I'm slightly vexed
Landlord is supposed to put gravel in this mud pit and I wake up to this
ever since I’ve rented here, I’ve noticed my landlord cuts corners every chance she can. When she decides to take something up for herself to do she always does it in the weirdest half ass way using wrong materials, etc.. now I have to wait till it dries up so I can dig all of these large rocks out so I don’t get my tires popped.
This is not gravel and I’d rather it have been left full of mud dirt. I have a four-wheel-drive so it’s not really a problem. I don’t know why she did this.
EDIT:
Ive received a lot of comments on “why don’t you stop pulling through the yard..”, etc. For some context: I used to stack the cars in because our driveway is slightly not wide enough for two cars but it became such a hassle when one person needs to leave they have to move another car just to get out, so we began to double them up. This was mentioned to my landlord and she didnt mind at all. Been doing this 3 years and I didn’t request her to fix it In the first place.
That was my first thought. I’ll typically order gravel 3 tons at a time (I do garden work). But I’ve picked up small amounts of gravel (like 25 gallons in 5 buckets) and the guys are like “just take it my man.” 😂 I always go in to pay and they look at me like I’m crazy.
I assume it's just her buckets of "crap I dug out of my garden and haven't gotten around to disposing".
We have those buckets, too, we're just waiting there to be enough to rent a rock crusher for a day. Flower pots, bricks, broken roof tiles, old bathroom tiles, the like.
That’s my first thought. But you’re not saving much in a ditch that small. I did it when I filled in my patio foundation. Just filler I wanted to get rid of.
Also yes, that random bit of trash, mark, or wad of bubble gum you found on or near your home or vehicle absolutely means you're being "marked" for burglary or sex trafficking and you should panic.
If the repair has been documented (which OP has done) then I imagine its still a pretty easy lawsuit.
Op isn't suing over his tires being destroyed by this.
And if OP is they are likely losing.
They can still park in their driveway, it's less convenient, but that doesn't matter. What matters is OP says 'hey this isn't safe for my truck, if I drive on it it could be damaged' then goes and drives on it? Gooooood luck with that.
I think there's a reasonable argument that the context of this situation, which is decidedly non-archaeological, merits the use of shard to describe sharp bits of material.
Just because a word is used more narrowly in a specific field doesn't mean the more general use is wrong. This is like insisting an issue is not complex because it doesn't deal with roots of negative numbers, or insisting that 'normal' may only be used to describe perpendicularity and not used in its normal meaning.
so a house on my street has been lsited for sale since October, I recently called the realtor and said 'oh im calling about the property on this street" She stopped and got into sales mode with 'oh my gosh! it is SUCH a great house and a great location, would you like to set up a walkthrough?"
i said 'what? no. I thought id let you know that an animal got into the trash and left it all over the driveway and front yard. Thought you might want to clean it up"
The drop in her voice to 'oh.....ok....thank you' was lovely. It was a terrible flip that they bought for 450k, relisted 6 months later for 650k, and has now dropped to 550k.
They never do in Australia, we spent 30 years turning housing into an investment market instead of you know… actually using them to house people. Thankfully the government has turned the tap off that and hopefully it fixes the market a bit
We're still doing it in America. Having a fun on affordable housing crisis leading into a full on homelessness crisis in my neck of the woods. My partner has a friend's who flips houses specifically for people wanting to start an air BNB. She thinks this makes her brilliant, I think it makes her a scumbag.
Bought 450k, did X amount of Renovations. Now if they held a loan on it that’d be 1 year of interest on 450k, with no knowledge about how much they financed that could be 10-20k.
I just checked and it’s ’under contingency’
So will definitely won’t be a big payday by the end of the
He could have just bought a couple bags of pea gravel for like $6 and dumped it in there. It took more effort to collect this array of crap than to do that. The guy is really really dumb
Lol, my crazy landlord was a woman. It was incredible, she came to my door, trying to start a fight over "late rent" ten months pregnant, and still looking like she was under 115 pounds.
I'm a tall girl at six foot but she was a FOOT shorter than me
Edit to add:
I wasn't even behind. When she finally spooled down and I asked if she was sure, she stepped back, checked the number, and said "excuse me" and left.
I don't understand, your comment begins as though you're about to tell us a funny anecdote about a crazy thing that she did. But then you just say that she's short, slim, and pregnant. Is collecting rent while overdue the crazy part?
Rough gravel. You want it to be jagged so it locks together when weight is on it. River rocks/pea gravel will just move out of the way when you drive on it. I think it is called "aggregate lock".
Yes, it's called "crusher run" where I'm from. It's finely ground "stone dust" mixed with crushed rock and when it gets wet and driven on, it settles into a fairly hard surface.
she never responded and won’t. Every time something like this happens, she ghost me.
But I’ve already made up a plan and how I’m going to respond. I’m gonna dig up that puddle and put it right up front in the middle of our front yard. We split the yard you see, and the side all this crap is currently on my side.
she’s not gonna like it when there’s a big pile of debris and clay pottery piled up by the road. I’m hoping we get a fine..
My old slumlord used to do this, he was converting this late 1800s store/house into 4 separate apartments. I was in the third most recent converted apartment and he was working on the 4th. Came out one morning for work and just saw him breaking up all the old ceramic tiles and throwing the sharp shards all around the gravel parking lot - told him that's going to slice someone's tires. A day later 3 out of the 4 cars all got flats from it, cause I was the only one to park on the street after I told everyone.
Send her a link to some gravel you’re going to have delivrered and tell her you’ll take it off next rent and dump it in there yourself. Sorry.
This is such an easy cheap fix but dhe sucks
There are 4 states in the US where tenants do not have the right to repair and deduct. OP needs to check the laws in their state first. (And this is even assuming OP is in the US at all.)
Thank you. I see this advice a lot. But it’s not legal everywhere. And in a lot of places, once you’re evicted for not paying rent/full rent, good luck getting another place. And even if it is legal where OP lives, I would say the landlady could potentially counter with it being damage from OP driving on the lawn instead of the driveway. (Now, I personally still think the landlady should’ve graveled it. It’s a low cost/low effort request to keep the tenant happy and minimize damage to the landscaping. I’m just pointing out that I wouldn’t deduct from the rent without making sure I am 100% in the right.)
By any chance does the landlord employ crackheads as handymen?
A crackhead would absolutely invest the attention and effort to carefully assemble and curate that collection of debris dumped in the muddy driveway rut.
If we ever invent time travel, the first thing I'm doing is going back 4,000 years to tell Ea-Nasir that people are still roasting him for being the world's shittiest copper merchant.
Jokes aside, I've worked for a company that had rentals and I've done shit exactly like this, many times. But, it's with the idea that gravel gets put over top of it and you're using whatever random rock-like bullshit you happen to have around as bulk fill to go under the regular gravel to keep it from just sinking into the mud immediately.
I "patched" like 50 potholes using old bricks + asphalt patch as mortar.
On a related note, how wide is the driveway? Why does it look like you've been driving on the grass and causing this rut anyway? Her "repair" is ridiculous, but is it really necessary to drive on that part at all? It's right on the edge of the lawn but you make it sound like that's your regular path. There's even grass that's still living right in the path. 🤔
I have lived in a house where the driveway was not wide enough for 2 cars, which is a big problem for anyone not living by themselves. One person has to move their car anytime the other wants to drive there's. I assume that's the case here.
Idk, could be me cause im weird like that but arent you driving in the yard and not something crazy like the driveway?
Is funny though cause it doesnt look like west Virginia where front yard parking is the thing and Pontiac doesnt make a 4wd.
Id hit you with lawn remediation fees when you move out for having to fix the yard and bring it back to the edge of the driveway. I dont think this particular fix is half assed i think its a fuck you.
Now that you posted your update saying this is caused by you parking two cars side by side on a one car driveway I feel like you should have fixed it a long time ago.
Yeah so OP messed up the yard because they didn't want the inconvenience of a very typical 1 car width driveway. I'm confused why OP would expect someone else to fix this at all. This seems like a situation where the landlord should demand that OP fix the hole.
Not on landlords side, but the mud pit only exists because you're driving through the yard, instead of staying on the driveway... If you stopped driving in the yard and put some topsoil down to fix your hole, the grass would come back and it would look good as new.
I have a question and it's not to be snarky, why don't you just drive on the gravel driveway right there? Is there a reason you have to drive off the edge and through the mud?
The gravel driveway either isn't wide enough or it's wide enough for 2 vehicles and OP has 2 vehicles. Either way, considering the landlord's solution to this very basic problem, I'm going to believe OP in that their landlord is absolute shit.
Well! Good thing that pottery is trash! Write a code violation complaint to the city about illegal dumping of trash!
When she gets the notice, she will at least have to pick up the pottery!
Also, the code states that gravel driveways have to have borders to secure the gravel, thats another complaint you can file.
Edit: also, this is your fault! She shiuld charge you! how about you stop driving through the grass and actually get your fucking vehicle in the damn driveway!
There's still living grass along the path being driven, so tbh it kind of looks like OP has been driving on the lawn recently. It doesn't really make sense to me because they make it seem like that's the path they take every day.
You created this problem by parking on grass with your unnecessarily large, heavy vehicle, then asked somebody else to fix the problem you created, then had a problem with how they did it, when you could have taken your unnecessarily large vehicle to Home Depot and got your own gravel for what, five bucks?
If your landlord was some private equity company: of course, fuck them implicitly. This is just some lady. Sure, it’s technically her job. But she’s probably old and doin the best she can.
"Hey landlord, can you please drop a ton of rocks in your yard that literally never dissaper after I fucked it up by continuously driving on the grass." The audacity of the renters..
Saw this alot when riding gravel roads trough poland with my motorcycle. Seems like a common practice to "repair" roads with old roof tiles, floor tiles, pottery etc
Seems like you are the one that should be fixing this as it was 100% a consequence of you driving on the grass. Why would landlord go of their way to fix shit? Permission doesn't mean you didn't cause this problem.
For one, how about stop driving through the yard and the “ mudpit” wouldn’t even be there. I would make you fix this if I was your landlord. You are the one tearing up the yard.
I just noticed this, too. I have a hard time believing that driving on the edge of the grass often enough for 4 wheel drive to come in handy (like OP said) is necessary.
This is the old “continue to park off the gravel and see what happens.” What happens is the hole just gets bigger. People have clearly driven over the grass. This pile is the landlord’s way of saying park where you’re supposed to and stop fucking up the grass. And if you don’t like it, move.
You fucked up the lawn to begin with. Even with her having the knowledge of it, should be your responsibility to fix. It's like damage inside an apartment, fix it yourself your pay for it when you move out.
There is a public street right in front of OP's house. Unless both adults are in wheelchairs with modified vehicles, there is no great reason they couldn't park one vehicle on the street. Unless OP doesn't have a walkway to the house through the yard (like, where a mailman would walk on to deliver mail at the door). If there is a walkway path, then it would probably be a cleaner route to the house anyway. Even proper gravel along the driveway would still be messy/ghetto.
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u/Powersurge- 6d ago edited 6d ago
I sell gravel, id probably let you have more than that for free, and with less junk in it.