Hi,
I bought my house about 4 years ago and the previous owners had just laid a new lawn, it all looked good, of course I moved in on the summer and everything was freshly laid. A couple of months later I soon found out why.
Underneath the turf they had put about 1-2inches of good quality top soil, under this was the heaviest clay soil i've ever seen, i've had gardeners and landscapers out to look and they all say the same. So what I did about a year ago was hired in a digger and excavated about 2 foot of this clay soil and got rid of it. This left a nice flat surface of clay (slightly sloping towards the house) I then dug out some drainage channels and linking into the storm drain, lined the drainage channels with some weed supressant membrane and filled with gravel and drainage coil. Then bought in what I though was good quality top soild, about 13 tonnes of the stuff and spread it all over the back garden, it was a total killer.
Thing is the topsoil I bought in wasn't the best of quality (got a landscaper to have a look and he says it's clay soil but not that heavy) and is still holding water (although it does drain eventually a 1-2 days after the rain has stopped but can be quite squelchy (if thats a word) under your feet for about a week, previously it was never dry)
The lanscaper recommended mixing sharp sand into the topsoil to aid the drainage, would anybody know if this is good advice? If it is, when spreading the sand should I use a rotovator to mix it in with the top soil or should it just be placed on the surface? I recon I need about 5-6 tonnes of sand to do the job, I plan to seed a lawn once done.
I bought my house about 4 years ago and the previous owners had just laid a new lawn, it all looked good, of course I moved in on the summer and everything was freshly laid. A couple of months later I soon found out why.
Underneath the turf they had put about 1-2inches of good quality top soil, under this was the heaviest clay soil i've ever seen, i've had gardeners and landscapers out to look and they all say the same. So what I did about a year ago was hired in a digger and excavated about 2 foot of this clay soil and got rid of it. This left a nice flat surface of clay (slightly sloping towards the house) I then dug out some drainage channels and linking into the storm drain, lined the drainage channels with some weed supressant membrane and filled with gravel and drainage coil. Then bought in what I though was good quality top soild, about 13 tonnes of the stuff and spread it all over the back garden, it was a total killer.
Thing is the topsoil I bought in wasn't the best of quality (got a landscaper to have a look and he says it's clay soil but not that heavy) and is still holding water (although it does drain eventually a 1-2 days after the rain has stopped but can be quite squelchy (if thats a word) under your feet for about a week, previously it was never dry)
The lanscaper recommended mixing sharp sand into the topsoil to aid the drainage, would anybody know if this is good advice? If it is, when spreading the sand should I use a rotovator to mix it in with the top soil or should it just be placed on the surface? I recon I need about 5-6 tonnes of sand to do the job, I plan to seed a lawn once done.
cant believe it, first time in 3 years I now have good quality grass growing.
