Posted a few weeks ago that my lawn was not doing very well, and most people said I wasn’t watering enough. I was watering it 2x a day with a hose and also left sprinklers on during the day.
It got a bit better with time (it’s been 3 weeks since we moved in) but some parts are still very dry/dead. Yesterday we decided to go to the back of the garden (where it has the most dry patches) and lift the turf to see underneath it and this is what we found.
They said they added top soil and done all the proper preparations before adding the turf.
Such a ridiculous job, not sure if I should call them back to fix it or just do it myself. Not sure I trust them enough 😅
I guess I need to remove everything, take all these stones out, lay top soil and then returf it right?
by Outside-Leg-6028
25 Comments
Riiiiiiiiidiculous.
What a bunch of winkle spanners.
I’d get straight onto the tuna melts and get them back with a lorry load of topsoil. Good dirt isn’t cheap.
Kick up a stink and get your monies worth.
What a waste of turf.
That will cost you a fortune in top soil to do yourself. Get them to do it, just make sure you check what they do and it meets the requirements
Get them to do it. My neighbour wasn’t happy with his, they came out and replaced the whole lot.
I assume the warranty is NHBC? NHBC Standards 10.2.9 Garden area “a minimum thickness of 100mm topsoil provided”. Snag it.
100% get them to do it, as with any other issue in your property. If anything else crops up in the future they’ll be quick enough to tell you “well you never said anything about this before”.
You can supervise the work being done and take pictures of it in progress. I’d encourage that because if there are further issues you have evidence to say top soil wasn’t put down or the ground wasn’t rotavated etc.
Get them to come back and put it right.
Wish I’d known that 10 years ago when in the same position
Find who’s built your houses socials/twitter and post that pic if you can.
That’s an absolute disgrace! What company is the new build done by? Just so I can avoid in future.
Get them to do fix it; it’ll cost too much to do this on your own. The sad thing is if this is what they did outside, how shoddy is the work inside.
Perhaps get a home inspector to perform a thorough inspection of everything in your home; check for leaks, insulation, etc.
Get them back out, even if it’s just to sort the topsoil that should’ve been there in the first place. Pretty sure new builds are meant to have around 3–5 inches of topsoil before turf goes down. Ideally though, you want all that rubble and builder’s waste removed too, otherwise the garden’s always going to be a nightmare.
Get a builder round to see what else they’ve fucked up
You don’t even want to think about what else they made a balls of. I’m sick of seeing this on new builds. The last few I’ve been on have been crime scenes.
Classic new build.
A mate had his garden that always flooded in wet weather. The builders tried to throw some water absorbent powder down but he didn’t accept that and went a bit ballistic. Eventually they dug up the entire row of gardens and fitted proper drainage.
Sister in law had the same issue but somehow she and her neighbours banded together to get drainage dug rather than a big complaint.
OP has a slightly different issue but it’s still woeful corner cutting from the builders.
plenty of drainage
The thing that ALMOST pisses me off more about this is the fact each and every one of us has to pay out for a survey when buying a house and they NEVER fucking catch anything like this for you.
You sure that’s turf and not just a big green rug
Needs fixing, insane that new builds are expensive as it is and then they somehow cop out on soil that was already there somehow?
Saving money on skips
Standard stuff for a new build
You can bet your soil will be building rubble throughout.
Top 100mm should be top soil but rubble and materials that inhibit plant growh should he removed from surface to 450mm below.
I don’t know what you’re moaning about, that’s prime quality Toprubble™
Years ago, I bought a three year old house and while I had a decent lawn, whenever I was working in the flowerbeds I kept on turning up bricks.
Not partial bricks, but full size, perfect bricks.
Apparently the bricklayers receive a certain number of bricks to build each house and, what’s left over, they get a digger to create a big hole, and dump the left over bricks.
Common practice on new build sites, it elleviates the need for multiple skips at the end of the job to dispose of any left over materials. I have heard stories about main builders having giant holes dug and pallets of bricks/blocks being buried to save on oredering more skips.
I have even spoken to various site managers about the excess bricks/blocks etc at the end of the job and why don’t they just get the merchants to come back and collect them, especially when they might have £10k or more in materials. Every one of them has said it’s too much hassle with paperwork etc.
SOP for Brit builders. 0% pride in their work.
I thought ours was bad its just turf on clay soil but lucky no rocks and stones. Still no topsoil that I can see tho