New Durham doesn’t leave driveway grade to taste. The town’s Driveway and Access Way Regulations cap every driveway at 15 percent — a foot and a half of rise in ten feet — and won’t let the grade change more than 10 percent from one section to the next. On a hillside lot those two numbers lay out the whole drive before we’ve hauled in a single load of gravel.
The rest of the rulebook is just as specific. A culvert under a driveway has to be at least 15 inches across with a foot of cover over it. A driver pulling out has to see 200 feet each way, or ten times the posted speed, whichever is more. The drive has to be 14 feet wide inside the right-of-way and at least 10 beyond it, and it can’t come in closer than 40 feet to an intersection. One entrance per lot unless you’ve got 500 feet of frontage. No horseshoes.
Long drives get one more rule. Past 500 feet you need a turnout at least 50 feet long every 500 feet, wide enough to make 18 feet of total width — unless the whole drive is 14 feet wide end to end. It’s there so a fire engine and a car can get by each other. On some back lots, that turnout is the difference between a drive that passes and one that doesn’t.
The permit comes from the Road Agent, after the Code Enforcement Officer signs off on the part outside the right-of-way; the regulations list a ten-dollar application fee. A connection onto Route 11 is NHDOT’s call instead. And frontage on a Class VI road is its own conversation: the Select Board holds a public hearing under RSA 674:41 before a building permit can issue, the way it did in 2022 for three lots on Bennett Road.
If your New Durham lot climbs from the road, have us run a grade line before you close. A drive that can’t stay under 15 percent changes where the house can go.
We stake a centerline and run grades on it before anything else. If a straight shot up the hill comes in at 18 percent, it fails, so the drive swings across the slope instead — the regulations allow crossing ground steeper than 15 percent as long as the drive itself stays under 15. More than 25 feet across that kind of slope and the section needs a design stamped by a licensed engineer. Curves hold at least a 30-foot inside radius.
Then the build. Strip the topsoil, lay fabric where the subgrade is soft, then base gravel and a crowned surface course. At the road end the drive has to dip before it meets the street so water off the lot doesn’t sheet into the road, and where the street is paved the Road Agent generally wants a paved apron as wide as the drive and at least six feet long. Culverts get pitched so the drive drains into them, not across them.
Frost is the long game. Gravel drives heave and rut every mud season when the base is thin or the ditches don’t drain, and under the town’s permit the landowner stays responsible for the culvert even where it sits in the town right-of-way. Build the drainage right the first time. It’s yours to fix forever.
New gravel driveways in New Durham run $15–$30 per linear foot for a twelve-foot travel way with base, surface and crown; the 14-foot width the town requires inside the right-of-way adds a little at the road end. Culverts typically run $800 to $1,500 installed. Paved aprons, turnouts on long drives and Route 11 entrances are quoted per site.
No steeper than 15 percent anywhere, which is a rise of a foot and a half over ten feet. The grade also can’t change by more than 10 percent from one section to the next. Where the hill is steeper than that, the drive has to cross the slope at an angle rather than climb it straight.
The Road Agent issues the driveway and access way permit, after the Code Enforcement Officer approves the part outside the town right-of-way, and it has to be in hand before any excavation starts. A driveway onto Route 11 needs an NHDOT permit instead. Crossing a stream or wetland can also require state and zoning approvals.
If it’s longer than 500 feet and narrower than 14 feet the whole way, yes. The regulations call for a turnout at least 50 feet long every 500 feet, wide enough to make 18 feet of total width, so emergency vehicles can get past. Building the whole drive 14 feet wide avoids the requirement.
Sometimes, but not by right. State law, RSA 674:41, generally requires frontage on a Class V or better road for a building permit. For a Class VI road the Select Board follows its own guidelines and holds a public hearing before deciding. Settle that before you spend money on a driveway to the lot.
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