Dust control on county gravel roads

Does anyone know the recipe for dust control on gravel roads? I"ve heard to use calcium chloride but how much, etc.? My house sits within 300 ft of the county road and of an evening, the dust is REALLY bad, especially on a still evening with no breeze...the dust just "sits" in the air and you can hardly breath. I"ve got about a half of mile road frontage I need to work with. Help.

Around here, people just contract with the county or township to have it applied. Really seems to work well.

Might be one of those chemicals that you need a license in order to purchase or apply.

Yes it works very well, but it's very corrosive and will eat up your vehicle just like winter salt!

I could use some myself.

When I was in southeast Iowa earlier this summer, I noticed on gravel or rock roads there was a strip past some farmhouses that was darker color than the rest of the road. I assumed it was some kind of dust control, but I don't know what.

Maybe some of the Iowans on the forum have info?

The township sprays CaCl on the road for about 150' either side of driveways and intersections here. Works well, and isn't very costly. I'd guess 50 gallons should easily do what you need. I've seen home-made applicators consisting of a length of PVC with 1/8" holes drilled about every 6", rather than an actual sprayer setup. Still works. The CaCl soaks in and spreads to cover the whole road.

Here is a product I use on my lane. It works very well. Usually one application each year is all you need.

It smells like molasses. I like it because it is much safer than the calcium base products. The calcium base products will kill the grass where it washes off the gravel. This product seems to bind much better too. It really is sticky before it is mixed.

It washes off real easy before it cures. After wards it is just about impossible to get off.
Dust control

I think it could be some sort of tree sap. call MK dust control in mount vernon iowa they apply it to get what they use. don"t know the number

Paul

I did a google search for dust control and this was one of the products I found. Where do you buy it , how is it packaged, and what does it cost? Also, how do you apply it? THanks JD

In Iowa you have to file a permit with the County
Engineer's office, to do dust controls, usually from May 15 to October 15, and you can self application or hire professionals to do spray it. Most people use calcium or tree sap. Tree sap seems to work better.

In the early 70's I was told they used the pulp from the paper mills in SE Iowa, not sure it worked so good for dust control because you could see someone coming for miles from the dust cloud, but it did make the gravel roads real smooth and everyone drove 70mph on them. A few years back I watched them apply magnesium chloride to the roads around Silverton, CO to keep the dust down.

Here they use brine water from the oil wells. Works well but is #ell on vehicles.

It was actually a liquid from the effluent from pulp mills, from processing the pulp. A couple of outfits did it around here into the 80's, but one quit and the other guy died, so no one doing it now. But it worked good. Reason it died out is because all the public roads are now paved, so no more county contracts, and without those, it wasn't financially viable for the applicators.

Here in rural southern Indiana they used to spray county gravel roads with black tar looking sticky oil. I reckon nowadays the EPA would jail you for extracting oil from when it came (Mother Earth) and putting it back on Mother Earth. Ashes to ashes dust to dust I reckon. Is that fine crushed stone lime dust hazardous to a bodys health?? Similar to how coal dust causes black lung, wonder what lime dust does to a bodys lungs???

John T

I've seen them spray tar on the road in front of houses on gravel roads.Maybe a few hundred yards on either side.

Here in Western Co,they use mag chloride for dust in summer,and to 'melt' snow/ice from roads in winter...

Dont spread PCB contaminated oil on the road like the did in Times Beach MO. years back.

Gene

and in NC too.

don't need to mix the chloride, just sprinkle it on the road and it will draw moisture out of the air and ground....

Lucky me has a 1/2 mile driveway on the end of a dead end gravel road. no traffic no dust..oh what a joy! :lol:

Near me there is a rock quarry where they crush gravel. On the property the EPA makes them spray water on the roads in the place because of the dust. Then they take the gravel and spread all over the county on roads. Makes a lot of sense huh. The county in recent years though has been spraying the roads with tar but they spread pea gravel in it before it's used. It's more like blacktop when they are done.

There are local supplier/distributors that sell the product. There are two here in Eastern Iowa. I get the product in 55 gallon drums. The cost is about $10/gallon. You mix it with water.

You mix it about 10-1 and then apply the mixture.

I have a small spray boom made with just an eight foot straight 1 inch pipe with 1/8 inch holes drilled in the bottom. I have a 150 gallon tank with a roller pump. The whole thing is three point mounted.

Hi this is not very scientific but the mix from tractor tires seems to work pretty well, on patches in our yard no dust there for a few months.
Don't ask how I know this though!
Regards Robert

We just discussed this today at work, As our county maintenace program places several hundered thousand dollars of it (mag chloride) yearly on several miles of our 275+/- miles of gravel roads. Costs about $1800 per mile but actually pays for it's self and then some in reduced maintenace costs associated with going from every other week blading to 5-6 week blading on some sections. If your county is one that performs regular road maintenace you might try convincing them to look into it for the reason I outlined above. It is the only way we would consider doing it at all because if it were for dust control only it would be far from cost effective.

Here are some ideas.
Unpaved roads and traffic areas can be significant sources of visible dust and particulate matter emissions (PM10 and PM2.5) caused by vehicular traffic. Emission reductions are achieved by stabilizing the unpaved surfaces through the application of dust suppressants. A variety of dust suppressants are available and generally classified as water, hygroscopic (road salts), petroleum emulsion resins, polymers, surfactants, bituminous materials (road oils and asphaltic materials), adhesives, and solid materials (petroleum by-products and soils). Other materials include vegetative materials (wood chips) and aggregates (gravel). Effective management practices can also reduce emissions, such as reducing vehicle speed or restricting traffic on unpaved roads

I live on a gravel road with a posted speed limit of 35mph. I would guess that not one in ten vehicles passes my place at that slow a speed. Our gravel is crushed basalt, which wears away, creating lots of dust, especially when a large truck going about 50 goes past.

One of my neighbors and I used to have about half a mile of the road oiled, and that really improved the dust situation. But that neighbor, who has since died, got disgusted with the other neighbors along that half mile of road who would not contribute to having the oiling done, and who griped a bunch about the one or two days that it was necessary to drive very slow, or else the oil would make their car messy. Then the price of road oiling went up from $1 per linear foot of road to I believe $3 per foot. We quit oiling the road.

The oil used, and approved by Spokane County is supposed to come from a well somewhere in Montana that couldn"t be used in regular fuel production. It has a lot of asphalt in it, and I think they had to add a bunch of solvent. The truck they hauled the oil in had a system to heat the oil using heat from the exhaust, so when it got here, it was extremely hot. They would spray it down one half of the road and then turn around and spray the other half. It would smell strongly of solvent the first day, and I always worried a little that it might be flammable, but it never caught fire.

Oiling the gravel road that way was very effective at reducing dust and also helped to reduce washboarding. Over the 15 or so years that we had the half mile oiled, it built up a pretty decent oiled base. But the County, in it"s infinite wisdom continued grading the oiled road and sometimes adding some gravel, so the benefit did not last.

A few years ago, I bought a bunch of magnesium chloride granules and applied it to the gravel road for about 250 feet in front of my house. I used the same spreader that I apply lawn fertilizer to my yard. That Summer I also watered down that 250 feet every several days. I would say that there was a bit less dust from the road that Summer, but I decided that the mag chloride cost and the work involved were not worth the trouble. The fast moving vehicles would bring the dust with them when they entered the treated area, and my yard and house would still get dusted.

I kind of gave up. Luckily, the prevailing wind usually blows the dust away from my house. I sure wish people would just slow down.

One of my neighbors stopped by about a month ago and said he is trying to promote the idea of having the gravel road paved. I told him that while I hated the dust, I would be extremely opposed to paving, since I believe that the way the Local Improvement Taxing District that would result would raise my taxes a huge amount, considering that I have 1/4 mile of road frontage. I explained that I could easily see that costing me $100k in taxes over the next 20 years. I asked him to go ahead and find out how funding would be done for paving the road, and to let me know. But I told him that if it was going to cost me much at all, I would have to oppose the idea. He left in a huff.

I expect that the County will do a traffic study to see how many vehicles use our road over a time period. Maybe the County would at least partially fund improving the road and that might make paving a viable idea.

I wish people would not drive so darn fast on the gravel road. And I wish the County Road Department would leave the road alone, rather than grading it about every month in the Summer. When the road is bumpy with a washboard surface, lots of vehicles go much slower and create lots less dust. Oh well, they will do what they are going to do. Wouldn"t want them to have a reason to obey the speed limit!

Sorry this turned into a rant...good luck with your dust problem.

I've seen them spread it with a three point fertilizer spreader on construction jobs. No recipe involved. It would draw moisture and keep the dust down for a short while.

They used to have sawdust roads in Perry County, Illinois. Instead of oil and chip, it was oil and sawdust. Slicker than snot when it was dry, and like ice when it was wet. I guess they had a readily available supply of sawdust back in the 50's - 60's. And oil was cheap then.

A few years ago some guys here were using a soybean oil product. Smelled like old soybean oil that was going bad. Haven't heard of the stuff in the past couple of years. It probably was priced out of the market. Jim

Fixerupper and I are in the same neighborhood.

Big difference between us is we are in different counties. Mine uses mostly limestone for roads and his uses mostly river gravel. To that end my county subsidises what a local coop puts on the roads.

Coop uses a product made from tree sap. Two applications in a year cost's about $250 for me to cover 400 feet of road. The grader comes by and scrapes most of the loose gravel off the area just before the dust control is applied.

Like Fixerupper said they were messing around with a soybean oil product but I think that was either Farm Bureau or the Soyabean association, not the Coop that usually does the dust control.

The tree sap works pretty well but it is laid on pretty thick. Also if it is done for many years in a row you will start to have potholes form. Only way to get rid of them is to go without for a few years.

jt

Here in Oakland County, MI, the road commission owns its own brine well. They spray the brine on gravel roads; the resulting mixture of salt water and Michigan clay sticks tenaciously to the underside of your vehicle while efficiently rotting away anything it touches.