Drainage on Flat Lots
A sloped yard sheds water on its own. A flat one does not, and on clay the water that lands in a flat back yard tends to stay there. The usual symptoms are a soggy strip along the back fence, puddles where two neighboring yards meet, and a wet corner of the basement under a downspout.
On a flat lot, small grade changes do a lot. Building up the soil a few inches around the house so it falls away, extending downspouts into buried lines, and adding a shallow swale or French drain along the property line usually fixes it. The key is finding a real outlet for the water, not just moving the puddle to a different corner of the yard or onto the neighbor’s lot.
Replacing Original Concrete
After sixty or so Michigan winters, an original concrete patio or walk has usually cracked, sunk toward the house or lifted at the joints. Once a slab has tipped back toward the foundation it is sending water to the basement every time it rains, so replacing it fixes more than the look.
The replacement is usually larger than the original, since those first patios were often built for a couple of chairs. Pavers on a compacted base, pitched away from the house, handle freeze and thaw better than a single slab and can be lifted and reset if anything settles. A paver or new concrete front walk often goes in at the same time.
Updating a Ranch Landscape
Ranch homes sit low and wide, and the foundation plantings that suited them decades ago are often now taller than the windows. A landscape update for a ranch usually means lower plantings kept in proportion to the house, beds pulled out far enough from the foundation to stay dry, and a clean edge between bed and lawn so the yard looks finished from the street.
Fall Cleanup and Bulk Leaf Pickup
Livonia runs a bulk leaf pickup every fall, typically from the end of October into early December. The rules are specific: rake leaves into windrows at the edge of the roadway, not into ditches or far back from the road; leaves only, with no sticks, branches or grass mixed in; and nothing in plastic bags, which the city cannot pick up.
Outside the bulk pickup, leaves can go out with your weekly trash in paper compost bags or containers of up to 33 gallons marked with a yard waste sticker, set apart from your trash cans. If you are planning a fall cleanup, tell us whether you want the leaves hauled away or left at the road edge for the city’s pass, and we will time the visit to your section’s schedule.
