The Driveway Project - Part 3

Disaster! We went away for a long weekend and came back to a disaster-zone.

Prior to leaving, we'd spent several days moving dirt, planting new grass seed, and watering. With over 1000 linear feet of driveway edge to work on (and with drainage concerns still in my mind), we prioritized the areas and began working on two main sections: around the bend at the top where I expected water to flow over the edge, and at the bottom where cars like to turn around.

We began by preparing the area by adding and leveling fill and top-soil, as you see here:


We then decided to try 2 alternative methods of seeding.

The first was using a paper based "seed roll" that had seeds and fertilizer mixed within a 80ft x 3ft paper roll.


The second was using a wood based 50ft x 4ft roll that was made of straw-like wood fibers against a nylon mesh.


At this point, the paper roll looked favorable. It was the easiest to lay down and had the seed and fertilizer all ready to go. With no rain and hot weather, several days watering followed. The first seedlings where starting to sprout just before we had to leave for a few days away. We hoped that they would survive until we returned...

We arrived back at the house in the evening just as it was starting to get dark. We'd seen rain in the forecast while we where away, we just didn't know how much. At the bottom of the driveway, in contrast to the jet-black fresh asphalt we'd left, this is what we saw:


You can see dirt, gravel, and wood chips washed across the asphalt. It looked like a mess, and we started to get a picture of how much rain we'd missed.

On moving up the driveway (walking at this point), there was more to come:


At this point, things where looking pretty bad. "This is not good.", I yelled back to Erin.


But the worst was yet to come. At the top bend, there was a complete collapse:


As you can see, we found a new 1 ft wide and 6-12 inches deep ditch running along a large part of the driveway. If you compare this to the earlier photo of the same area (as we left it) you might get an idea of how much of a shock this was for us. And needless to say, I was not a happy camper.

It turns out that while we where away some thunderstorms came through and dumped about an inch of water within 2 days. by the size of the ditches the rain created, I can only assume that the water must have come down pretty quickly, like 1/2 inch within an hour on each day. Once again, not happy.

So, I called the paving company and explained to them what had happened. They sent someone out to look at it, and will be returning to next week to try and repair it. We've started working on clean-up, and re-doing the areas that got washed out. I'm getting over the initial shock, things are gradually returning to normality, and we've got another weekend of moving dirt to look forward too.

On a more positive note, after all the rain, the new grass is growing:



But in the meantime, my thoughts return to drainage ditches and erosion control.

I'm sure there'll be more updates on The Driveway Project to come.