At 9 A.M., I met the contractor at the farm site. We spread the Typar and discussed the plan for the day. The dump truck driver arrived with the first load of gravel at about 9:30 A.M. After that, the contractor spread the gravel while waiting for each successive load to arrive. The loads came about half an hour apart and the whole driveway was covered by the early afternoon.
The gravel is a 6”-minus mix of tailings from a local gold mining operation. A nice thing about this material is that all the dirt has been washed out and the mix drains well even after it settles. The main difficulty is that it is hard to level it if there are too many large rocks at the surface. So, after each load was spread, the contractor and I picked the largest rocks off and tossed them onto the leading edge of the pile before he began compacting the new layer.
After so much delay it was hard to believe the whole driveway was laid down in just a few hours. One the positive side, it is all ready to use. On the negative side, it was installed the weekend before I return to my fall work hours and both kids are now back in school.
With luck, I’ll get some clearing done before the snow falls. Anything I can do before winter will get us a quicker start in the spring.
