River Rock for Beds, Ditch Lines and Foundation Drains

Ask for stone at a camp and you will be shown two piles. One has flat broken faces and sharp corners. The other is worn round by water, runs between an inch and three inches across, and carries tan, gray and brown with the odd red piece in it. That second pile is river rock.

Rounded is the one people want to look at. It is also the one that will not stay on a slope, will not lock up under a wheel, and needs an edge to hold it. Everything below follows from that.

River rock against the crushed stone people order instead

Pick it up and the difference is obvious. The rounded pieces roll off each other. A crushed piece has flat faces that bite.

What that means on the ground:

• Rounded stone will not hold a slope or a crown without help. Crushed stone will.
• Rounded stone leaves generous spaces between pieces that do not close up under load, which is useful buried in a drain.
• Rounded stone stays looking like stone. Crushed stone sheds dust and picks up silt.
• Rounded stone underfoot moves. Anyone who has walked a cobble beach knows the feeling.

Where the surface is meant to be seen rather than driven or walked on, rounded wins. Everywhere else, look at 3/4 inch crushed stone first.

The bed that washes down the slope every mud season

The usual problem this fixes. A bed on sloping ground, mulched every year, and every year the melt and the spring rain carry half the mulch into the lawn or down the drive.

Stone does not float and does not rot. Laid over fabric with a proper edge, a rock bed stays where it was put through the thaw, and it does not need topping up each May.

The same reasoning applies at a camp where a roofline drips onto a bed, along a ditch line that runs hard in April, and anywhere close to water where organic mulch is going to end up somewhere it should not.

How rounded stone behaves on till, ledge and a lakeside slope

Dense glacial till holds water and stays soft into May. A bed on that ground wants fabric under it or the stone works down into the soil and disappears within a couple of seasons.

Where ledge is close to grade you are building up rather than digging in, so the bed has no lip to hold it. Set an edge, or the first heavy rain takes the outer row of stone with it.

On a sloped lot running toward a lake or pond, size the stone to the water. A 1 to 3 inch stone holds a gentle grade and a quiet ditch line. Where spring runoff comes through with force, or where wave action is at work, go to large river rock or heavier still.

Two inches, an edge, and what goes under the bed

Depth for a decorative bed is 2 to 3 inches. Deeper than 3 and you are buying stone that nobody sees, and shallow enough to show fabric through it looks unfinished within a season.

Sequence:

1. Strip the sod and grade the bed, low at the edges rather than mounded.
2. Fabric across the whole bed, overlapped and pinned.
3. Edging: spaded trench, steel, or a stone border. Something that stops the outer row from traveling.
4. Stone, spread with a rake and leveled by eye.

Skipping any one of those is what produces a bed with grass coming through it and stone in the mower.

The version nobody sees: stone around a foundation pipe

Different job, same material. Here the stone is not decorative at all, it is the void space around a perforated pipe, and the rounded shape is fine because nothing has to lock together.

Wrap the trench in fabric, bed the pipe, surround it with stone, fold the fabric over the top, then cover. The open spaces between rounded pieces carry water out to where you want it, which on a camp with water perching over frozen ground in mud season is the whole point.

Why the turnaround wants something else underfoot

People ask about using it on a turnaround or parking pad. It is the wrong choice and it usually gets replaced within two years.

Rounded stone will not compact. Under tires it spreads outward, so the middle goes thin and a berm builds at the edges. Turning a wheel grinds it into the ground beneath. And the loose surface makes shoveling and plowing in winter a chore, since the blade picks the stone up and throws it into the lawn.

A turnaround wants a compacted base of crushed gravel with a surfacing course over it. Keep the river rock for the border beside it.

Yardage for 22 feet of foundation drain and a low spot in the yard

Two hypothetical jobs. River rock runs about 2,700 lb per cubic yard on this site's published figures, near enough to 1.35 tons per yard, so the tonnages below are approximate. Other shapes go through the river rock calculator.

French drain along a foundation, 22 ft long, 18 inches wide, 18 inches of stone

• 22 x 1.5 = 33 sq ft in plan
• 33 x 18 / 12 = 49.5 cu ft
• 49.5 / 27 = 1.83 cu yd
• 1.83 x 1.35 = 2.5 tons

Low spot regraded and covered as a bed, 14 ft by 10 ft, 3 inches

• 14 x 10 = 140 sq ft
• 140 x 3 / 12 = 35 cu ft
• 35 / 27 = 1.30 cu yd
• 1.30 x 1.35 = 1.8 tons

For a bed that is not a rectangle, break it into rectangles you can measure and add them. Close enough beats exact when you are going to round up anyway.

Rinsing, raking and the leaves that land on it in October

Upkeep is light but it is not zero.

Leaves are the main thing here. They drop into a stone bed, break down between the pieces, and in two or three years there is enough soil in there to grow weeds. Blow the bed out in the fall rather than raking it, since a rake lifts stone along with the leaves.

A hose rinse in spring takes the winter grit off and brings the color back. Where the plow throws sand, expect to rinse more.

Set the quantity and a delivery date on this page. Delivery is arranged at checkout by ZIP code, and the truck needs firm ground with room to back and dump.