Alan2005

Our gravel driveway is in a bit of a mess (due to heavy trucks driving up and down it all winter while we were having some work done to the house) and consequently it needs fixing up.

I've not done this before and google hasn't helped that much (I'm probably searching for the wrong things). The driveway and car park bits come to about 3000 sqft so does anybody of any idea of how much I need and what type of gravel should I ask 'acme gravel merchants' for?

rich07

Not sure what you want to ask for, but try driveway gravel. If you put 4 inches thickness down, you need about 30 metric tonnes. As you already have a subbase, you could probably get away with half of that.

Alan2005

Yes, I guess maybe I should have thought of that

Any idea how much this stuff costs? The internet gives various answers from $10 to $100 per tonne + whatever it costs to deliver it.

Steve_P

Wouldn't you also have to have it packed down?

Three to four inches of loose gravel is going to be a bugger to drive on.

Novocastrian

And perhaps it's not so important in balmy BC,but a gravel driveway is a bugger to clear snow from.

Get it tarmac-ed. (spelling?)

Oink

I'd call two or three gravel companies and then triangulate their sales bullshit and see if there's a common theme, eg type of rock, amount of rock and if you need retaining side stays or something.

jimf

Are you getting it completely relaid or just local repairs?

10-20mm gravel would normally do - depends what is available locally cheapest and your preference for appearance.

This is a decent website for UK/Irish applications:

http://www.pavingexpert.com/gravel01.htm

A decent sub base, geotextile and edge retraints will all help a gravel drive last longer but they all cost.

R I C H

IME gravel is a pain, especially in the winter as Novo points out.

I re-modeled my driveway last year and used a crush aggregate - a 3" base of 0.5-1" diameter aggregate, with an inch on top of 0.25" size. It's similar to that used for baseball diamonds, and packs down as hard as you like, easy to plow in the winter and pretty dust free.

mandymoochops

share your pain and roughy the size too - soggy mud / trailers and other have made ours like a bog. Oh reckons around $2000 to get it trucked in and spread.

Atlantic Xpat

In this part of the world, gravel is not used, rather crushed stone, usually 3/4", spread and sometimes rolled. It is a pain in the butt for snow-clearing and every spring I would spend more of my life than I wanted, picking rock out of the lawn. So I went with paving, but thats a bloody expensive option these days with the price of oil. Back in 07 it cost me $6k or so for 4500 sq ft or so.

Crushed stone (as also used for weeping tile / french drains) runs around $250 a tandem truck load IIRC. I'll be updating that price this week as I need some for the base of my super-humungous-lean-to-greenhouse project.

Aviator

It's called Road Mulch in these parts, costs around $11 a ton + delivery, which is usually between $8 and $12 a ton for a full load (12-24 ton). Topping up, 25mm is plenty, keep a few yards around for fixing potholes. Rolling helps compact it faster.