Hillside Grading & Slide Repair in Cincinnati, OH

Hillside grading and slide repair covers two kinds of work: shaping sloped ground so it is usable and drains properly, and fixing ground that has already moved. Around Cincinnati, both involve the same soil, a stony, silty clay colluvium that weathers out of the Kope Formation and coats many hillsides. It is stable when left alone and drained. It is not stable when it is overloaded, undercut or saturated.

What the research says

USGS work on landslides in Hamilton County found slopes with thin colluvium standing at about 18 to 25 degrees, with thin slides moving during heavy rain and thicker ones failing after grading or other disturbance. Documented triggers included a construction cut and fill placed on the downhill edge of a road. Before we price any hillside job, we look at the slope above and below, check for cracks, bulges, leaning trees and seeps, and talk with you about what has moved before.

Grading a sloped yard

Making a sloped yard flatter usually means cutting, filling or both. Fill on a slope must be benched into firm ground and compacted in thin layers, never pushed loose over the edge. Cuts at the bottom of a slope are kept small and supported. Where the grade change is more than a few feet, a retaining wall is often part of the answer, and taller walls need an engineer.

Repairing a slump

Small surface slumps can often be repaired by removing the slipped material, installing drainage, benching in compacted fill or stone, and replanting. Larger or deeper movement, slides that threaten a house or a road, or anything involving a tall wall should be evaluated by a geotechnical engineer first. We work from the engineer's plan and handle the excavation, drainage and rebuilt fill.

Water is usually involved

Nearly every slide we look at has water in the story: a downspout emptying onto the slope, a leaking line, a spring, or runoff from a road or the lot above. Collecting that water and carrying it to the bottom in a pipe is often the cheapest and most effective part of a repair.

Cost

HomeAdvisor puts most hillside digs at $1,000 to $5,000 and yard grading at $400 to $6,500. Engineered slide repairs cost more and are priced from the engineer's design.