farm driveway refurbish

THe driveway at the farm was once in pretty good shape. good solid base and could handle tractors and the milk truck (double axle straight truck) feed trucks ect.ect..

but over time as the grandparents grew older the driveway wasn't updated and didn't get much taffic. so alot of grass and therefore alot of organic material has accumulated/grown on top.

what is the best way to refurbish this? kill the grass (partially done) and box scraper the sod off and place a couple inches of new on top?

just put new stones or asphalt grindings on top?

or?

My father ran the township road grader ..maintainer.. for many years. He had a keen eye for grades and slopes that in the end gave him a good finished product. In most areas what makes a good road are the ditches beside it. Also having the road surface at the proper height compared to the surrounding terrain as in generally higher. Good ditches that keep the water drained away from the road bed as said above make the road. Also what he called the ..crown.. of the road is probably second to the ditches. So the middle of the road should be a hump between the edges of the ditches, slowly sloping to the sides to let the moisture drain off the roadbed. Many people do not know this but when new blade edges are put on a road grader that maintains gravel roads in the country the center is cut out of the blades. This is done in a fashion so that the cutting edges when done have a gentle arc across the length of the blade with the highest part of the arc in the center of the blade.

I have some asphalt grindings on drive to shop. Wish I had them on drive to house. Get them bladed down and shaped before rain, because when they get wet they pack and stay in place.

X2 what used red said. You can't create a driveway in a ditch. The driveway must be higher than the sides all along the length. This can be a mind-bender because as the elevation changes, then the grading must be adjusted. If you have an eye for grade, you might raise or lower it's grade along-side the natural grade. You are at an advantage if you know your property and can figure this out from previous observations. In regard to foundation, it's no different than building an interstate highway: Lot's of solid base, packed down amongst some heavy stone/rock. Run over it a vibratory roller, pack and pack until it's about as hard as concrete. Check the grade and adjust as necessary. Put down the asphalt road millings as thick as possible during HOT WEATHER and pack it down with a roller or heavy track machine. You want to get fresh millings which are ground up like coffee grounds, none of the junk with 1-2-3 inch chunks in it. Do the packing/rolling of the millings on the hottest day of the year and you get a solid roadway.

X what used red posted. Except I don't consider grass and some organic material to be a problem. If it has potholes and muddy areas, that is a different story. If just some grass I would leave it alone.

I ran heavy equipment for 40 years with many miles on a grader. If the cutting edge had an arc in it was junk and had to be changed out. Would never work out for final grading. Never seen new ones with an arc in them. Gordy in MN

I've never seen motor grader cutting edges with a built in "crown". They wear faster in the center of the moldboard, so they will get a crown in them from normal wear. We would routinely remove 2 piece cutting edges and re install them on the opposite end of the moldboard to keep them wearing evenly.

Scott and Gordy, I was not clear the new cutting edges
for ..dragging roads.. were cut like that with a torch.
Call it what you want but this is how it is done in
Northeast Kansas where I grew up. My dad ran the
township machine off and on between the 60s up until
he passed in 2010. My uncle still runs the grader, now
it is couple year old JD machine, I am not sure what
the width of the machines blade is but I know it has an
extension piece on it. If they plan to rebuild a section
of road which usually means digging out the ditches
and raising the road bed they remove the dragging
edges and put on straight sharp blades. In that
area there are ..county.. gravel roads as well. These are
major thoroughfares that in many cases went the
complete 36 miles across the county or connected to
the county blacktop roads. The county maintains
those, while as I mentioned my father maintained the 6
square miles of our township. The county roads were
wider so generally two vehicles could meet on them
and basically maintain their speed. Most township
roads were wide enough for two vehicles to pass but
they were narrow enough that the vehicles would slow
considerably and get more off the side of the normally
traveled road. Since the county roads were wider to be
able to ..drag.. the road moving the gravel ridge from
one side to the other they had to maintain far less
angle on the blade. This would encourage the road
grader to start bouncing if they traveled to fast with
the machine, essentially creating a wavy or wash board
surface right after they operator ..maintained.. the
road. Of course it was not all like that but often you
could tell where the road had a good level spot with no
side roads or swags the operator would try speeding
up the machine and then the bouncing would start and
you would have a 100 foot of freshly graded road with
wash boards. My father was always at odds with the
county Forman trying to convince them to maintain the
roads in 3 passes instead of two so the blade could be
angled more. But oh no, ..this is how we have done it
for years and it would take to much extra time and
would cost to much to change to that method. So my
father would refer to them as ..tight bladers.. or ..flat
bladers.. an so it went.

Had that issue at FILs farm, grass and sod had built up over the stone base
I cut the grass and sod off getting back to the stone and then added more stone
Road was already built up for drainage

(quoted from post at 17:21:29 01/16/23) I ran heavy equipment for 40 years with many miles on a grader. If the cutting edge had an arc in it was junk and had to be changed out. Would never work out for final grading. Never seen new ones with an arc in them. Gordy in MN

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You have never seen an edge with an arc because there has never been one made, LOL. The operator makes the crown with the proper use of his blade with a straight edge.

Just my take on it, but anybody that cuts an arc in a new blade on a Motor Grader to put a crown in a road, just doesn't know how to run a grader. And yes, I have run a grader. When I retired from the city, I was paying $125 for a 5' carbide blade and would strangle somebody if I saw them taking a torch to it.

the grass makes it hard for visitors (and us sometimes) to find the drive without getting off and getting stuck.

The layer of dirt on top of the gravel is deep enough to make it greasy when it gets soaked with some rain and not hard to break the wheels loose. won't sink into very far but still gets slimy.

SO that is the motivation to scrape or skim off the dirt and sod off the stone base.

We do have some pot holes. not too many but 1 is too many

also need to expand a couple places for extra parking so ideally would do it all at once.


Thanks.

Scrape the grass and sod off the old rock or it will work it s way up through the new rock and you ll be doing the job again much sooner than if it were scrapped