Silverdale: A Hole or Sunken Spot Opened Up in My Yard

Why this happens in Silverdale

In Silverdale we check poorly compacted backfill from an earlier dig before anything else, because a wet spot that never appears is how it shows up here. A trench that was dumped full and never compacted settles for years. Dense hardpan up on Ridgetop makes the signs misleading, so we confirm rather than assume.

Next: a leaking water service line washing out the trench. The most common cause on a sunken trench line. With trench walls that slough near Dyes Inlet under acreage out Anderson Hill Road, the symptoms can look identical to the first cause, which is why the meter test and the locate matter.

Don't overlook a collapsed or separated drain line. Old clay tile or crushed corrugated pipe lets water wash soil into the pipe and away. On Silverdale properties from the subdivision boom after the Kitsap Mall opened it comes up more than you'd think.

Before you call

Silverdale is polybutylene country.

Do this before anyone digs a winter water table close to the surface in Silverdale: keep everyone off it and mark it. Don't fill it until the cause is known. It takes minutes and it tells us whether the problem is on tight side yards full of irrigation or inside the house.

What happens next

The repair side is underground water leak detection. On Ridgetop and Island Lake cul-de-sacs that means trace the line, then confirm there is a leak in loose outwash on the Clear Creek flats where the problem actually is, then correlate. If what we expose is gray polybutylene from the 1980s at the end of its life, we say so with the pipe in your hand.

From Old Town to Anderson Hill Road and out around the Kitsap Mall, sinkhole or sunken spot is a regular Silverdale call for us. Our home base, and emergencies on acreage out Anderson Hill Road dispatch immediately, any hour.