Hey everyone. So I live in an area that is mostly clay underneath the ground. To keep my foundation from shifting when it contracts during the dry months, I have to water it regularly. I have a soaker hose that runs around the house, placed 1 foot away from the foundation.
This creates a problem with mowing where I can’t just let my robot mower (or my push mower) run freely because of the risk of the soaker hose getting caught up in the blades, which has already happened once when I accidentally mowed too close.
To resolve this, I want to kill the grass (using landscaping fabric) in the 1 foot space between the foundation and hose and replace it with something else so I don’t need to bother manually trimming it. At the same time, I don’t want to use organic stuff like mulch because underground termites also exist in my area and I don’t want it to attract them close to the foundation.
A brief search pointed me to using gravel. However, the problem with stones (especially larger ones) is that they also trap moisture underneath them, and the dark and damp areas can also maybe attract termites. Reading a bit more, I think a good compromise would be smaller and uneven gravel/rocks, as more space between them means sunlight penetrates more and moisture gets dried up quickly. Is this a good solution?
Honestly since you have to water it anyways, I would kill off the lawn 3-4’ around the outside of the house and plant flowers.
Do a blend of species at about 4x the normal planting rate. You don’t want any space between the plants just mass to crowd out the weeds. I find. You can do a mix of annuals or perrenials.
Personally I’d just order in a good seed blend from a mail order company. Skip the big box store or the garden center.
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I can’t. I know a few people on their management team.
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I met some folks at the NCEO confrence a few years back.
Let’s just say, they fall into the “annoying fucks to deal with.” on the professional level.
One of them I used to work at with the same company. He got banned from customer visits after pissing off too many large customers.
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Realistically I think you should just keep the grass and stop watering your foundation perimeter. Any cracking or shrinking is temporary and inconsequential.
However, if you really want to get rid of grass around the foundation, go for a perennial bed of native plants. They’ll look better than grass, won’t need near as much water, and may even attract pollenators or birds.
If you go the gravel route, which I think you would end up regretting, remember that you will end up with weeds growing in it no matter what. Enough organic matter will eventually accumulate to allow weed seeds to sprout, then you’d be stuck with a much more manual maintenance problem than you have now.
If your only concern is termites, there are perimeter termite poisons you can get and apply, or any pest control service would likely be able to do that for you.
Any cracking or shrinking is temporary and inconsequential.
Is that so? It’s common advice in my area to water the foundation else be saddled with tens of thousands of $$$ worth of work in ~10 years to deploy piers and fix cracks around the house.
That’s news to me! If you’ve heard it from a reliable source then I’d keep on doing it, though. I will say that I personally haven’t had issues with termites despite mulch right against the house, but it was a one time application to get plants established.
Yeah, the expansive clay here is that bad. But thanks for the information!
Any cracking or shrinking is temporary and inconsequential.
This really tells me you dont live where OP lives (my money is on texas). In different soils, like a big chunk of Texas, the soil is expansive. If you let it dry out, you can have the whole foundation crack, and since they often use slab-on-grade foundations, where the crack could easily result in a plumbing issue with huge repair bills.
It’s cheap to build slab on grade, but expensive after that, so needless to say, developers love it.
It should be a crime to build a home with a foundation that requires weekly maintenance.
I mean, yes and no. It probably doesnt require weekly maintenance, but it’s similar to cleaning; easier if you just stay on top of it.
It some places, you have to keep shoveling snow off your roof all winter or else your house will collapse. There are ways to make houses require less maintenance, but there’s a cost-benefit.
Lots of places need sump pumps to combat the water table. If the power goes out, your house floods.
Check your insurance limitations, there’s probably a note about only being covered if someone checks on the place every 72 hours.
A water leak can do a lot of damage in a week, a lot can be damaged during the winter when stuff freezes.
A home is constant maintenance.
That’s the first I’ve heard of that. Pretty cool how different engineering concerns arise due to local differences. Thanks for sharing!
I was actually looking at a layer system myself. With stabilized earth (50% concrete and dirt) packed at an angle about 1 1/2 feet, rocks, rocks wrapped in breathable fabric, and finally more rock on top of that.
Basically just mimizing the rate at which water flows under my house but giving it a better place to go away from the house.
I also have big clay pots buried a foot or two from the house so the water can sit in there and slowly spread mix spread out.
The biggest saver is dealing with roof runoff though, rain storage plus irrigation away from the house help quite a bit
Smaller rocks have less space between them. I’m no pest expert, but you probably want plain 1" crushed stone. It shouldn’t trap moisture.
I wouldn’t recommend dumping so much water right into the ground, but you could also just bury the soaker hose.
Thanks for the suggestions!
And as a follow up, what kind of gravel would be best? I see a bunch of different types on Home Depot for example (decorative landscape rock, crushed gravel, boulder and stone, basalt, etc.). I also see I can filter by rock size (inches). Can anyone recommend what would be best?
My buddy just used a shitload of quarter down to regrade the edges of his foundation. I have done zero of my own research but trust his judgment implicitly. We also have mostly clay around here but our home is built on pilings so I’m not worried about the wet/dry cycle. We have some very minor shifting with the seasons but nothing structurally significant.
A few people not understanding expansive soil in the comments. You need to keep the soil moisture consistent. In your case, I might go for something like lava rock. Especially if you can get some that’s light in color, it can help keep the actual soil cooler so you have less evaporation. The porosity will let moisture through, though, so it won’t be too wet underneath.
I wonder if you could get a moisture meter or something to make sure you aren’t using more water than you need. Also, potentially, you could hook your soaker hose up to a smart irrigation system that can handle automated rain delays.
Yeah, I’m not exaggerating when I say people in my area are spending tens of thousands to level their foundation and fix cracks on their walls after 10 years of not maintaining the moisture of the soil around and underneath their houses. It’s that bad here.
Thanks for the lava rock recommendation! I’ll look into it. And yeah, I probably do need to get a moisture meter to determine how often and how much I need to water. I tried a smart meter once, the one that you attach between the outdoor faucet and the soaker hose. It had a timer, schedule, rain detection, and all that jazz. But it broke down within a week, and I don’t want to risk something that might fail-open with faucet just open. Maybe I need to look for a better quality one. Anyways, thanks!
I don’t wanna be rude, but you’re wasting a shit ton of water, in an already arid area, and then you wanna create a hellscape out of it on top? My environmentalist heart hurts hearing this plan 💔
Look around what grows natively in your area.
A lawn is already wasteful and hard to keep alive in mild climates, in a desert this is just stupid.
Maybe there are some pollinator plants that tolerate this dryness. Hell, even cacti and succulents bloom and attract colibris and shit.
Sadly, I don’t live in your climate and therefore can’t give you many instructions out of experience.
Good look rewilding your space! 🤗
Soils like this aren’t mainly a problem in arid areas, they are a problem in areas with alternating dry/wet seasons. They likely live in an area that gets a decent amount of rainfall most of the year, but the hot summer causes the clay to dry out and shrink, which over time causes subsidence.
Alright, thanks. Learned something new!
Believe me, I hate a manicured lawn as much as you do. I already don’t irrigate the grass at all, and just water the tree and plants on my front yard. For the foundation, I only turn on the soaker hose for 30 minutes once a week. That’s still way less water compared to using my irrigation system to water the lawn weekly. I think using water for 30 minutes via soaker hose once a week is an acceptable compromise for avoiding the cost of foundation repairs and cracking walls in a couple of years or so.
There’s rubber mulch. It’s expensive but lasts for years.
If you’re worried about termites, the best thing aside from not putting wood mulch right up against the house is to put in some of the termite stakes.
Thanks. Yeah I read about rubber mulch, but the pollution angle kinda throws me off of the idea.
