Hi everyone, I feel as if you are all along with me on my search for just the right place. I found a nice parcel with a decent home however there is no driveway, just two dirt/mud ruts. The ground is fairly level and seems to have good drainage. There appears to be an old gravel pad up by the garage. I am in Illinois and have about 5 gravel pits within 20 minutes of me. Can anyone give me examples of their driveway installation dimensions and costs? I realize that there are many, many factors including geography, topography, quality of materials, distance to the gravel pit and labor, etc. I am just wondering if I am looking at a $10k project or a $50k project or a $150k project. Of course that will help us know if we can afford to even make an offer! Thank you for any experience related to installation cost that you can share.
How long will the driveway be? How long and how wide are the deep ruts? What is your soil type in that area in general? (clay, loam, silt)
On our property in central VA, we had a trail through the woods leading to an area that would eventually become my barn and pasture. It was always fine for truck, cart and tractor traffic. We had the area logged and cleared. During that the trail had deep ruts from the skidded and logging trucks. We talked with a contractor about “fixing” it. He suggested filling the ruts with #2, adding road base on top of that and then adding 57 stone. The price for the 50yd project was crazy, and that was 16 years ago. We decided to wait. We then filled the ruts with fill dirt (free) and had a load of 57 spread by the dump truck driver. It was a long time ago, but the price was probably under $300. Fast forward to this past summer. We were ready to upgrade the gravel drive to the barn a bit, make a parking area and add a semi circle turn around for truck and trailer. We had 20 tons of crush and run spread/dumped by the driver. The load was $400. We need to get another load to make the semi circle slightly bigger for the trailer that is for our equipment to be able to make the turn. It won’t take a full load, so we are waiting until we have need for gravel in another area.
Our soil where most of our driveway is located is clay to slightly loamy. We keep grass clippings and leaves off of the driveway year round and make sure that the water gets off of the driveway quickly by making low places for the water to move into the woods rather than along the drive creating ruts, puddles and softening the roadbed.
You will probably need to hire a contractor to remove the ruts from your driveway, unless you own a large enough piece of equipment or are able to rent one and operate it without creating more damage. Then depending on the soil, you will need to put down some larger stones to provide a load bearing surface and then smaller gravel on top of that.
The width is personal preference and how much you are able to spend… Things to consider…make it wide enough that you can get your rig in and out of your farm without issue. Think about needing to get deliveries made whether it is a big box truck or a large hay trailer. Also think about access for emergency vehicles. If the driveway is mainly straight, you won’t need it to be very wide. If the drive way is curvy, it will need to be wider.
You could contact your local quarries and get some names of haulers. I would speak with 4+ haulers and see what they say about the project. Speaking with different individuals will give you an idea of what is common in your area.
Length of the driveway will be a huge factor. Also, is the current driveway area stabilized or would you need additional grading? If you just have to add a few inches of gravel on top of what’s already there, then figure about $400 per dump truck load of gravel, needing about one truck load per 100 feet or so (just an estimate based on the three truckloads I put down to seriously rehab part of my driveway about a year ago. I’m estimating the length covered but you could do the math based on how many inches deep and how many cubic yards in a load. The cost was $1284 for three truckloads of CR-6 or crusher run)
Don’t know how much this will help you, but we just got a bid for some major rehab of an existing driveway that we share with 2 other neighbors. It broke down as follows. The bid did not specify the length of each segment, but I think they are about 1000 ft each IIRC.
Bottom (flat) segment - 100 yards 22A processed road gravel $4500
Hill segment -100 yards 22A processed road gravel ($3500) and 10 yards recycled asphalt for the crown at the top ($1000), total of $4500
This included labor to cut, grade edges, and compact as needed for water to flow off to the side.
The contractor was also going to be doing other work as the drive forks to 1 house and they had additional needs.
We are less than 10 miles (probably more like 5 mi) from the gravel pit. Hauling distance is a huge (biggest) part of the expense. Be glad you are close to several pits and get multiple quotes. It isn’t a cheap job, but the last time this drive was done was almost 15 years ago. A well done job should last you a while. We’ve done minor touch up/top off once or twice and to try to keep it graded. It had just gotten to the point where enough material had slowly washed down our steep hills over the years.
We spent about 400 on 21 tons of 53s. Which is limestone dust up to 1 1/2 inches. It packs like concrete and is really nice to drive on. Most of the cost was in transport, so you should be spending less.
Labor is in general $100 an hour 3 hours minimum. This includes the professional and the skidsteer. Renting your own skidsteer is $200 for 24 hours. If it needs to be level we use a pro. If it just needs to be pushed around we rent the skidsteer and then use it for 12 hours straight on anything we can think of. You could probably also use a tractor with a FEL. We tried using a box grater but that didn’t work at all.
8s are just the rocks, no dust but it moves around and doesn’t pack as well. I would use the 53s if I was tossing it on dirt and I’d want it about 3 inches deep.
I can tell you that 700 feet of asphalt around here, land of “holy shit, how much” pricing, starts about 40k, so–depending on length, obvs–you’re probably not in the 50k+ range.
Do you have friends with equipment or do you have equipment you can use? The biggest part of stone pricing around here (east tn) is the delivery. The quarry is less than 5mi from me but to have a load delivered is $75! Granted they will try to spread it as they dump it but still, if you know anyone with a dump truck that will help you out it will save you a ton of cash 
.
Thanks everyone! What doesn’t COTH know about?!? This is all great information. I am looking at these prices more as a point of negotiation and to determine if we really could afford to put a driveway in. Using some mapping software we determined that it is about 450 linear feet of drive, slightly curved, with a moderate slope down and then back up. I do think we’d likely need a drainage pipe under the lowest part which appears to be perhaps the littlest creek in the spring. That will add to our total, I am sure. I have a local excavator giving me a call tomorrow which should give me a more regional answer. This is not something that I’d be confident tackling even if we did rent the big equipment. There is nothing there now - it is just dirt - so it would need flattening and a little bit of grading I imagine. After they installed the drive I am confident we would be able to keep it up.
My guy drives a heavy duty utility bucket truck so I will be sure to explain that to the excavator who calls. It would need to stand up to the daily use of that bucket truck. If I was living in a fantasy world I would put in a paved driveway but there is no way I could afford that I am certain.
For the culvert pipe in the “little” spring creek…I would advise going WAY bigger than you would first think necessary. Having a large pipe (metal, concrete or plastic) could save you a washed out driveway in the case of a period of long rain or a deluge from a storm. I would also be sure that the area entering and leaving the pipe are easy to maintain…mowable. It will make it easy to keep leaf litter and tall grass from accumulating around the drain and clogging it.
For a driveway that really has no base, just soil, I would ask for a break down of the bid. This will enable to you compare prices a bit better. Some may want to put down larger stone and then geo textile on top with smaller more compactable material on top. This could save money in the long term, because you wouldn’t be “losing” rock to the sinking into the soil. You may find that a contractor won’t suggest going this route, and it may be because it would be overkill for the soil you have. Ask lots of questions!!
Always buy in full truckloads. The big cost is hauling, whether full or not, price of fill doesn’t change much. Have driver spread the load, drop extra in a pile out of the way for use later.
On the drain tubes for the creek, go WAY bigger than you think is needed. You want that water THRU THE TUBE and gone as fast as possible, not trying to wash out your new “dam” of a driveway. Perhaps two tubes beside each other, or oval shape over round, that will allow more water thru easier, would be helpful.
I really second the use of geo fabric in the driveway between the layers. It is incredibly stabilizing, keeping layer in place under stress of rain softness with truck weights on it. Consider alternative fill, like crushed concrete if cheaper than stone. It packs well, getting harder with use. Stands up to water flow on it, over it, fairly well when the ditch over-flowed, no washout at all… We have used crushed concrete a lot recently fixing driveways here and I like how it stays where you put it, drains well. We have large trucks and the barn drive looks very nice even after a lot of usage this winter. We also put quite a bit around the field gates and walking there is dry footing.
We have a drainage ditch running thru our property, which handles incredible amounts of seasonal water. We are at the lower end of the surrounding area, so drainage all comes here to run down to the river. It can go from dry to 3ft deep in a few hours after torrential rains. Small tubes do not allow water to leave fast. Water used to pond across the road when the tube was ONLY 18 inches. That tube rusted out, holes in the road! Replaced with a 3ft plastic tube, which lets lots more water thru faster, speeds drainage instead of so much ponding now. We COULD put a small boat to ride in when the water is high! Never need to paddle, the force of flow would move the boat! Way too strong a current to try walking thru the ditch when it has high water.
We did cement the upstream side of tube where it goes under the barn driveway, helps prevent erosion. Had leftover cement from doing a floor in the shed. But this is only an 8ft wide ditch.
In other property buying threads, it is recommended to check flood and topographical maps of the area, see how much expected water will come your way in runoff during torrential rains. Have to say we seem to be getting a lot more than we used to, in record breaking amounts of rainfall. We have put in drain tiles, graded open ditches to improve runoff, and it helps a lot. All done over the years, since often one change created another issue . The backyard used to flood regularly before putting in drain pipe. Not much standing water anymore, even after extremely heavy rains.
Still, our location beats the flatland north of town with the 12ft deep roadside ditches!! We looked at land there when we moved. Young and ignorant, we got lucky there not buying those places.
