Anyone who lives in a snowy climate knows just how hard it can be to guess exactly where your driveway is once it’s buried under a foot or two of fresh snow.
And if your driveway is almost 300 feet long like mine – it can be a challenge for your neighbour to keep his John Deere tractor on the straight and narrow as he blows out a path for you in near white-out conditions.
The solution to this annual problem is of course – driveway markers.
Easy to make
You can buy driveway markers at the local hardware store, even at Amazon.com, but in my case it was cheaper, easier and faster to make seven of these markers myself. It’s about the easiest DIY project I can think of – wooden stakes with a band of shiny red sheathing tape wrapped around the top and a 45 degree mitre cut at the bottom. That’s it.
What to do
Rather than use new wood and paint the stakes, I went for fast and cheap. I recycled some boards from our old greenhouse which had a weathered to a nice dark grey – perfect for visibility in blowing snow. The stakes should be at least 42″ long – even longer if you’re likely to have over 36″ of snow on the ground over the winter.
- Rip a board into 1 1/2″ to 3″ widths to make the marker stakes
- cut to the length you need – 90 degree cut at the top & 45 degree cut at the bottom
- wrap the tape around the stake 2 or 3 times near the top end
Drive them home
You’ll want to install your driveway markers before the ground freezes. Winter arrived very early here at Stonehaven and I thought I’d missed my opportunity. But we had a few warm days just prior to another big storm so I was able to get the job done.
Total time invested from ‘OMG, I need to make driveway makers TODAY’ to ‘stakes in the ground’ was about an hour.
For best results:
locate markers about 12″ outside the area you want to keep clear
- drive the stakes with a regular hammer, sledgehammer, or flat back of an axe
- start by driving in the first and last markers in the line
- sight down the line to add the remaining markers at equal intervals
This is brilliant! It’s just what I need! Thanks for posting this.
We just had 6 cm, and my husband was swearing at the driveway. I hear you have a ton of snow out east, too. Yay, winter.