We’re thinking of doing a shoot and chip driveway, rather than asphalt. Any pros/cons I should be aware of? No heavy trucks, just a fair bit of car traffic. Fairly straight, with a small incline.
What about snow plowing this surface? Is it easy to damage? Anything else I should know before I pull the trigger?
Thanks for any input!
This term might be local to you. Would you explain what it is?
I think “shoot and chip” is the same as tar and chip… but don’t you have to have asphalt or concrete as a base layer? I thought the idea of tar and chip was to extend the life of the base with minimal maintenance?
They used to tar and chip all of the roads were I grew up in PA instead of repaving them when the blacktop began to wear and crumble.
The downside was that the tar and chip was incredibly messy for the first few months after it was applied, especially in warm summer temperatures. Everyone hated driving on freshly tar and chipped roads to the point of avoiding them if possible! You’d kick up all the dust and rocks like on a gravel road, with the addition of sticky tar on your vehicle! And let me tell you, they SUCKED for riding bikes as a kid. But after it was well worn, it was more or less like a normal driving surface and lasted forever.
If the road wasn’t well worn before snow season, the snow plow would scrape a lot of the chip away, but otherwise they held up fine to plowing.
Chip seal is what the procedure is called in this area, keep in mind we do not have extreme winters in north Texas and I think there are only snow plows in the pan handle of Texas… many of the former just gravel ranch roads were chip sealed into what appears to be blacktop asphalt road surfaces
The street in front of our house was gravel in the 50s then chip sealed in the 60s re-chip sealed about twenty-five years and hasn’t been touched since… and is holding up to trucks in the thirty to forty thousand pound range …but we are not subjected to the freeze thaw cycles if up north.
In Kentucky we saw asphalt roads reduced to mud after winters of negative 30F as the base was destroyed by the deep freeze
We are putting in a chip and seal (also known as macadam) driveway next week. We now have gravel/dirt which washes badly with a heavy rain. I did a lot of research about it and then had some guys come out to give estimates. They can go over the details with you. It is much more affordable than asphalt and actually requires less maintenance. Our driveway is 1/2 mile long, and we are also doing the area around the barn. The cost is approximately $25,000 for an 11’ wide driveway, plus the barn area which is fairly small.
We were able to get a loan from our local AgCredit at a very low interest rate. I was afraid my husband was going to have a stroke the last time we had a major downpour. Our current “driveway” is also prone to potholes which also requires a lot of work every few months.
The guy who is doing the work told us not to scrape the surface directly, but to leave about an inch of snow. We use a box blade and can raise it up.
We’ll see how it goes next week.
[QUOTE=clanter;8162944]
Chip seal is what the procedure is called in this area, keep in mind we do not have extreme winters in north Texas and I think there are only snow plows in the pan handle of Texas… many of the former just gravel ranch roads were chip sealed into what appears to be blacktop asphalt road surfaces
The street in front of our house was gravel in the 50s then chip sealed in the 60s re-chip sealed about twenty-five years and hasn’t been touched since… and is holding up to trucks in the thirty to forty thousand pound range …but we are not subjected to the freeze thaw cycles if up north.
In Kentucky we saw asphalt roads reduced to mud after winters of negative 30F as the base was destroyed by the deep freeze[/QUOTE]
Kentucky does not have “winters” of negative 30F. The last two winters have been unusually cold, with occasional below zero temperatures for a few days at a time, but nowhere near -30.
[QUOTE=keatssu;8163010]
Kentucky does not have “winters” of negative 30F. The last two winters have been unusually cold, with occasional below zero temperatures for a few days at a time, but nowhere near -30.[/QUOTE]
Yes, there was a -30 registered in KY last winter. It was -32 in Madison County, KY. The record is -37 in Shelbyville, KY in 1994. And yes, the roads in KY are a mess this year.
http://www.kentucky.com/2015/02/20/3704875_madison-county-hits-minus-32-degrees.html?rh=1
I always joke that Kentucky has the worst weather in the United States-- you guys get ALL of the extremes! All four seasons and then some! :lol:
I
[QUOTE=LauraKY;8163056]
Yes, there was a -30 registered in KY last winter. It was -32 in Madison County, KY. The record is -37 in Shelbyville, KY in 1994. And yes, the roads in KY are a mess this year.
http://www.kentucky.com/2015/02/20/3704875_madison-county-hits-minus-32-degrees.html?rh=1[/QUOTE]
I’m not referring to record temps or aberrant temps, I’m talking about average temps. Our winters are relatively mild. We went 60 days without measurable snowfall this past winter before we had a couple of big snows. The roads around me were not a problem.
[QUOTE=keatssu;8163010]
Kentucky does not have “winters” of negative 30F. The last two winters have been unusually cold, with occasional below zero temperatures for a few days at a time, but nowhere near -30.[/QUOTE]
Oh they have had them in the 1970s … minus 25 was recorded at the farm we had our horse at in the Simpsonville area in 1990s…
Updated Friday morning at 10:30 AM…(10:54 AM EST Feb 20, 2015)
The low temperature just east of Richmond, KY this morning dropped to -32 degrees.
This was 5 degrees above the all-time Kentucky low of -37 set in 1994.
Regarding KY winters - I’m referring to the season of winter in general, not records and aberrant temperatures. Search the average temperatures and snowfall for KY and you’ll see the weather here is relatively mild. This past winter we went 60 days without measurable snowfall. We haven’t had any problems with the roads - there are some potholes, but nothing extreme, and they are very quick to patch them up. We did have a couple of big snowstorms at the end of winter, but never days on end of subzero temperatures.
If you leave an inch of snow on top of the pavement it can make slush, which in the worst case can turn to glare ice overnight and stay ice during the day. That’s a problem we have with our north facing driveway unless we box grade it off. It’s usually a short term issue here in KY, but it only takes once to cause damage or injury.
My neighbors did this to their driveway about 2-3 years ago. It was a gravel driveway with a bit of a hill. It held up pretty well until just recently.
[QUOTE=clanter;8162944]
In Kentucky we saw asphalt roads reduced to mud after winters of negative 30F as the base was destroyed by the deep freeze[/QUOTE]
Irregardless of KY’s temps, I recall the roads in the campground we went to when I was a kid more or less destroyed by winter freezes. Even as teens, we could tell the base was insufficent to withstand the temperature changes. Southern Michigan does routinely get pretty darn cold. Most of the roads handle it pretty well; however, the private roads and driveways tended to not survive well.
We actually have quite a few roads here that are done with macadam. I first thought they had done a road base and left off the actual asphalt. These are actual roads with some heavy trucks, and they were done OK but not great, so we are seeing potholes starting to develop after less than two years.
In my experience, the base has to be well prepared and of a good thickness, and the liquid asphalt application has to be generous (and forceful?) enough to get good penetration. Otherwise the hard layer won’t be thick enough to last. YMMV, and with a driveway it should be plenty durable if the prep work is at all correct.
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