Gravel & Rock Delivery in Key Largo

Key Largo runs roughly from mile marker 90 up to 107 and is the closest Keys market to the mainland at about ninety miles from our yard. It is also the only one with two ways in: US-1 through Florida City, or Card Sound Road into North Key Largo.

That second route matters more than it sounds. When US-1 has a problem — and it does — Card Sound gives us an alternative that no other island in the chain has.

Building in Key Largo

Key Largo is heavily canal-front. Large parts of the island were developed as canal communities with direct water access, which means an unusual concentration of seawall, dock and shoreline work and steady demand for rip rap and armour stone.

It also means most properties are very close to water, which is exactly what makes permitting strict. Anything touching a canal edge or below mean high water needs approvals before material arrives.

Residential construction and renovation is the other constant. Driveways, pads and slab work on properties where the ground is thin soil over hard limestone, which changes how excavation and base work behave compared with the mainland. Limerock base and crushed concrete both haul down regularly.

Landscaping leans on stone rather than lawn. Pea rock and decorative aggregate do far better than grass in Keys conditions, and they move well here.

The dive and tourism economy along the corridor generates commercial pavement and pad work, and the Ocean Reef area at the top of the island is a market of its own with its own access arrangements.

Materials we deliver to Key Largo

We carry 21 materials and will haul any of them here. These are the six Key Largo orders most, with the specification detail you need to order correctly the first time.

Limerock Base in Key Largo

The material South Florida is built on. If it is paved, there is almost certainly limerock underneath it.

Limerock is mined limestone crushed and graded so that it runs the full range from roughly three and a half inches down to powder. That full gradation is the entire point. The coarse pieces carry load, the fines fill the voids between them, and when you add water and roll it, the fines cement the whole thing into a slab you can drive a loaded truck across.

South Florida sits on limestone, which means the material is quarried locally and hauled short distances — and that is why base here costs what it costs. In most of the United States, road base is crushed granite or gravel trucked in from a distance. Here, the Miami oolite formation in Miami-Dade and the Ocala limestone further north put the quarry inside the market.

You will see it written as limerock, lime rock and crushed limestone depending on who wrote the document, and heard as base rock or DOT base on site. Engineers specify it by FDOT section number. It is all the same product.

Full Limerock Base specification, coverage figures and FAQ →

Specification

What Key Largo customers use it for

• Base course under asphalt roads, driveways and parking lots
• Base under concrete slabs, aprons and sidewalks
• Compacted base beneath paver installations
• Structural fill and sub-base where bearing capacity is specified
• Stabilised construction entrances and haul roads
• Pads for equipment, containers and modular buildings

What is the difference between limerock and crushed limestone?

Nothing meaningful in this market. "Crushed limestone" is the generic description, "limerock" is the South Florida term, and FDOT documentation calls it limerock base. Same material.

Crushed Concrete in Key Largo

Recycled, cheaper than virgin rock, and it gets harder with age. The most under-rated base material in the market.

Crushed concrete is exactly what the name says: concrete from demolition, crushed and screened to a base gradation. The reflex reaction is that recycled material must be inferior to virgin rock. In this application that reflex is wrong.

Concrete never fully hydrates. There is always unreacted cement left in the matrix, and when you crush it, expose fresh surfaces, add water and compact it, that residual cement goes back to work. A crushed concrete base continues to stiffen for months after it is placed. Limerock does not do that.

It is also angular with a full range of fines, which is exactly the gradation profile that makes a good compactable base. Properly processed material performs at or very near limerock base — and costs less, because the raw input is a disposal problem somebody was paying to get rid of.

Miami-Dade in particular runs on it. The density of demolition and redevelopment in Dade means there is a lot of feedstock and a lot of processing capacity, and crushed concrete is the default base on a large share of the private work there.

Full Crushed Concrete specification, coverage figures and FAQ →

Specification

What Key Largo customers use it for

• Base course under asphalt, concrete and pavers where accepted
• Structural and general fill
• Driveways, parking areas and yard surfaces
• Construction entrances and haul roads
• Pipe backfill and trench restoration
• Levelling and grade correction on large sites

Is crushed concrete allowed as base on permitted jobs?

Often, but not universally. Many private and municipal specifications accept it; some require virgin limerock. Check the specification for your job before building on it.

Rip Rap in Key Largo

Armour stone for the places where water is actively trying to take your property back.

Rip rap is specified by class, and the class is driven by how much energy the water carries. Sheltered canal banks in inland Broward take smaller stone than an exposed shoreline on the ocean side of the Keys, and a scour apron at a culvert outfall is sized for the velocity coming out of the pipe.

The general rule is that stone has to be heavy enough that design-storm flow cannot move it, and graded enough that smaller pieces fill the voids between larger ones so the mat locks up rather than acting as a pile of loose boulders. Almost every properly built installation also has a filter layer underneath — geotextile fabric, a bedding stone course, or both — to stop the soil beneath from washing out through the gaps. Rip rap placed directly on sand will eventually sink into it.

We are the supplier, not the engineer. If your project is permitted, the plan set will name the class and the layer thicknesses; send us that page and we will match it. If it is unpermitted seawall repair on your own property, tell us the exposure and we will tell you honestly what size the neighbours are using.

Full Rip Rap specification, coverage figures and FAQ →

Specification

What Key Largo customers use it for

• Seawall toe protection and scour aprons
• Shoreline and canal bank armouring
• Slope stabilisation on retention ponds and lake banks
• Culvert and outfall headwall protection
• Living shoreline and mangrove edge stabilisation projects
• Temporary construction entrances and haul road crossings

Do I need a permit to put rip rap on my seawall?

Almost certainly, if any part of the work sits below the mean high water line. Depending on location that can involve FDEP, the South Florida Water Management District, the Army Corps of Engineers and a local marine permit. Confirm before ordering material.

Fill Dirt in Key Largo

Bulk soil for moving grade. Cheap by the ton, and the material most often ordered in the wrong quantity.

Fill dirt is screened soil sold by the ton for moving volume. The word that matters is clean: no roots, no construction debris, no trash, no significant organic content. Organic material rots, and soil with organics in it keeps settling for years after you thought the job was finished.

Where a specification calls for structural fill, the requirements are tighter — a specified gradation and a compaction standard, usually verified by a testing lab. If your drawing says structural fill, tell us, because that is a different order from generic clean fill.

For most residential and light-commercial work — raising a low corner of a yard, building a pad, backfilling an old pool — clean fill is what you want and what we deliver.

Full Fill Dirt specification, coverage figures and FAQ →

Specification

What Key Largo customers use it for

• Raising lot grade and correcting low spots
• Building up pads before base and slab work
• Backfilling excavations and old pool removals
• Landscape berms, mounds and contouring
• Filling behind retaining walls and seawalls
• General bulk volume where bearing is not critical

How many tons of fill dirt do I need?

Work out cubic yards (length × width × depth in feet, divided by 27), multiply by about 1.25 to get tons, then add 15 to 25 percent for compaction. Our tonnage calculator does this and converts to truckloads.

Pea Rock in Key Largo

Small, rounded and smooth underfoot. Called pea gravel everywhere else — in Florida it is pea rock.

Same material, different vocabulary. The rest of the country calls it pea gravel; South Florida calls it pea rock, and if you ask a yard here for pea gravel you will get a slight pause before they hand you the same thing.

It is a small, naturally rounded stone at about three-eighths of an inch nominal, washed clean, in a mix of tans, greys and off-whites. The rounded shape is what distinguishes it from #89 rock, which is a similar size but crushed and angular.

That difference drives where each one is used. Rounded feels good underfoot and looks softer, so pea rock goes on pool decks, paths and decorative areas. Angular locks under load, so #89 goes under pavers and around pipe.

Full Pea Rock specification, coverage figures and FAQ →

Specification

What Key Largo customers use it for

• Pool deck surrounds and landscape borders
• Walkways, paths and courtyard surfaces
• Drainage beds and dry creek features
• Playground surfacing
• Exposed aggregate concrete finishes
• Ground cover in planting beds and side yards
• Under decks and in side-yard drainage runs

Is pea rock the same as pea gravel?

Yes. "Pea gravel" is the national term and "pea rock" is what it is called in South Florida. Same 3/8-inch rounded washed stone.

#57 Rock in Key Largo

The workhorse drainage stone of South Florida. Open-graded, angular, and the default answer whenever water has to move through rock instead of sitting on it.

#57 is a gradation, not a rock type. The number comes from the AASHTO/ASTM sizing chart, and it describes stone that passes a 1-1/2 inch sieve and is retained on a No. 4 — in practice, pieces running roughly three-quarters of an inch to an inch, with the fines washed out.

In most of the country #57 is granite or trap rock. In South Florida it is crushed limestone, quarried locally, which is why it costs a fraction of what the same gradation costs in Georgia and why nearly every drainage detail on a Broward or Miami-Dade plan set specifies it. You will hear it called #57 stone by engineers and spec writers and 57 rock by everyone actually standing on the job. Same material.

The defining property is what has been removed. Because the fines are washed out, the stone will not knit together and will not compact. Stack it and it stays a pile of loose angular rock with roughly a third of its volume as open void. That void is the whole point: water runs straight through it instead of perching on top.

Full #57 Rock specification, coverage figures and FAQ →

Specification

What Key Largo customers use it for

• French drains and trench drains — the standard backfill stone
• Septic drainfields and pump chambers
• Under-slab drainage layer beneath concrete
• Pipe bedding and backfill where flow matters more than support
• Coarse aggregate in ready-mix concrete
• Loose driveways and equipment pads where mud is the enemy
• Erosion control at downspouts and swale outfalls

Is #57 stone the same as #57 rock?

Yes. "Stone" is the term on plan sets and in ASTM/AASHTO documentation; "rock" is what it is called on job sites throughout South Florida. Both refer to the same washed, open-graded gradation running roughly 3/4" to 1".

Ground conditions in the Florida Keys

The Keys are geologically unlike anywhere on the mainland, and building here reflects that at every turn.

Rock, not soil

The upper Keys are built on Key Largo Limestone — fossil coral reef — and the lower Keys largely on Miami oolite. Either way, what sits under your feet is rock with a very thin and often nonexistent soil cap.

That means excavation is breaking, not digging. It means anything requiring depth costs more than the mainland equivalent. And it means that when a job calls for soil, planting medium or fill, all of it has to be imported — there is nothing local to win it from.

No aggregate production at all

There are no quarries, no pits and no processing anywhere in the island chain. Every ton of base, fill, sand and stone used between Key Largo and Key West is hauled down US-1 from the mainland. That is the single dominant economic fact of construction here, and it is why material costs more the further down the chain you go.

Elevation, flooding and why fill is regulated

The islands are very low. Much of the developed area sits only a few feet above sea level, and essentially all of it is within flood zones. Adding fill changes drainage patterns on neighbouring property and alters flood behaviour, which is precisely why Monroe County scrutinises fill placement and grade changes far more closely than any mainland county in our service area.

Do not order fill for a Keys job until the permitting is settled. It is a long way to send material that cannot legally be placed.

Salt, storms and material choice

Everything here is exposed to salt air and periodically to storm surge. Shoreline protection is not a one-time improvement but an ongoing maintenance obligation, which is why rip rap and armour stone move in the quantities they do.

Getting a truck onto your Key Largo site

Two routes is a genuine advantage. Card Sound Road is a toll road into North Key Largo and gives us a way around problems on the US-1 approach through Florida City.

Once on the island, US-1 through Key Largo is the spine and most properties come off it directly or through short canal-community streets. Those streets are often narrow with limited turning room, and canal-front lots frequently have restricted frontage.

Tell us whether the truck can reach the drop point or whether the material needs staging and moving by machine. On seawall work particularly, getting a loaded tri-axle close enough to the water to place stone where you want it is often not possible.

Plan on several days of notice. Key Largo is the most schedulable Keys market but it is still a ninety-mile haul each way.

Before you order

Four things worth reading once if this is your first load into Key Largo. Each opens the full guide.

Areas we cover in Key Largo

Key Largo, North Key Largo, Tavernier border, Rock Harbor, Newport, Ocean Reef area, the Card Sound Road corridor and mile markers 90 through 107.

If your street is not on that list, we still deliver there — it is not an exhaustive index, just the areas we are asked about most.

Key Largo — common questions

Florida Keys County — general questions

Nearby cities we also serve

All of the Florida Keys → · Full service area →