Ever since we had the big tree cut out of our front yard 2.5yrs ago, we've had a sinkhole in the lawn where it used to be. When they ground out the stump, they only ground it down to just below the level of the lawn. Which meant that over the intervening years, the root bowl has slowly rotted and decomposed, and the ground has sunk further and further down because of it.
It's been annoying, but we have plans to re-do the front yard completely, so we've been putting off dealing with the hole, and it's keeps getting deeper and deeper. I had originally planned to have a guy with an excavator come out and scrape the yard to make it all level again, which would have been great, but it didn't come cheap.
The sinkhole had gotten deep enough that 6 months ago Jess couldn't get the mower into it to mow that section. Recently, it had even gotten too difficult for me to navigate with the mower, so in my laziness I'd resorted to using the weed-eater on that section. But it finally came to a head when I nearly fell into it one week, and then the following week the neighbour's visitor's kids were playing in it, and I didn't know how our liability insurance would stand up, given it was a pretty hazardous situation that we knew about, and it was in our front yard, without a fence or anything around it. Since both Jess and I have worked/still work for a personal injury law firm/s, it's probably not something we could plead ignorance about!
So one weekend I attacked the hole and dug up as much rotting wood as I could get out. I figured that the more I removed now, the less it was going to sink in future. Then, I broke out the handy 4WD/steamroller, to compact the existing base of the hole as much as possible.
Doesn't look that bad from this angle, does it?
Still not too bad.
Now you're starting to get a bit of an idea...
I think I touched the sidesteps down a couple of times, but only just. The hole was probably about 40cm deep at it's deepest spot - maybe a little more, but it was about 2-3m round, as you'll soon see.
After having a disproportional amount of fun (and giving the Pathfinder the toughest 4WD low-range workout it's had in months...), it was off to borrow the ute, and pick up half a cubic metre of crusher dust.
That proved a little optimistic - the hole still wasn't full. A week later, we went through the process again, and deposited another half-metre of dust into the hole. This bought it basically level, but in truth, it could do with a bit more, just to finish it off.
We've planted some grass runners into the middle of it, and have been watering it every night if we remember/every second night if we forget, and it seems to be coming along.
Even though we're out of our peak grass-growing season, I'm confident that if we can keep the water up to it, it'll have grassed over in no time. Even as it is, it looks considerably better than an overgrown mine shaft in the front yard. When we get more crusher dust for the side yard (more details in a future exciting instalment!), we'll make sure we get a bit extra to top dress this with, and finish it off nicely.
Slowly but surely, we're knocking over some of these little jobs that are just making the house much, MUCH easier to live in, and making it look so much nicer as well.
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