We have a gravel drive, which is basically tarmac (on a concrete sub base) onto which gravel was rolled. It's stayed in place pretty well, with a few little dips here and there which need occasional gravelly top ups.
A small area (a foot across maybe) is breaking up where the car turns when I do a daily three point, as I guess the tyre is always in pretty well exactly the same place.
Would digging it out, sticking in a £7.50 bag of cold lay tarmac and whacking down some replacement gravel on top of it before it sets do the trick do we think? Or is it going to be much sucking of teeth and five grand before I blink?
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That will be fine as long as the hole isn't just a muddy pudding underneath... i.e. get the cold lay tarmac onto something solid.
I used a couple of bags of cold lay from Wickes on this drive into a fair size pothole. It's a shared access and the sharer who is in the construction industry was dismissive saying it wouldn't last 5mins... been there two years plus without moving.
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Yeah, it'll be fine.
Unless of course it's an early indicator of there being the thinnest of crusts between your drive and the top of an old mineshaft...
Wouldn't worry about it though.
;-)
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>> Would digging it out, sticking in a £7.50 bag of cold lay tarmac and whacking
>> down some replacement gravel on top of it before it sets do the trick
You sharpen knives as well?
PS got an old washing machine here you can dump in your front garden if you like.
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Yes, well thanks guys. I couldn't see a reason why not, but we all know I'm not the most practical, so it was a just in case query.
I'll polish up my lucky clothes pegs and give it a go at the weekend, if I've not fallen down the mineshaft.
Funnily enough we were digging just outside the house once about ten years ago and it became apparent there was a mighty great hole under the flower bed - a torch showed possibly an old cellar. In the best Famous Five tradition we laid a paving slab over the corner and haven't been near it since.
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>> Would digging it out, sticking in a £7.50 bag of cold lay tarmac and whacking
>> down some replacement gravel on top of it before it sets do the trick do
>> we think? Or is it going to be much sucking of teeth and five grand
>> before I blink?
Why not avoid the first two operations in the first sentence and just stick down some more gravel?
Where has the gravel gone? Would half an hour's vigorous (you do vigorous don't you?) raking fill in those dips and gullies?
At least, that's what I think my people up at Duncan Towers do.
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>> Where has the gravel gone?
Over just that little patch, ground down to dust. Replacing gravel there every so often results in it being ground down to dust again, and now the supporting tarmac is going too. I don't imagine my solution will last forever, but it's cheap enough to do every year or two if needs be.
The odd dip and hollow in far flung corners that are only walked on, not driven over, do get gravel raked into them every so often - the whole thing has a layer of loose gravel over a layer of "stuck down", if you see what I mean.
It's all a bit of a faff but much better than the concrete and mud area we inherited, it being once an old farmhouse/pub in the nineteenth century.
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Pub? I would have that slab up and get down in that cellar ASAP, the beer will be going off soon.
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Gravel gets scattered into the grass verges, as does the shingle stuff on our 300 yard drive.
A decade or two back, some tinkers came by and conned someone here into paying a fair amount for some of that cold tarry stony stuff. There isn't any left now, just stones and potholes. Actually there's a longish strip of concrete at one point, but it doesn't really last. Hard to tell whether one should floor it or mimse.
What we need is a permanent traveller community ready and eager to keep the damn thing up to the mark. Or perhaps not, on second thoughts. Life can be a bit tiresome sometimes.
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Um, I have a large gravel frontage to my property. I asked the chap I bought the cottage from what type of chippings did he put down originally. Cotswold Buff, he tells me.
So I phoned the peeps he got it from to order a tonne so as to make good a few areas.
They delivered Dorset Gold 20mm stuff instead, as it was all they had.
So I plonks it down as it looked fairly similar, and boy did it stick out as being different!
So I had to order another 3 tonne of the blimming stuff so it all looks the same.
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Well Crankcase. I did the same with a bag from Wickes. Preparation is the key I think.
Do on a dry day (preferably a warm day too when the bag of tarmac will have been left out for a while to warm up and be pliable), and brush out all waste / loose stuff in the dip / hole.
I prime the area with some bitumen paint generously slathered all over the base and round the rim of the area and then get the bag of tarmac and pop in some and pound it down with a sledgehammer, then top up and do the same until level.
I did this on a few bits and it has lasted very well. It is the sealing with the bitumen and the generous hard-packing that stops the moisture getting in and popping it back up.
I had my boss say it would last weeks and 3 1/2 years on it is fine......
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Yep that's my procedure too.
I only do the repairs in the height of summer and dig out the loose then leave for 2/3 days in baking heat. I actually use the outdoor vacuum to get the dust out of the old/new interface and like you use bitumen as a tack coat on the hole and edges.
Finish with one of these... www.mad4tools.com/defiance-48in-long-asphalt-tamper-various-sizes-7745-p.asp kept from when I was in a related business.
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>> Finish with one of these... www.mad4tools.com/defiance-48in-long-asphalt-tamper-various-sizes-7745-p.asp kept from when I was in a related business.
Real men of course get themselves a petrol driven whacker plate.
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I've enough trouble starting a petrol strimmer. God knows what manner of carnage would ensue if I fired up a petrol whacker plate.
( is it some sort of Liverpudlian thing BTW? )
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www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/310984949489
link considerably shortened to restore correct page width
Last edited by: VxFan on Wed 25 Mar 15 at 01:26
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>>> Real men of course get themselves a petrol driven whacker plate.
The real (Irish)men of my early working days were even more advanced... they left the tarmac 6" high for the traffic to roll down... calling for a wacker would take the job over budget.
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That's helpful, thanks SFD/Fenners. I'll update the inevitable catalogue of disaster in due course.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Tue 24 Mar 15 at 13:38
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That reminds me to complain to our council/county. A neighbour has gravelled their drive and decided to run the gravel across the pavement and cross-over right up to the curb of the road. And so the gravel is now spilling into the road, making a right mess!
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>> And so the gravel is now spilling into the road, making a
>> right mess!
>
Gravel in road is a risk to cyclists; hence the ride leader's shouts of 'ware gravel on club rides all those years ago.
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How about parking a foot over to the left (or right!) to spare the damaged area ;)
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It's the turn, not the park. I have to turn at that point to get it into the parking building. I could change the car again I suppose...
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>> to get
>> it into the parking building.
Some of us have a rusty corrugated iron shed we like to call a garage, others have a "parking building". :)
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Oh well. Hard to know what to call it is all. One set of previous owners were keen heavy horse people and kept them in there - so I guess it was a stable. Still has loads of certificates from the fifties for best in East Of England show, that kind of thing. The guy we bought it from called it a barn, and kept doves in there. And we call it "the barn" too.
But "barn" and "stable" sound grand, when in reality it's a 30' by 16' brick and wooden building with a corrugated iron roof...also known as a big shed.
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>> Oh well. Hard to know what to call it is all. One set of previous
>> owners were keen heavy horse people and kept them in there -
Pub? Cellar? Heavy Horses? Lordy Lord, this gets better, it was a BREWERY!
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Umm...actually it was something like that, in its time. Owned by Greene King, and the houses next door were something to do with it, but can't remember what offhand.
I think it was called "The Dolphin" when it was a pub.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Wed 25 Mar 15 at 08:28
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Gravel drive help - Fenlander
