Lost Blog

They can control the grade of your back yard? As in, if you pile on too much dirt, they can force you to remove it? I could see perhaps if you built a huge mountain of dirt the height of your house, but a few inches of top soil?

 

..Al

They can control the grade of your back yard?  As in, if you pile on too much dirt, they can force you to remove it?  I could see perhaps if you built a huge mountain of dirt the height of your house, but a few inches of top soil?

 

..Al

 

 

Yes, and no...

 

It is the general grade of the yard that the town has a say in because of the preplanned drainage matrix...

 

There is a storm drain behind each home (or two in my case) with a manhole cover... and the weeping tile from the house leads back to this storm drain. The 2 storm drains in my yard are connected underground and are also connected to the storm sewers on the street...

 

So...

 

The areas leading directly up to the drains, should be lower than the rest of the yard (both in front and behind the drain), so that the excess water in the yard all will run into them... but when the yard was originally filled in (by my in-laws about 5 years ago), they used cut up plastic wine barrels as "inserts" where the drain covers are so they could build the ground up around them an additional 8"-12"...

 

The dirt I am currently spreading out was meant to bring the rest of the yard up to this "artificial" height...

 

It is raining today...

Ah, glad to see your child labor is working well

 

The city where I live has equally dumb rules, but they never enforce them. At one point we had an ordinance about the length your grass could be before it was an eyesore. Good idea right? ONE FOOT was the determined length.. isnt that beyond eyesore?