Had to have water line to house dug up and replaced due to an inaccessible leak. When they reburied the line, they left my yard like this. Contractor told me they can't do anything else other than this, and leave it to erode. Said it should erode away within 5 months.
This thing is almost 2 feet tall, and is predominantly clay and rock. I call bullshit; clay doesn't erode nearly as well as soil.
We are paying a small fortune from this work. Should I insist they come back and do a more thorough job tilling and compacting this? I'm not sure what to think about all this.
by Fox5606
12 Comments
That is very normal in pipe replacement unless they gave you a charge for landscaping restoration or removal of extra soil. Still, it will settle, maybe it will take longer than 5 months but if you dont have the patience, you can hire a landscape company and just charge you for the work.
What does your contract read?
Was it a landscaper or a utilities guy? That would make sense coming from one of them.
Depends on the agreed upon work. If it’s in the contract to rebuild to existing conditions including compaction, sod, watering ETC then yeah just ask when they will return to complete the agreed upon work per contract.
What does the contract say?
No. They are supposed to leave the area close to how they found it.
That contractor is feeding you a massive line of bull. Plumbers and pipe guys dig holes but they do not know the first thing about soil structure or grading. Heavy clay like that does not magically erode away in five months. It is going to sit there and bake in the sun and turn into a solid brick right in the middle of your front yard. When you dig up compacted subsoil it expands which we call the fluff factor in the dirt business. You literally cannot fit all that dirt back into the trench without hauling off the excess.
Do not ask them to till and compact that garbage. If they run a plate compactor over that wet clay you will never be able to grow grass or plant anything there again because it will destroy your drainage and create a hardpan layer. Tell them to get back out there and haul away the excess spoil. They only need to leave a slight crown of maybe three or four inches over the trench line to account for natural settling over the next year.
Once they haul off the big chunks of subsoil you will need to bring in a couple inches of real screened topsoil to blend that area back into your existing grade. The guys who fix pipes are almost never the right guys to fix the landscape so do not expect them to make it look pretty. Get them to remove the mountain of trash dirt so you can actually establish a proper grade. Hold their final check until that pile is sitting in the back of their dump truck.
I wouldn’t accept this level of “work” without pushback. The BEST case scenario here is you have a large dirt pile with no grass that will turn those sidewalks into a mud slide.
I had a fiber cable installed and they left two much smaller mound in my yard on either side of my driveway from displaced dirt that they swore would “settle”. I made the mistake of trusting them and I now have twin hills in my yard that fuck up my mow lines.
This will not settle. Looks like they added a bunch of that white gravel for drainage, but that means there is no where for the dirt to settle to. Especially since its pinched in between two sidewalks.
If you wanna see what it will settle to, hose it down and walk all over
What did they put in,a 2 foot diameter pipe?
He’s a lying sack of “sh–“. Do not accept that. He needs to put it back to what was there before or as close as he can get, and that is not even the beginning of that. Do not pay him or cancel the payment until he fixes it properly.
It’s easy to criticize other peoples work.
If they only replaced the water line, the dirt should all go back into the trench, if they compacted it properly. My guess is they did not compact the dirt at all and it is going to settle quite a bit. If you have a soker hose you can speed up the setting process. I don’t know what you paid for so I won’t judge their work.
If the contract doesn’t state anything about them retuning it to original condition, they did everything you agreed to and it’s on you. As a landscaper, if you truly want it to look good you’ll have to get it picked up, hauled away, then get grass seed thrown down.
Compactor?
Did you agree to pay to have that dirt hauled off? The cost is alot, and Id bet you didnt.