Gravel Delivery FAQ for Indiana Lanes, Pads and Beds

The correction this page has to make most often is the same one every spring: somebody measures an area carefully, guesses the depth, and orders a clean washed stone for a layer that was supposed to carry a truck. Area is easy. Depth and material are where the money goes. The answers below run in the order a job actually unfolds, from the morning a load is due back through the choices that got made before it.

Sorting Stone From Soil Before Anything Goes in the Cart

Which stone should I use for drainage, and which one goes under a base?

The fines decide it. #57 stone, 3/4 inch crushed stone and drain rock are washed, so water runs through the gaps and the material never firms up. They belong in tile beds, trench drains, footing drains and wet corners. #53 stone and #73 stone are dense graded with the fines left in, which is what lets them lock together under compaction. They belong under a lane, a pad or a patio. Putting the drainage stone under a lane gives you a surface that shifts underfoot forever, and putting the dense graded stone in a drain gives you a plugged drain.

The mechanism is worth holding on to, because it settles most of the material arguments on this page. Clean stone is washed so that only a narrow band of sizes is left, which leaves open voids between the pieces for water to move through. Material with fines is graded across a range of sizes, dust included, so the small particles fill the gaps between the large ones and the whole layer locks up when it is compacted. One drains and never firms; the other firms and barely drains.

Can I use topsoil, garden soil and fill dirt for the same thing?

No, and the difference is what is in them. Fill dirt is screened of roots and large rock and carries minimal organic matter, which is exactly why it is used for bulk: it settles and stays settled. Top soil is screened and balanced between sand, silt and clay, so it grows turf and bedding plants. Garden soil is blended with compost for raised beds and planting areas. Raising a low spot with topsoil gives you ground that keeps sinking; filling a raised bed with fill dirt gives you a bed nothing will root into.

What Till, Sand Plain and Karst Ground Change

Does the ground I am working on change what I should buy?

More here than in most places, because the state is not one kind of ground. Across the flat central till plain the subgrade is dense clay that drains slowly, which is why so much of that farmland runs on tile, and a base there needs an outlet as much as it needs depth. In the northwest the sand plains and old ditched marsh ground sit on a high water table, so low ground stays soft after snowmelt even where the surface looks dry. The unglaciated south-central hills sit on limestone karst, where water disappears into sinkholes, and runoff funneled at a sinkhole can wash out fill. Southern and southwestern flats often have a dense fragipan holding water near the surface. Describe your ground when you ask about a material and the answer changes accordingly.

Fabric, Edging and Holding Material on a Grade

Does geotextile belong beneath the stone, or beneath the mulch?

Under stone on soft ground, usually yes. A geotextile between clay subgrade and aggregate keeps the two from mixing, which is the failure that quietly eats a lane on wet till: the stone works down, the clay pumps up, and eventually there is no distinct layer left. Under mulch in a planting bed, usually no. Fabric there blocks the organic matter from working into the soil and weeds root on top of it within two seasons anyway. Fabric is not a catalogue item here, so source it locally, and never use it as a substitute for fixing a subgrade that pumps water when you walk on it.

How do I keep material from moving on a slope?

Start by asking the material to do less. On a grade, a rounded stone like 3/8 inch natural pea gravel will creep downhill under foot traffic where an angular crushed stone will interlock and stay. Give the surface an edge to work against, whether that is timber, steel or a cut trench at the bottom. Where water rather than traffic is doing the moving, the answer is usually a bigger stone: RipRap placed over fabric in a thick enough layer is what holds a scouring ditch bank, and light material at that spot simply ends up downstream. Bare slopes on the moraine ridges and the steep shale hillsides in the south gully quickly once cover is stripped, so get something over them before the next heavy rain.

The Base Under a Loaded Axle

A pickup uses my lane, but so does a grain truck. Does the layer change?

The site publishes about 4 inches compacted for dense graded base under a normal drive, with a new drive commonly taking around 6 inches of surfacing material over it. A car park pad and a lane a loaded grain truck uses are not the same problem, and the honest answer for the heavy case is that the depth is set by the subgrade rather than by a table. Build in two layers, go to the deeper end of the range, fix the soft ground first, and where a specification or an engineer governs the work, use their figure rather than a supplier's.

The Pile That Is Left After the Job

The lane has a rut and there is a soft patch by the gate. Is a surplus worth hanging onto?

Dense graded stone, yes. There is always a soft patch by the gate, a low spot at a field entrance or a rut at the end of the lane that will take it, and it keeps indefinitely in a heap on firm ground. Sand and screenings keep well too if they stay out of the wind and away from a ditch. Topsoil and garden soil are better used within the season, and mulch breaks down in the pile. Decorative rock is the one case for ordering slightly under rather than over, since color and size vary a little between loads and a top-up is visible.

Still unresolved? Work the quantity out first with the calculators, which also settle the unit, the five or ten percent allowance and the weight of a yard of each material, then send your measurements and a line about the ground through the contact page. Width, headroom, the marked drop point and everything between checkout and the tip are on the delivery page.

Where do #57 stone and drain rock belong, and where does #53 stone belong instead?

Who operates Indiana Rock Supply?