Leveling a personal plot for construction, a garden or a vegetable garden, its need, rules and methods of work. Leveling the site is a series of measures aimed at arranging the territory. Its flat surface greatly facilitates the maintenance of a home garden. Today we will tell you about the necessity and methods of leveling the land plot.
The need to level the land
Perfectly even soil cover is rarely seen in the backyard area. Most often, the owners get areas with numerous irregularities and differences in height. There are several reasons for the need to eliminate such defects:
- Construction … The planning of the building area is necessary to evenly distribute the load from the house to the foundation, especially if it is tape. In this case, the difference in heights should be less than 0.5 m. Another, no less important point is the device of the blind area. It plays the role of not only a path for walking around the house, but also reduces the load from the soil on the foundation. It is much easier to lay out a blind area of paving slabs or cover it with asphalt on a flat surface.
- Growing fruits and vegetables … The presence of hillocks and depressions on a land plot does not have a big influence on their yield, but it is more convenient to plant, care for the crop and collect it on a flat territory of a garden or vegetable garden. Another plus is saving water consumption for watering plants.
- Lawn device … One of the main conditions for such an event is a flat area. There are several reasons for this. The first is the aesthetic appearance of a green lawn. A lawn with pits and bumps is less attractive. Another reason is that on a flat surface, the lawn grass takes root more easily and does not get wet from stagnant water, which usually accumulates in the pits of a bumpy area. Excess moisture can cause damage and disease to the lawn. And finally, the last one is the difficulty in working with the lawn mower on uneven grass surfaces.
- Landscape design … Many of his designs require a flat surface. For example, winter gardens or alpine slides will look most beautiful and natural when placed on a flat landscape. The same goes for the rock garden - our guest from Japan.
Land leveling rules
The procedure for leveling the site with your own hands is quite difficult and takes a lot of time, although some of the work can be done with the involvement of technology and professionals. For the correct planning of the necessary measures and obtaining a positive result, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with our recommendations:
- First, you need to clearly define for yourself the purpose of the site - laying out a garden, a place for a house, etc. At this stage, such planning should be coordinated with a land surveyor who is able to analyze the composition of the soil and give recommendations for the development of the site.
- The complex of works on leveling the site provides for the removal or filling of soil, therefore it is important to immediately determine the slope of the relief. The complexity of earthworks depends on the size of the territory, the differences in its heights and the expected result. In order to save money, some of the work can be done manually using a shovel. For example, planning a small area for a vegetable garden. In another case, it is possible to attract special equipment.
- The area should be leveled in dry weather. The vegetative layer of soil removed from above should not be stored for more than a month. This will accelerate the death of microorganisms involved in oxygen enrichment.
Land alignment methods
Before the start of earthworks, stones, construction debris, weeds and hemp of sawn trees should be removed from the territory. It is also important to get rid of plant roots. After finishing the stripping, you can make the layout of the site in the most convenient way.
Manual plot leveling method
When leveling an area manually, you must have a rake, a bayonet shovel and garden forks, pegs, a water level and a roller with you.
Work on a horizontal section must be performed in the following order:
- Inspect the relief and determine its average point on it. It will serve as a guide for alignment. If the soil level needs to be made higher, its highest point should be taken into account.
- The selected point should be fixed on the ground with a peg driven into the ground. Its apparent height is taken to be 0.1 m higher than the level of the highest relief mark.
- Starting from the peg, the site must be divided into squares, creating a kind of grid. The size of each square is taken as 1x1 m. The top of the pegs defining the corners of the figures should be placed in the same plane of the horizon. This is possible with a water level.
- After such a breakdown of the site, it will become noticeable where to add soil, and where to remove it. In this case, the surplus of earth must be poured into the holes, creating a flat surface.
- After finishing the planning of the site, it must be left for a couple of weeks for the soil to settle. After that, the pegs should be removed, and the area should be finally leveled with a rake.
If the site has a general slope that needs to be preserved, proceed differently:
- Fix the lowest and highest point of the relief with pegs, defining the direction of its slope.
- In the elevated part of the site, a row of pegs should be hammered, the same procedure must be done below.
- Connect the upper and lower pegs in pairs with a cord or fishing line. The stretched cords should form a flat, sloped plane if the pegs have been driven to the same depth.
- Using the cords as guides, the excess soil from the bumps must be transferred to where there is not enough soil on the site.
- After two weeks, the quality of the layout should be checked and, if necessary, corrected.
- At the final stage of work, the site should be plowed in different directions using a cultivator, and then the entire surface should be planned with a rake.
Mechanical way of leveling the site
With a significant amount of earthwork to level the site, the presence of obstacles in the form of fragments of concrete slabs, large stumps and relief differences in height over 200 mm, it is advisable to use special equipment. These are small excavators, tractors, walk-behind tractors, graders and cultivators.
The technology of work on the planning of the territory, carried out with their help, depends on the type of soil on the site, the degree of its unevenness and the power of the machines used. The essence of the work is similar to the above-described option: excavations in the form of trenches or pits are filled with soil, and its excess is evenly distributed over the site.
When leveling the site with an excavator bucket, you can fill in pits and ravines. This work is often combined with the removal of the vegetation layer. The use of an excavator is advisable when planning areas for lawns in an unkempt condition. Competent leveling of the territory with the bucket of this machine allows you to reduce the cost of transporting soil.
If the area is large, rough it is done with heavy equipment. Continuous leveling of the site with a tractor is carried out in two stages: first, passes along the site, and then across. This technique has special knives for work. With their help, the removal and movement of a fertile layer of land occurs, which is by no means useful for the site. However, if there are many stumps or other obstacles on it, it is difficult to do without the help of a tractor.
After rough planning, smoothing of small up to 0.2 m irregularities of the land plot is recommended to be carried out using a walk-behind tractor or cultivator. In addition to finely leveling the soil, these mechanisms help increase soil fertility by mixing it with fertilizers, lime or peat. This process is called reclamation. Loosening the soil with such machines for the subsequent sowing of crops is called "cultivation".
There are 2 types of cultivation units: horizontal type and vertical type. The knives of the first type of machines rotate horizontally and are similar to the forks from a mixer. They rotate in the ground, winding up vegetation and the remnants of its roots. Therefore, the machine is able not only to plan the site, but also to qualitatively free it from weeds.
The vertical cultivator is more massive and powerful. It is advisable to use it in large areas. The rotation of the knives of such a machine occurs in a vertical plane. This allows, when leveling the site with a cultivator, to loosen the soil qualitatively. The system of the unit can bury stones and various debris up to 0.3 m into the ground, forming a drainage layer for the planned crops.
The walk-behind tractor is simpler. In fact, he is a "walking tractor". When working with this mechanism, you need to accompany it, walking alongside and adjusting the process of its operation with the control knobs. Before putting the walk-behind tractor into operation, it is necessary to screw an ordinary board to its universal mount, so that it is even. After that, you can start working. First, he loosens the soil, and then levels it using a board fixed to it.
If such equipment is not available, it can be rented for 1500-2000 rubles per hour. When using heavy machines with the involvement of specialists, the price of the issue is different:
- On-site consultant services - about 4000 rubles;
- Removal of trees - 500-1000 rubles / piece. depending on the thickness of the trunk;
- Territory planning with a bulldozer or a tractor - from 40 to 80 rubles / m2;
- Leveling the soil with a cultivator - 30 rubles / m2 and higher.
In winter, it will cost more to level the plot by about 200 rubles / m2, since frozen soil is much more difficult to process.
Leveling the soil for the garden and lawn
The requirements for a place for a garden are not so high compared to preparing for planting a lawn. Here you can adhere to the basic rules for leveling the territory.
Small areas require this step-by-step layout:
- It is necessary to carefully remove a layer of fertile soil and lay it on the edge of the future vegetable garden;
- Carry out its continuous leveling, removing soil from the hillocks and filling them with depressions;
- Return the vegetative layer of soil to its place;
- Wait one or two weeks before using the area for its intended purpose.
Large areas for the garden should be prepared as follows:
- Plow the territory up and down;
- Treat the area twice with a cultivator to remove the roots of weeds from the soil;
- Compact the top layer with a light roller, for example a barrel filled with liquid or sand.
The durability and attractive appearance of the lawn near the house largely depends on the quality of the preparation of the territory on which the lawn is supposed to be located.
The process of planning such a site involves going through several stages:
- The site needs to be marked. To do this, it is necessary to hammer the pegs along its perimeter and connect them with a cord. The distance between adjacent pegs is 60 cm.
- The territory of the site should be free of debris and stones. Large tree stumps can be decomposed with saltpeter.
- Remove and transfer the vegetation layer of the soil to the border of the site, broken by pegs. If the bottom turns out to be solid ground, it should be dug up with a shovel or loosened with a walk-behind tractor.
- Level the site by moving the soil down from the hillocks. After that, the removed sod should be returned to its place.
- After two weeks, select 9 evenly spaced points on the site and hammer in them the pegs with marks applied at a distance of 10 cm from their top. The pegs must be aligned in height using a long block.
- Align the soil on them: where you want to add it or remove the excess.
- After finishing the leveling, remove the pegs and compact the soil with a garden roller. It is often made from a steel barrel or cut from a wide pipe filled with grout.
Advice! It is recommended to roll the site up and down, such maneuvers will get rid of air pockets in the soil. How to level the site - watch the video:
Before leveling the site with a walk-behind tractor or other technique, it is important to correctly distribute the forces. A small area can be ennobled on your own, and it is better to use a tractor or grader to plan a large area.
