Yard Grading Winnipeg
Your lawn should gently slope away from your home—if it’s flat, water can accumulate, and if it slopes toward your home, you can expect basement flooding, cracked foundations, and worse.
By grading your lawn, you can prevent drainage issues, keeping your home safe and your lawn and other plants healthy. At Bulger Brothers, we offer yard grading services for residential and commercial customers in Winnipeg.
What Is Yard Grading?
Yard grading is the process of gently sloping your yard so that water drains away from your home and toward the front or back street or alley. Most properly graded yards have a slope of about 5%, declining from your home or business toward the property line.
Having a perfectly level yard is a problem. Water will pool and stagnate, and proper drainage becomes next to impossible during a storm. The resulting pools of water may kill plants, erode soil, attract pests, and turn to ice in the winter, leading to dangerous holes in your yard.
Improper grading can also allow water runoff to reach your home or your neighbour’s property. This can lead to substantial property damage. Proper grading increases the value of your property, decreases the risks of property damage, and leads to a more aesthetically appealing yard that’s easier to manage.
There are several circumstances in which you might need your yard to be graded. Anytime you’re installing a new lawn, it’s likely you’ll need professional yard grading services. You may also need grading services if you’re installing a new permanent structure, like a deck or shed. These structures generally need to be built on level ground, and the slope of the area around them may need to be modified.
Our Yard Grading Process
Initial Property Inspection
Our yard grading process starts with a detailed inspection of your property. We’ll assess where utilities like gas lines are located, how the yard needs to be sloped, which structures and plants might obstruct the sloping process, the drainage patterns of your yard, and more
Grading Process Planning
Once we’ve assessed your yard, we can begin planning the grading process. We grade using heavy machinery, so we’ll plan access points to the front and backyard, routes to avoid utilities and trees, and other logistics
Setting a Grading Date
With the plan in mind, we’ll set a date to grade your yard. In most cases, grading a full property takes 3-5 days, but for larger or more complex properties, it may take more time.
We’ll obtain all the permits required for grading. Once we have, we’ll remove your existing lawn and any rocks or other obstacles—we can keep trees intact. With the yard cleared, we’ll remove and set aside the topsoil, then begin the cut-and-fill process, where soil from higher parts of the lawn is used to fill in lower areas.
Setting a Grading Date
We’ll obtain all the permits required for grading. Once we have, we’ll remove your existing lawn and any rocks or other obstacles—we can keep trees intact. With the yard cleared, we’ll remove and set aside the topsoil, then begin the cut-and-fill process, where soil from higher parts of the lawn is used to fill in lower areas.
The Grading Process
Once your lawn has reached the desired slope, we compact the area to help prevent rapid erosion. From there, we carefully add soil using smaller equipment to achieve the perfect grade. With that grade achieved, we place the topsoil back in your yard, then plant new sod or other landscaping features. We can also reinstall any rocks or hardscaping that were moved during the grading process.
Yard Grading Tips for Winnipeg's Climate
Yard grading is particularly important in Winnipeg:
In the springtime, the deluge of the winter melt can seriously damage building foundations and lead to basement flooding.
In the summer, our thunderstorms can be severe enough to create flash floods.
In the winter, any water that’s stagnated in your yard over the spring can freeze, leading to slipping hazards and serious damage to your yard.
The soils in Winnipeg are typically clay soils—clay soils tend to swell when they absorb water and shrink as they dry. They can also create drainage issues—clay soil particles are incredibly fine, and when they stick together, there’s little space for water to pass through. Soil may also rise during the spring thaw as moisture lifts the ground up.
These factors make careful grading particularly important in Winnipeg. Having plants, including regional plants like tallgrass, can help stabilize soil through root networks. Proper aeration is an important facet of lawn care in Winnipeg, as the holes created by aerators give plant roots a place to grow—and water a place to penetrate into the tightly packed clay soi.
Why Choose Our Yard Grading Services in Winnipeg?
Our family-owned business was created right here in Winnipeg. We know all of the by-laws and what it takes to get a Lot Grading Permit. We offer full-service landscaping, too—once your yard is graded, we can add any features you want, from flower beds to a new lawn and so much more.
We’re driven by a passion for creating beautiful, livable yards. We love our city and our work—and we’d be happy to grade your yard to a perfect slope.
Call us today!
