I’ve got a 1/4 mile lone driveway out in the sticks. It can be a bear to tend in the winter with the amount of snow we get in the Keweenaw. However in the summer it goes mostly untended – and the potholes are starting to get atrocious.
In the past I’ve used the front bucket to try and smooth things out, but it really isn’t the right tool for the job. We’ve also bought new gravel to fill in pot holes, but that quickly dissipated. I’ve learned that in order to fix the holes you’ve to tear up the very base of the hole in order to have the newly added material adhere to it. So I finally bought a Box Blade!
The 6′ box blade has a forward and reverse facing blade on the back of the box, with 6 tines that can be used to dig in and tear up the ground. I watched a couple videos, and it seems like you only need “treat” the surrounding 50′ around holes, but since the driveway is in such rough shape I did the entire thing. I did a couple passes with the tines getting increasingly deeper. Then I would go back to the biggest problem areas and give them extra attention. Finally I did a pass with just the box (tines all the way up).
It’s quite satisfying when the box has a decent amount of earth in it, depositing a nice even layer behind it.
The driveway is in pretty decent shape now – but I’m expecting to have to treat the problem areas a few more times.
