Ground Levelling?

Stigura

Hope you people are the ones to chew this over with? It's way too small to bother Smallholders with. And, dunno, just not sure it goes with DIY.

Straight in so; I have a patch of ground. Twenty foot square. Bit of a run to it ~ left to right. It's an absolute Nightmare of stones the size of a head. (This is largely due to natural topography / geology. Glaciers and mountains. Ice age. All that stuff)

Thing is, in a perfect world, I'd like it like a tiny little tennis court. That would be the absolute ideal. As it is, it's just a patch of wild grass and weeds, which I know so well are growing up through hell. And it slopes.

What does the Massive think, please? JCB's aside. Two ~ quite possibly crazy? ~ notions which came to me were sand, or stones? Either way, basically bury it. Bury it. Level That off. Leave nature to come back. 'Mow' what ever comes up.

Dunno. I'm clueless. This is beyond my experience.

Anyone?

Thanks

Lumen

Too small for tennis. Basketball? Table tennis? Squash court?

Problem with filling as opposed to cut and fill is that

- You need a truck load of fill material
- You end up with twice the elevation change at one side

Mini digger!!!

Stigura

Lumen wrote: »

Too small for tennis. Basketball? Table tennis? Squash court?

Special sort of bird catching net, actually. But, I don't want to get side tracked with that. All hell will, of course, ensue.

Lumen wrote: »

Problem with filling as opposed to cut and fill is that

- You need a truck load of fill material
- You end up with twice the elevation change at one side

Okay. This is where ye have to excuse my completely blank expression. I'm completely lost on what " Cut and fill " means But, following it with " Mini Digger! " ~ I suppose ye mean to have stuff (and rocks) dragged out. Then bed over what's left?

(So; The lord taketh away. Then, ye toppeth that which .....) It's extremely basic mathematics, see? My mind simply can't process such Never could. I know I'm not thick. But, I also recognise that this makes people angry, as they think I'm acting it. I'm not.

So, what's it all about, please? Why get a digger in and scrape stuff out? I'm sure, if we had a black board, ye could show me, in seconds, the principal ye trying to explain.

Just waiting for someone to come along now and start shouting that I'm a stupid, drunken idiot. Ye've seen it happen before. The usual handles too :rolleyes:

Does this sound doable, Lumen? Or, should I just revert to type and throw a load of money at a Builder to sort it out for me? Save all the usual grief.

Bloke put a concrete floor in for me. It was fantastic! I'd bought a mixer, aiming to do it myself. Some years later, I gave him the untouched mixer, in payment for laying the floor, while I drunk tea and watched! It was great!

standardg60

It basically means moving stuff from the high side to the low side, aka back-breaking torture, hence the mini-digger.

Stigura

Thankyou!!! See? And I've been sitting here, wringing my mind sideways, trying to figure out why one would 'remove' ground ..... Just couldn't see the bog simple concept that ye move it to the other side!

God, that makes So Much sense, now!

Yeah. Mini Digger? Hellish cost, even for barely half an hours work.

Me though? Pick and shovel? At my stage in the game? Ummmm ...... Nah!

So, what about afterwards ~ far more back to proper Gardening here, eh? I imagine I'd end up with a more nicely flat area of hell. Top soil it? Does one buy topsoil, by the hiab delivered 'builders bag' load

I don't s'pose straight horse manure would do? I have a truck load of That sat there! Side effect of having horses!

Naos

Is it possible to rotovate it and level with a rake?

Stigura

Naos; If Only, mate! :eek:

No. I'm afraid this ground is just Ridiculous! Look; I always try to avoid over explaining stuff like this. People always think I'm saying far more than needed. Else they simply decide I'm 'making up' problems. Then spit their dummies because they feel I'm ignoring their sage wisdom :rolleyes:

I live around the foot of a mountain. Literal ice age glacial activity has blessed this land with, basically, the gravel ye'd find in a fish tank. But, each grain is the size of a melon. And there's a bare sprinkling of earth on top. Pound a cro bar down, to sink a fence post? " Clank!!! "90% of the time. It's horrible!

So, yeah; Rotovator? It'd destroy itself in a minute. Be like trying to rotovate a skip full of motor engines

standardg60

Stigura wrote: »

Thankyou!!! See? And I've been sitting here, wringing my mind sideways, trying to figure out why one would 'remove' ground ..... Just couldn't see the bog simple concept that ye move it to the other side!

God, that makes So Much sense, now!

Yeah. Mini Digger? Hellish cost, even for barely half an hours work.

Me though? Pick and shovel? At my stage in the game? Ummmm ...... Nah!

So, what about afterwards ~ far more back to proper Gardening here, eh? I imagine I'd end up with a more nicely flat area of hell. Top soil it? Does one buy topsoil, by the hiab delivered 'builders bag' load

I don't s'pose straight horse manure would do? I have a truck load of That sat there! Side effect of having horses!

Now you've got it!
And see the brain juice is flowing grand now..yes topsoil afterwards, in one of those ton but nowhere near a ton bags!

Lumen

OK, let's keep this simple.

What volume of material do you need to move?

You can work that out from the height difference. If the area is 20ftx20ft, you'll need to move 100cuft* for every foot of height difference from the high side to the low side.

So what's the height difference?

There's a reason they make prisoners dig holes by hand. It's punishment.

If you have melon-sized rocks to deal with, doing this by hand is complete madness.

* I think this maths is right.

Stigura

:cool: Game on so, lads! Just wait till this bloody situation passes. I should have a shed ton of money left, having not been able to get out and squander any! Crook, up the road, has a mini .....


If ye could actually see this pathetic little plot of ground, ye'd probably think I need my head testing, even contemplating such trouble on it.


But, I want my net there. It's What I Do! (Fully trained, qualified and licenced, of course). I'd want to create ~ and maintain ~ a little postage stamp of lawn, in this otherwise unkempt wilderness. Never mind Exactly why!

slavetothegrind

If there is easy access a local contractor would bring in an excavator and level it up for you, he could then have probably 50 cubic metres of top soil delivered and levelled out for you and then you can seed it.

You are probably looking at 4.5 to 5 k for a good job of it i would guess....

Get a few estimates, local lads would know the land and the difficulties in digging it .

slavetothegrind

of course if it's really sloped you might be into retaining walls.........

Stigura

Lumen, my man! That sounds a hellish lot of gear to move! :eek: But, any way ye look at it; No Way on gods little green earth am I Even gonna even Contemplate anything so stupid as to attempt it myself!

(Just to level here? I'm a Retired Rat Catcher. Ye don't grow big muscles and a strong back catching rats! Most I've ever had to lift was a sack of bait. Now, after years of sitting around, annoying the internet? My arms are like wet pipe cleaners. I have the 'Oomph!' of a saturated piece of tissue paper! I Don't Do 'Physical'! )

So, yeah, I pay some other buck to do it for me. Once I've worked out what 'It' is. The wise people used to pay Me! Now? Every loon's a key board expert and types about bacon and cider vinegar :rolleyes:

Anyway: Height difference? Barely perceptible, to be honest. I live on the side of a land basin. There's a place 200 yards or so 'above' me. Up there, I can look down onto my own roof? But, on this tiny patch? It's barely even perceptible to the eye.

Not sure how I'd go about measuring the Actual fall? I have a little mesh fence out there. Dead level at the top ~ as far as I could see / manage. Doubt there was an inch in it, on ground level? Dunno.

Again, see; I have this habit of presenting these off the wall questions. Simply because A. Anything 'Simple' I should be able to work out, or google. And, B. I'm involved in some stuff normal people don't know about. Like, why this particular net needs a soft, flat (Lawn type) surface to operate on.

But, yeah, as said above, that's pretty much what I want. A barely twenty square foot lawn.

Lumen

Stigura wrote: »

Anyway: Height difference? Barely perceptible, to be honest. I live on the side of a land basin. There's a place 200 yards or so 'above' me. Up there, I can look down onto my own roof? But, on this tiny patch? It's barely even perceptible to the eye.

Not sure how I'd go about measuring the Actual fall? I have a little mesh fence out there. Dead level at the top ~ as far as I could see / manage. Doubt there was an inch in it, on ground level? Dunno.

OK, hold on there now.

Are you trying to level the ground, or flatten it?

Level = fix a slope.
Flatten = make it even.

If you want to measure the fall use a builders line, a couple of sticks, a spirit level and a tape measure.

DJIMI TRARORE

Op, have u ever watched The Field, be afraid be very afraid😊 Maybe a pic of said plot could be of help 🀔

Stigura

:eek: Slave; I'm talking about twenty Feet here ~ not yards! Grands?! I had my bloody great stables re roofed, and a JCB in ~ for a couple of days ~ to dig some stuff. Then a big, block bay built on a concrete pour, and so on. That only cost me a few grand, as I remember?

No. This little pocket may yet prove worth a man and a mini. But, (And I've just been standing at the back door, eyeballing it to get a better idea for Lumen)

This job would really amount to half an hours scratching, with a mini. Then, probably a month or two of me wheel barrowing a 'bag' or two of top soil round there.

Stigura

Lumen; Brilliant! Thanks! I want to LEVEL it!


Back, in a minute, with pictures.

smelly sock

slavetothegrind wrote: »

If there is easy access a local contractor would bring in an excavator and level it up for you, he could then have probably 50 cubic metres of top soil delivered and levelled out for you and then you can seed it.

You are probably looking at 4.5 to 5 k for a good job of it i would guess....

Get a few estimates, local lads would know the land and the difficulties in digging it .

5k LOL.

Hooefully this recession does kick in soon.

Stigura

Djimi; Good idea, about the shots

That's my nemesis. That gate, foreground, is 3' across, without the posts. 3' 4" high. Just to give scale. I'm talking about the patch behind it. To the back gate.


THIS is the ground to the right. It gives a much better idea of the fall away. Though, it Is decidedly more pronounced, to this side. Dunno why Maybe something to do with that back gate having been a proper field gate, originally?

Bass Reeves

From the look of it you are falling from the top LH corner of the photo to the bottom RH corner. Fall is a bit more than you would think it is. You want it all completely level.

First you need to clean it completely spray off green growth and cut it bare with a string trimmer. Cut back all bushes. Not out of the question to do it by hand. However it will take a few days. If you want it really level get a 16' 4X2 and a level. Drive a spike in the center and this allow you to check levels anywhere in the plot. Hand way is to have another spike on the end not on the center spike 1''shorter this give you an eyepoint with the level.

When you have it level just get topsoil and spread it evenly over it. Rake it out roll it this will allow you to see hollows. You biggest issue will be filled corner may sink a bit. A lad in a mini digger would sort it all in 2-3 hours if you had the topsoil in hand 5ton of it should be enough.

Lumen

smelly sock wrote: »

5k LOL.

Hooefully this recession does kick in soon.

That price seems nuts.

In 2017 I paid less than that for about 200sqm of landscaping, including large shrub clearance, flattening, soil improvement, reseeding. Maybe a truckload of topsoil and a fair amount of peat moss.

I had a team of people on site for a week and there was probably 2 days with a decent sized digger plus specialised seed bed machinery.

Bass Reeves

Lumen wrote: »

That price seems nuts.

In 2017 I paid less than that for about 200sqm of landscaping, including large shrub clearance, flattening, soil improvement, reseeding. Maybe a truckload of topsoil and a fair amount of peat moss.

I had a team of people on site for a week and there was probably 2 days with a decent sized digger plus specialised seed bed machinery.

Ya heard the price for lawns and a drive and a few kerbs that happened last year. It supposed to have cost over 50k. There was no tarmac in it. Nearly collapsed when I heard it. Taught I was robbed 4 years ago got two patios and footpaths done in Indian sandstone, 100 m driveway as well as parking back and front prepared for tarmac, some kerbs replaced, a hedge replaced, two small area gravelled and other shrubs replaced, as well as getting a few stone walls ckeaned and it cost a bit with 20k. Tarmac cost 12k afterwards.

slavetothegrind

ok it does seem nuts with the information now available, it's clearly a much much cheaper job.

It sounded like digging granite out and filling a rock base with soil but clearly it's much much easier than that.

My own fault for guessing.

Sorry.

Ginger83

Another idea...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OpfRm0X2jI

standardg60

slavetothegrind wrote: »

ok it does seem nuts with the information now available, it's clearly a much much cheaper job.

It sounded like digging granite out and filling a rock base with soil but clearly it's much much easier than that.

My own fault for guessing.

Sorry.

I didn't reply to your post as i knew you had probably miscalculated.

But now i will, Wtf are you sorry for? It's absolutely nothing!

Take care.