About Virginia Rock Supply and a Catalogue Named the VDOT Way

Take a handful from the pile at the end of a drive and you can usually tell what was ordered. If gray dust clings to the larger pieces and the handful holds its shape when you squeeze it, that is a dense-graded material with its fines left in, meant to lock up under a roller. If it runs through your fingers as loose, clean angular pieces with no dust, that is a washed size, meant to let water through and never to compact. Almost every question people bring to this storefront sits on one side of that line or the other.

Fines left in, or washed out: the line the whole list is drawn on

Everything sold here is one of five things: a base with fines that binds, a washed stone that drains, a rounded decorative stone, a sand, or a soil or mulch that has to grow something. Ordering the wrong side of that line is what produces a drive that never firms up or a French drain that silts shut in a season. The product pages carry the size and grading for each listing so the distinction is visible before anything goes in the basket.

Why the list opens with 21A and 21B instead of a generic base name

Base material in this state is specified by the VDOT Road and Bridge Specifications, where Section 208 covers the dense-graded sizes 21A, 21B and 22, each available as Type I or Type II. A contractor, a county plan sheet and a supplier here will all use those designations, so the catalogue uses them too. 21A carries more fines and packs tighter, which is why it is the usual driveway and pad base. 21B is coarser with fewer fines: it drains a little better and packs a little less hard. They are two separate listings because they are two separate materials, and calling either of them by the other name sends a buyer to the wrong pile. The washed sizes follow the same logic, listed by number as #57 Stone and #8 Crushed Stone. Treat all of that as how material is described locally rather than as a mark this storefront holds.

A list stocked for three grounds and a long storm season

The catalogue is shaped by the fact that Virginia is not one kind of ground. Low, sandy Coastal Plain soil with water near the surface asks for fill and drainage sizes. Slow-draining clay across the Piedmont asks for a base thick enough to carry the load on its own. Limestone valleys with karst, west of the Blue Ridge, often put rock within a spade's depth and punish concentrated runoff. Hurricanes, tropical storm remnants and nor'easters keep RipRap and the coarse drainage sizes moving in a way they would not in a drier state, and frost is set by each locality rather than by one statewide figure, so depth guidance is a local question.

What ordering here involves, and what it leaves to your locality

This is a storefront rather than a yard you drive into. You measure the work, size it on the calculators, choose the material from the product range, then set the quantity and a delivery date. Delivery is arranged at checkout from the ZIP code you enter, and the truck needs a clear approach and firm level ground to tip on, which the delivery page sets out in full. What stays outside this site: anything an engineer, an inspector or your own city or county has to sign off. Independent cities such as Richmond, Roanoke and Fairfax are administered separately from the counties that share their names, so the entrance permit, the frost figure and the stormwater rule that apply to your address come from your own locality. Ask here before ordering if a spec sheet and a listing seem to disagree.

The plan sheet calls for Type I 21A. Does the listing here tell me that?

Is 21B the same thing as the crusher run a yard would sell me?

Does the same list suit a lot in the coalfields and one on the Eastern Shore?

Who sets the frost depth I should be planning around?