Maybe the "regular dirt" is all you need.

We need 68 yards of dirt, to fill in the hole left behind after the concrete was removed. 68 freaking yards! It's going to cost us more to get this amount of dirt than having the concrete removed. I wasn't prepared for needing THAT much!

Well, the 20 inch 24x46 hole is going to have to stay that way throughout winter. We're going to have to save for awhile to have that kind of $ to just throw away on stupid dirt.

you have 5 acres dont you ... cant you steal it from some corner where you can put a compost pit ...

if you were to do it.. i might wait til later fall ... when the grass is more dormant???

is water retention there important ...

ken

time for a pond.. lol ... ken

I wish I had 5 acres. I only live on about a 1/2 an acre. Most of us out here on the lake have 1/2 an acre or less, except for the father and son, who I've mentioned about their feuding. They together own about 150 acres (or more) of land around here.

It's about to get real between those two! The son is arrogantly parking his trailer (that he transports his bulldozer and excavator on) on his dad's property and is now mowing it once a week. I can't wait til the father comes back and gives his son a good metaphorically kick in the rear-end.

I know getting 4 yards of topsoil earlier this spring cost us $90. And we need 68!!! Just the thought of how much it's going to cost us makes me want to reach for the nearest brown paper bag to breathe into.

I'm preparing myself for having a pseudo swimming pool right next to my house for the next 7 months. Nothing I can do. I mean I could put it on a credit card, but there's no way I'm going to do that...

The only silver lining in this is all the dirt underneath those slabs turned out to be gorgeous, moist sandy loam. I was nervous about the quality of the soil because the slabs were the floor of our once attached garage we had taken down a few years ago. The previous owner of the house was a real handyman and would work on his car and his friends' cars from time to time, so I always wondered if oil had gotten into the ground underneath but the soil appears to be untouched.

I'd go with fill dirt to begin with. You can often find this free for the taking from construction sites where there is significant excavation going on. Contractors/developers have to pay to have this stuff hauled away so having someone take it off their hands is a savings for them. Check out Craigslist or your local freecycle for local sources. You just need access to a pickup and a lot of elbow grease :-) And sometimes you can get lucky with the excavators still present and they will load for you. Then you can save your money for the "good stuff" when you finally get around to planting or finalizing the area.

can we have a pic .... ???? .. i want to look outside your box ....

the more you have delivered.. the bigger the truck.. the cheaper to product ... its not a linear pricing ...

ken

I've got video footage of the excavator removing the concrete. It's on my phone and every time I try (and believe me I've tried many times) to mail it to my email it says it can't send anything over 20mb. I've tried making the video shorter and it still won't send. I'll have dh can look at it after work....

The people I get the dirt from own the gravel pit. And funny enough, it's the father who owns all the land that the son's Christmas trees are on. . lol Anyway, they can only fit on their delivery truck 4 yards. i know that because I needed 4 1/2 yards last time and the wife made a comment that they went ahead and put the extra 1/2 yard on the truck to save me a second delivery charge. She made a comment that it wasn't good for the truck, but I didn't ask her to do that. I just asked for 4 1/2 yards and she said they could only do 4 at a time and I said well just send 4 yards and we'll see if we can make do with it. She showed up with 4 1/2 on the truck.

So, basically, I've already avoided the middle man of going straight to them. Having her show up SEVENTEEN times with her truck with a delivery charge of $30 a trip (and the pit is only 1 mile away) along with $22 a yard times 68 yards is making me seriously hyperventilate.

There's no excuse for me not checking into this prior. I just never dreamed it would take this much dirt.

The guy who took the concrete out said he was bidding on a septic system on my road and if he got it he would bring me all the fill from it. I guess he had a firm idea of how much dirt I was going to need. I had no idea at the time and I was like oh if you can, great but if you can't it's okay too. Now, it's all I can do to not call him and say PLEASE bring me fill, I'm desperate.

He said if he got the job he would show up on Friday. Well, Friday came and went without a peep from him...Gardengal I will definitely look into free fill in my area.

Small update: I called the gravel pit, and told them the size of the hole and depth of the hole we need to fill, and asked them what they would charge for just for the plainest of dirt. She said well, you'll need some topsoil too. I said yes, enough to plant shrubs. She said are you sure about that exact size? I said well, it's deep in some areas and other areas it's not low at all. Its really uneven.

She offered to come over and take a look at what I'm talking about and to find out for sure what I need. She also said maybe you could do half the hole now, half later. I said for a job that requires lots of deliveries like mine, is the delivery charge price lower? She said let me talk to my husband and see if we can't work something out. I said if you don't normally do that, then don't make a special favor for me, I'll just save up for this job. She said I'll stop by to see what's really involved and then we'll go from there.

Dumb question: Why do you need to fill the hole in? The hole is only 2 feet deep. Is it such that you could re-contour the area, so that the "hole" would be come a feature of the lot. By cutting down the sides of the hole and using that dirt to fill the deeper area of the hole you could make the area look natural and not need 68 yards of additional dirt.

Well, the hole goes along the entire east side of my house, and abuts my foundation the entire length of it. I want to plant shrubs there. I don't want it pooling water there and getting into our crawl space somehow.

I would try to find more of the native soil (the sandy loam) to fill it with. Then you can focus on planting your shrubs. Or you could make a water garden.

Help! She just called me and said I should go with straight sand for 48 of those yards (14 inches of depth) and do 20 yards of topsoil for the last 6 inches. She said sand is MUCH easier to work with, and it would be fine if my only plan there is grass and a few shrubs. What do you all think? They're charging me $90 for 4 yards of topsoil delivered, and $45 for 4 yards of sand (or fill for that matter) delivered.

I don't know why you are limited to 4 yards at a time. I can fit like 3 yards in my little rinky dink trailer. Call a concrete company - or a dredging company. When we did our patio project last year they brought in like 20 yards at a time. I paid $175 a load for "black dirt". And it was good stuff :). I think they hooked up with a dredger, lots of little shells and very organic. Call around, those prices seem really high. I wouldn't want that much sand. Good luck!

I called the gravel pit directly. They only have one truck, and it only carries 4 yards maximum. I figured if I called the pit instead of going through a middle man I would save money. She's stopping by tonight to see if i really need 68 yards.

Oh, and she told me that DH and I would have a much harder time spreading around fill than sand.

I would try local concrete companies, pavement folks, landscapers, etc. You know they are getting big 20 yard truckloads. We had 20 yds. of mulch delivered - all in 1 truck. There was a fee per yard, and I think about a $50 delivery fee. The pricing you are getting is crazy. I bet your neighbor dude can hook you up :). The gravel pit may not be the best option, it's not really what they do. Call around, be super nice on the phone, someone will understand what you need and send you in the right direction. I found my concrete guy by asking the barber lol.

Looks like you need more than you might think.

Calculator

Ok so I have no ide where you are, check this out

Topsoil

You certaintly won't be planting anything there if you use sand! Use 100% (or at least 90%) native soil.

Sand won't solve your drainage concerns next to the foundation either.

How about a picture of the area showing what we need to see? Maybe somebody here can save you money and enhance your garden at the same time.

Mike

Thank you everyone. She just left. She said I need much, MUCH less fill than I thought. Maybe even less than 40 yards since there are some very, very high areas already. She's going to start delivering it in the morning. She's going to KY for the month of Sept on Friday,and couldn't guarantee that the pit would be open when she got back in Oct. I wanted to get this done right away, so it was now or never.

They're the gravel pit who all the excavator and hauling companies use, so there's no way any of them would've been any cheaper.

Ok, so I didn't see the previous comments before I wrote the above. Sorry about that.

I am using native soil. The pit is a mile away from me and they're digging right out of the ground there. I'm using fill for 11 inches and topsoil for the other 7 inches. I'm only planting grass in this area. Based on the fact that this wall on the East side of my house is the wall where our bilco door is, leading to our crawl space, which houses our water pump and she advised 100% to not plant ANYTHING around it. Period. So, I'm going to go to container gardening. :(

Oh and she said she's not delivering the topsoil til next spring, since fill always settles, and she wants to make sure we're at the right level before adding the topsoil.

forget the video.. snap some pix before.. during and after ... please

ken

Ok, I just took some pictures.

She's now not delivering til October due to a couple reasons. I didn't want to get into the minutia of it all, but this area was actually 2 separate, but joined concrete slabs put together. You can see it perfectly on the video.

The 2nd slab, in the back part is MUCH lower, by like 1 feet or more than the front section. I've been outside, in the pouring rain, raking the rocks that are in the first section and raking them into the second section. I've made some headway. It's a miserable job, but I think in the end this is better for growing grass and it will save us money in the need for fill in the 2nd section.

I will need though a couple of days to do this, and she's going to be leaving by then. If she wasn't leaving til Monday, it'd be fine. By focusing on one section next to my foundation, and getting some HUGE rocks (boulders!) out I see there is NO topsoil, or even dirt underneath. I think this first section is ALL rocks for 2 ft or more. There's one concrete block against our foundation that I can't get out. It's like it's fully attached to it. I tried using a sledgehammer but I'm a 100lbs dripping wet, so that's a joke. But then I got to thinking what if I put a hole in the foundation. That is not a phone call dh would want to get at work. I got a picture of it so you can see what I'm talking about. Oh, and excuse any yellow great stuff or junk you see, this is what I've been finding as I rake. I didn't put it there.

Here's the entire length of it: Click on it to enlarge. Neighbor's property can be seen. You can see the difference between the 2 sections. The drop off is seen 3/4 of the way back that marks the 2nd section it's mostly dirt.

Below is the front section. See how high it is already in relation to my siding? It's only a few inches below my side door. I don't think we have any room, maybe an inch or two for topsoil. If you scroll back up to my first pic of the 2nd section, the dirt is much lower in relation to my foundation. This is where I'm going to rake up the rocks and move them to.

Just what Ken said. Take photos now before delivery, photos after this fall's delivery, photos after topsoil delivery. She's a dirt person not a plant person, so whether or not you can or should plant there may not be correct with regard to access to your crawl space doors, depending on specific plants chosen (grass is a groundcover after all so why not a more attractive groundcover, for instance) and there are a choice of plants that either are quite narrow growing or take hard pruning without blinking, so need not hinder access. With photos you can get some suitable, specific suggestions that will work in this area. You might want to include one photo with the doors all the way open to give an idea of the room that will require.

I posted my photos right before you posted.

Cross-posted. I'd find someone with a transit or level and do some checking of elevations. Seriously consider doing some regrading rather than adding if it turns out to be as it looks, lower close to the house and higher farther away. You don't want soil against your siding, but even less do you want water running downhill towards the house and pooling against it.

I would call a grading company. Don't want your foundation area graded wrong. And you are right not to mess with the concrete block :)

Thank you both SO much! After I read your responses, I walked over to my next door neighbor's house. He was outside puttering in his yard like always. He's a retired contractor, and I asked him if he knew anything about grading. He was outside in 30 seconds with a string, and a small level and he held one end up to my foundation and told me to hold the other end on the other side where it's high, and we now know what we have to do to get a good slope. I have to add additional soil near my foundation, but it won't be touching the siding. It doesn't have to go that high.

I've been busy all afternoon raking rocks into the deep areas where I'm going to need a good foot of soil. I've gotten about 1/5th of the first section done. It looks so much better without all the rocks. It actually looks somewhat nice. With all the grading I'm guessing I won't need more than 30 yards of topsoil. It's tough to figure out how to calculate when you're dealing with a slope.

Oh, and with regards to the concrete block. He said Oh I can take care of that and I said no, please don't. I don't want to hurt our foundation. He said it will be fine, don't worry. He got a chisel and a hammer and started knocking it down piece by piece. I held my breath the whole time. When he was halfway done he got a call and he handed me the tools and told me to finish it. But my arms are sore from all the raking to hold that huge hammer, so I didn't do it.

Update: We had a friend of ours come with his tractor and till up our area. He did a great job, and wouldn't take any money for doing it either. He wanted my dh to fix his computer so it was a barter of sorts.

And now we are having trucks come from a gravel pit about 25 minutes away.

I spent about 20 minutes on the phone with the woman there and God bless her. I must've driven her crazy asking questions about sand, fill, clay, un-screened top dirt etc. She had her adding machine going nonstop.. In the end, we came up with a plan: We need 35 yards total. We're going to start with 21 yards of "un-screened top dirt" and let that sit over the winter and percolate. She said unscreened top dirt is what you see when you dig a hole in our area. It has sand, clay, topsoil, etc in it and would be perfect for us. The last 14 yards will be of screened top dirt. They'll be here on Friday..

Well, the first truck of 15 yards showed up and he brought beautiful screened topsoil. I said "I was supposed to get unscreened topsoil, that looks like screened since I don't see any rocks or anything". He said the paper he had didn't specify which topsoil to bring. He said he made a mistake and to please don't call them, just don't say anything. He said it's their fault for not specifying. I'm wondering now what the 6 yard truck is going to bring.

Here is my final update on this: The 6 yard truck came with screened topsoil too! The driver of the 15 yard truck called me to say he told the other driver to get screened topsoil as well, so that we wouldn't have 2 different kinds of soil delivered to us. We paid $501 instead of paying for what they would've charged us for screened topsoil which is $761 which includes tax and delivery. We have SO much dirt! 21 yards is a huge amount.

"We have SO much dirt! 21 yards is a huge amount."

It sounds like you plan to do it manually, so wait until you have to spread and level it, , and you will know exactly how much that is.

I had six yards of topsoil delivered and it took about three days to get it distributed across the yard.

PS: Since you are filling a hole, don't forget to allow for the settling of the fill.

Tractor seems like a great idea. It makes my back sore just thinking about moving it manually.I moved about a yard yesterday from one part of the lawn to another, as it was stored on the edge of a lot that was just sold. Took me several yours and a couple of glasses of tea to get it done.

As an ex-landscaper here in the land of winter rains, I learned early on never to leave a job overnight that would puddle, otherwise I'd come back to a muddy mess in the morning. Grade it as soon as possible.