Here’s a line in the Ossipee zoning that catches people: a gravel driveway counts as lot coverage. The ordinance lumps paved or gravel parking areas and drives in with roofs and sidewalks unless they’re designed to be porous, and Rural and Residential lots top out at twenty-five percent. Over the aquifer, going past twenty percent impervious needs a Special Use Permit. On a long camp road or a 300-foot run back to the house, the driveway can be the biggest thing on the plan.
Do the arithmetic once. A twelve-foot drive running 300 feet is 3,600 square feet. Add a turnaround and a parking pad and you’re close to 5,000 before the house, the garage or the shed. On a one-acre Rural lot — 43,560 square feet — that’s better than a tenth of your allowed coverage gone to gravel. Inside the Water Resource Protection Districts the no-permit ceiling is twenty percent. It’s rarely a deal-breaker. It does decide where the house sits and how long the drive gets.
Access is the other question. Routes 16, 25, 28 and 171 are state highways, so a new entrance off any of them means an NHDOT permit; off a town road it goes through the Ossipee highway department’s driveway application. And there are camps in this town on Class VI roads — town roads the town no longer maintains — where Ossipee has you sign an agreement and release before a building permit issues, acknowledging nobody’s coming to plow or patch it for you. If your drive starts on one of those, the drive is only half the problem.
The good news is material. Ossipee was shipping sand and gravel to Boston by railcar more than a century ago, and Ossipee Aggregates is still one of the larger employers in town, so base gravel doesn’t travel far. On the lake side the subgrade is often sand already, which drains better than anything we could truck in. Though loose sand under a tire ruts and washboards unless something on top locks it down.
Before you settle where the house goes on an Ossipee lot, measure the driveway in square feet, not just feet. On a long run it can eat a big share of what the lot is allowed to cover.
On outwash, drainage mostly takes care of itself. What sand won’t do is hold a shape. Dry sand under a loaded tire moves sideways, so we strip the organic layer, compact the sand subgrade damp, and set a bank-run gravel base on top in lifts. Then three-quarter crushed for the surface, because angular stone knits together where round stone rolls. Crown it about a half inch to the foot even on sand. Spring melt still runs.
If coverage is tight, a porous design is the way out the ordinance itself gives you. That means open-graded stone over a stone reservoir, built so water drops straight through instead of running off the edge — and on Ossipee sand it works about as well as it works anywhere, because the ground underneath will actually take the water. It costs more per foot than an ordinary gravel drive. It also has to be built porous on purpose, with no fines in it, not just labeled porous on a plan.
On the till and rocky ground toward the mountains it flips back to the usual New Hampshire driveway problem, which is water. Ditch both sides, set cross-culverts wherever a swale crosses the line, and build grade breaks into anything steep so water can’t run the whole length. Size the turnaround for a fire truck. The working window runs roughly April through November, and we won’t send a loaded truck up a soft seasonal road in mud season to save a week. It isn’t worth the road.
New gravel driveways in Ossipee run $15–$30 per linear foot for a twelve-foot travel way with base, surface and crown. Flat sand runs with gravel close at hand sit at the low end; hillside drives on the rocky side of town, with ditching and cross-culverts, sit at the top. Porous builds, culverts and state-highway entrances are quoted per site.
Yes, unless it’s designed to be porous. The ordinance’s lot coverage definition includes paved or gravel parking areas and drives alongside structures and sidewalks. Rural and Residential lots are capped at twenty-five percent coverage, and over the aquifer, anything beyond twenty percent impervious needs a Special Use Permit.
Depends on the road. Routes 16, 25, 28 and 171 are state highways, so access off them goes through NHDOT. Off a town road, the Ossipee highway department handles the driveway permit application. We find out which applies before laying anything out, because a state entrance can move the whole drive.
Sometimes, with conditions. Class VI roads are town roads the town no longer maintains, and Ossipee requires an agreement and release before it issues a building permit on one, so the owner accepts that the town isn’t plowing or repairing it. Talk to the building inspector early, then plan the drive.
A surface that locks. Loose sand or round gravel rolls under tires no matter how well it drains. Grade it, compact it, and cap it with a few inches of three-quarter crushed stone with a proper crown. On sand the fix is almost always the top layer, not the drainage.
On a tight lot near the coverage cap, often yes — it’s the ordinance’s own exception. Ossipee’s sandy ground takes water well, which suits porous construction. It costs more per foot than standard gravel and has to be built without fines to stay porous, so it earns its keep mainly where coverage is the constraint.
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