Any soil engineers here?

[pcwolf]

Can extreme clay soil be amended with something to drain better? Sand?

I am reclaiming a sloping, wooded section of my yard. I found the local materials dealer delivers 14 yard loads of "sifted soil" for $20 a yard, which is a good as it gets around here.

I have found tags in it with "Dominion Power" and they are burying electric supply so I am guessing that is the source. The stuff is nearly 100% clay, which puddles and never seems to dry, making it a slippery, muddy muck that is awfully hard to work with the loader. I wonder if a few tons of sand would make any difference.

 

[HillStreet]

Not an engineer. I should think you would want a binder in the fill, stone, gravel. Is that land muddy like that all the time, or did it recently rain/thaw? You say slope, does the bottom of the slope terminate at wetlands?

 

[pcwolf]

I slopes to a forest floor with leaf and branch debris. There is a ravine about 100 yards away. I buried a lot of stumps, cut down saplings, trunks and branches to try and keep fill from washing away. I have raised the level of the fill about eighteen inches above the original slope. The rain puddles on the top surface in low spots. Too late to lay a base layer of stone ... would adding stone on top of the mix have any effect?

I don't think water is seeping from other than the rains we have had. This year was the heaviest on record by six to eight inches. Even the woods are soggy.

 

[Billrog]

Yes adding stone would be effective especially if you had access to blast rock 3 to 4" diameter other than that any gravel would be better than sand.

 

[Complete Turf Care]

Changing the texture of your soil is not going to be easy. It took millions of years for this soil to form, and you won't change it overnight.

You would have to add lots of sand and incorporate it deep into the clay to help with drainage. It may be easier to just add a few inches of good soil on top of the clay.

Depending on how big of an area you are working with, that could get expensive. This is probably not what you want to hear, but you may just want to leave it alone and live with it as it is.

 

[pcwolf]

The area I reclaimed is about twenty by seventy-five feet. My hope is to drag a chain farrow around to level it, and bring in 3-5 yards of topsoil in order to plant a tall fescue. It is beginning to sound like my best bet is just to wait until there is a prolonged dry or freeze spell and work with what I have.

 

[redman135]

Hello pcwolf, clay is a "fragile" soil. This means it is easy to damage the structure and turn into a solid non draining mass.
Your best option at this point is to stay off it and wait for it to dry out. NOTE not just surface dry either.
You may want to mole plow some moles(under ground drainage channels approx 1 1/2" diameter) into the clay to allow drainage under the clay, or if you have got enough fall, simply leave the water to run across the top of the ground. How much and how heavy will traffic be in this area?
To level the clay simply run a blade over it to smooth out the ruts. Then get topsoil and grade to desired slope, and thickness.
If you are in yorktown USA then you are going into winter so I would recommend getting fescue hay ,break the bales and shake the hay over the top soil , then walk on/ roll it to make it stick to the ground.(if left fluffy the wind can blow the hay away to easily) This will protect the ground from the rain/ downpours surprisingly well(standard practise on new zealand road and large construction sites).
Come next spring you can plant your fescue lawn.
Good luck

 

[Diggin It]

Add natural waste. Some of that forest floor stuff, leaves, wood chips, grass clippings, etc. It'll take time, but it's free other than elbow grease and sweat equity.

 

[Soundguy]

Changing the texture of your soil is not going to be easy. It took millions of years for this soil to form, and you won't change it overnight.

You would have to add lots of sand and incorporate it deep into the clay to help with drainage. It may be easier to just add a few inches of good soil on top of the clay.

Depending on how big of an area you are working with, that could get expensive. This is probably not what you want to hear, but you may just want to leave it alone and live with it as it is.

Agreed, it will take a decent amount of suitable material mixed in, or much of the unsuitable material excavated and replaced. If the clay soil is deep, and you just put sand on top, you will get a aquaclude and a moist spot where the water sets sub surface.

Disclaimer.. not specifically a soil engineer.. just a vanilla CE..

 

[JWR]

Changing the texture of your soil is not going to be easy. It took millions of years for this soil to form, and you won't change it overnight.

You would have to add lots of sand and incorporate it deep into the clay to help with drainage. It may be easier to just add a few inches of good soil on top of the clay.

Depending on how big of an area you are working with, that could get expensive. This is probably not what you want to hear, but you may just want to leave it alone and live with it as it is.

I agree with CompleteLawnCare... Now that we know your space is "only" 25 x 75 feet that is not all that big. Being an old FFA trained farmer I'm full of comments of course. Don't do anything until it dries out and dries out deep. From the picture it seems possible that you can actually till deep enough to get down to the forest floor stuff that the clay was placed on. If that is true, then yes, use a large deep capability tiller and put in a dump truck worth of sand -- or really anything OTHER THAN clay. I would not use gravel of any size because that just makes for trouble later on. Unwanted stone in a lawn surface will result, plus I don't feel it does much for "drainage." Well drained soil means from underneath, NOT surface. So if you cannot get down to the forest floor underneath you really can't fix it. For purposes of a lawn extension, as LawnCare said, your best bet is just to cover it with topsoil no matter what you are able to do underneath. I would look around and see if you have any horse farms or other serious farmers nearby. They might be sources for both manure and maybe a load of soil. If you have, or have access to a trailer, a good big load of horse manure tilled in will do wonders for the granularity.
And for my last useless question: Why on earth did you put clay in there in the first place ?