What is the difference between topsoil and fill dirt?

Topsoil is screened black dirt, the dark prairie soil that supports grass and planting. Fill dirt is unscreened material used to raise grade, fill low ground and backfill before a roadstone course goes down. Topsoil goes on top of finished grade; fill dirt goes underneath it.

What is Class A roadstone and what is it used for in Decatur County?

Class A roadstone is 3/4 inch crushed limestone with the fines left in, the standard Iowa base course. It goes under driveways, parking pads, shed bases and farm lanes.

How deep should a gravel driveway base be in Decatur County?

Depth depends on your ground, your traffic and how the site drains, so no single figure fits every drive. Use the calculator on the product page to size your load once you have your numbers. On this clay, a washed layer under the base helps perched water move.

Decatur County Class A Roadstone and Gravel Delivery, IA

Order gravel, stone and aggregate delivery in Decatur County, IA online. Iowa Rock Supply sells bulk material by the ton or by the yard, and a dump truck tips it on your site.

Start with Class A roadstone, the crushed limestone base course Iowa calls roadstone. It carries the fines that bind and compact, which is why it goes under drives, pads and farm lanes here.

Materials Delivered in Decatur County

Material falls into a few families: base, washed stone, sand, soil and decorative. Each one does a different job on a Decatur County site.

Base and drive material

Class A Roadstone is the standard Iowa base course. It is 3/4 inch crushed limestone with the fines left in.

11. County engineers and city entrance standards write the same material as Class A roadstone.

Use it for driveways, parking pads, shed bases and farm lanes. It binds and compacts into a firm surface.

1 Inch Roadstone is the coarser grade, laid under a finer surface course. Reach for it on a new drive, a soft spot or a lane that carries heavy equipment.

Driveway Gravel tops an existing drive or lane that has thinned out, over a compacted roadstone base.

Washed stone

Clean Rock is washed and open graded, so water moves straight through it. It goes in subdrains, drainage tile backfill, pipe bedding, septic rock and behind retaining walls.

3/4" Crushed Stone gives a drive a loose, free draining surface. It also beds pipe and backfills trenches.

Riprap is revetment stone, specified by class letter under Section 4130. It armors stream banks, culvert outlets and pond edges against spring runoff.

Sand

Mason Sand mixes brick and block mortar, fills paver joints, and works as play sand or horse arena footing.

Washed Sand beds and levels under slabs and pavers. It also fills where a clean, free draining grade is wanted.

Soil, fill and decorative

Top Soil is screened black dirt, named for the dark prairie soils the state is known for. It handles lawn repair, grading and bed prep.

Fill Dirt raises grade, fills low ground and backfills before a roadstone course goes down.

River Rock is rounded gravel washed out of the Missouri, Mississippi and their tributary valleys. Use it in decorative beds, borders and dry creek beds.

Delivery Across Decatur County

Order online and pick a delivery date at checkout. Choose your quantity by the ton or by the yard, and each product page has a calculator to help size the load.

A dump truck arrives and tips the load in one pile. Have the drop spot clear and reachable, with room for the truck to pull in and out.

Delivery covers Lamoni, Leon, Davis City, Garden Grove, Grand River, Van Wert, Weldon and Decatur, plus the surrounding rural ground.

Ground Conditions Across Decatur County

Decatur County sits on the Southern Iowa Drift Plain. Old pre-Illinoian till lies under a windblown loess mantle, usually 5 to 30 feet thick, with buried paleosols beneath.

The Yarmouth-Sangamon paleosol is a thick, gummy grey clay that water will not move through. Farmers across the Southern Iowa Drift Plain call working in it gumbo.

Rain, snowmelt and spring storms drive the water problem. Steeply rolling ground drains at the surface, but the clay subsoil does not take water, so it perches and runs off.

That leaves drives soft at the bottom of a grade. A washed, open graded layer under a drive gives perched water somewhere to go.

This is Iowa's most eroded landscape. Streams cut deeply, hillslopes carry a fine texture of rills, and gully and stream bank erosion after heavy rain is the main reason rock goes in on slopes and outlets.

The working season here is the longest in the state. Clay soils still need to dry before anything gets compacted, so a wet spring pushes base work back several weeks.

Cold winters bring repeated freeze and thaw, milder than the north but still enough to heave gravel drives and lanes every spring. Frost depth is commonly 42 inches, and the local building official sets footing depth.

Choosing the Right Material

Union County, Clarke County and Lucas County all share Decatur County's ground region, the Southern Iowa Drift Plain. The ground is the same across all four.

That means the same reading applies next door: old till under loess, with that gummy grey paleosol holding water up. Base and drainage choices carry over unchanged.

Pick by what the ground does with water. A compacted roadstone base for drives and pads, clean rock where water needs to move, and riprap where runoff hits a slope or an outlet.

Order Roadstone, Clean Rock and Sand in Decatur County

Iowa Rock Supply delivers base, washed stone, sand, soil and decorative rock across Decatur County. Driveways, parking pads, farm lanes, drainage runs, stream bank armoring and garden beds all start with the right material.

Order online by the ton or by the yard, size the load with the calculator, and pick your delivery date at checkout.

Bulk Gravel and Stone Delivery in Decatur County, IA