Yard Drainage & Leveling in Vidor, TX

Yard Leveling & Drainage Services in Vidor, TX

In Vidor the ground nearest the house matters more than the rest of the yard. This part of Orange County took water in Rita, Harvey and Imelda, and many homes here went through at least one of those storms. Plenty were repaired, rebuilt or lifted afterward. The yard around them was usually put back however it happened to land. What that leaves is a familiar set of problems. A slab with ground running toward it along one side. A raised house sitting on a fill pad with a steep edge that washes and a ring of soggy ground at its foot. Flower beds built up against the brick until the weep holes are buried. This page is about fixing that ground so water moves away from the house first and then off the lot, which is where yard leveling earns its keep in this town.

Vidor sits on flat, heavy clay between the Neches on the west and the Sabine on the east, in low country that carries runoff from far upstream down toward the coast. The clay is the same kind found across the river in Jefferson County: it swells shut when wet and cracks when dry, and a yard on it sheds water over the top or holds it. The water history is the reason the house comes first. Rita in 2005, Harvey in 2017 and Imelda in 2019 each put water across this stretch of Orange County, and Imelda's rainfall here was extraordinary. After a flood, the house gets the attention and the ground around it gets whatever is left. Repair crews bring trucks that rut the lawn, rebuilding leaves debris and stray fill behind, and a house lifted onto a new pad can end up a foot or more above the yard that surrounds it. In-town lots near Interstate 10 mostly drain to a street ditch or a back-line ditch shared with several neighbors, and the acreage off the farm-to-market roads drains through field ditches and driveway culverts to the county system. Either way a yard's water meets somebody else's within a short distance. That sets the terms for leveling a Vidor yard: get the water off your slab and out of your yard without simply handing it to the lot next door.

The work starts against the foundation and moves outward. The first several feet of ground off the slab need to fall away from the house on every side, and that band is shot first, because on a lot with a few inches of total fall the strip next to the wall decides whether water sits against the foundation. Where that ground has settled or was never built up, it is filled in compacted lifts and shaped to run away from the house. For a raised house, the job is the transition between the new pad and the old yard. A short, steep fill slope at the edge of a pad washes into the lawn every storm and leaves a wet ring at its toe. A longer, gentler slope can hold grass, and if the ground at its foot is shaped to carry water away instead of catching it, the ring goes. That takes more fill than people expect, and the fill and topsoil are delivered with the job. Beds and borders get a look too. Soil piled against the house over years of planting can rise above the weep holes in the brick or the bottom edge of the siding, and that holds moisture against the wall however well the rest of the yard drains. Finished grade is kept below both. With the ground near the house right, the rest of the yard is shaped to carry the water off. Low spots are filled and blended, ruts left by repair trucks are cut out and refilled, and where the water needs a defined path a shallow grassed swale runs along a side yard to the street or the back-line ditch. On acreage the same work ties into the field ditch or the drive culvert, and if that ditch or culvert is the real blockage, the fix moves there. What we will not do is solve your yard by sending its water into your neighbor's. If the only way out crosses another property, you hear that at the estimate. 811 is called before any digging, and the septic tank and field are marked and kept clear of fill and machines.