that volition just produce another pothole in the same place. And information technology won't take long for it to reappear, either (hence the term "quick fix").

5. Long-term solutions to gravel driveway maintenance – Long-term repair solutions all have to do with large tools and heavy machinery. If you fix it yourself, these approaches require buying, renting, or borrowing machinery that can spread and compact gravel to form a smoothen surface and reduce loose layers of rock.

   You can hire this projection out, and spare yourself the trouble of collecting a tractor, chain harrow, grader blade, box scraper, and all sorts of other intimidating machinery and tools. This was our choice for the first several years of our gravel driveway maintenance, and it worked out well, but your conclusion volition be based on your own expertise and feel.

6. T he proper intendance and feeding of a pothole –Potholes can be a pretty serious problem. Your best bet is to widen the pothole past taking out the unabridged department, then fill up in the hole with layers of gravel, compacting each equally you go.

7. Water woes – Water can wreak havoc anywhere, especially with gravel driveways. If you're seeing consistent problems with ruts, washouts, and birm, your driveway probably has drainage issues. The solution is either to add plenty gravel to make your drive college than the areas surrounding information technology, or to install a culvert or ditch to pull the water away from the place where it flows over the gravel and compromises information technology.

8. Snow plow damage – Winter'southward special, isn't it? All that pretty snow on your drive. If you use a snow plow, though, yous can wait your gravel driveway to exist unrecognizable the next fourth dimension the dominicus comes out. Brand certain you lot take steps to move the gravel that has been pulled outward by the snowfall plow, back toward the eye section of your drive.

9. Geotextile fabric, anyone? – When all else fails, and y'all're still not set to upgrade to an asphalt, concrete, or paver bulldoze, y'all might consider installing a geotextile layer to the substrata. It corrects unstable, soggy soil.

10. Consider excavation – An extremely rutted gravel bulldoze with weeds and a sub-grade that's unstable should be redone completely. Trying to fix it at this signal would simply be a waste matter of time.

When it's fourth dimension to rethink…

Tired of patching up and fiddling with your messy gravel driveway? Maybe information technology's fourth dimension to consider putting in a paved drive, one that will last a long time before you ever take to think about driveways again.

Afterwards many years of maintaining our long drive, made upwardly of small rocks with minds of their own and a wanderlust to become with them, we finally decided to go for the asphalt. Now, no thing how many trucks or kids with ATVs turn around in our driveway, it stays where information technology was put in the first place, instead of flight off in all directions seeking, evidently, greener pastures.

Though it may not seem like it to you lot, after dealing with a gravel bulldoze, you practice have an abundance of options that will require less maintenance, concluding longer, and do the job amend.

Source: https://www.greatdayimprovements.com/10-gravel-driveway-maintenance-tips.aspx

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