I am building a home / small ranch with 20,000 SF of driveway. I bid concrete, but the HO now wants a dog kennel and horse barn. He wants me to see if I can reduce cost on the driveway in order to provide some funds for the kennel / barn.
It has been suggested I try a “chip seal” driveway. As I understand, the driveway is excavated, graded and covered wth adequate base materials. It is then regraded, sloped to drain and a hot tar substance about 1 1/2″ thick is applied by a truck with a seep pipe in the rear. 3/8″ – 1/2″ nicely colored aggregated is blanketed on the hot tar about an 1 1/2″ thick and rolled. The tar is completely covered.
The tar is suppose to seal the grade and the aggregated provides a durable surface.
I know that it will not be as nice as the concrete we bid, especialy since I included accent bands of stamped concrete at 20′ intervals and a substantial pieces at the street entry and house, but the cost are less than a third, providing more than enough for his kennel / barn. We will do some concrete walks and an appron at the Garage. The chip seal will not be touching the house or installed in the most used foot traffic areas.
The company that is down here in TX doing this has origins in Colorado. They showed me pics of very nice homes withy these driveways. They look nice and blend naturally with outdoor surroundings. I alos viewed a completed project and it looked nice.
I ain’t never dun nutin lik dis afore n I wuz a wunderin if’n eny of y’all out thar head. N utter parts ov dis hure Younighted Staytes folks mite caul it sumpthin defrunt.
Replies
Chip'nSeal makes a great driveway surface, especially for a ranchette with a horse barn and kennel.
We can't do them here because the snow plows would rip them up, but down where you are, what the heck, just do it. Once you see how it turns out, it probably won't be your last.
The county roads here are "chip sealed" every couple of years. They come out, spray a layer of asphalt over the existing road surface, spread a layer of crushed rock, and leave it that way for a few weeks. Traffic gradually compacts it, and then they come back and sweep up the excess rock.
As a driving surface, it sucks. For weeks after the job you hear rocks flinging up against the rocker panels. I'm a cyclist and the stuff is terrible to ride on. I have always assumed they do this because it's the cheapest way to maintain a paved road.
None of this might matter for your application, but I'd make sure your client sees a sample of the surface you're proposing.
Ah yes...chip seal! I have a similar driveway here in California that I share with two other homeowners. We all got together and paid to have it done to our driveway, 25 feet wide and about 450 feet long, about three years ago. It does look nice for the first month or two but be careful how you drive on it, once a few cars drive in and turn around on and it, it digs up the top layer pretty good. After about two to three years it begins to break down again and after 10 years it's not much different then a thin gravel layer over dirt. The finished product is only about an inch thick and consists of oil layer, 1/8 inch gravel, oil layer and final gravel layer. Each gravel layer is rolled and looks similar to asphalt when freshly completed however, come the first hot Texas summer day, the first car to drive on it will leave tire marks that can't be missed.
When they chip seal a normal roadway that was, or is, originally a four or five inch layer of normal asphalt then it looks almost new afterward. The county and other government agencies do this as preventive maintenance kind of thing to keep water from penetrating the roadbed. That's a completely different animal then putting chip seal on a graded and rolled/compacted dirt driveway. Chip seal on a private dirt driveway looks great and will hold up for awhile but just don't expect it to be anything like either concrete or regular 4 inch asphalt driveway. Another note, at the price of oil these days you can expect to do some serious number crunching to justify the outlay.
What about pushing a little harder to convince them to making the driveway out of concrete or pavers? You could do a little at a time and after 10 years or so you have a permanent driveway that'll last a lifetime. At the very least you would have at least a partial paved driveway instead of just dirt and gravel again.
Eighteen months after having our drive done, the neighbor started to build on his vacant lot and by the time the house was completed, all the guys driving to work and delivery trucks had pretty much trashed all our effort in that portion of the driveway. Huge pot holes and not much different then what we started with. Wish I had a digital camera, I'd show you some pics to see what to expect.
I drove truck for a paving company for awhile back in the 70's, and we did quite a bit of chip seal.
In my experience, the oil, which is nearly bunker C and heated so it flows, goes on much thinner than you describe. The best outcomes happened when: 1. The base was well prepared: 2. We applied at least 3 lifts; 3. Each lift was rolled.
We did a lot of Forest Service roads, a few driveways and some access roads to resorts.
The Forest Service specs were always good and those roads, which would bear log truck traffic in addition to hunters, fishermen and cattle drives.
The worst results I saw were on a couple driveways and on the entry road to a golf course where the owners, over the objections of my boss, wanted to go on the cheap with minimal base prep and a single lift. Some of those projects were coming apart where we started before we got to the finish.
Like in most things, you get what you pay for....IMO, a well done chip seal makes a great road....even for cycling.
I wonder how asphalt would price out?