Our Gravel Driveway Keeps Washing Out
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
- Well we got another rain storm that washed our gravel driveway out again. Normally I’d just come out here and box blade it back in shape until the next big storm would wash it out again but this time I decided to fix it more permanently. And I got the perfect tool for the job
Link to Mongo Attachments Tilt Bucket
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Link to Mongo Attachments Tilt Bucket
mongoattachments.com/tilt-bucket/
Those tractors sure seem to make life easier, and are super handy. Looking good on getting the drive way redone. Can't wait to see how it turns out!
Hey there Adam, I have been a viewer of your channel for the last 4 years and I have always been impressed by how much your channel has grown and changed over time. It has been interesting to see how you went from doing mainly firewood videos to using different equipment to excavating and dirt work, trail riding, to building buildings to cool projects and your two ponds all the way to fixing your driveway. I lot the variation of your videos, you always do a great job! Thanks Adam for always putting out awesome videos!
Maybe a French drain on the high side of the driveway, the length of the drive, would decrease the amount of water that flows across the driveway and down. Just a thought. That tilt bucket works great!
Adam, maybe try putting some breaks down your ditch in a few places & that will slow the flow of water down hill. They use 4-6” stone. I’m sure you have already thought about that but just food for thought. Remember, water will win every time. Great video. More & better equipment makes for lighter work. Have a great day. Dave from Maine.😉
Your operator skills are climbing exponentially, Adam. Best wishes on the pond. Can’t wait until you and the family are on it this winter!
I would argue that some grass in your new ditch will prevent erosion much better than stones though.. and be much cheaper and easier to maintain. The gravel will likely fill up on your expensive river stones quickly, if you go that route.
My thoughts exactly on the gravel filling up the stones. It’s still going to wash off the driveway and now it’s going into the ditch. I think we’ll see you back here with plan B ‘down the road.’ Hopefully, I’m wrong. If I’m not, hey, more content! 😀
Hydro seeding would be good
Good to see you embracing the ruts and turning them into swales. I think this is the right approach and adding the large rocks is the way to get it even better.
My drive is almost identical to yours - you might try water bars. I used “recycled” (i.e. free) parking lot blocks/stops upside down buried on the down hill side at about 30° from the crown to my swales, have them like every 30-40’ and it solved my problems pretty well. They not only slow the water cascade, they seem to collect the washed out rock, then deflect the water off to my rip-rap ditches
I love my tilt bucket. Most favorite attachment!!
@OneEyeCustoms I hope all is well. Haven’t seen you post a video in a bit
I’ve had that bucket for two years and have been very happy with it. It’s amazing for shaping.
Good morning Adam, good choice in attachments for the excavator. I've seen Mike on "Outdoors with the Morgans"
get one of these and he absolutely loves his and puts it to very good use. I'm sure you will find many uses for it.
Your ditch is wide enough and easy enough I would think you could seed it and just mow it, and may save money.
The cost of stone is so regional because the availability of stone is VERY regional. Here in northeast North Carolina, we don't have any rock - this area is all sandy soil. Rock has to be brought in by train or truck from somewhere else. I imagine that isn't cheap to haul great distances. Sand is ridiculously cheap here, dig a hole past the clay pan and you will find all the sand you could ever want.
Yeah, here in TN I can get a 20 ton triaxle load for $500-550 if I shop around. You dig a hole around here and you are going to find more rock than dirt. A load of decent screened top soil in comparison will run you close to the $1k mark.
Yea here in Georgia 18tons runs anywhere from 300-500 depending on if you are getting 57 stone or crusher run
Thank you for your hard work to bring us great content.
When you get done digging the ditches you may want to consider putting a few rocks that are a bit bigger than a softball into the ditch to help slow down the flow of water.
Tell us you didn't watch the video without telling us you didn't watch the video. 😅
Nice job Adam! You may need to drop in a culvert or 2 eventually, after you see how the water “ sheets” across the driveway. Good luck!!
good morning Adam nice to see you working smarter with the correct equipment for the job which facilitates the value added quality results and must elevate your smile factor. The new building in the background is still a wonderful eye catcher and fits right in with the beauty of its surroundings. Have a wonderful week. 😀👍👍👍
Looks great! Hopefully you called National Fuel or the PA 811 line for a utility mark out before the digging commenced!
Love the commentary while operating very insightful
You said at the end this probably won’t work for a 2+inch rain but what you had stood up to less than that(?). The top end will wash out the road; hope not but just looking at it from the comfort of my couch - looks that way.
Your skills are impressive and improving!!!
Hey, brother. You did a super nice job on the driveway and the ditch. Congratulations! Chip
I’m out here in California, but I learn a lot and great ideas watching your videos. Thanks!
Awesome! Thank you!
There’s a reason why they call them “Gully Washers”.
Unless you use 100’s of yards of concrete to create the proper drainage, you’ll always have wash out issues on a driveway like yours. I don’t know why you’d try to replace a bank with a crown unless you wanted to double the wash out trouble you were having. You succeeded 😂
PS. It is absolutely the operator, and not the equipment, that makes the difference. Somehow, all sorts of ditches got built long before there was ‘tilt’ anything. It was pure operator skill and experience.
At any operators union school they still make you reach a certain level of proficiency with a straight backhoe/excavator bucket before they’ll let you get near a machine with a hydraulic thumb on it.
* You won’t know if the problem is solved until the next gully washer.
I think you need to just bite the bullet, get the stone, and lay it down ASAP…..it would have been best to do it before taking back the roller. Or you can wait and do all this again later after you realize the crown really is the way to go and that you will either send the watershed down both sides or create a catch basin on the high side and pipe it under the road. The only water you want on the road is what falls on it from the sky.
There are no active quarries around here, so limestone has to come down the Mississippi River on barges, get loaded onto trains at Vicksburg, and taken to a yard in Canton, MS. Its expensive, but you can buy it now by the truckload. 20 years ago, it was just in 50lb bags at Lowes.
Instead of armoring your ditch, I recommend you let the grass grow and put in water bars every 150 feet or and direct the water into the field where it can sheet flow down the hill. You should be able to shape everything so you can mow it.
GOOOOOOOD
MORNING EVERYONE FROM
A GORGEOUS COOL MORNING HERE IN VIRGINIA BEACH!!…Boy Howdy Adam that rain really did a number on your driveway…glad you have the right tools for the job.
Nice job & video!
Catch yinz on the next one
Have a day 😊
since watching this, the algorithm is showing me all kinds of driveway videos. Seems most driveways have enough gravel and just need a power raking to get them back up. may be worth looking into as i bet its cheaper than new loads of stone.
LOOKING GOOD!
I use filter fabric under my stone-lined ditches. More "stretch" than woven fabric and allows you to set stones in the ground, as you mention. Like you said, it doesn't prevent weeds, but reduces them and makes them easier to pull out I think. In my area of northern Vermont, 1-1/2" crushed gravel (bank run, natural gravel) runs $270/load. 100% ledge product (3" minus) runs $325. This is only 18 ton loads. But guess I should feel lucky. Plus I'm only about 2 miles from the quarry.
looks good , cant stop water just redirect it .best to all john
Angling the driveway to the inside and having the 1 ditch is how it should be done and it will serve you better.
When does the digging for pond #3 start?
Looking good I have the same issues on my driveway I believe the only way to prevent washing out would be to pave it or concrete it but man that would be expensive to have done
Yeah I’m not even sure how much it would cost and I don’t think I want to knoe
nice job adam. i live in warren pa and know all about washed out roads
Good Morning! Nice results on the driveway with that tilt bucket, Adam.
Shallow WIDE ditches on BOTH sides of the drive (more like swales) with grass growing in them to control erosion, is what you need. I mean WIDE, at least as wide as the driveway and only 4-6” deep. You’re only halfway there. You don’t want the water to run across the driveway unless you plan to do this every time you get a hard rain.
Nice job Adam. Hopefully it will solve your problem. Stay safe.
ever look into recycled blacktop? we have it installed at a few of our facilities and we have not had issues with wash outs at all
Nice work! That bucket sure is slick
Good luck Adam. Hope that fix works. Anyway, stay safe, healthy and cool. Bill H from Cranberry Township
those stone prices are insane! My area we average $300-$350 for a tandem load of 2" crushed limestone.
Next time the water crosses the road, consider a properly sized elliptical culvert at that location. You can only keep the water on one side of the road for so long. Grass seed will be cheaper and better to prevent erosion in your new bar ditch.
Great job.
put 2-3 inch stone in those deep ruts then finish with your smaller stone
Hi Adam . There was a woman I use to mow her yard she had a driveway that had a spot that was probably 150 ft at 10% grade then leveled out it washed out all the time I got a guy to bring septic field line gravel about 3 inch to 4 inch size and put it down on the hill part then covered lite with 57's on top it worked amazingly well for ten years never had to fix it again she passed away after but I know it worked that long .
That works really well Adam! You look like you’ve been using that bucket for a long time. I have to get a load of larger stone today for my back yard today f on a washout. Jeff
We just experienced something similar, but a lot worse. Our area got washed out to the tune of over 100 roads, two bridges, a house and more destroyed or rendered unusable. Our driveway was washed out at the culverts where a creek flowed under it (5 to 6 feet deep erosion). We've filled part of it back, but we also have a 1/4 mile gravel drive on a hillside and we're going with a fabric mat underlayment this time around. Going to dig out the drive down to about 8 to 10 inches, put in the fabric mat, then cover in various sizes of stone, then compact it. I've got a few videos of the flooding as it happened, then the repair to the drive the next day on our channel. Look for the "Flooding Damage Repair" video to see the extent of the damage. It was a wild ride, I'll tell ya.
I just had two 25T loads of DGA brought in for a top layer on my driveway and a packed layer in my barn, was ~$560 per 25T load in central Kentucky
The county just redid our road and put new culverts in and this year we have had 4 storms that dumped at least 1" of rain in less that 30minutes. In my ditch they put rip rap and i hate it now my 2a limestone around my culvert washed down into the rip rap and makes a solid damn on the downhill side of my culvert. once its in the rip rap it impossible to clean out. I would recommend just planting grass in that ditch and try to slope the driveway to it as much as possible to the whole driveway isnt trying to dump in one spot.
I think the price of stone has most to do with how much limestone is in the ground in that region in Wi where I live there are 4 quarries within 10 miles of my house. A load delivered is about 500$ but about 200 of that is the trucking i think.
Adam you need to get a crown in your driveway and make sure the driveway is higher than the yard so the water can drain. And you need to add some swells to your driveway.
Thanks for sharing!
This attachment for the excavator is somewhat reminiscent of the Swedish attachment Rototilt
Here in Southwest Montana, gravel goes for about $12 / ton.Thats what living in the Rocky Mountains does for you. And 30 below winters.
Yes, gravel driveways are in need of continual maintenance.
There’s just no rest for a home owner. Maybe a drain tile on each side that can divert water??? ❤😊
People always ask don’t you ever run out of content. Nope. The second I wonder what am I going to video today the driveway gets washed out or a tree falls in the woods or something needs fixed or improved
@@HometownAcres yep, being a homeowner is a never ending battle. We’ve had seemingly non stop tornadoes, datos, hail storms here in Iowa. We had 100 mile an hour straight wind one night and a nice ash tree in our woods decided to transplant itself into our backyard. At least, the canopy did. Everyday’s an adventure. More so at 68 years of age. ❤️😊 by the way Adam, our son loved the plaque that you made for his cat Phil.
That bucket works well 👌
In southern Indiana where the limestone quarries are everywhere, it's about $300-$500 a load (enough to do a regular sized driveway).
Have you looked in to RCA? In my neck of the woods it goes for about $7.00 a yard. Holds up very well and locks up over time.
Add french drain type culverts running down each side of the drive. Let the water go into the culvert where it doesn't washout the drive!
not just a crown ... you must have a series of swells to force the water off the roadway... slow the water speed and at times the accumulated volume.
I've never had fabric affect how well rip-rap holds in place.
You have the solution on your property. Ash from wood fires. Layer ash over the gravel & lightly water. Let dry a few days. It will become hard, but not as hard as concrete.
It solved my brother's driveway sinkholes.
Good morning Adam, nice bucket, seems very smooth and durable. Do more research before you put down riprap and rock.
Check out Cooperstown Sand and Gravel. That's who we deal with,their prices are usually pretty good. Have a good one,take care and God Bless!!!❤😊
I would not be too concerned with rip-rap in your ditch. Once you get vegetation established in it, it should hold most of your gully washers. Getting a good crop of grass without rip-rap will allow you to mow it. Maybe even mow it taller than the adjacent field. Notice that when the water discharged it didn't cut into your field much, if at all. Your ditch looks great as is. Granular material is much more erodible than topsoil. Put your money into gravel for the drive and use some of your new pond overburden ( or the topsoil you stripped for the new building) to support growth in the swale.
kyle from spicer designs is going to be mad that your bucket is so solid
Hah! Im definitely jealous
2A is $19.50 a ton plus trucking in Harrisville,PA.
Great videos Adam.
Would it help if you put perforated drain pipe in your ditches?
River rock seems like a maintenance pit as it grows in with weeds. Cant mow over 4 inch rock. I would just plant it woth grass and mow it.
Instead of guiding the water down the edge of the driveway. Get rid of the water at the top. Once you put riprap on the edge it's gonna start growing trees brush etc.
Your wife is a saint.
Yes she is
You need a french drain both sides of your driveway, as the side edges of it.
Looks good
What about putting in a culvert halfway down the hill to lessen the water crossing the driveway? Just a thought!! Best, -- J. Andre. / Old Iron Acres
When working on roads and ditches, it seems like we're fixing one problem and creating another...
I called for the ditches last time. :P
Trench out a 1 ft deep trench on each side. Never mind the rain beat you to it.
I watched this then came back. I wanted to ask a question because I have no idea about rock and stone. I was stuck in traffic yesterday because they were resurfacing the black top road near our house. While I was sitting in traffic one of the sign holders was standing by my car and I asked him what they did with that old black top. He told me that they repurpose it and sell it for projects like yours. I that old black top cheaper that rock for a driveway?
You need a culvert at the point where the water tends to cross the driveway.
Great equipment skills. Why not try the old European way? Just plant hedges on both sides of the driveway to avoid erosion.
2 inch layer of 3/4 inch stone will slow down the water to stop the wash out
Commenting to help the algorithm. Hope to see Adam with a concrete driveway landing his private plane on it some day lol!
Keep up the great work!
Shoot I’d be happy with blacktop. I don’t think I’ll ever see the day though
Look to crushed concrete, it a great base product.look for a place to move the water with pipe .
Water bars might help?
Darn...and I thought gravel was expensive here at about $400CAD per load ($290USD). That is up in the Canadian shield though...so makes sense it is a bit cheaper.
Maybe a geocell for the hill, I've been contemplating it for my driveway but it's still on the pricey side
Hi Adam
We own a 30,700 acre nature reserve in South Africa, up in the mountains. Have you considered adding "sleeping policemen" humps on your driveway to divert the rainwater? This is the only solution that stops our roads from washing out after heavy thunderstorms, other than replacing dirt/gravel with flat rocks. Here's a film about our reserve: th-cam.com/video/EtjsB_-siWY/w-d-xo.html
We also dug out a pond late last year at our smaller nature reserve in England. The first excavator (almost new, just one year old) burst into flames overnight and was a complete right-off because of an electrical fault. You think you've had problems! Here's the link to that film: th-cam.com/video/j8aSETZKo-U/w-d-xo.html
All the best from the UK
👍All I can say about this video is, ahhhhh.
Stone is $960.00 a load in finger lakes area of NY.
you should check out "Outdoors with the Morgan's" and see how he cuts ditches with a tilt bucket
Very few homeowner operators are as good as Mike Morgan.
Andrew Camarata has some extra stone...
Pavement cure for all roads
your dad looks cool
Could you just plant the swale in grass?
I watched several videos where people install that rif raf (how do you even spell that???) and the put geomat and on top of that they put angular rock. They specifically said use angular rock, because smooth stone washes down and angular rock locks in to one another and stays put.
In another video they put specific rocks that are linked like a mat.
😂 Rip rap. Riff raff is found in the government offices.
Hahaha
I have the Mongo 42” duel cylinder tilt bucket for my kx040
I believe mine is a 52”. I forgot to mention that
Adam what is the cost to black top the driveway?
NOOOOOOO!!!!!! NO SPRAY!!!! Use your attachment that does the shredding; you can use it for grass too!!!