How to Repair a Hole Where a Gravel Driveway Meets the Road

LESLIE: Henry in Illinois is taking on a driveway-repair project. What can we do for you?

HENRY: Where my driveway meets the asphalt road in front of my home, right where it meets – I have a hole forming there and it goes down about 3 to 4 inches deep and probably about 4 feet in diameter. And so it turns out that when I turn my wheels to turn into the driveway, well, the left front wheel hits it and it kicks that rock out. And I put new pea rock in there and it just kicks it out, too.

TOM: So you have a pea-gravel driveway and the force of the car running it over and over and over again is sort of wearing away a hole. There is a solution for that, Henry, and that is – what I’d like you to consider doing is pouring a concrete apron at the foot of the driveway.

So what the concrete apron does – it doesn’t have to be very big: across the entire driveway, maybe 2 feet, maybe no more than 3 feet deep. But 2 feet will probably do. That concrete driveway – that apron then serves as the entry point for those tires.

So you hit that, you go over the concrete apron and then you go into the pea gravel. And the edge of the concrete apron will retain – acts as sort of the retaining wall for the pea gravel in the driveway. That’s the easiest way to stop that from happening. Otherwise, it’s going to be a constant maintenance hassle for you to replace what is really just a very soft apron now with the pea gravel coming right out and spilling out into the roadway.

You’ll also save a lot of stone in the winter when the plows come by and start pushing that snow around.

HENRY: OK.