Most of what we do is patios, walls and driveways. This one was not that.
The Sarver Sportsman’s Club had a washout problem on their stream, and it was getting worse. The water there is not a little creek you step over. As TJ puts it, it is a step down from a river. Every high-water event was taking more of the bank with it.
They had been told no. More than once.
They had these awful washout issues. We have no idea what to do. Nobody wants to touch us.
TJ Belsterling, owner
Why other contractors walked away
Because the work is in the water, and water does not care about your schedule.
You cannot rebuild a bank while the stream is running high. You cannot get a machine down there when the ground is soft. And the fix is not a wall you can stand back from and admire, it is tons of rock, placed properly, below the water line, where nobody will ever see it.
It is difficult, it is expensive, and there is nothing photogenic about it. That is a combination a lot of companies would rather pass on.
We waited for July
The first decision was to do nothing for a while.
We waited until July, when the water was at its lowest. That is not procrastination, it is the whole job. Going in during high water would have been dangerous and the work would not have held.
Then we put a mini excavator into the creek.
I put the excavator in the creek. My tracks were completely covered with water, and we went in there and dug the bank out, reinforced it with the riprap, and did it the whole way down.
TJ Belsterling, owner
700 tons of R7 riprap
We hauled in 700 tons of R7 riprap and rebuilt the bank with it, working from in the water, the whole way down the affected stretch.
Riprap is graded stone sized to stay put under moving water. R7 is a heavy grade, and that is deliberate: undersized stone gets picked up and carried off by the next flood, which means you paid to move rock downstream. The bank is dug back, keyed in, and the rock is placed so the water runs across it instead of biting under it.
- Timed for low water so the work could actually be done properly
- Excavator working in the creek, tracks under water
- Bank excavated and keyed, not just rock tipped down a slope
- 700 tons of R7 riprap, placed the full length of the washout
It held
Western Pennsylvania gave it a proper test almost immediately. Heavy rain through the back end of the year and into the following spring, the kind of water that caused the original problem.
A year later, with all the terrible rain that we had, everything is holding up great.
TJ Belsterling, owner
TJ went back down and walked it with them. The bank is where we put it.
The honest part
This was not a cheap job, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Hauling 700 tons of rock and putting a machine in a creek costs what it costs.
But the alternative was watching the bank keep leaving, and every year of waiting makes that number bigger, not smaller. That is true of erosion, it is true of a failing retaining wall, and it is true of water running at your foundation.
I will never turn a client down because the job is too difficult. Obviously that affects the price. But I will absolutely get the job done.
TJ Belsterling, owner
They had us back
The Sportsman’s Club has us back this year, for a pergola and a patio. Which is a decent measure of how the first job went.
If water is taking your ground
Streambank washout, erosion on a slope, drainage running at a building: these are all the same problem, which is water going somewhere you did not plan for. It is the thing behind most of the retaining wall failures we get called out to, and it is what our site development and land clearing work is usually really about.
If someone has told you your job is too difficult, call us. We may still tell you it is expensive, but we will tell you honestly whether it can be done.
(724) 605-4822. Every estimate goes out within 48 hours, usually 24.