New gravel driveways built with a real base, and tired ones regraded, crowned, and drained — so a Plymouth driveway survives mud season and the next big storm instead of washing down the hill.
Plymouth sits on glacial outwash — deep sandy terraces laid down by the Baker and Pemigewasset — and that geology is a gift to excavators: fast digging, easy trenching, soils that drain almost too well. The flip side is the floodplain; both rivers claim real estate in a big spring, so we check flood zone lines early on any low-lying project and set grades accordingly. The rental economy around Plymouth State drives a steady, particular kind of work: gravel parking pads behind multi-unit houses, built with fabric under the base so four winters of plowing don’t churn them into mud, plus drainage fixes for backyards that six parked cars have compacted into ponds. Village lots are tight, with the usual old-town underground, so 811 marks come first. Summer is our Plymouth window for rental work — students gone, driveways empty, and eight clear weeks before the leases turn over in late August.
Building a parking pad for a Plymouth rental? Put geotextile fabric under the gravel — it’s a small line item that keeps the base from pumping down into the subsoil under daily traffic and plowing. A fabric-based pad is still a pad in ten years; a gravel-on-dirt pad is a mud problem by year three.
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.
