Now that may sound a little bit complicated but once you get the hang of it, it’s really not that difficult. What you’re trying to do is figure out the elevation change from one point to another point, once you get used to it a few times it’s pretty easy to do. In this case, I want the highest elevation of the installation to be up against the house and slope towards the outer walls 1/4 inch per foot. So since this area is roughly 18 feet wide, I want the highest area by the house to be four and a half inches higher than the outer wall grade.
As I bring infill and compact it, I repeatedly check the grade to make sure that it is what I need it to be. Compaction is important because the loose soil or fill will settle over time. So compaction speeds up that process and will make sure the installation lasts for a very long time. Adding water throughout the process helps the soil or fill dirt settle and also helps keep the dust down.
You can rent both a vibratory plate like this one, which is good for vibrating about 4 inches deep of material or a jumping-jack like this one, which allows you to compact a little thicker base material and is good for around edges. If you are adding a lot of fill to an area, it’s a good idea to compact it in layers along the way until you get the elevation about a half-inch to three-quarters of an inch below where you want your final turf elevation to be.
Now this is where I made a mistake on my initial installation. As I reach my final grade, I should have used a fill material with a smaller aggregate like decomposed granite for the final four inches. An aggregate is basically the stone material that’s in your fill, so if you have small stone, you can compact it a lot easier. The road base that I used had larger rocks in it even though it was supposed to be small, so it didn’t compact super smooth when I rolled out the turf initially and I can feel all the little discrepancies. More on that later, but that’s why I’m saying that the preparation is the most important part of the installation.
