Creating a farm road with geotextile will provide you with a long lasting road that is easy to maintain and cheaper than putting down concrete or asphalt.
When designing a road, you want to insure that you have adequate drainage. I like to see a hump in the middle of the road, so water can travel from the top of the road, off to the sides, and into a ditch. You can use the water in these ditches creatively, but that is a topic for another day.
You will need to either grade the road with a hump in the middle yourself, or hire someone to do it. After you road has been graded, you will be left with bare dirt. The next step many people take is putting down rock/gravel. This is a mistake.
The next step you should take would be to put down a layer of geotextile, and then your gravel/rock on top of that. What is geotextile? Geotextile is a permeable membrane, usually made of woven polyester or polypropylene. It allows water to seep through it, while preventing anything from coming up and growing.
Geotextile comes in big rolls. Roll it out along the entirety of your road/driveway. You can cut sections out to account for elevation changes and curves. Then staple it down using long sturdy staples and hammer. This will keep the geotextile in place. You’ll want to make sure that you do a quality job of securing because the next step it putting rock down.
After the geotextile is secured, it’s time to put some rock down. I would recommend using one inch to 1 1/2” rock for a driveway. Yes the rock will settle and compact, but not like it would if you didn’t use the geotextile. The geotextile will keep the rock from sinking down into the soil, which will give you more bang for your buck.
What do you think of this method for creating driveways/roads? Let me know if the comments section below.
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