A little while ago I wrote about my ugly backyard with the large crater in it and how I was hoping to remedy the ugliness this summer. The crater is a large ring of overgrown stone and dirt around a pit of sand. If you recall, my backyard is so ugly that you can actually see the large crater that takes up half my yard on satellite photos of my neighborhood. And now I have decided it’s time to take action and begin my backyard makeover.
I have several option for how I can make my backyard more enjoyable:
- I could hire a contractor to come in with a Bobcat and dig it all out. That would cost about $1,500 and I have yet to find a contractor that wants to haul the sand and stone away. They all want to bury the stone in a large hole. I don’t think that’s a very good method.
- I could simply dump dirt over the crater, but there is too much sand and stone there at the moment, so in a few years my crater would probably be visible again.
- I could dig it out myself, sifting the stone out and using it elsewhere. This is the cheapest method by far.
My crater is a mix of sand and stone dirt which I am gradually separating.
I, of course, chose option #3. I’m going to dig out the sand and stone and sift out the dirt. In the end I’ll have a large pile of stone, a large pile of sand, and large hole that’s mostly sandy dirt. I then plan to till over the entire lumpy yard, including the dirt pit, and then even it all out before I plant some grass. I may or may not have to put down a load of topsoil, as well.
So far it’s been going fairly well. The photo above shows a patch of dirt where I’ve dug up the stone, dumped it into a garden screen sifter I made and then sifted out the stone from the dirt. I’ll have to slowly work my way all the way across the crater and I’ll still need to find a way to dispose of all the stone. I may try using the stone in a drainage ditch or may simply offer it up to any of my neighbors to see if they need a few tons of sand and stone for any projects they may be working on in their yards.
It’s hard work and slow going, but I still have plenty of time and I really need the exercise, so I’m sticking with it for the moment. If I dedicate an hour or so to this project every night I should be able to remove most of the unwanted debris from my backyard in about a month or so, but then I’ll still probably have to have a load of topsoil brought in and I’ll have to plant grass back there.
Update: I completed most of the screening and removal of the stone in about two months. Unfortunately, I still had a pretty big crater in my back yard, so I went ahead and called in a contractor with a small Bobcat to come out and re-grade the yard and even out the area. He did a great job and he even took away a lot of the stone I had piled in another corner of the yard!
Did you know that if you forget to get the underground utility lines marked before digging, it could cost you? For any project that requires digging, like leveling your yard, or creating a drainage system, call 811 before you start, or visit our website, http://www.call811.com/ for state specific info.
Enjoying your articles! In this one you casually mention that you made a “box screener” to screen the stone from the dirt in your yard. It’s not so easy, as I discovered a couple of years ago when I began working on my yard which was filled with ornamental rocks as far as the eye could see. I tried to buy something to filter the rocks, but ended up building a tool myself. So many people asked me about it that I decided to sell it online. Now I have several different models. I even ran ads through Google, and that led me to your site, where many of the ads ran! Please let people know they can find reasonably priced soil sifters at my site (http://www.thesoilsifter.com), and can even ask for variations on the design to suit their needs. I do it as a hobby and am not trying to get rich, just pay for my time, materials and tools.