Driveway Installation on a wooded property...without damaging trees

[mike_belben]

Speaking of clay soil soaking, i just spent fathers day playing around with the kids.  We succeeded in refining potters grade clay right out of the new driveway spoil dirt.  And the biggest trick is water and time.  With enough time any sized clay ball will eventually "slake" into milkshake. Even faster if stirred.

So to apply this to driveways, the amount of time water sits on them and the weight of the vehicles "stirring" them will dictate how much milkshake your yard becomes,  very simple equation.

If you are on clay you want minimal water to hit the driveway and quick shedding of whatever must.  The next half is what to the vehicles weigh and are they doing 3 point turns with lots of steering and shearing?  If so, youll need more inches of larger sizes of rock to carry the load and prevent it from being transmitted to the clay.  A quad trail needs no rock and log trucks might take 2feet, for example.

[peterpaul]

An old time Contractor friend, a few years gone now, told me this story many times.  " A lady calls him up and chews him out.  She says the driveway he installed has a big pot hole at the end of her driveway where she turns into it off the Main Rd.  She demands that he come up immeadiatly to fix the pothole.  He drives over and takes a look.  The only pothole is at the end of her driveway.  He tells the lady, He would be glad to fix her pothole and gives her a price and she will have to pay up front.  He then explained that he had installed the driveway 17 years ago!  She turned around and headed up back up to her house in a huff. He never did fix it".