Driveway Disaster

[jamieleeuk]

I skimmed off the grass layer of my front garden and knocked down the garden wall to give me access to park (obv planning permission etc was obtained).

Being young and inexperienced, I just laid some anti-weed fabric and dumped 1.5 tonne of gravel on it (10mm-20mm in size)

It's only a small area but the dimensions are:

4m wide, by 5m long.

From where the garden wall used to be (what is now the join of my drive and the public pathway) there is a 20cm (roughly) gradient drop over that 5m drive length (ie, sloping down to my property at 4cm every meter).

I didn't give it thought at the time - but now I can see and feel my mistake... The car has sunk a bit and it's difficult to get off the drive due to the gravel slipping.

I don't know what's best to do - but I have a thought that building the rear of the drive up so it's flat might work?

How would I go about that, or would you suggest an alternate method?

Many thanks in advance

 

[LooPrEvil]

It sounds like your basic problem is you did not compact the the ground before you carried out your work. You should dug out about 9" of soil, put down about 6" of MOT and hired a whacker to compact it. Then put your chippings down.

However you only want about 1.5" layer of loose chippings, because any deeper and you will 'sink' into them and have a similar problem, but caused by too much depth of chippings / limestone.

 

[bucko78]

a 1/25 gradient isn't a massive problem for a car but by the sounds of it the loose chippings are having an adverse effect on the gravity of the car and the traction which is lost through slippage.
You may need to remove the chippings completely and go fo a paved or concreted finish.
mot 1 being the finest granular material will still deteriorate once saturated the finer dust and grits become mushy when aggitated it therefore needs protection for it to work adequately. It's primary fuction is to form a sub base layer under a covered surface ie tarmac /block paving etc.