How to repair lawn?

tedimc

We got some landscaping done last year, but it was late in the summer when the new lawn area got raked and seeded.

From day 1, it was always very wet and the contractor done a very poor job in my opinion.

I did have to track across the area with a digger which caused the deep tracks in the photos, but even a wheel barrow or walking would cause a damage in areas.

It has dried out a little, and there should be good natural drainage. The level was raised significantly with stone fill, and then overlayered with soil.

What is my best approach to fixing up this area? Should I rotavate up the whole area again and rake level? Or would a power rake suffice? Is there a recommended process for this type of damage.

thebandit2020

tedimc wrote: »

We got some landscaping done last year, but it was late in the summer when the new lawn area got raked and seeded.

From day 1, it was always very wet and the contractor done a very poor job in my opinion.

I did have to track across the area with a digger which caused the deep tracks in the photos, but even a wheel barrow or walking would cause a damage in areas.

It has dried out a little, and there should be good natural drainage. The level was raised significantly with stone fill, and then overlayered with soil.

What is my best approach to fixing up this area? Should I rotavate up the whole area again and rake level? Or would a power rake suffice? Is there a recommended process for this type of damage.

I think you need to start again unfortunately......

tedimc

thebandit2020 wrote: »

I think you need to start again unfortunately......

Thanks, I was thinking that may be the best option. What would I need to do - would rotavating the whole area suffice, or get in a bigger machine to rake up the whole area?

aw

tedimc wrote: »

We got some landscaping done last year, but it was late in the summer when the new lawn area got raked and seeded.

From day 1, it was always very wet and the contractor done a very poor job in my opinion.

I did have to track across the area with a digger which caused the deep tracks in the photos, but even a wheel barrow or walking would cause a damage in areas.

It has dried out a little, and there should be good natural drainage. The level was raised significantly with stone fill, and then overlayered with soil.

What is my best approach to fixing up this area? Should I rotavate up the whole area again and rake level? Or would a power rake suffice? Is there a recommended process for this type of damage.

It sounds as thought the area was filled and raised and now is boggy.
The only solution is to put in some form of drainage, and relaye that part of the lawn.

i.e. French drains, land drainage pipework, a soakpit, etc.

Is it just in that one spot that it is boggy? Or is it the whole lawn?

tedimc

aw wrote: »

It sounds as thought the area was filled and raised and now is boggy.
The only solution is to put in some form of drainage, and relaye that part of the lawn.

i.e. French drains, land drainage pipework, a soakpit, etc.

Is it just in that one spot that it is boggy? Or is it the whole lawn?

Yes - exactly. I was raised maybe 4-6ft in places with rock and then covered over with 1 foot or so of topsoil. I thought the rock would provide good drainage anyway and the contractor assured me the ground would dry out, but it didn't really. I mentioned drainage to him at the time, and he said it wouldn't be needed as the water will drain down hill anyway. It made sense to me at the time.

The soil tends to vary from area to area, so I would say boggy in patches. I put this down to different soil types/etc used for levelling. So areas were fine to walk on or run a barrow, others your foot would sink down 4 inches.

I also thought it may have been the way the machines compacted the soil when levelling.

What is my best approach here - use a rotavator, or come back in with a 3T machine and rake it all up again?

grassylawn

I am skeptical about what the builder told you. If it is just topsoil over broken rock then the drainage would be good.

I dug a trench about a spade's head wide and about a spade's head deep at an angle that leads out to my driveway where it joins channels that lead outside my property. That has fixed the bogginess in a large area of the lawn, only where it dips in other diections still get muddy. The soil is still compacted though so the grass is patchy and not doing great. So basically my point is that fixing drainage will stop it being muddy but there might be additional issues with the soil to address before it looks ok.

tedimc

grassylawn wrote: »

I am skeptical about what the builder told you. If it is just topsoil over broken rock then the drainage would be good.

It is definitely just soil over rock as we were living in the house during the works and the levels raised significantly.

Calling it topsoil, might be a bit of a misnomer. It could be that the quality of the soil was very poor, and could have been heavily compacted before even be levelled and graded.

grassylawn

Yeah that's what I meant. We had builders decide to level our lawn by putting a load of "topsoil" on it. It was heavy clay that they had dug up when doing earthworks elsewhere on our property. So really they just thought it was a way to dispose of it. The thing is we had already said we were happy to just have a mound of it. Anyway heavy machinery + wet conditions + heavy clay = very badly compacted lawn.

tedimc

grassylawn wrote: »

Yeah that's what I meant. We had builders decide to level our lawn by putting a load of "topsoil" on it. It was heavy clay that they had dug up when doing earthworks elsewhere on our property. So really they just thought it was a way to dispose of it. The thing is we had already said we were happy to just have a mound of it. Anyway heavy machinery + wet conditions + heavy clay = very badly compacted lawn.

Thanks - and is it salvageable, or should I be looking for proper topsoil to layer over it, adjust levels, etc.?

What makes it worse is that this guy was a so-called landscaper - if it was a builder I would understand.

looksee

Taking a digger across a new lawn would destroy it regardless of how well it was laid. You should avoid even walking on it in wet weather until it is well established. Does water stand on it? When you say it is wet, how long would it take to not have any visible water on it. I am fortunate to have good topsoil on top of very free draining sub soil, but I would not take a vehicle or machine across it in wet weather.

Its hard to say how poor it is, if it was only sowed late last season then the undamaged area isn't looking too bad. You might just dig the area where the digger tracks are and rake and reseed it, see how it goes.

grassylawn

tedimc wrote: »

Thanks - and is it salvageable, or should I be looking for proper topsoil to layer over it, adjust levels, etc.?

What makes it worse is that this guy was a so-called landscaper - if it was a builder I would understand.

I don't know. A year later mine is a mixture of yellow thatch and green grass with bare patches. Better than the mud that it was, but not fantastic.

I let the grass that did grow alone with the idea that it would break up the soil and add organic matter. I broke up some of it with a heavy adze hoe and mixed in compost. I removed some of it altogether to let the original lawn recover. I dug a trench around some of it.

What seems like a lot of compost gets used up very quickly if using it in a situation like this.