Levelling lawn

[Tommo1863]

Hi.....
After a little advice please...
Bought a new place around six months ago and just finished renovating ground floor and going to start the garden.....
It's not too big, about 8 meters long by 25 meters wide. There's a slope at the moment, nothing major, probably a drop of around 1/2 meter over the 8 meters....
I want to level it out, can I just rake/drag the earth from the bigger side to the lower side until it's level and then re seed? Or is this not an option? Any advice is much appreciated... Thanks

 

[r896neo]

If you strip the turf then your plan is fine. If you leave the turf and pull It over with a digger it will make levelling very difficult.

Also consider the sub soil, once your down a foot you'll most likely be into rubbish sub soil so try not to dredge too much of it up to the surface.

Digging holes as a novice on a digger is easy but grading and leveling land with one is a very much harder skill. consider getting a man and machine deal

 

[Tommo1863]

Thanks for the reply..... I wasn't planning on stripping the turf or using a digger.... As I only really need to take about 8 inches from one side and add that 8 inches to the other side u was planning on using rake, fork and spade....
Is this possible or not?
Thanks

 

[Himaginn]

If I read this correctly, you've got about 20 m³ to move!

200mm (8")X 12 m (half the width of the garden) X 8 m (depth of garden) = about 20 M³
Obviously that's a very approximate guesstimate. It might be 200mm at the deepest, but that will shallow out to nothing, then you'll be building it up, from nil to 200mm. Even if you take an average of 100mm depth, it's still about 10m³ to shift!
It'll take a while with a rake, fork and spade. I'd get a digger in!

 

[r896neo]

Ok, its always hard to get a feel for how large slopes even when measurements are provided etc are because they are not always even. If you don't need a digger then go for it. I would strip the turf personally as digging soil is not too hard but digging through sod makes it much much slower and harder work.

You could happily do it in a couple of hard days.

Buying a ton of two of screened topsoil would make final levelling much easier.

As will doing it all during a dry warm spell

 

[Tommo1863]

Ok..... I've got a friend helping me tomorrow..... Both of us are (fairly) young and (reasonably) fit so I'm hoping by lunchtime I should know if it is do-able without hiring a digger....
How would you remove the turf?? Cut strips with spade and pull them up like pulling a plaster off??

 

[r896neo]

I would use a turf cutter and then it just rolls up. If you dont want to hire one (prob £30-40) then forget cutting the turf at all. The reason for removing the sods is once gone you can use a pick and fork to break up the soil and then shovel it easily. If you try to do this with the sods still in place the pick and fork have to work much harder and will merely lever sections of turf up and not really break them apart. You'll soon see what i mean.. haha

Get a long tail shovel or two if you can it will really save your back.

If it was me i would dig the sods off the high side and place them grass side down on the low side. You ideally want to bury them at the deepest part so they dont get dragged back up when your levelling and raking.

Then continue breaking up and removing the soil from the high side. Whilst its easier to just dig out lumps shovel full at a time the process of breaking the soil up with a fork and pick will save you work later. One man can pick and fork and the other shovel and shift. Take turns though as one is much easier than the other!

Then once your levels are close break up the soil as best you can with a fork and then rake, rake, rake and rake some more to break it all up and create a finer loose soil on top for seeding. Then heel it all in and rake it over to its final level.

The final breaking up and raking will not really work if the weather is not dry. but the rest can be done rain or shine.

Good luck.

 

[lostinthelight]

use a rotavator to make the soil easier to move?
litl

 

[Brigadier]

At my old place, we had really carp drainage / soil, such that the lawn was a bog in any rain, and concrete in any dry spell. About 8m x 10m.

I dug it out to 2ft depth, barrowed it through the utility and garage (no side entry!), and into waiting skips.

Admittedly, I was younger and fitter in those days, but it took me less than five hours.

Factor your effort / time off that?