New gravel driveways built with a real base, and tired ones regraded, crowned, and drained — so a Barnstead driveway survives mud season and the next big storm instead of washing down the hill.
The 1960s-era plats around Locke Lake Colony and the Suncook lakes created some of the smallest buildable lots in the region — laid out for summer cottages, now steadily converting to year-round homes. Working them takes the right habits: compact excavators that fit the access, spoil hauled off promptly, and grading planned so your drainage fix doesn’t become the neighbor’s problem ten feet away. Foundation upgrades are the bread and butter — posts and piers giving way to full frost-depth foundations, with utility trenches threaded past wells and septic systems themselves squeezed onto the lot. Shoreland rules apply within 250 feet of the lakes, small lot or not. The narrow colony roads deserve respect: some post in mud season, and a loaded triaxle isn’t welcome on all of them, so we stage material off Routes 28 and 126.
On a small Barnstead lake lot, sort out where the water goes before any regrade — on lots this tight, shedding water off your foundation can send it straight at an abutter, and that’s a feud with no fence tall enough. A day of swale and dry-well work solves what a lawyer can’t.
A driveway that lasts is a structure: geotextile where soils are soft, a compacted bank-run gravel base, and a crushed-gravel or stone surface crowned so water runs off the sides instead of down the middle. Culverts go where water crosses, ditches where it runs alongside. Skip any of those and you buy the same driveway again every few years — that’s the washboard, potholed, washed-out driveway we get called to fix.
We build new driveways, rebuild failing ones, and do the annual regrade-and-crown that keeps a camp road drivable through mud season.
New gravel driveways typically run $15–$30 per linear foot built right (base + surface + crowning); regrading and topping an existing driveway costs a fraction of that. Culverts and ditching quoted per site. Flat quote after a quick look.
Built properly — compacted bank-run base, crushed gravel surface, crowned — figure $15 to $30 per linear foot for a standard 12-foot-wide driveway, more on steep or soft ground. A cheap spread-and-go driveway costs less up front and every year after.
Water is running down it instead of off it. The fix is shape and drainage: crown the surface, ditch the uphill side, and put a culvert where water crosses. Once water has somewhere to go, the gravel stays where you paid for it.
Yes — washboard and potholes are symptoms of a thin or uncrowned surface. We regrade to pull material back where it belongs, re-crown, and compact. If the base has failed we'll tell you honestly and price a rebuild of just the failed section.
Free site walks, test pits before quotes, flat pricing, and a crew that knows Lakes Region ground.
Tell us where the property is and what you’re trying to do. We’ll walk the site, talk it through, and give you a straight, flat quote.
