Gravel path drainage took me 3 weekends instead of an afternoon

Thought I could just lay down some gravel and call it done, but the rain in my Austin backyard turned it into a muddy mess after one week. Anyone else find out the hard way that drainage fabric and a proper slope are absolutely necessary?

3 comments

3 Comments

murphy.barbara1mo ago

My 200 feet of Austin limestone gravel has been down for 4 years with no fabric and just a slight natural shed to the alley. Last summer we got 8 inches in one storm and it drained fine, a little standing water for an hour tops. I think folks overbuild this stuff trying to engineer a garden path like it's a road. A good thick layer of crushed granite on top of packed dirt, proper grading away from the house, that's all you really need. Fabric just creates a barrier for weed seeds to sit on top of anyway.

clairem479d ago

Buddy of mine put down some nice river rock along his side yard a few years back. No fabric, just graded it so water ran off toward the alley. He gets tons of leaves every fall and just blows them off, no weeds ever took hold. The other side of his house he put fabric under black mulch and now it's all ripped up with crabgrass poking through. He keeps saying the fabric side is way more work to maintain than the rock side ever was.

patriciap521mo ago

Same here, four years strong with no fabric and zero issues.