Build a Culvert that Looks Like a Stone Bridge

By John Shaw-Rimmington
Published on February 28, 2018
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John Shaw-Rimmington
With a little bit of effort and the right stone material, a culvert can become the showcase of your property.

Learn how you can build a culvert, or dry-stacked stone driveway, that functions and looks like a stone bridge.

Taking on the task of building a dry-stacked stone culvert — that is, a stone culvert that doesn’t use mortar — presents the very satisfying opportunity to build something that’ll be strong enough for you to drive a vehicle over and will look very much like a beautiful dry-stacked stone bridge.

There’s no reason to go with bags of sand or cement, blocks, plastic, metal, or anything man-made in your finished culvert. With a little bit of effort and the right stone material, a culvert can become the showcase of your property. After all, it’s the first thing people will see when they pull up to your drive. Why not make it stunning?

How to Build a Stone Culvert

Start by digging out and removing the dirt from the location of your future culvert, leaving a 3- to 4-foot wide ditch on either side of where the culvert is to go. The ditch should be deep enough to allow the top of a 1- to 2-foot channel to be about 2 feet below grade. You’ll have to dig at least 1-1/2 feet farther out than the area that crosses under the driveway so the water will run correctly in the direction you require. You’ll then dig a trench 3 inches deep and a foot wider than the width of your culvert opening. Fill the trench level with 3/4-inch clear, crushed, sharp aggregate, and then lay flagstone material — or even patio slabs — that are approximately 2 inches thick on top of the aggregate to form a level bed for the watercourse. When you lay the flagstones, you’ll want to butt them close to one another and extend them at least 6 inches past the length of the footprint of your culvert on either side.

To create a small waterfall, you can make your culvert’s openings slightly higher than the ditch it will be flowing into. In this case, you might like to build small stone embankments around the area the water will flow into. Conversely, you can create a small, rounded retaining area in which the water can pool before it goes through the culvert; do this by situating your culvert so it’s slightly higher than the water in the ditch flowing up to it.

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