A Hole or Sunken Spot Opened Up in My Yard (Tracyton, WA)

What usually causes sinkhole or sunken spot in Tracyton

Start with a leaking water service line washing out the trench. The most common cause on a sunken trench line. Around Dyes Inlet and Riddell Road the housing dates from 1950s-to-1980s ranch homes and waterfront cabins, which makes this the likeliest answer to sinkhole or sunken spot.

Then an old dry well, cesspool or septic component. Older properties have forgotten structures that eventually cave. We've seen it near Riddell Road more than once, usually on galvanized on the older waterfront cabins.

And a collapsed or separated drain line: old clay tile or crushed corrugated pipe lets water wash soil into the pipe and away. Less common on mid-size lots on the Tracyton Boulevard grid, but we've found it near Tracyton Boulevard.

First steps on a Tracyton property

Tracyton is where we most often sort out groundwater from a real leak.

First steps for sinkhole or sunken spot near Olympic High School: do the meter test. Note whether it appeared after rain or in dry weather. Keep everyone off it and mark it. Then call; the rest is a locate through clay with groundwater along Tracyton Beach Road, not guesswork.

How we fix it

When it's the buried line, the fix in Tracyton is underground water leak detection: we confirm and mark, listen through till under the Riddell Road grid at the marked spot on plateau lots near Olympic High, and correlate. Pipe and cable locator and the mini excavator ride on the first trip so it's finished the same visit.

Tracyton Boulevard, Olympic High School, the boat launch: near any of them, sinkhole or sunken spot gets the same crew and the same equipment. Minutes from our base, day or night, with the mini excavator on the trailer for sloped waterfront lots on the inlet.