Ground Down

FTLComm - Tisdale - Monday, October 1, 2001

Historically one would have to go back a long time to find a time when so little rain and precipitation has fallen on Tisdale over a three year period. This is a major drought with sloughs gone, dugouts empty and the countryside looking more and more like this was Saskatchewan's SouthWest instead of Parkland. We showed you the efforts some businesses have undertaken to bring up the concrete around their buildings due to the shrinking of the soil. These

pictures were taken this morning of three houses sitting side by side on Newmarket Drive. Each of these houses built in the late sixties have long ago settled and have had complete landscaped yards all of this time. However, this past three dry summers with the water table disappearing and the clay base shrinking we can see the front steps sitting more than six inches above the ground which has been descending. In spring it was noticed that the vertical siding around the outside of our house was slipping (below) a bit but this fall we discovered just how much.

All around our home built in 1971 the soil has fallen downward about six to eight inches and out from the house almost four feet. The front step, like those on Newmarket sits high above the surrounding ground. When asked about the problem Colin Chupa, one of the top experts on the problem, explained that once settled addition rainfall would not cause the soil to swell and the only solution is backfilling and bringing the soil levels back up to where they belong. Otherwise even small amounts of rain or spring run-off would simple collect around the house and flow into the basement.