A Long Way to Fall!

Why couldn't they have built just a few feet further back?! It sure would have saved me a great deal of angst and expense.



There's been quite a bit of movement in the house. How active it is, I don't know. We don't let the kids do too much jumping in this back corner of the house.

The house was built right at the edge of this high bluff... on a sand hill no less. The neglect of maintaining gutters on the back of the house over the years has caused a great deal of erosion. You can see, in the photo below, how much earth has vanished by the old stucco line along the back of the house. I'm almost certain this was "at grade" at one point.

I've investigated helical piers and actually moving the house forward on the property. Both of which are terribly expensive. So for now, I've opted for maintaining the gutters, routing the downspouts away from the house and a lot of prayer. I also cleaned the bank up quite a bit, cut back some of the shading canopy to allow more vegitation to grow. I try to blow the leaves off this portion of the bank each fall as well... so the leaves don't interfere with anything trying to grow. Roots are my new best friend!