Is Soil Washout Always a Bad Thing?

Yes, soil washout is always a bad thing. No matter what state your home is in, this is one issue that you don’t want to deal with. Soil washout is nothing but trouble, and it will have a widespread impact on a home of any size. Likewise, you do not want to ignore this issue. 

Impacts on Your Yard 

The impact of soil washout on a yard is not often discussed, which is strange because this is where it will have the most obvious, immediate, and lasting effect. The damage that soil washout does to your yard is widespread and severe. It is very difficult to fix once it has advanced to a certain point. You see, soil that has been subject to prolonged washout and erosion loses its vitality and is stripped of vital minerals and vitamins. 

In the worst cases, this can result in the soil being unable to grow anything at all without intense fertilization and supervision. This is not ideal, of course, especially if you are an avid gardener, but it will also have a huge impact on the soil around your property. After all, the earth in your yard is not isolated from the rest of the world. Fixing this kind of issue takes a long time and can be pretty unpleasant – the best way to add vitality to fallow soil is to layer it with manure, after all. What’s more, the process of repair can take years! This is huge in comparison to the few days or weeks that repairing foundation damage might take. 

Impacts on Your Home 

Soil washout may primarily affect the soil around and under your home, but this soil has a huge role in the health of your property. As such, prolonged soil saturation and washout will inevitably end up causing issues in your home. The main and most serious issue that this can cause is movement in your property’s structure – this occurs because of the way in which soil moves while it is experiencing washout. Soil movement under a property can result in the formation of large voids beneath the foundation. 

This issue is most likely to lead to processes like subsidence and settlement that are, essentially, processes of sinking that impact a property dealing with fundamentally weak or unstable soil. Settlement is a process by which chunks of the property’s foundation break away and fall into those voids. By contrast, subsidence is a process that sees the whole property starting to sink (usually in an uneven manner). Either process puts a huge amount of strain on the structure of your home and will result in widespread cracking and damage.