Starting with a short refresher .....
When we bought this property, there was an old run down house and a small garage with a lean-to attached to it.
We had the house torn down but kept the garage and lean-to.
We built a new house and made the existing garage part of it.
The property slopes down from the road to the house so controlling water runoff is a concern.
There is an old concrete pad in front of the garage and the water would flow off of it and down into the floor of the lean-to.
When I first enclosed the lean-to on the side of the garage and put a door in it, I dug a trench in front of it and laid down a row of concrete blocks.
This created a ' bridge ' that I could drive across and the water running off the concrete pad in front of the small garage could run thru the holes in the blocks.
However, when it rained hard, water would still run across the yard, over the concrete blocks and into the floor of the lean-to.
So ... I have finally gotten around to widening the gravel drive out in front of second garage door to make it usable any time of the year.
The first thing to do was to pull up my concrete block ' bridge ' and replace it with something that will drain better.
I built a trough out of treated wood with galvanized metal grating in the top of it and put it in front of the garage door.
This is the end of the trough that buts up against the side of the concrete pad in front of the small garage.
This is the other end of the trough.
I took my trailer and got about 4,000 pounds of driveway stone and yesterday I started putting the gravel down.
I got about half of the drive graveled yesterday And I used about 1/4 of the gravel out of the left side of my trailer.
This morning, I pulled the trailer back up along side the drive to start working off the right side of the trailer.
Once I got all of the gravel down, it was time to do some playing on the Ridemaster roller and pack the gravel down.
First I ran up and down the drive for awhile.
Then I changed direction and starting at the edge of the drive, I rolled across it and onto the old concrete drive.
Then I turned my front wheels a little and ran the roller back across at a little bit of an angle so I end up a few feet over from where I started.
Using this zig-zag movement, I ran up and down the drive some more.
This is how the finished drive looks now.
The floor of the lean-to is dirt so I'm going to put some of this gravel down in there also.
The grates are cut into 12" squares so they are easy to just lift out when the trough needs to be cleaned out.
When we bought this property, there was an old run down house and a small garage with a lean-to attached to it.
We had the house torn down but kept the garage and lean-to.
We built a new house and made the existing garage part of it.
The property slopes down from the road to the house so controlling water runoff is a concern.
There is an old concrete pad in front of the garage and the water would flow off of it and down into the floor of the lean-to.
When I first enclosed the lean-to on the side of the garage and put a door in it, I dug a trench in front of it and laid down a row of concrete blocks.
This created a ' bridge ' that I could drive across and the water running off the concrete pad in front of the small garage could run thru the holes in the blocks.
However, when it rained hard, water would still run across the yard, over the concrete blocks and into the floor of the lean-to.
So ... I have finally gotten around to widening the gravel drive out in front of second garage door to make it usable any time of the year.
The first thing to do was to pull up my concrete block ' bridge ' and replace it with something that will drain better.
I built a trough out of treated wood with galvanized metal grating in the top of it and put it in front of the garage door.
This is the end of the trough that buts up against the side of the concrete pad in front of the small garage.
This is the other end of the trough.
I took my trailer and got about 4,000 pounds of driveway stone and yesterday I started putting the gravel down.
I got about half of the drive graveled yesterday And I used about 1/4 of the gravel out of the left side of my trailer.
This morning, I pulled the trailer back up along side the drive to start working off the right side of the trailer.
Once I got all of the gravel down, it was time to do some playing on the Ridemaster roller and pack the gravel down.
First I ran up and down the drive for awhile.
Then I changed direction and starting at the edge of the drive, I rolled across it and onto the old concrete drive.
Then I turned my front wheels a little and ran the roller back across at a little bit of an angle so I end up a few feet over from where I started.
Using this zig-zag movement, I ran up and down the drive some more.
This is how the finished drive looks now.
The floor of the lean-to is dirt so I'm going to put some of this gravel down in there also.
The grates are cut into 12" squares so they are easy to just lift out when the trough needs to be cleaned out.
