|
Lanelle - excavation and trucking companies around here make a living from stripping all of the topsoil from a development and piling it up, then shred it and sell it. While it'd be lovely to truck in 6" worth of loamy soil, 'loamy soil' per se doesn't really exist around here, and generally once we're looking at a project, it has already been rough graded to within +/- 2" of final grade, all with clay soils.
To strip out and truck in topsoil for the typical 1/2 acre lot, or approx 700 yards of material out and in, would make seeding or sodding start out with a price tag of $5-6K or more, before we even started talking about the seed or sod. Too much for our average client to bear.
So, the standard here is to bring in about 36 yards (2 tri-axles) of pulverized topsoil. That's standard from the largest company down to the smallest. There are a few here and there that either don't put down any topsoil, and some that'll bring in 8 truckloads. But those deviations are minor and rare.
So, there's really only one layer of soil around these parts...clay. That being said, since the sod would require such a extraordinary effort of soil improvement to match the health and vigor of seed, seems seed would be the way to go.
|