This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.
Levelling garden and turfing
Hi all,
We're shortly about to undergo a renovation/extension project on our home and as part of this we've begun to attempt to level a large part of the garden. At the moment the garden slopes away from the house getting steeper the further away from the house (towards a stream), over the weekend a few of us broke down an old wall and slabbing on the lower part of the garden which was on a slightly different level, at it's lowest point it's approximately 4ft from the level we'd like to raise it to. The plan is to gain back some of the garden from the space we lose by extending outwards, we plan to use some of the rubble from the weekend (broken bricks, slabbing and concrete, uncompacted) to fill some of the depth, then use the soil from the extension excavation and finally around 1-2ft of topsoil on the top before laying turf. This will all be held back by a large retaining wall (double thick possibly inc. some rebar) which I will get the builders to leave some drainage holes in.
Due to the large depth and substantial layer of top soil (1-2ft planned) do you think this will be at least adequate enough to get a decent lawn? If completely removing the rubble means I won't end up spending money on a project doomed for failure that's fine, however I'd probably need to come up with a 'Plan B' as I think the then required approx 15tonnes of soil & top soil plus turf may be out of our budget.
We're shortly about to undergo a renovation/extension project on our home and as part of this we've begun to attempt to level a large part of the garden. At the moment the garden slopes away from the house getting steeper the further away from the house (towards a stream), over the weekend a few of us broke down an old wall and slabbing on the lower part of the garden which was on a slightly different level, at it's lowest point it's approximately 4ft from the level we'd like to raise it to. The plan is to gain back some of the garden from the space we lose by extending outwards, we plan to use some of the rubble from the weekend (broken bricks, slabbing and concrete, uncompacted) to fill some of the depth, then use the soil from the extension excavation and finally around 1-2ft of topsoil on the top before laying turf. This will all be held back by a large retaining wall (double thick possibly inc. some rebar) which I will get the builders to leave some drainage holes in.
Due to the large depth and substantial layer of top soil (1-2ft planned) do you think this will be at least adequate enough to get a decent lawn? If completely removing the rubble means I won't end up spending money on a project doomed for failure that's fine, however I'd probably need to come up with a 'Plan B' as I think the then required approx 15tonnes of soil & top soil plus turf may be out of our budget.
0
Posts
My main concern really is bringing up the level and using the rubble/concrete over potentially having to have many tonnes of earth and soil added.
I think 1-2ft of soil over well broken up rubble fill should be fine.