Driveway Material

What do you guys use or recommend for driveway material?
Remember I live in the deep south so there is never any snow grading to worry about.

Driveway is hard packed white to tan clay.
You could not dig a hole in it with a pick axe.
Has had river gravel on it but has sunk down into the clay.
Driveway is at grade with surrounding ground.

My options that I know of........

Crushed limestone.
Makes a good driveway but out on my price range.

Blast-furnace slag
Also makes a good driveway but must be trucked 50 miles so expensive.

Recycled asphalt
I have never priced this so know little about it.

Now we will get into things more in my price range.......

Red dirt to build a crown then cover it with river gravel pumped out the ground. This is the same washed gravel they use to make concrete around here.
This is what I was thinking of doing.

Dirty river gravel.
This is the above gravel as it is pumped out the ground; it is not screened or washed.
Mixture of sand (like is on a beach) all the way up to 2 inch gravel.

Crushed concrete.
A guy at work told me they opened a crushing plant close to me so this will most likely be the least expensive.
Suppose to be from dust to 2 inch concrete.
Have not seen the product so I do not know how pure the final product is.
May have bricks; cinder blocks; and or rebar in it.
 
The slag is good to very good. It will crush into fines and stay put pretty well. The crushed concrete is also excellent. I would want 3/4 and smaller, 2 inch is too big for surface use. Jim
 
Crushed cement base with a layer of unwashed gravel on top. Around here some people use crushed cement as the base with unwashed or washed crushed limestone on top but crushed limestone is plentiful in these parts.
 
I did 1/2 of my driveway in 3/4"- crushed concrete (that's all they had at the time) it is excellent. A few rains and it has packed as hard as - you guessed it - concrete. Hope to get more this year. Cheaper than 'crusher dust'.
 
The blacktop millings work really well. They pack tight and the tar residue will rebond it. The recycled concrete sounds second best, but 2" is a bit course. 1" max would be better. Sharp edged stone packs much better than river washed round stone and sand will. You should check into the blacktop millings.
Loren
 
Recycled asphalt will harden op almost like asphalt paving in your warm climate. It will take a little while but it packs into a very solid surface.
 
I'm thinking of doing the crushed concrete thing on my drive. Question; do you tamp it down with a vibrating tamper type thing?
 
Hey John, I live in Pass Christian ms,, I work on a concrete crusher at pre stress,the guy gets 18.00 a ton for it,, it packs really well, I put in on my drive way 4 years ago and still holding up very well
 
I've used some "recycled gravel", the local asphalt company bring in all the waste/millings and separates it by tar content. They sell the stuff with less tar as recycled gravel, it usually has some asphalt content, not as much as the ground asphalt, and is similar to gravel, but not quite true gravel, either. Kinda driveway taint, I suppose.

The crushed concrete is good,but dustier than the ground asphalt.
 
I live in middle TN. and as you discovered the clay is good until it is saturated with water, then everything sinks in. My neighbor has clay and put 3 inch crushed rock on it for a driveway about 14 years ago, at grade with surrounding ground, he put it on thick and raked it out. Someday during an archeological dig in the future they may find his lost driveway stone, it has been sunk for years. I would build your crown so that the edge is a few inches above the surrounding ground for effective water shedding. I tried river gravel on some of my field roads, it was alright on flat ground but any hill and the rain washed the rounded stone away. I get more seat time on the tractor repairing it than I planned. I haven't tried the other options so won't advise on them.
 
I work road construction and have access to a bunch of different materials. I also run one of our concrete crushers at work so that is a plus for me. I plan on digging out along sid my garage this coming year, and also redoing the turn around in our driveway. All together probably 50'x100' total. I plan on using crushed concrete as a base and covering with millings. The rest of my drive(12'x300') is already millings. They hold up well. And some may read my post and no I do not get anything for free from work. I pay like everybody else. Just telling you what works for me.
 

That is like how much is my tractor worth with no description. It all depends on the ground that the material is going over. How wet? and what you have for drainage?, slope ? A lot of people want their driveway to be able to support a fairly heavy truck like an oil truck, so it needs to be designed and built.
 
I've been using recycled concrete and love it. They crush it in the same sizes as limestone, just pick the size you want. Packs great and cheaper than stone.
 
I would say asphalt millings would be best, followed by recyled concrete. Whatever you use, I would suggest putting down a layer of soil stabilization fabric first- that'll keep your new material from sinking into your clay
Pete
 
In the Midwest you would want to either build up the driveway above the surrounding grade or cut ditches on both sides of the drive to drain water out from beneath the driveway. Sharp trap rock packs much better than rounded river rock.
 
John I do not know how long your drive way is but you really do not have any base under any gravel you will put on it. The clay is good until it gets wet and then it gets soft. I also do not know what type of traffic your expecting to have on it. Car traffic is one thing while truck traffic is another. So I will guess lighter weight vehicle traffic.

Of the materials you listed the one I would like the best is the recycle asphalt if it is grindings. If it is milled/ground material it will be a smaller consistent size and not have larger clumps. The nice thing about it is with hot summer temperatures and sun shine it will stick back together pretty well. If you compact it and then get good hot weather it will fuse enough it will resist washing if you have many slopes/hills in your drive. Also it does not produce much dust.

The river gravel or dirt river gravel would be my last choice. The sand and natural round stones will not pack well. The gravel will stay loose unless it pushes into the clay base. It will push into the base worse than crushed rock too.

Crushed/recycled concrete can be good IF it is crushed and screened into a small enough size. You do not want anything larger than 1 inch as a finish on a drive way. They recycled the concrete on the road in front of my house. They used it as the base. It was 2 inch and smaller. Even rolled it would be a rough drive way.

Some thing for you to look into as well is ground fabric. Since your drive does not have a base of gravel and it seems like it is flat with the surrounding area so it can get wet at times. You would smooth an roll your existing drive put down the fabric and then cover that would the material of your choice. It keeps the gravel/material from sinking/mixing with the clay base. The cost is about $1 a liner foot for 12 foot wide material.

I used the fabric directly over compacted dirt in my cattle runs to and from the pasture fields. I covered it with 3-4 inches of 3/4 road rock(crushed 3/4 rock down to lime). It has lasted over ten years with little maintenance. Before that the gravel would be a muddy mess in less than a year or two at the most.

I will also advice to not go cheap. If you can not afford to fully do the job, either wait until you can or borrow to do it right. Doing a half way job will just be back to mud soon without much return on your money.
 
JD's got it right, but he missed that you have river gravel in the clay. That makes a base. The clay will keep coming up through anything you put down short of poured concrete or asphalt unless you put the geotechnical fabric down. It lets water drain through but keep the clay below and the gravel or whatever above.

I've used crushed concrete and it is a great material.

Around here in Oklahoma even with clay I put down six to eight inches of 3" rock and drive on it slowly for a year or two, then four inches of 1-1/2" material with fines and it lasts for many years. I built a subdivision road that way in 2002, ten houses on it and it still takes minimal maintenance, we just fill a few holes with gravel every year and they drive 40 on it.
 
I don't know about LA, but here in MI you can't just dump asphalt millings anywhere. They are supposed to be mixed into the road, put on a drive, or brought to a recycling plant. Asphalt millings would be best, like out of a road mill. Maybe with the warm weather down there they don't do that since your roads don't have from the frost like we have up here. Around here, a lot of times if you find a job like that and ask the crew leader, they'll haul it to your place if it's closer than the nearest asphalt recycling plant. They aren't supposed to just dump it into a hole or such because of the bitumen/tar/oil in it.
 
I live in northern Indiana and soil can be sand to clay. My drive way I took top soil off and put it in one pile and sub soil in another. I put the 2 60 foot pads that my mobile home set on in the bottom with the staves from a silo that I taken down. I then put all the piles of rocks setting in fence.I then put 4 semi loads of 3" limestone and topped off with 3/4" to fines on top of that. Its been 38 years and is now ready to be chipped.
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I'm going with the 3/4" lime stone, quarry's only about four miles away and only need two or three loads. What I don't understand is the ground up blacktop, my neighbor is an engineer with a company that builds roads, bridges and so on so about four years ago he had them do his driveway in that ground asphalt. He told me what it cost and I forget but it was a lot, drive way is probably 500 feet straight as an arrow. Winter comes, neighbor goes to Arizona for a couple weeks, tells another neighbor to plow his drive before he gets home. The guy drops the plow on his pickup and rips the pavement out in chunks on one end but the rest of it has since all loosened up and looks like a dark colored gravel road. Also my brother in law has a blacktop drive way but he had that recycled asphalt put in front of a couple of buildings. It's a hell of a mess if you walk on it on a wet day, sticks to your shoes and your floor mats.
 
These days I only use crushed limestone. Crushed granite is good, too, but doesn't pack down as well as limestone. I used to use crushed concrete, but the quality of concrete I was getting was very poor, basically crap rinsed out of redi-mix trucks, so I gave up on it. If you can get GOOD recycled concrete, I'd say it's nearly as good as limestone.
 
The best base material I have found is slate/shale. Its cheap and hold up better then the fiber mat.
 
Just how we did it: moved most of the clay. put it several inches of RR ballast(2 to 3 inch granite) with three quarter inch washed stone to fill in the gaps, then road bond(mixed sizes and dust)
It took time driving on it to settle that much but the parts we drive on every day are like asphalt
If I had the chance to redo that reclaimed asphalt sounds pretty good.
 
I can find 3 places that sell it within 20 miles of me? Maybe a local rule due to all the lakes in your area?
 
Just bought 24ton no4s cost $400 had to all the rain freeze thaw freeze has made a mess of everything around here. I have had bad luck on crushed cement found a piece of rebar in my new truck tire.
 
Sorry Spook, I guess I didn't elaborate like I should have. It can be hauled to a lot to be distributed or sold, but unlike rock or dirt/topsoil, you aren't supposed to just dump it in an abandoned gravel pit, or low spot on a farm just to get rid of it, where it will leach into the groundwater. They're trying to keep it from being discarded where it may cause a problem later on, and try to give it a home on a driveway or road base, etc.
 
I vote for the crushed concrete. I have had that in the drive for about 20 years now. I even drop loaded semi trailers in spring on it with no sinking. It is just now getting worn down to where I should put a new layer on top to level tings out again. I put 6 inches down after digging off the top of the old area. It will wear down some with driving on.
 

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