Building the Hogan

Up until this point we’ve been using an old bladed driveway that the previous owner cut to his building site.  Since the little road led us directly to the shed, we kept on using it as a starting point for all of our activities.  Now that our focus has shifted to the new house site we came to the point where we needed to put in a real driveway.

It turns out that a new driveway would have been required in any case because in discussions with our neighbor we found out that the old driveway was actually on their land.  They were nice about it, saying that we could draw up some kind of easement should either of us wish to sell in the future, but we quickly conceded that it wasn’t in the right place anyway so we’d be abandoning it.

We’d already marked the boundaries of the house, including the garage, so it was not much of a task to decide where we wanted to cut the driveway.  We knew a few things for certain.  It had to be on our land and it had to get to the garage.  Everything else was negotiable.

Cecilia is a bit of an expert on Feng Shui and we used her experience to guide us with placing the path.  She imagined a big sweeping right turn near the east entrance to the house that again turned left and entered the garage.  This would be best for channeling the chi.

To be safe we marked off a spot about thirty feet south from our neighbor’s property line and placed a stake at the entering road.  The width of the driveway, we figured, should be about 10 feet wide.  Since the standard surface road width is 8 feet 6 inches we felt that a 10 foot driveway should accommodate anything that might have to come down there.

We outlined the path with garden stakes every 10 feet or so on both sides of the proposed driveway.  The big, sweeping right turn was visually pleasing.  We adjusted some of the stakes to make it feel “just right” and stood back to admire.  Since the house is set back about 140 feet, the driveway was nearly 200 feet with the curve.

Once we were satisfied with the layout we began by removing the large sagebrush with shovels.  Fortunately this area was relative free of big sage and in a few hours of work we had the driveway clear.  The next step was to break up the grasses and other small plants with the tiller.  The tiller work took us another full day.

To make a good, solid driveway it should include a fair amount of stone.  We contemplated bringing in gravel to lay on top of our new surface but we’d found from our legacy driveway that once the clay/sand/pebble mix was compressed it made a pretty solid driveway.  We reasoned that with constant use and some maintenance we could build up the driveway in stages.

Pulling soil that had been piled up from the “old” building site in wheelbarrows we proceeded to cover the driveway with a mixture of dirt and various sizes of rocks.  The mixture was really good and began to compress even as we walked on it.  With some rain and sun baking it would firm up nicely.

I wanted a good crown to the road so the water would drain to each side.  We piled the dirt up high in the middle and gently pulled it outward.  On each side I planned to dig a trench to remove any standing water.  With another full day of wheelbarrow work we had the driveway filled.

Making drainage trenches was simply a matter of repeating what we’d done for the road.  We removed any large shrubs and then tilled it until it was loose to a depth of about 14 inches.  Both of us went back over the trenches and pulled the loose rock and soil onto the driveway for further raising the level.

A couple of drives up and down the new road proved that it was solid and ready for use.