Dirt Work: Finding Fill and Building Up the Pad

Before I could even begin digging, I needed enough dirt. The area I was building on sloped, and it needed to be flat and at the highest ground level to shed runoff. There also needed to be a decent driveway sloping as gently as possible to the road. That meant I’d need LOTS of dirt — and I didn’t have the slightest idea where to get it.

Attempt 1: move my own dirt

I started by digging up other parts of my yard. There were some things I wanted to change anyway, so I dug out areas of the back yard and used that dirt for the garage. I bought an old 1980s John Deere riding mower and a dump trailer that attached to it. It was slow work, but it gave me some of the dirt I needed.

Attempt 2: order a truckload

Next I contacted the large dirt-hauling companies in the area. The price seemed absurd, but I ordered one full dump-truck load (about 8 yards) to see how far it got me. It cost a fortune and barely made a dent. Never doing that again.

Attempt 3: free dirt from Craigslist

My next step was searching free-dirt listings on Craigslist. I went to a couple of construction sites and loaded my pickup, but they were all too far away. It wasn’t worth the wear and tear on the truck to haul so much dirt over such long distances — not to mention I had to shovel it all out of the truck by hand.

At this point I had all the dirt I needed for the garage pad, but I still didn’t have a driveway.

What finally worked: a neighbor with a dump truck

Finally, I found a guy in the next neighborhood who owned a full-size dump truck. He could get fill from a quarry about 10 miles away. They offered two grades: one was basically big chunks of rock, the other was good-quality dirt. I ordered two loads of rock as the base for the driveway and covered it with three loads of clean dirt. It worked perfectly and wasn’t terribly expensive.

Fill that holds up

Not all dirt is good fill. For anything that will carry a building or a vehicle:

• Use clean fill without organic material (roots, sod, topsoil), which rots and settles.
• Place it in thin layers — about 6 to 8 inches at a time — and compact each layer.
• Put coarse rock at the bottom of driveways for drainage and strength, finer material on top.
• Let the building department or engineer know if the foundation will sit on new fill; it may need extra compaction or deeper footings.