Yard Leveling & Drainage in Beaumont, TX

What to Expect

Rain on the upper Gulf Coast arrives a few inches at a time, the clay under most yards takes almost none of it in, and a lot shaped once when the house went up has usually settled, been patched after Harvey or Imelda, or been driven over since. The result is a yard with shallow dishes that hold water for days, a strip along the fence that never dries, or a slab with the ground running toward it. Yard leveling and drainage is the residential end of our grading work. We fill and shape backyards and front yards so water leaves them on its own, we deliver the fill dirt and topsoil as part of the job, and we tell you plainly when the fix belongs to a different trade.

The phrase covers four different jobs, and what your yard needs decides both the cost and the result. Lawn leveling, as most people use the term, is smoothing a bumpy lawn: humps, ruts, sunken lines over old trenches, the hollow left where a stump rotted out. When the dips are shallow, a thin topdressing of sand or topsoil raked into the grass a little at a time does the job, and the grass grows up through it. That is rake-and-spreader work rather than machine work. We can deliver the material, and we will tell you if that is all your yard needs. Low spot filling is the next step up. One or two dishes in an otherwise sound yard, too deep to topdress without smothering the grass. The sod comes up, compacted fill goes into the hollow, topsoil goes on top, and the surface is blended into the ground around it so water runs across the spot where it used to stop. Regrading a yard is the full version. The yard falls the wrong way, usually toward the house, or has no fall at all, so the surface is cut on the high side, filled on the low side and reshaped from the slab outward toward an outlet: the street, a side yard swale, a back-line ditch. On a bigger tract this becomes our land grading work, the acreage version of the same idea. Then there is the yard that is not a leveling job at all. If water backs up from a ditch or culvert that has stopped carrying, the fix is on the ditch, and that is our drainage work. If it pours off one corner of the roof into the same bed every storm, gutters and downspout extensions are the answer, and that is a different trade. If the ground stays wet when it has not rained, or the water seems to come up from below, a French drain may be the better fix, and we install those. A sump pump is a plumbing contractor's job. We will say so. The soil is what makes this harder here than in most of the country. The Beaumont Formation clay under much of Jefferson, Orange and southern Hardin counties swells and seals when wet, then shrinks and cracks when dry. Water barely soaks through it, so a yard on this clay drains across its surface or not at all. North toward Lumberton, Silsbee and Kountze the soil picks up sand and takes water better, but it washes once bare. Either way, fall is the fix, and the fall has to end somewhere: a street, a road ditch or a district channel that carries the water on toward the Neches, Taylor Bayou or the Sabine.

Our Process

It starts with seeing the water. The best visit is the day after a hard rain, when the low spots and the place the water stops are plain to see. Photos taken while it is standing are nearly as useful. Then we find what is underground. 811 gets called for gas, water, power and cable, and the things 811 does not mark get found too: sprinkler lines, a buried downspout pipe, the septic tank and field, which are kept clear of fill. We shoot grades from the foundation to the outlet rather than judging by eye. A yard that looks level can fall an inch toward the house without anyone noticing, and on flat ground an inch decides where the water goes. On the day, the order holds. Sod and topsoil come off where the fill will be deep, and good topsoil is set aside to go back on. Low spots are filled in thin lifts and compacted, because loose fill settles back into the same dish within a season. The surface is shaped away from the slab first, then across the yard to the outlet, with topsoil on the top few inches. Two rules apply on every yard. Finished grade stays below the bottom of the siding, the brick ledge and the weep holes, so the fix does not put dirt against the house. And the water is not sent onto a neighbor's property. The yard is left shaped and ready for seed or sod. Bare graded ground should not sit long in this climate, because the first hard rain starts carving channels in it.

Equipment & Capabilities

The machine is picked for the yard. A tracked excavator handles most residential leveling, reaching over beds and fences and shaping the fall around a slab without running back and forth across the lawn. On open yards and larger lots a dozer does the broad shaping, cutting high ground and spreading fill over a wide area. Fill dirt, topsoil and sand arrive by truck as part of the job, so the material and the grading follow one plan. Clay fill is compacted with a roller in shallow lifts. Topsoil is not rolled hard, because grass struggles to root in packed ground. Tracked machines matter on this soil, since wheels on wet clay leave ruts that become a leveling job of their own. Access is measured at the estimate: gate width, fence panels, overhead lines and the driveway the trucks will cross. If a fence panel has to come out, that is agreed in advance. When a yard is too wet to work without tearing it up, the job waits for drier ground, usually late summer into fall rather than February or March.

Why Choose TRP Land Clearing & Excavation

You get told which problem your yard actually has. A bumpy lawn, a low spot, a yard that falls toward the house, a ditch that has stopped working and a roof that dumps water at one corner all look like a wet yard from the patio, and they have five different fixes. Only some of them are ours, and the estimate says which. We shoot the grade instead of eyeballing it, fill in compacted lifts so the dish does not come back, and keep the finished grade below the siding and off your neighbor. The material comes with the job. The estimate is free, done on site, and given by the owner who runs the machine.