How To Fix An Erosion Washout

okay so today we have what I consider to be not an unusual situation but something that occurs less frequently than the typical landscaping or Excavating project OR technician may face and that is an erosion issue which has led to about a 6 foot wash out in a gully that is jeopardizing the structure of uh the house that's in the background behind me so what we have here is we have a pasture that has a driveway going down alongside of it and what you can see from the driveway is that it basically is acting as a funnel and taking all the rain and storm water down to one point where it then washes down the hillside which you can't see at this moment which we will go and take a look at and it's created like I said about a six foot funnel so the first part of this is the grading of the upper structure and then the second part that we have to do before we get involved too deeply in this project is to correct what's already occurred so to grade the upper structure to fix what's happening and to eliminate the problem from happening again in the future we're going to grade the entire pasture so that all the water that comes off from the driveway instead of cascading down in one point will disperse evenly over the entire pasture which allows it to soak into the ground before it goes over the edge so let's go down and see what's happen in the past and let's look at what we're going to fix in the lower area to fix the existing wash out just a different angle of the same problem with this angle you can see that the water's concentrated into one path and flowing down creating the wash out area that's giving my customer the issues that is uh jeopardizing the structure behind me we're going to use the dozer in the background to grade the upper pasture we're going to use the excavator to clear the brush create a road and a safe work environment to fix the Gully that already exists so let's go take a look at what's happened over the years and let's talk about how we're going to fix the next phase of this project just to give you an idea of how severe this Gully has how many years it's taken to do it I'm going to jump down into the hole to give you a perspective to show you what they've done over the years they've piled brush up into the hole as a temporary fix now this has to be removed so let's show you how deep this Gully is we're talking about at least six feet deep this hole has been washed out over the years that's what we're going to fix this is phase two to fix the wash out this is where we're going to clear all the brush out of here so we gain access to the hole and then we're going to pack this with soil we're going to regrade it and we're going to put erosion control measures over the top of it to keep this from happening but we're also going to regrade that upper pure so we stop the concentration of water from coming down into one area so stay tuned we'll keep you informed as we go we'll take one shot from the bottom to give you another perspective now we're at the bottom of the hill we're looking up the slope this is where we're going to start our work to fix the Gully the wash out and the reason we're going to start at the bottom is basically for safety we're able to create a flat working environment a flat platform where as we remove the brush we can keep filling in the trench behind us so that we have a nice safe Zone to work to get down to the bottom we're going to create a road through the woods removing any trees branches overgrown brush and shrub so that we can get down to the bottom so that we can start to work our way back up to the top of the hill fixing the Gully and wash out compacting and placing soil as we go okay so the last time we were here what we had was an ungraded pasture since that time we've started grading and Mining soil for the pasture but what from the pasture for the spot that we have the erosion problem but what we have found is that the existing oils on site have a high silt content and if we're going to try to fill it in a spot that has a lot of errosion and problems what will happen is if we use the silty soils is the next time it rains if any water does get concentrated in that area for any reason it's going to draw or Wick the silt right out of the soil and wash it down what will eventually happen is we're going to have an erosion problem just like we tried to fix so in this case what we're going to do is we're going to bring in clay so we found some black organic clay which will allow some vegetation to grow and reestablish but it's also very cohesive so when I grab a handful of it I can squish it and form a ball and what we really want to do is we want to take that hole that's in the ground over there we want to pack it in there we want to get this clay good and and tight in there we want it to get into all the cracks and crevices and spread and we're going to make sure that we terraform it into place place and that's going to hold that soil together and stop any further erosion from occurring so let's go look at what we've done with the hole so that you can see how we've prepped and gotten that ready and then we're going to be taking this clay that we're going to going to be bringing in and placing it into the hole so let's go check out what we've done okay so we're back at the problem area what we seen last time we were was here was about 20 years worth of Timber and debris placed in this hole as an attempt to fix this the problem what we've done what you find is we've cleaned this place out and gotten it ready so that we can really get some soil in here so let's take a look so right down here is where this debris had covered the entire area when we cleaned it up we made sure that we got everything out even underneath in places like this we want to pull the Timbers out that we're resting in here and the reason we want to do that is because if we leave those behind soil will not go in there it will not compact water will eventually find its way back into that crevice and then start eroding and undermining this Bank from the the bottom up so we made sure that we got everything possible out of here so when we go to place that that clay soil it's going to pack tight into every nook and cranny creating a long lasting solution for the homeowner okay so we're about the halfway point through this project so far we've imported between 450 to 500 tons of clay based soil what we're going to be using this soil for is to grade this PL pasture flat so that we get an even Sheen and can direct the water instead of sourcing it funneling it into the the spot where we have the issue evenly across the whole site we've already filled the hole in and the bottom side we're going to go down below we're going to take a couple shots up we're going to show you what we've done to correct the existing problem and now we're going to use the rest of the soils that we've imported in to keep anything from happening down the line so the idea is to grade this out and to stop this problem from happening 5 years down the road or 10 years down the road so you can see that we've filled the hole in we've packed the soil tight and then we've taken the excavator after the fact and we've loosened up the surface soil we don't want to keep the soil packed tight at the very top layer because we need vegetation to reestablish once the vegetation reestablishes any of the small surface issues that could occur will be stopped so the soil has been restored back the slope has been restored back to its natural state and now we're going to be leaving this this area and allowing the vegetation to reestablish so I'm standing in the exact spot as a reference point where before I was crawling underneath this tree and showing you just how deep of a gully we had it's all been filled it's all been fixed and now it's ready to turn back over to the customer to reestablish the vegetation the problem has been solved okay so if you look at the pasture and the ground below me you can see that we have everything graded to a nice smooth transition we have taken the water which was concentrated in one focal point over there and we've distributed it evenly across the slope that way we're not going to have erosion recreating the issue that was there before so now the next step for this customer is to reestablish vegetation once the vegetation is reestablished this job is complete