Questions on re-grading the perimeter of my home

[General Lee]

With all the rain and storms the east coast has been receiving, I need to add more slope to some areas around the exterior of my home. My question is, can I just add dirt and tamp it to the slope I want or do I need to remove dirt and start with a "clean base" before adding dirt?

 

[ducks13]

Depends upon the grade at the house, if it will make it less than an inch or so below the slab I wouldn't do it; lower the dirt level instead.

 

[General Lee]

Depends upon the grade at the house, if it will make it less than an inch or so below the slab I wouldn't do it; lower the dirt level instead.

My home has a full walkout basement, so the slab is a ways down. I'm thinking about building it up where needed and sloping it from there. Just wondering if water will just seep through the new dirt down to the original and continue to seep towards the house.

 

[RDrancher]

If there is no existing lawn you can compact new soil over the old by wheel rolling it. If you do have an existing lawn, shave off the sod a bucket / blade width at the bottom of the slope and start filling and compacting over the remainder of the slope. For small areas, or areas less than the width of a bucket, a couple of shovel widths of soil to soil contact at the bottom of the slope should be fine. Be sure to keep the soil height at least 1" below the weep screed (on stucco houses), siding, or brick ledge.

I'm assuming that you can get your tractor to the area. If not, hand tamping for compaction will suffice.