What to put on muddy garage access road?

garage - at this time of

over it to reduce the

concreting but I was

some drainage &

about maybe something

might stay in place

Limestone chippings will tend to compact together and form a fairly solid surface.

But for a long time, you'll be treading a grey slurry into your house and car. Railway ballast is horrible to walk on, particularly if you're not wearing boots - you tend to go over on your ankles. "Spent ballast", i.e. the stuff that emerges from track relaying can be cheap, and has more fines - too much sometimes. Crushed concrete or brick from a demolition/recycling yard is a possibility - cheap but can be dirty. Road planings are another one - never tried them myself, but a lot of farmers use them for tracks and gateways.

And when you consider that most suburban railway carriages don't have a tank for the WC waste, I wouldn't want it in my drive.

garage - at this time of

over it to reduce the

concreting but I was

some drainage &

about maybe something

might stay in place

Pea shingle works. But better is to sprinkle down cement powder, rake it, then put the gravel down. Without the cement, the gravel slowly sinks into the mud. The cement gives enough extra solidity to stop that happening.

NT

Walking is not an problem - it only gets reversed onto and I have a motorised garage door!

As long as the area has a 'border' 20mm gravel won't go far. Use a landscape fabric underneath.

Just bought some 20mm gravel, £30 a tonne delivered. Cheap as chips.

Dave

That was the case with the Mk I slam door stock. Most of that is gone now and all newer units have had retention tanks for years.

Of course, you might get ballast from a line last relayed in 1957 but the richards would be pretty well rotted down by now :_)

Tim

On my line they have only just gone. Standing on the platform looking at turds nesting in a pile of paper in hopefully a thing of the past.

What sort of area would a tonne typically cover for this sort of use ?

Have you considered those recycled plastic frame type things? If you imagine something a little stronger than a plastic milk or bear bottle crate, a couple of inches high - set in the surface of the soil so that the grass grows through it, protected from wear by the plastic.

It happens that Mike Harrison formulated :

At a guess and depending upon depth, 9 to 12 square foot.

I had a driveway some 8m x 4m and covered it with around 40/50mm deep. Tool

Dave

Assume density about 2x water, so divide by 2 to get volume, so 1 tonne = 1/2 cubic metre. At 1/20 metre deep (5cm) you are looking at about 10 sq metres.

What about the plastic mesh used for creating temporary car parks? It just rolls over the grass and stops things like feet and tyres sinking in. If you leave it long enough, the grass grows through and makes it a semi-permanent surface. There are also slightly more permanent solutions, which take the form of open grid tiles, which are pressed into the soil.

Colin Bignell

The other option would be to make sure that it comes from stations.....

garage - at this time of

over it to reduce the

concreting but I was

some drainage &

about maybe something

might stay in place

Yew, Crushed limestone, and whack it flat - about 2". thick MOT type I road base.

Then just leave the grass to grow back naturally, or, if you are in a hurry, sprinkle a THIN layer of topsoil on it and re-seed.

I've done this where people use my roadside verge as a passing place, and it really stops the damage.

Mine cost me 16 a ton this time, 12 a ton last...mind you that was 16 tons...

Abouyt 5 sq meters.

Its about 3 tonnes to a cubic meter IIRC - see