A friend of mine just had a gravel driveway covered with a powder, wetted, and it should generate a “concrete” or “cement” driveway. My friend was instructed to keep it damp for a week. What kind of material is this, and why doesn’t it need rebar?
So the individual gravel pieces will magically line up over the course of a week, the air bubbles will rise to the top and dissipate, the driveway will flatten itself out and form a concrete driveway with full support?? Sounds like a simple bonding agent to keep the dust down and loose gravel from moving, until you drive over it and it breaks up into coated gravel again.
I vote scam.
Could be quick-crete or something similar, but it aint gonna work like he thinks its gonna work.
I’m curious if someone approached him to offer this service and if he has any way of getting back in touch with them. Also, how much did he pay them?
There’s a polymeric sand that can be used as a sort of mortar in patio brick applications - I wonder if this is something similar. The idea on the patio is that you lay down the pavers, then sweep in the polymeric sand. After it’s well-swept into all the cracks (and I do mean well - it’ll bond to the surface if you’re not diligent about sweeping it in or off), you wet down the whole schmear. The water activates the polymer in the sand, causing it to bond together and effectively cement the pavers in place as it dries. Supposed to keep the weeds down pretty well too.
We didn’t go for it when we built our patio; we used plain old sand. I hear that the polymer breaks down over time and weathering, and needs to be redone with new polymeric sand. (It’s true we need to add more sand to our patio anyway, but we don’t have the extra cost of finding the polymeric stuff.) That and you need to be really careful during application so that you don’t get it sticking to the top - apparently it’ll never come off.
No way this stuff would work to create a sort of concrete driveway - I agree with everyone above. But the polymeric sand was my first thought as to what this might be; it’s clearly a misapplication of that product, though.
Please come back and let us know how it looks after he drives on it for a bit. Pictures would be cool. Pictures of the look on his face will be even better.
I’ve got a barrel of used motor oil I’ll sell him if he’d rather have asphalt.
Sounds like a cement binder or PolyPavement.
Most gravel driveways either lack or have only a very shallow subgrade. If there’s a deep subgrade, a thin binder might stabilize the surface somewhat, and reduce fugitive dust, but it’s a kludge. With a shallow subgrade, vehicle parking, freeze/thaw cycles and a lack of control joints will quickly reduce the binder to aggregate. With a deeper subgrade, it’ll just take longer.
Hey, gotta hand it to the guy…he’s got good tactics! No need to skip town after finding just one victim.
A week from now , he’ll be long gone. But in the meantime, he’ll have had 7 days to try scamming all the other neighbors , too.
Naw, that’s sealer for existing asphalt driveways. :rolleyes:
Ok, just on the offchance this isnt a scam, could it be gravel bonded with slow curing polyurethane? That requires water to cure (although atmospheric moisture is usually enough for polyurethane)
Well, the OP is from 2013, so I guess theres been more than enough time to see how Jinx’s friend fared . . . . Jinx???
Dammit, missed that, but yes, I’m curious too now. Could be funny if the spammer tagged himself in a story about a shitty driveway that broke up the first time someone trod on it.
Moderator Note
Thread revived by a spammer who has since been disappeared.
Spoilsport!
I really wanted to look into that site (spammer posted a link to a miracle product for a concere replacement).
Now, I’ll never have a chance sniff sniff
zombie scam or no
anything less than 2 inches of concrete on a solid base will fail. even ticker could fail if all other things aren’t optimal.
My WAG is a classic pikey scam. The week of “keeping it damp” would be to allow the pikeys time to con as many other people as possible and disappear before customers realised they had paid several hundred quid for 2 inches of sand.
The explanation in the OP may be incorrect. There are some mixtures which will set to a hard pack surface for a while. My friend built a house and the contractors did this initially to create a driveway up to the house. It was in good shape when they finished working and it lasted through winter (a mild one) and for about a year in total when he had it paved. By that time there were several large patches with nothing but gravel and dirt left and a lot of cracking through the rest of it.