Clean fill for a large stump hole

Question

I had a large Ash tree stump ground out of my yard and now have a huge hole to contend with to restore the lawn in this area.

Can I use old weathered bricks to partially fill a large stump hole leaving 4 - 5" for topsoil?

Answer 1

Sure you could. Personally, I would break the bricks into smaller chunks, as much as it may be unnecessary.

The important thing, IMHO, is that it be similar, drainage-wise, to the subsoil nearby; else the different drainage can cause the lawn to appear conspicuously different than its surrounding - different color, different vigor, and possibly even drier and weaker growing.

I think the only thing this really means is don't order the bricks into a nice plane that could create a pan - just throw them in 'willy-nilly' with some dirt (so you don't accidentally create hollows that will collapse sometime in the future giving you some annoying surface sinks).

Answer 2

You could do this, but I would be cautious about it. Presumably the stump hole is deep as well as large in diameter. In effect, you have just dug a well in the middle of your lawn, and are asking if filling it with rocks won't affect anything.

The best material would be as close to the surrounding soil and subsoil composition as possible. Even then, don't be surprised if it takes a few years for the in-fill to finish settling, and the reseeded grass (or new turf) to really "blend in" with the surroundings. An alternative would be to make this space into a flower bed, or some other feature that was intentionally "not just more lawn" and supposed to look different.

I once encountered the reverse of your situation. A lawn had a large patch that never grew as well its the surroundings despite several years attempting to correct the problem with re-seeding, fertilizing, etc. Eventually we decided to dig up the entire lawn and start afresh. At that point, we discovered that the house-builders had "buried" a few hundred bricks in the subsoil for some unknown reason. We dug them all out and re-leveled the whole area, which took a few months of part-time work - but after that, there were no more lawn problems.