What can I do to make a gravel driveway driveable?
Question:We got 2 dumps of gravel (pretty fine stuff, maybe 1/2 inch) on our downhill sloping driveway and now it's almost impossible to drive up the hill. The tires spin, the vehicle skids (and shoots gravel all over the place). Before that, the driveway was dirt and was driveable. We paid money, got gravel, and can't use it. Will gravel settle over time? Should I argue with the contractor (and make him remove some of it)? Note that black-topping the driveway is not really an option (lack of funds + the type of gravel we got is not for blacktopping). Any advice? Thanks...
Answers:
Try wetting it down and driving over it if you can. We hose ours down and have the kids go over it with the quad. But you definately want to wet it down every day for about a month, and drive over it with something to pack it down. Then it will be driveable.
My brother is an excavator and he said that gravel should be graded and then "rolled' flat with a roller. If you want a better driveway, he said that instead of gravel, you should have used a type of crushed slate, "Hard-Pack" or "Stay-Mat". It settles like pavement and will not wash away in the rain since it is flat and not round like crushed stone. Hope this helps.
Gravel will break down and settle over time. I would drive over it as many times as it takes to pack down the loose gravel.
At some point, you may want to drag or scrape the gravel to level it out. You can make a nice drag out of some chain link fencing weighted down with something. You drag back and forth up and down the driveway until it is level. You then pack it down again.
Sounds like it wasn't spread good enough, and you should have used crusher run, it is gravel with sand and dirt mixed in with the rock, makes a great driveway when packed down, almost like concrete. have a tractor person with box blade scrape it down for you and pack it, this may help
best thing to do is get bags of cement & pour on your driveway then damp your driveway & hire a wacker from a rental place that has building equipment & wack your driveway 5 or 6 times over and it will become as hard as concrete.
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