[Closed] What might be buried in my back garden?

Fake grass? Wtf? is this a new thing? Has the housing market got so greedy that you literally have to walk around checking things are real? Whatever next, paper doors? Cling-film windows?

It’ll be easier to bring the part closer to the house up...

Earth blows up once you’ve dug it up. Think at least 100% more volume.

Frozen sausages?

If you dig right down, or even level just the lawn, you're going to have to put retaining walls round to hold up next doors gardens. That'll be a big job.

I decided to remove a 3x1 metre by 50cm raised bed in lockdown 1. The volume of earth was phenomenal. Must have been 70 barrows. Do as above and level it in situ by moving from the slope to the dip as it were.

Fake grass? Wtf? is this a new thing?

It's massively popular and my street is full of it. I have never once been woken up on a Sunday morning by a lawnmower and I love it!

Frozen sausages?

What brand?

If you dig right down, or even level just the lawn, you’re going to have to put retaining walls round to hold up next doors gardens. That’ll be a big job.

That's the part were I'm willing to pay for professional help. I was thinking of using sleepers or similar to hold it up while I do the heavy, time consuming part.

We can't bring the yard up to meet the grass as the garage door, back gate, taps, drains and everything is at ground level.

It's most likely building rubble left over from building your house. No point in carting it away as it costs money.

Assuming you want to level it to the height of the brick wall in the foreground then you've just over 15m3 of soil/rubble to get rid off. Roughly 1.5 tonnes per m3 so about 23 tonnes. Also depending on how compact the soil is it will "expand" to about 1.5 times its current volume when dug.

However you'll likely want to remove more than that because you'll be in the midst of whatever's underneath so you need to take more out so you can put a base layer in for whatever you end up using as the surface.

You probably don't want to take all of that earth away though - the fencing will need some support so you'll likely have some sort of retaining wall around the edges which will eat into the area a bit. So if your ultimate plan is to get down to the level of the paving in the foreground then you really need to consider that.

Dont forget you'll also need to dig out footings for a retaining wall, another 10 tonnes. Also will hit turn into a pond? Easiest option is another low retaining wall about a metre back from the existing one, flower bed, maybe a water feature in between and then level the bit beyond. Do you need acres of space? Will feel hemmed in and possibly dark if you dig it out. Digging it out will be back breaking and disposal of 60 tonnes of rubble isnt cheap. Nor will the cost of all the new earth works. Save the money and build a proper man cave across the back.

Frozen sausages?

What brand?

I assume Quorn, to go into a plastic lawn.

I would try to re-use the dirt you remove rather than paying for a skip. If you dig down you are likely to hit some rubbish dirt the deeper you go. If you use the dirt you remove to level a higher area you don't pay for it to be removed and keep the good top soils.

Perhaps you could embrace the slop and build a second wall and then have a grass ramp leading up to it. The raised bit will give you a nice level area to sit. The ramp gives easy access and a bit of interest, the wall is somewhere to grow a creeper of some kind. Grass ramp can be real or plastic grass

OP you are proposing an extremely expensive task to make it one level, far less expensive to retain the patio on it's level and the second tier on another level, preferably built up rather than excavated. But still a big task when you could instead think about tiering it in to ~three flat levels without needing retaining walls. As others have said you'll need retaining walls on the public footpaths and neighbour gardens, which will probably have to eat into your garden space to ensure they have sufficient gravel backfill. It looks like you have a consistent seep of groundwater on your current 70 cm retaining wall around the second brick down. Yes it has been wet, but this winter won't be too unusual going forward. So you need to think about drainage for the retaining walls (and if you modify the front retaining wall add something better in there). If you have more than 1.2m you need toe drainage. If you genuinely have a 1 m difference in height in a 5 m garden, then the groundwater at the top footpath side if only 50 cm below ground could give quite a flow into your garden if you excavate (path of least resistance, depends on the geology).

Also if you are genuinely thinking of excavating over 1m, think about both aesthetics and how you will get sufficient light into the space. The horizontal to vertical ratio and the amount of shade for half the year when the sun hides behind the house and fences, think about how useable and enticing the space will be, both for how it feels and to avoid it becoming dark, damp and mouldy. Your going to have a 3+ m tall walls surrounding a 5-6 m wide square. I think more terracing might make the space more appealing to sit out in.

I'm disappointed . .  I thought you'd bought this house

"Please be aware this property is being sold by family members as part of a relatives estate. It was the deceased's wishes to be buried in the garden as he was born and died in the house. This wish has been carried out and the property will be sold as is."

I didn't think you were allowed to bury humans in back gardens (even if dead first)?

Previous noisy neighbours?

Konagirl explains what I wanted to say better

You don't need to pay to dispose of the soil you dig out. Just put it in your pockets and scatter it around the streets when you go for a walk.

There be treasure....Arrrr!!!

Best option, as described might be two stepped levels, with another retaining wall part way along the garden, then it's at least useable.

Frozen sausages?

What brand?

I assume Quorn, to go into a plastic lawn

Walls, surely

Maybe a very gradual lawn width set of steps in place of the existing wall so you'd lose lawn length but it'd be more inviting.

Third image down would give raised beds opportunity.

I thought we covered this in your ramp thread... I'll suggest you excavate a foam pit.

The difficulty with retaining walls is that you don't own the ground behind, so you can't let it move; you have to hold it up while you build the wall. You'll need a temporary retaining wall of some kind, so the inside face of your wall is likely to be 30-40cm into the garden. It's usual to extend the base under the soil to weight it down, but you can't, so your walls will need to be attached to a slab across the garden; all reinforced concrete. Not impossible, but a big job, not a usual DiY task and several £1K. You'll also need to go through the party wall formalities with three adjacent landowners.

You could start by digging out behind your existing wall - which would give you a good idea of what you might find. Then put in a drain at the bottom, piped to your existing rainwater drains, backfill with single size gravel, with a terram membrane to stop the soil mixing with it. Or try the same thing but rebuild the wall a bit further back.

Apologies, haven’t read the whole thread.
We dug out an area about half that, a bloke with a mini digger made short work of it, but we had rear access for a skip.
I’d get rid of the steps and wall on the left, dig another metre back then level the rest with steps going into it.
Maybe have raised beds at 2/3 height then sleepers going to the final level.
We used gabions as retaining walls, you can fill with and old crap then face with something cool. Best thing is you can do yourself without any need for concrete. Put a porous membrane between them and the soil so there’s no water build up. The base of the gabions are set slightly below patio level and double as a soak away. You can stick wood on the top to make a seat
Pm me for pics I can’t post em on here.

You know what? You've all said pretty much what I imagined. It would be a gigantic, expensive, ball-ache and I don't need it. Even though I was getting used to the idea of a 5x2 metre shed with a tin roof.

I might just build some long timber panels and use them to retain the existing borders. Then I can level off the area in between and use the soil to fill up the planters.

We used gabions as retaining walls, you can fill with and old crap then face with something cool. Best thing is you can do yourself without any need for concrete

That's one of the things I came across when I first started looking for options and one of the things that made me think a DIY effort was possible.

You don’t need to pay to dispose of the soil you dig out. Just put it in your pockets and scatter it around the streets when you go for a walk.

This is what I said to my neighbour when she asked where I was going to put it all. She just slowly nodded her head while looking confused.

I thought we covered this in your ramp thread… I’ll suggest you excavate a foam pit.

The ramp is almost ready to ride! And is a perfect example of the kind of stuff I've been doing after 9 months of lockdown and a few rum and cokes.

Let's approach the problem a different way...

it’s too steep to comfortably sit on and the plastic grass makes it too slippy anyway.

Cut off the back legs of your lawn chairs so that the seat is level and erm.. crampons.

If the rear is really 1.7m higher than the patio (that's a 1 in 5 slope - blimey!) Just whack a deck in level with the rear of your garden, access it from upstairs and use underneath as your shedofdoom

Why are there spikes directly underneath your window?

Frozen sausages?

What brand?

Lorne

TL;Dr it's covering an Austin A35

This has to be a job for self-levelling compound...

Put another 3-4 courses on the retaining wall and level up the garden as much as you can. Still some restraining required on the back wall but less.

dig right down and make a subterranean shed 🙂

What? No Colin Furze YouTube link?

Anonymous tip off to the Police, they may come round and dig it up for you.