I live on a gravel road with a posted speed limit of 35mph. I would guess that not one in ten vehicles passes my place at that slow a speed. Our gravel is crushed basalt, which wears away, creating lots of dust, especially when a large truck going about 50 goes past.
One of my neighbors and I used to have about half a mile of the road oiled, and that really improved the dust situation. But that neighbor, who has since died, got disgusted with the other neighbors along that half mile of road who would not contribute to having the oiling done, and who griped a bunch about the one or two days that it was necessary to drive very slow, or else the oil would make their car messy. Then the price of road oiling went up from $1 per linear foot of road to I believe $3 per foot. We quit oiling the road.
The oil used, and approved by Spokane County is supposed to come from a well somewhere in Montana that couldn"t be used in regular fuel production. It has a lot of asphalt in it, and I think they had to add a bunch of solvent. The truck they hauled the oil in had a system to heat the oil using heat from the exhaust, so when it got here, it was extremely hot. They would spray it down one half of the road and then turn around and spray the other half. It would smell strongly of solvent the first day, and I always worried a little that it might be flammable, but it never caught fire.
Oiling the gravel road that way was very effective at reducing dust and also helped to reduce washboarding. Over the 15 or so years that we had the half mile oiled, it built up a pretty decent oiled base. But the County, in it"s infinite wisdom continued grading the oiled road and sometimes adding some gravel, so the benefit did not last.
A few years ago, I bought a bunch of magnesium chloride granules and applied it to the gravel road for about 250 feet in front of my house. I used the same spreader that I apply lawn fertilizer to my yard. That Summer I also watered down that 250 feet every several days. I would say that there was a bit less dust from the road that Summer, but I decided that the mag chloride cost and the work involved were not worth the trouble. The fast moving vehicles would bring the dust with them when they entered the treated area, and my yard and house would still get dusted.
I kind of gave up. Luckily, the prevailing wind usually blows the dust away from my house. I sure wish people would just slow down.
One of my neighbors stopped by about a month ago and said he is trying to promote the idea of having the gravel road paved. I told him that while I hated the dust, I would be extremely opposed to paving, since I believe that the way the Local Improvement Taxing District that would result would raise my taxes a huge amount, considering that I have 1/4 mile of road frontage. I explained that I could easily see that costing me $100k in taxes over the next 20 years. I asked him to go ahead and find out how funding would be done for paving the road, and to let me know. But I told him that if it was going to cost me much at all, I would have to oppose the idea. He left in a huff.
I expect that the County will do a traffic study to see how many vehicles use our road over a time period. Maybe the County would at least partially fund improving the road and that might make paving a viable idea.
I wish people would not drive so darn fast on the gravel road. And I wish the County Road Department would leave the road alone, rather than grading it about every month in the Summer. When the road is bumpy with a washboard surface, lots of vehicles go much slower and create lots less dust. Oh well, they will do what they are going to do. Wouldn"t want them to have a reason to obey the speed limit!
Sorry this turned into a rant...good luck with your dust problem.
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