

330 tons

Scoop with blue skies and clouds.

The gravel store keeps a record of every load I've purchased.

Over the last 10 years we've bought and hauled 330 tons.

Some of that was a huge dump truck load of crush and run on our main driveway. I will never get crush and run again. It seemed to fade into the ground rather quickly. I should've made sure we got 3-4 inch rock for that application.

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Recently I visited the remains of a Roman bath house in Heerlen in the Netherlands. One of the exhibits was a cross-section of a Roman road that had been dug up nearby.

The road bed was made out of local limestone. To make the road, a trench was dug. This was filled with a layer of fist-sized limestone pieces which was well compacted, with a thinner layer of finer limestone pieces and dust on top, also compacted. That road had existed for hundreds of years and had been repaired many times, so it was difficult to tell how thick the road bed was originally.

But from other archaeological finds it was estimated that 4-6 in of fist-sized rocks was used covered with 1-4 in of smaller rocks and dust. The road surface was concave (higher in the middle) to make water run off. There were ditches on both sides of the road.

As I understand it, similar thicknesses are still being used today for driveways et cetera. But then with geotextile under it.

It is very important to compact each layer after it is laid down. The stones need to form an interlocking network.

Compacting could be an issue in your case. You're probably not going to get a road compactor on your property. But a vibration plate would also work, and you should be able to rent one of those and transport it with your truck.

Assuming a bulk density for compacted rock of 2000 kg/m3 (125 lb/ft3) you would need in the order of 1.5 ton of rock per yard of road for a 10 ft wide and 10 in deep roadbed.

Comment by Roland_Smith Sun Aug 21 18:43:13 2016

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