Re-grading of yard
Hello All. We have major drainage issues in our back yard caused by erosion and neglect by previous owners. We hired a civil engineer to help set new grade elevation marks with added fill to make the drainage work.
My question is what needs to be removed from the yard before new fill dirt is laid down. We were told to remove “all organic matter”. We have muck caused by standing water as well as patches of remaining grass. The elevation needs to be raised over a foot in some areas. The property is in Dayton Beach FL.
Thanks for any advice/input
Kommentarer (17)
gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
5 år sedan"organic matter" is whatever is already growing there. If it is just lawn grass, then I wouldn't worry about removal - the new layer of soil will be sufficient to smother and kill it off. Anything larger - trees and shrubs - should be removed as a) they will be hard to work around with laying and spreading the additional soil, and b) the raised soil level will kill them eventually anyway.
John D Zn6a PIT Pa
5 år sedanI'd try to find a way to save all the organic material. . Chip all the limbs, branches, and roots. I'd save any sod and any topsoil I could find. If I had to take it all off site I'd make an effort to find a place to store it. If you found an empty lot or something similar, I'd consider renting a dump truck and a small loader. Here I don't know if I could find a dump truck rental, but you could hire out a man with a dump truck. Home depot rents a small backhoe for $259 a day. Once you have a backhoe you find other uses for it, like digging out that fruit tree, or those bushes.
Excavators think of topsoil and anything organic as waste, something that has to be disposed of. They like to see a huge field that's a smooth as a babies. A root sticking up over yonder spoils the view they want to see.mindshift
5 år sedanOrganic matter is the remaining grass and any other plants where the fill will go. This could include perennials, shrubs and even trees. I would have thought you would be specifically told to remove any affected tree, because that's a lot of work and/or expense to have done. I would not rip out plants that are not in the work zone. Ask the people who told you to clear out the yard for more detail.
ymelnic1 thanked mindshiftYardvaark
5 år sedanInstead of second-guessing, ask the question of those who gave you the instructions.
The Garden Artist LLC
5 år sedanDo you have a picture? Hard to give a pertinent response without seeing it.
NHBabs z4b-5a NH
5 år sedanÄndrades senast: 5 år sedanDefinitely remove all the grass and any other plants And plant parts such as branches,stumps or leaves. Muck is a rather vague term. Is is largely half-rotted plant matter or just soil type of mud, largely inorganic?
If you pile whatever you remove in an out-of-the-way spot where it won’t interfere with regrading, you will have some good organically rich soil to use for gardens or as a thin top dressing on the new soil. You also avoid having to figure out disposal.
toxcrusadr
5 år sedan"Organic matter" would be grass, trees, shrubs, wood chip mulch, etc. This is so they don't have to deal with removing any of it and so it's not buried it with the new fill.
Hopefully the plan includes scraping the topsoil, stockpiling and putting it back afterwards.
As to whether the 'muck' you mentioned qualifies as 'organic matter', that's a question you'll have to ask the contractor.toxcrusadr
5 år sedanI swear there were no responses to the OP's post when I wrote the above yesterday, and now there are several going back 4 days. Weird.
NHBabs z4b-5a NH
5 år sedanSame with my response just above yours. There were no visible responses when I wrote mine. Houzz must be doing wonky things to their programming again.
ymelnic1
Författare5 år sedanÄndrades senast: 5 år sedan
Thanks for the replies everyone. The grass spots are tough to get at because the property has very old trees and since the soil has eroded so much through the years, the roots are very close to the top. The guy who did the demo on the existing pavers with a bobcat said he doesn’t want to do it since that would hurt the trees.would it be a feasible solution to use kill all in the grass in hopes that the root systems will die before the regrading in hopes to expedite any possible settling prior to compacting? I don’t want to hurt the trees. Aboveis a pic of the yard.
Yardvaark
5 år sedan"would it be a feasible solution to use kill all in the grass...?"
I don't know what "kill all" is. Round-up (glyphosate) is what you'd want to kill grass/weeds with but not hurt trees. It would be sprayed on the grass/weeds green parts.
NHBabs z4b-5a NH
5 år sedanJust killing organic material isn’t the same as removing it. You would also need to find a way to remove as much of the grass as possible as well.
The Garden Artist LLC
5 år sedanThe reason the roots are at the surface is probably due to two conditions, either the grass has been over watered and as a result the tree roots have come to the surface for oxygen, or the type of tree is typical of surface rooting (a lot of Crabapples, Willows and some cultivars of Maple trees will do this, among others). You have two choices, cut the roots out which depending on the extent, may or may not kill the tree, or built above ground level, i.e. a raised deck.
zoey
4 år sedanWe had a similar problem and we didn't get good advice when we were trying to sort it out. We went back to civil engineering books, asked my father-in-law who knows about such things, got fresh advice from professionals and could finally sort it out after many months. Drainage issues are hard to solve sometimes; but if they are sorted out well, you can go through decades of problem free drains. There's nothing to beat good advice.
Reload the page to not see this specific ad anymore
Arbordale Landscaping