Adventures With Dirt

On Monday we went up to Ryan's house to have some adventures with dirt. Shortly after he moved in, he got at least eight inches of rain within a few hours and his basement flooded. We remedied things in short order with three shop vacs and fans, but then we had to figure out how to prevent this in the future. After talking to several neighbors, the ones that had installed a second sump pump didn't have any flooding. So we did have a second sump pump installed, but the drainage from the original one was also a problem. It was only pumping water out a couple of feet away from the house and the sump pump drain is also at a low spot. We fixed the sump pump drainage by digging a trench and diverting the water much farther away from the house. The last piece of the drainage issue was to address the grading of the soil around his house. It had settled and everything was sloping towards the house, so we needed to get some topsoil and spread it on both sides of the house, away from the house on a downward slope.

The dump truck driver was nice and dumped 5.5 cubic yards on the side that needed the most and 1.5 cubic yards on the other side of the house. Then we just got busy with wheelbarrows, shovels, and rakes. 

We worked pretty steadily, taking breaks for water and our backs, but by late afternoon we had spread all of the dirt necessary on both sides of the house and still had an extra 1.5 cubic yards. So John's garden got quite a few wheelbarrow loads of the extra topsoil. 

John and Ryan put the fence back up and we spread grass seed and straw and watered. We had a beautiful day for the job, 78 degrees and breezy, but then it got 20 degrees colder with frost at night, so I doubt the grass seed will germinate this year. 

It may not look like much but you can tell that we did something by looking at the cellar window wells. They were about eight inches above soil level on both sides of the house but now the soil comes up to the level of the window well. 

We still have to add window well covers and see how things look when we get some rain. I'm sure we'll have to re-plant grass in the spring and we could probably scrub the mildew off the siding, but these can wait until warmer weather. I was really dreading this job and we had allotted two days for it, so I was very happy that we were able to complete it all in one day. After a few ibuprofen, some roll-on lidocaine, and muscle rub my back and shoulders weren't even too sore. I am very glad that this is done!