Fill Dirt in Virginia: Bulk Ground, Not Growing Soil

The decision sitting under most fill dirt orders is a simple one that gets asked the wrong way round. People ask which dirt is better. The question that actually settles it is whether anything has to grow in the material once it is in place. If the answer is no, and the job is volume, shape and support, this is the material. If the answer is yes, you want Top Soil and you want it on top of this, not instead of it.

Raising a grade so water leaves, which is what fill dirt is mostly bought for

Across the Piedmont, from Loudoun down through Richmond to Danville, the common version of this job is a yard that holds water in one corner after every thunderstorm, on clay that lets almost nothing soak away. Down on the flat Coastal Plain the version is a whole low lot where water arrives and stays. In both cases the fix is the same shape of work: bring the low ground up, give the surface a fall, and send the runoff somewhere it can go.

That is what this material does. It is screened to take out the large rocks, roots and debris, and it carries very little organic matter, which is the property that matters. Organic material rots, and as it rots the ground above it drops. A grade built out of leafy soil is a grade that will not stay where you shaped it.

The other regular jobs are filling voids, closing out an old pool or excavation, and building a pad up to level before a base course goes on top of it.

How it behaves on clay, on Tidewater ground and up in the valleys

• Piedmont clay compacts well and holds a shape, but only if it is placed at a sensible moisture content. Fill worked in a soaking wet spell turns to a paste that will not take compaction and will settle for a year afterwards.
• Coastal Plain ground around Hampton Roads, the Eastern Shore, the Northern Neck and the Middle Peninsula has water near the surface. Fill placed on soft saturated ground pushes the soft material sideways rather than consolidating it, so what is underneath matters more than what you are adding.
• The valleys west of the Blue Ridge often have rock close to the surface, so depths vary sharply across a short distance. Probe before you order rather than assuming an average depth across the whole area.
• Freeze and thaw, moderate on the Piedmont and heavier in the Blue Ridge and the mountains, works on a poorly compacted fill over a winter and leaves a soft, uneven surface by spring.

Placing it in lifts, and checking the fall before you walk away

• Strip the topsoil and any vegetation off the area first, and set it aside if you intend to reuse it.
• Place in lifts rather than one deep dump. Six to eight inches at a time, compacted each time, is the usual working approach for a domestic job with a plate or a roller.
• Compact each lift before the next arrives. A deep uncompacted fill settles for years and takes whatever you built on it down with it.
• Check the fall with a level and a string line as you go, not at the end. Getting a grade right on the second pass costs far more than getting it right on the first.
• Finish with topsoil anywhere grass, beds or planting are going in. Nothing much grows in this material by design.

The wall face and the water's edge: two places it must not go

Backfill hard against a retaining wall. Fill placed directly behind a wall face traps water and turns into pressure on the wall. What goes against the face is a drainage zone of Drain Rock, built up in lifts with a route out at the bottom. The fill dirt belongs beyond that zone, filling the volume behind it and bringing the ground up to the level you want. Both materials appear on the same order; they just go in different places.

The edge of a pond or a shoreline. Bare fill at a water's edge is washed out by the first storm or the first run of high water, and on the Chesapeake Bay and the tidal rivers that is a matter of when rather than whether. The waterline itself wants armor, which is RipRap, sized for the exposure. Fill dirt has a part behind and above that armor, raising and shaping the bank. Work at the water's edge usually needs approval before anything is placed, so confirm what applies to your site before you order anything.

A construction entrance is the third one people ask about. That is a stone job, not a dirt job: a coarse stone over fabric that shakes mud off tires before they reach the road. #4 Crushed Stone is the usual order there.

Counting a wall backfill, a bank and a site entrance

Length times width times depth, all in feet, gives cubic feet. Divide by 27 for cubic yards. This site's calculator pages put fill dirt at about 2,400 lb per cubic yard dry, roughly 1.20 tons, and up to 3,000 lb wet, roughly 1.50 tons. Use the dry figure for planning and expect a wet load to weigh more.

• Example, the fill zone behind a 40 ft wall, averaging 3 ft wide and 4 ft high: 40 x 3 x 4 = 480 cu ft. 480 / 27 = 17.8 cubic yards, about 21.3 tons dry. The drainage zone against the wall face is counted separately and ordered as drain rock.
• Example, raising a 30 ft stretch of bank, 6 ft wide, by 12 inches behind the armor: 30 x 6 x 1 = 180 cu ft. 180 / 27 = 6.7 cubic yards, about 8 tons dry.
• Example, the construction entrance that wants stone instead, 45 ft by 14 ft at 8 inches: 630 sq ft x 0.667 = 420 cu ft. 420 / 27 = 15.6 cubic yards. Coarse stone runs about 2,900 lb per cubic yard on this site's figures, roughly 1.45 tons, so about 22.6 tons of #4 stone.

Compacted fill takes up less room than loose fill, so a volume worked out from finished dimensions needs a margin on top. The dirt calculator sizes this material.

Choose a quantity and a delivery date here once the area is stripped and you have somewhere the truck can tip within reach of the work. Delivery is arranged at checkout from your ZIP code.