Fix those potholes after moisture damages your gravel driveway.
Heavy rains can flood your gravel driveway, causing the gravel to cascade down the driveway. When the rains clear, you'll have potholes in some places and lumps of gravel in others. Fixing your driveway takes some labor but isn't difficult. Adding heavier stones may help prevent future erosion, since they're less likely to move during minor storms. Add additional finishing touches to prevent erosion from a hilly or a flat driveway. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Rake the gravel over the driveway to even the grade. You'll move gravel from higher places down over the driveway, filling in the potholes. Use the metal rake, or the shovel if the piles are large.
2. Pour additional gravel into potholes, since you may not be able to recover all of the gravel you lost. You may use finer gravel or large gravel to create a weighted driveway that's naturally more resistant to erosion.
3. Tamp down the gravel, using a thick wooden bolster. If you don't have spare wood around your home, use anything that's flat and heavy but won't splinter the gravel. To tamp down the gravel, press the bolster into the rock. This removes the air and compacts the pieces of stone together.
4. Create a slope that naturally diverts water from your driveway. If you live on a hill, you'll want one side of your driveway to be higher than the other. If you have a flat driveway, create a crown by making the center of the driveway higher than the two edges. The crown and the hill will both direct water toward the sides of the road, minimizing erosion-related damage to your gravel driveway.
5. Pour more gravel onto the appropriate spot (for the hill or the crown) to shape your gravel driveway. Tamp the new gravel down. Add more gravel and repeat the tamping process until you have the desired shape.
Tags: your gravel, your gravel driveway, gravel driveway, your driveway, down gravel
