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Inexpensive methods/materials for constructing a driveway

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surfcave

Civil/Environmental
May 23, 2001
4
The driveway (5 m long by 3 m wide) up to our church grounds is being eroded away by rain and car tyres. The driveway's insitu material at the moment is a fine grained silty/sand. Over its 5 m length the driveway rises to a height of about 0,75 m. I am looking for inexpensive methods/materials for constructing a reliable driveway
 
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Your driveway grade is excessive (15%) contributing to your erosion. Consider regrading the site if possible to lower this grade. Design for drainage. For inexpensive materials, see what is locally available. With your soils, a geotextile between your subgrade and a aggregate base course couldn't hurt.
 
Your drive sound like a traditoinal "track" not designed for taking loads from large cars, vans or trucks.

To save building a drive with a proper sub-base and road make-up you could removed the top surface of the drive till the area is level across the drive, try and reduce the gradient of the road if possible, lay a geotextile to provide stability and build up a road using compressed quarry material finished with a tar spray and chip wearing layer. Alternatively you could use scarified road material (bitmac removed from the surface of an existing road to allow new wearing coarse to be laid). As contractors have to dump this material at high cost they are usually very keen to sell it cheap. Bitmac is normally (unless chemicals added) inert so using it for your drive would not be against regulation for reuse of material.
Having said that check with your local authority first. They may have bylaws inplace stating otherwise.
 
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