We’re looking at sealants for gravel. The purpose is two-fold. First, we don’t want the gravel spreading all over the pavers, landscaped areas, etc, every time there’s a storm. Or even the landscape crew with their blowers.
Second, we were hoping for a water-proof seal. We have a ring of gravel around most of the house (between the house and the walkways). Our soil is very expansive. The thought was that we could keep water away from the soil adjacent to the foundation if we could water-seal that gravel.
I’ve looked at a couple of products, but they all seem to say that you have to reapply if the area gets wet for 24 hours. It doesn’t rain often in Phoenix, but once or twice a year we’ll get a steady rain for 24 or more hours. Seems kinda silly to have a product for outdoors that doesn’t like the rain.
Does anyone have knowledge or experience with products like this, or better than this?
Did you think about putting down chat? It compacts to a hard layer and allows you to walk across it. Also easy to blow stuff off of it. Just need to compact it with a water barrel/lawn roller.
The seal part is difficult. You might be best off to dig out a portion, replace it with asphalt or concrete and then put a decorative layer of sand or gravel etc whatever you want over it.
Might try larger stone, we used 1-1/2" Mexican stone along brick & paver walkways, drives… If moisture is the issue, put down heavy vinyl sheeting under the stone… Or is that too easy?
The last round we did here along a redone brick walkway caused me and DW damage to our elderly bodies, me, spinal stenosis flares, DW, hip deterioration flared, my Ortho Doc sent me on a PT run and it has subsides after months, DW’s Ortho Doc delayed, but finally heading to anterior hip replacement, maybe July… Docs are booked way out… So be careful, we don’t heal so fast any more!
Is there a place where water can easily drain out of the area if the ground is sealed?
If yes, you might try putting a weed blocker fabric underneath. As designed it will let water drain through. So you just need to paint the weed blocker fabric at it mostly seals it.
I know this because DW put some of this down to create a path in our garden, then painted it to look like stones. The low parts in the uneven path collect water for days.
We have foundation (post-tension), then gravel (about 18" or so), and then a paver walkway. Then ‘yard’. The house is the high point, so the water does drain away from the foundation. But the soil will still get wet.
I’m assuming it’s the same thing since we also bought it from Costco. It’s under the strip of gravel I described, primarily as a weed barrier. Also, note that in Phoenix, people don’t generally have rain gutters. So the water just runs off the roof all around the house (except the patio cover, where it is channeled into two scuppers).
Painting the fabric will make it pass much less water. As an experiment I’d take a few square feet of scrap fabric and see if it takes paint. You could even try Flex seal spray paint. DW is the expert…says there are two types of weed-stop fabric and one is better than the other – the better type is more like a fine net.
The one we have is like the Costco link I sent. It’s almost like burlap, but a much tighter weave. It does inhibit water penetration (though I haven’t run an experiment). Before I realized that, I thought covering drainage in the yard was a good idea, to prevent mud from plugging the tubes. It prevented the mud, alright, but didn’t allow the water to flow very well at all.
I have seen ads for the Flex seal. The ones where they use it to patch a hole in a dinghy? Not sure how that would hold up under the Phoenix heat (plastic/rubber-type stuff gets very brittle over time).
Hmmm…so it looks like the spray glue is out. Either the fabric, or painting the fabric are my best options? I’ll need to remove the gravel to see how the fabric is doing in terms of coverage. We do get very few weeds there, and those we do get never get below the gravel, and so are easy to remove.
Thanks for the discussion. Any more ideas, I’m all ears…
Tell me about it. By the time you get in for your appointment you have either forgotten why you made the appointment or what ever was ailing you stoped ailing. Family doctor I’ve been going to for over 40 years is always two (2) weeks out. Minimum. Specialist sometimes up to three (3) months out.
Maybe, since you are worried about water near the house, actually put rain gutters on your house and let the down spout spread it out way from the house. Might be alot easier than trying to figure out how to water proof the ground.
The last house we built, I did without gutters because the site lent itself to it.
The roof was simple with just 2 surfaces with an 8:12 pitch. The north side was on the driveway, I put in a concrete V-shaped drip strip on the long edge of the porch. It was high in the center, sloping to each end. (While I say “V”, it was flat enough to walk across it. In fact, we brushed it for better traction.
The other end goes on gravel for 5 feet then into a 4 inch corrugated tile for 30 feet to a drain terrace below.
On the south side, we laid rock that was left-over from the walls. It sloped away from the house and the ground sloped from there. I let it “grass-in” and just ran the weed-whacker across it.
It was, while I was there but duty called. I was assigned to stop traffic on a state highway on the north side of 2 flooded creeks. So I drove my pick-up 1 1/2 miles down the road and setup shop with my handheld radio, 2 orange flags and a handheld flasher to turn traffic back for 10 hours. This is what Mulberry Creek looked like after the rain stopped. The bridge is by the yellow flash signs:
I had to pull 4 vehicles out of the mud next to the road. The drivers decided they did not need to follow my directions when I was turning them around on the pavement. Just more fun in the rain …
The storm filled all 5 of our tanks to capacity and all had overflow. Here is one after the storm moved east and the sun came out:
Unfortunately, I had plowed a field below the house a week earlier. It took me about 3 days to get everything back in place once it dried. The curly washout turned south (left) and was 3 feet deep at the south end of the field:
But the rain filled many lakes nearby including Lake Sweetwater, 12 west of our place, in a single day. I had photos from July 8th at the boat launch with docks and launch ramp a little ways from the water: