nightjar cpb@ wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
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nightjar cpb@ wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
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nightjar cpb@ wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
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nightjar cpb@ wrote:
"dairich" wrote in message
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A corner of my lawn (about 2 m.sq. is badly drained (& shaded). It
ends at a 20cm. step down to a path. What can I do?
I would plant the area with water loving plants, like bamboo or
hydrangeas or turn it into a marsh plant area. My next-door neighbour
spent ages trying to deal with a 'badly drained' bit of lawn before
discovering it was the outlet for a natural spring.

Colin Bignell
The problem with that, Colin, is most of them do bugger all in winter.
I don't normally expect my bamboo area to do much at any time, other
than stand there and whisper in the wind.

Willow - especially weeping willow - will dry a 100 square meters of
ground..in summer..
It will also, IME, add a few tens of thousands of pounds in ground work
to anything you want to build within about 10 metres of it.

Er noi. It will add tens of thousands to anything that is *already built
with inedequate foundatins*, but once you have the digger in site, going
down an extra half meter is not expebnsive either in diggertime or
concrete.
Except that, on a new build, it was an extra 2.5 metres deep, mass
concrete instead of a concrete strip foundation, which required a
concrete pumping machine to deliver it from the mixer lorries on the
road, instead of a small mixer onsite, and £20k.

I had to go down 2.m meters in one place,but that was ash, not willow..

Either you were lucky, or are on different soil. The discovery of a willow
in next door's garden meant that my foundations changed from 0.5m to 3m
deep, which, apparently called for a specialist contractor.


Actually, that was PROBABLY ********. We had this a while ago, and very
few trees go much below 1.5m deep if that, and the majority are only
0.5m deep.

IO have seen extesnive damage from subsidence with a localised willow
and shallow (about 02m) strip foundations, but that is all.

Probably you, like me, were on clay soil, where locaklised drying of the
roots - or worse, cut roots resulting in long term re-hydration of the
soil and heave - meant the stability near the surface would extend a
fair way below.

Nevertheless I don't think any more than 2.5m is EVER called for, and
that is achievable with a medium digger.

Deeper than that piles are probably a better and more economic bet anyway.




The concrte pumping machines aren't taht expensive. Not thousands
certainly.

That was simply one of the things about the project that stuck in my mind. I
didn't bother to ask for a detailed breakdown of individual costs, as I
wasn't going ahead at that much extra over the original estimate.

Colin Bignell