Maintaining an unpaved private road can be a daunting task. Many homeowners become frustrated as they spend money to place materials such as stone or road millings on their private road, only to have it washed off by rain or pushed off by a snowplow. Seeing mounds of stones washed out of a driveway is an aggravating experience. Alternatively, if the aggregate material is not added to the private road, driveway or lane periodically, the passageway will become muddy and difficult to navigate. Is paving the solution to this dilemma? It may or may not be the answer for you. Paving is not always the best solution for every private road. Oftentimes, the better solution is to understand how rain water is negatively affecting your lane. Once you understand the problems, simple alterations can be made to your existing lane to make a major impact on how much effort it will take to maintain in the future.
With over 15 years of experience in maintaining private roads, driveways and lanes, excavator Rick Burkholder shares his knowledge and expertise with many customers. He is always happy to walk a driveway or lane to provide individualized recommendations; however, there are a few basics which will be shared here so that you can begin to understand how to address issues you may be facing.
The path of least resistance.
Most homeowners think about how their vehicle will navigate their unpaved road – especially when it snows, but an even more important consideration to make is how rainwater will travel on that unpaved surface. Water is a very powerful force. It moves anything that is in its path – including the stone, slate, or road millings that you paid someone to spread on your driveway. As water flows downward it picks up speed, giving it greater force. Think of how water rushes down a waterslide at a pool: it takes the path of least resistance. It is also capable of moving you along quite quickly by the end of the slide when nothing is breaking its flow. It is very important to give water the least destructive path to follow on your driveway, which will result in less damage and less money spent on your road’s construction. If the path created during the building of your road isn’t the path of least resistance- rainwater will not use it. When you give rainwater an easy pathway to follow you will find that your aggregate material will stay in place storm, after storm, after storm. When proper water pathways are established an unpaved road can, and will, look as well kept after a storm as it did prior to the storm.
There will be ups and downs.
We know that water uses that path of least resistance to flow to low lying areas. So where are the lowest points in the structure of lane and the land surrounding it? Do you have any ditches running along your driveway? If not, does the ground next to you lane sit higher than its center point? Is the lay of the land funneling water right towards all the precious stones you have paid someone spread? Ideally, there should be a low-lying area adjacent to at least one side of your private road; meaning it needs to be physically lower than the height of your lane. Now think about how the driveway is graded, or sloped. If you were to pour a giant glass of water down it, would the water move towards the low-lying area? Often homeowners do have a low-lying area or ditch running along their lanes; however, if the road has not been graded towards that area it will result in the water flow never reaching the pathway created for it. Instead it is traveling on the lane itself – and moving all your stone with it.
Enforce a speed limit.
As mentioned earlier, water flowing downward picks up speed which increases its force – making it more likely to move your aggregate material with it. It is important to place water breakers along your private road to slow the water flow. A water breaker is simply a physical cut into the grading of the road which will immediately divert water from a lane and direct it towards the lowest lying area—the area in which you would like the water to travel. Water breakers should be placed wherever there are extended downward grades to your lane so that the water is not able to pick up speed and force because its traveling a great distance. Periodically water breakers may need to be touched up to ensure their effectiveness, but that is far less expensive and aggravating than having tons of stone swept off your lane each time it rains or snows.
Making the rubber meet the road.
Bringing all of these considerations together will help you, the homeowner, get miles ahead of the endless cycle of dumping stones on your driveway, only to find it lying in your yard or pushed out on to the main road later. Maintaining the unpaved road that you want to drive your vehicle on every day is not an effortless process; and as with many projects around the house, it is not always cheap. We at E.B. Excavating want you to know that there are numerous ways to make your dollars spent last much, much longer. By purposefully giving water a path of least resistance and managing the speed at which it will likely travel, you can limit its destructive force. Less destruction means less repair or maintenance for you, and less repair and maintenance equal less money spent over time. An hour or two of dirt work can change the entire trajectory of your relationship with your driveway – for the better. So, the next time you think you need to call someone to replace the stone on your driveway, consider a more permanent solution and find an excavator who can help you do some regrading. At the end of the day we can all think of things we’d rather spend money on than buying stones, once again, for your driveway – which won’t stop washing out. By applying these