How To spread and level stone

Here's a quickie "How To" if you need to spread and level crushed stone; I wish I had taken photo's of the whole process, but I didn't.

Below find the secret if you don't have that Backhoe or Loader, or back blade on your Tractor, or, it's just a small job.

I had to fix up a storage shed foundation for a 12' x 24' garden shed.  I calculated, to make the repair, I would need 4 tons of "2B" stone.  Turns out the garden shed site was not cut properly by the contractor, probably due to a transit that was not properly leveled. 

So here I was, my local helper delivered 4 tons of stone and now I had to level it.  I don't know if you can see my level lines, but my site as cut, was 6 inches lower on one end than the other.

Please also see my article about fixing my stone driveway.  Stone Driveway.

Trying to spread stone

To spread the stone I started out with my shovel, boy its hard to drive a shovel into stone, but I tried for a while.  No, no, maybe my rake, I'll drag the stone.  Well the rake just doesn't want to penetrate the stone either.  This is going to take a couple days! 

There's got to be a better way, and there is!

My Garden Tiller!  I dig up large stones out of garden beds all the time with no harm to those hardened tines.  I fired up my tiller, it does a fabulous job of lifting and dragging stone.  Of course I'd strongly recommend eye protection.  It's really pretty benign though.  The tiller lifts, loosens, and digs the stone, it does most the work.  I pull the tiller backward and a good bit of stone comes with it.  A few hours later the whole pile was spread, it's a power rake!  All the shed site needed after that was some fine tuning with the rake!

And here's the tines months later after doing more garden beds to boot.  The stone doesn't even phase these tines.  Don't get me wrong they do wear out, but at the welds near the hub, I've replaced several over the years.

I've since tried this idea on stone called "1/2 minus".  This stone size is simply 1/2" stone and smaller, and it really contains quite a bit of stone dust.  For this size stone the rake and shovel was easier than the tiller.  I used this stone for half the foundation of my homemade greenhouse.  This stone almost turns into a porous concrete like floor.  Get it level before it really packs down!

You can use this tiller technique for any stone or topsoil foundation for your storage shed, garden shed, or greenhouse foundation.

Hope this is helpful!

Thanks,
Bob

If you've received this "How To" from a friend and found it useful please consider supporting the BobsHowTo web site with a very small ($1.50?) donation through PayPal.  I try to spend a good bit of time detailing out every aspect of a "How To" but this is an exception, I hope to make a thorough "How To" when I cap the driveway.

Topic: Here's a quickie "How To" if you need to spread and level crushed stone.