I've recently acquired several loads of road millings that I spread on my gravel driveway to fill in the ruts and regrade some low spots. The material is somewhat coarse and a bit difficult to pack. Careful backdragging and running back and forth a few hundred times has helped, but is there something else I might do to help tighten this stuff up? I'm thinking of renting a plate compactor, any other thoughts or suggestions? Thanks.
Lots of h2o and compaction of some form, I've sprayed my millings with a light mix if diesel and used motor oil, just enough to help them "emulsify" and stick together. ,
I've got a sense that using using something petroleum based will be more affective (effective?) than water. The next questions would be quantity and applicaton method. Light mist from a garden sprayer, or more saturation from something like a watering can? Goes without saying that this task would have been better performed back in the middle of summer sometime, but the material wasn't available until last week. Figures........
From the many side roads I drive year in and year out, observing the road work and various effectiveness, it seems to me that the millings will hold together well if you water and compact them very well. Then like you suspect, it takes warm weather along with traffic and time and the oil seems to kind of stick them together into something like asphalt especially where the wheels run, so long as the wheels don't tear them up first. Of course, over time this inadequate surface will let water through into the base and then the potholes that form will be worse than gravel road potholes, more like asphalt potholes with sharp edges. Then you will need cold patch or hot patch to fill them in, and so it goes from there.
The h20 aids in the initial compaction much like it would with any gravel type material, moisture acts as a lubricant and help the material "slide" together to form a tighter bond. I sprayed my petroleum based mix out of a tack truck as to form a uniform layer, with a properly crowned road this mix also helps shed any rain. As for the pot holes, I've had one after 4 years, and even then, I took a 5 gallon bucket of millings from work, spread em in the hole dumped some oil on em and you would never know it was there now. My biggest complaint with millings is the chunks, my millings were from some temporary binder course paving so I didn't have the chunks that come from the top course lifting off, lucky me, right?
Don't spray diesel fuel on it!!!! level it off, leave it alone. Anybody hauling asphalt know's diesel fuel was used as a release agent back in the days when it was allowed to use diesel fuel. Any petroleum based material thinner than the oil used in the base mix is exactly that.... a thinner. If the oil content in the material you spread on your driveway is up to par, leave it alone time will stick it back together.
The fuel and oil help to bind it all back together, I guess I should have stated just a small amount of fuel is mixed with the oil to help to thin it thus enabling it to be sprayed more consistently.
All good suggestions here from people that have used this stuff before. Bigshow, you're right about the chunks! Oh my aching head! Load the truck, short chain the tailgate, push the stuff around with the loader, get out of the loader to throw the chunks to the side, hop back in, back drag and repeat......
I like to use SC250 road oil on millings. Spread them out as smooth as possible and roll them with a smooth drum roller, then spray them with road oil. When your done people will think you have put down hot mix asphalt. I use a bitch pot (tack pot) to spray the oil, it has to be hot to spray about 200 degrees. It's more of a summer time project, if it's not warm weather the oil wont cure. Here is a driveway I did this summer.
Nice job on the driveway.
Sister company had several loads of millings and dumped them in our yard . Finally spread it out to a thickness that run from 4 to 6 inches . Has held up pretty good considering the weight of the trucks and cranes rolling over it .
They have a hard time holding up a static load but other than that they are great for cheap final coatings on driveways and such. No dust, don't track, get harder than medically assisted wood and they are generally priced right.
I have a big supply of mixed millings and 2A stone that came from temporary paving over a pipeline job being removed. When we spread that out it packs very tight and doesn't move, when you walk on it it feels solid like asphalt. In areas where rain washed out plain 2A mod, the mix does not wash out. In a year of heavy truck traffic we haven't seen a pothole yet. Spinning forklift tires on it doesn't move it unless you get really carried away. So maybe this means you should mix the asphalt millings with stone? We spread it and pack it with a 955L with street pads, that takes care of clumps and lumps, then the trucks run it in.