05-31-2016, 10:07 AM
My parents' home, built in 1956, was part of an 8 house "development". All the houses had basically the same plan.
Apparently the builder buried some inconvenient trees in the back yard of one of the houses as an extension of the foundation dig. After about 6 or 7 years the rotted trees resulted in a giant sink hole. My neighbor back then (I was just a kid living in my parents' house) owned a factory. He hired a company to dump two dump trucks worth of sand in the back yard. He had 5 or 6 workers from his factory come by to remove the remaining tree stumps and back-fill the hole with sand. He then ran a hose from the fire hydrant to the hole to make sure that all the sand settled. The following weekend the workers were back with more sand and some topsoil to complete the job.
If it were me I would make sure all the organic material was removed prior to putting in the driveway. In the case of my parents' neighbor's house the giant sink hole (about 20 feet in diameter and about 8 feet deep) came crashing down one day. It made enough noise to make him run to the backyard to see what had happened.
In the case of the driveway if it gave way while driving over it you could easily trash a car and possibly injure the occupants if this were to happen.
Apparently the builder buried some inconvenient trees in the back yard of one of the houses as an extension of the foundation dig. After about 6 or 7 years the rotted trees resulted in a giant sink hole. My neighbor back then (I was just a kid living in my parents' house) owned a factory. He hired a company to dump two dump trucks worth of sand in the back yard. He had 5 or 6 workers from his factory come by to remove the remaining tree stumps and back-fill the hole with sand. He then ran a hose from the fire hydrant to the hole to make sure that all the sand settled. The following weekend the workers were back with more sand and some topsoil to complete the job.
If it were me I would make sure all the organic material was removed prior to putting in the driveway. In the case of my parents' neighbor's house the giant sink hole (about 20 feet in diameter and about 8 feet deep) came crashing down one day. It made enough noise to make him run to the backyard to see what had happened.
In the case of the driveway if it gave way while driving over it you could easily trash a car and possibly injure the occupants if this were to happen.
No animals were injured or killed in the production of this post.