Potholes in cottage roads are best remedied with diesel and hydraulic muscle. But they can also be fixed DIY-style with your own time and labour. Resist the urge to simply refill a pothole with more crushed rock. This is an exercise in futility, because when a tire hits the repaired hole, especially in wet conditions, it displaces aggregate toward the edge of the hole. The next set of tires will then be hitting a dip, bouncing more material out and up, making the hole bigger. Repeat 500 times and your old pothole is back, bigger than ever.
The solution, which may seem counterintuitive, is to first enlarge the pothole by removing the sharp edges of the “pot” itself. The idea is to make a smooth transition across the hole, with no sharp vertical-ish edges. A pickaxe will bite into those hardened shoulders, as will a steel bar, or an ice chisel. If you have a rotary hammer drill, use that. With the hard edges of the pothole cut away, rake the area smooth and add road material back, in layers, wetting the aggregate and compacting each layer with a plate tamper or a chunk of 6×6—or by slowly rolling a car back and forth over it. Keep adding wetted and compacted layers until the enlarged area has a smooth crown.
Potholes are largely a water problem. Keep a crown on the road and provide adequate ditches to carry runoff and your pothole patches will last longer.
This article was originally published in the May 2024 issue of Cottage Life magazine.
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