Decomposed Granite for Dummies

Natural decomposed granite (grus) and granite

If you've followed this blog at all, you know by now that our awardees are often victimized by the intersection of their own ignorance with the structure of the venue where they're writing. Our spies¹ tell us that contributors to the eHow.com websites were required to write a certain number of words (300-500) because the site's SEO gurus believed that was the "highest quality." Never mind that the concept of accuracy went out the window when their writes started padding a short answer with useless (and often misinterpreted) factoids. That, we suspect, is what happened to Tyler Lacoma when he submitted "What Is Decomposed Granite?" to eHow.com back in 2010 (it can now be found at the niche site GardenGuides.com).

The answer's pretty simple: decomposed granite (DG) is the natural weathering product of granite and rocks of similar composition from lengthy exposure to surface temperature and pressure. The water-aided chemical weathering of relatively hard feldspars into soft clay minerals allows the rock to crumble into gravel-sized and finer clasts.

Lacoma said at least some of that, although it was fairly obvious that he wasn't very comfortable with information outside his business-slash-writing comfort zone:

"Decomposed granite begins as normal granite stone, often older stone found at quarries and other areas. Over time, wind, rain, cold and heat wear away at this granite until it breaks apart into smaller and smaller pieces, finally becoming gravel. This gravel is harvested and then either kept the same size or ground down to finer pieces as needed."

That, unfortunately, reads as though DG purveyors leave "granite stones" sitting around for a couple of months to crumble; after which the result is "harvested." Yeah, right: a couple of months. Try a couple million years, Tyler! We are also loath to believe that the finer fraction mixed with gravel-sized chunks is created by grinding it down.

Tyler's ignorance shines just as brightly in the padding used to meet eHow's minimum word count, including such specious claims as,

"Loose granite gravel is fine like sand."

No, Tyler, gravel is fine like gravel. Sand is finer yet... by definition. Lacoma continued his scientifically illiterate post by explaining that,

"Natural granite has several different shades available for homeowners..."

...which seems a rather odd construction for a "professional writer." As for using DG, Tyler thought this made sense:

"Installers must use a professional compactor to beat the granite gravel down in place..."

We'd like to see that pro out there beating up the gravel! Or maybe we should be impressed by the notion that,

"Granite is also one of the more organic landscaping materials and will not wash away any synthetic materials or chemicals into the soil when it rains."

Whether you call granite "organic" or not, you sure as heck ought to know that "will not wash away any synthetic materials or chemicals" is sure a sloppy (and wordy) way to say "won't leach"!

Our alleged professional "specializing in ecology" sure botched that post, eh? Small wonder that Tyler is collecting yet another Dumbass of the Day award to go with the four already on his mantel.

¹ We have staffers who used to write for Demand Media in the days before they changed the company name to Leaf Group and started shoving all the eHow content into niche sites.

SI - WEATHERING