Safety
AROUND YOUR HOME

Bill Campbell

Over the last four years working for the Extension Service, I have had several calls asking for information about installing driveways. While a few have been the standard 20 to 40-foot-long, street to garage variety, there seem to be an increasing number of people needing drives on larger lots. Some of these are several hundred feet in length and would require extremely good relations with a rich uncle or the friendly town banker, especially if you are considering concrete or asphalt. These were the only long-term solutions since gravel never seemed to last more than a couple of years before it disappeared into the soil or formed bottomless mud-puddles the first time it rained.

Over the last few years, we have been recommending products called geotextile fabrics to farmers to prevent gravel disappearance and mud-puddles on their lanes and feedlot areas. These fabrics have performed very well from economic and performance standpoints.

The basic function of the fabrics is to keep the gravel separated from the underlying soil. Wheel traffic causes gravel to mix into soil, especially during wet spring and summer periods when the soil cannot carry even light loads like your car. Over time, the gravel will "disappear" into the soil. Geotextile fabrics prevent this mixing and keep your gravel high and dry, providing a higher quality drive surface.

Geotextile fabrics have been in use at one of our area research farms for a number of years. They were placed in a section of a cattle feedlot area and the entire lot was graveled. After three wet springs, the edge of the fabric area was obvious. The gravel was still providing solid footing over the fabric, but had completely disappeared beyond the edge.

I visited another farm where fabric was used prior to laying out a gravel lane. Even though this lane has received two or three years of extremely heavy traffic on a daily basis, the gravel looks like it was spread last week.

These two examples show how geotextile fabrics can improve the life of gravel areas that receive tremendous traffic loads. I think they will perform even better under the relatively light loads of your personal vehicle.

The other benefit of these fabrics is in the dollars you will save when you don't have to replace gravel every couple of years. If you assume gravel over these fabrics will last at least three times longer than gravel without the fabric, you can afford to spend up to 40 cents per square foot on the fabric. Price checks from several local fabric suppliers have shown they are available for .5 to .30 cents per square foot. And they seem to cause gravel to last much more than three times as long as without fabric.

The key to using these products is to determine the strength and permeability of the fabric needed for your application. Product strength will determine if your loads will cause gravel to puncture the fabric, and permeability tests tell how quickly water will move through the fabric (faster is better for most driveway uses).

I have an excellent fact-sheet that was developed at the University of Illinois Agricultural Engineering Department about using geotextiles that you might find helpful. If you are thinking about a new driveway for your country home, write to me and I'll send you a copy to help you make your decision about the possibility of using geotextile fabrics on your project.

Bill Campbell is an Extension Educator, Farm Systems, at the Springfield Extension Center, Cooperative Extension Service, University of Illinois. You can write to him in care of Illinois Country Living, P.O. Box 3787, Springfield, IL 62708. Telephone: (217) 782-6515. E-Mail: campbellw@idea.ag.uiuc.edu

14 ILLINOIS COUNTRY LIVING MAY 1997