Steve, the road is doing great - all I have done is to add a couple of loads to correct any low spots that come up as everything compacts. The road has handled fully loaded concrete trucks without a problem. The material that was used - post oak gravel - has a variety of gravel to about 1 1/2" in diameter mixed with a lot of fines. It compacts very well and has a minimum of dusting. I'm very pleased with the results. I have also added this same material to lengthen a portion of the road all the way to the back of our shop (barn), plus added some more to make a large parking/turn-around area betweeen shop and house. I also laid some down where I park my trailer so it's not parked on grass and dirt. The surface does soften and you'll get it on your shoes when it's raining, but there is no loss of stability.
In hindsight, the fabric was a good idea to help stabilize the base of the road, but the key item that I've found is to be sure to give rainwater somewhere to go to drain from the road, otherwise you'll always have that sinking feeling [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]. This road was installed in a level cow pasture, so I used the box blade to create a swale on each side of the road. These swales connect to the larger culvert/ditch at the front of the property and also swing to the right and left around our buildings, where they connect and then drain to another ditch along the side of our property. The impact from doing this was immediate - no matter what the rainfall, water drains from the road into these shallow ditches and is routed away from the areas where we live and drive.
I can get some more pics if I can find the camera [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]
Come to think of it, I do need to add a picture or two - there's now a house on the right hand side of the shop! [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] It's sort of funny to see an empty field where we now live ....
Glad to hear it has held up for you. The road fabric has stabilized the base well enough that you don't get those little low spots turning up? The ones that are just about the size of a tire?
Routing the water away is a good idea. I'm going to have to do something with my drive before the year is out.
Slowly but surely the low spots that come up from time to time have gotten smaller and smaller. I just add some road base to that particular area and let it settle in from regular traffic over the road.
I did have an area that had been wet for some time, mainly from before I did the swales along the side of the road. It seemed that in this area (about 100 ft long) the surface would just not harden up. My solution for a poor mans stablization - I did not want to pull up the fabric - was to go get a pallet (about 35 bags) of Portland cement from Lowes. Cost was about $2 hundred and something for the pallet. I used the loader and box blade to scrape away the top layer of road base, just getting down to the fabric. Then I spread those 35 bags of Portland over the entire area, pushed the base back over it, and then blended everything together by running the tractor over it. You could feel the material stiffening up as the portland reacted with the moisture in the road base.
BIG difference - that morning the base sort of squished out from under your feet - the next morning I was able to drive my truck pulling the trailer with tractor on it without any problem. Now if there's any area in question, I just add some Portland - end of problem.
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