Stone driveways
Crushed stone driveways on Cape Cod, done properly
Angular stone that locks together and holds a slope
A crushed stone driveway uses angular crushed rock rather than shell as the wearing surface. We install three quarter inch crushed stone, which is the size that works for a residential driveway: small enough to walk and drive on comfortably, large enough that the pieces lock against each other instead of rolling apart. The same stone makes a good walkway or garden path.
We install what we deliver. A load tipped on the verge without a base prepared under it is not a driveway, it is a pile you will be raking for years, so we do the whole job or none of it.
Other names for the same thing
People call these crushed rock driveways, compacted stone driveways, crushed driveway stone and loose stone driveways. It is all the same work, and if you are describing yours with a word not on that list we will still know what you mean.
Stone installation
New crushed stone driveway installation
A full crushed stone driveway installation from bare ground up. The driveway is excavated and graded, a compacted base goes in, and three quarter inch crushed stone is laid over it in lifts and compacted until the pieces lock against one another.
Grade and excavate
The same first move as any driveway. We strip it down several inches and shape the pitch so water leaves the surface rather than standing on it.
Lay and compact the base
A compacted base under the stone, for the same reason shell needs one. Stone spread over soft ground presses into it and you lose the depth you paid for.
Spread the stone in lifts
Three quarter inch crushed stone goes down in layers, each one compacted before the next. Angular stone knits as it is rolled, which is what gives a compacted stone driveway its firmness.
Edge and finish
Edging holds the stone on the driveway, and the surface is raked out level before we leave.
Stone refresh
Stone driveway refresh and regrading
For a crushed stone driveway that has spread at the edges, opened into potholes, or worn thin in the wheel tracks. We pull it back level, correct the drainage that caused it, and top it off with fresh stone.
Find the cause
Stone driveways pothole where water sits. Filling the hole without fixing the drainage means the same hole returns in a season.
Regrade and reclaim
Stone that has migrated to the edges gets pulled back in, ruts levelled, and the crown or fall reinstated.
Top off and compact
Fresh crushed stone over the regraded surface, compacted in to bring the depth back.
The build
Every driveway is the layers underneath it
Shell or stone, the section through a finished driveway is the same. What changes is the wearing course on top.
Not only driveways
Crushed stone walkways and paths
Crushed stone makes a harder wearing path than shell, and it is the better choice where a walkway takes real traffic: a route to a side door used several times a day, a path between a driveway and a garden gate, anywhere people cut the corner.
For a path we often go finer than the three quarter inch stone used on driveways. Smaller stone is more comfortable underfoot and beds down tighter in a narrow strip, where there is no vehicle weight to compact it.
The base still decides it. A stone path on soil will press in and disappear the same way a driveway does, just more slowly, because there is less weight working against it.
Considering shell driveways instead?
The bright white driveway the Cape is known for. We install both, and we would rather you ended up with the one that actually suits the driveway.
Get an estimate
Crushed stone driveways across the Cape
We cover Bourne to Orleans, which is 11 towns. Tell us which one you are in and roughly how big the driveway is.
- Free, with no obligation after
- We look at the base, not just the surface
- Across Bourne to Orleans
