Foamcrete Water Bar for Erosion Control

I live in an area with sandy loam and every rainfall we lose a good portion of our driveway down the hill.Traditionally waterbars are made from wood or rocks: these types of waterbars do not work good for driveways that are being used by multiple vehicles daily.

bag of portland cement

open cell foam blocks

bag of play sand

bag of pea gravel

Hardware cloth

bucket to mix cement in

My neighbor was throwing out huge blocks of foam, so I asked if I could have them.

Use a piece of hardware cloth and grind the foam against it into a bucket or bag until all the foam is ground up.

If you have a dog that is missing a few brain cells you might want to put them away for this. My dog saw all the little flurries and must have thought it was snow because she came running in jumped into my new pile of foam pieces and gulped down about two cups of foam before I could stop her. It didn't seem to hurt her so maybe she didn't swallow enough. I had hell trying to get all the foam off her after that because the static sticks them to everything.

Cut the hardware cloth into 4-inch strips to go across the area. The hardware cloth is for stability in your concrete. Be sure to bend your hardware cloth into a half-moon shape to where the pokey things will point into the ground when you lay them down.

For my mix I used

8 cups Portland cement

8 cups sand

4 cups gravel

2 gallons of foam beads

mix these all together in your bucket then start adding water slowly while mixing. Its done when it is the consistency of thick pudding.

Then just take globs of concrete and glob it onto the hardware cloth and smooth it out with your hand or a stick. If you want a really smooth shiny water bar take a piece of plastic covered with vegetable oil and smooth it down over the cement, you don't have to leave the plastic on just do it as a finishing step.