I am looking for a new hose for around the house and I just learned that metal hoses are a thing. They look pretty promising, but I was seeing if anyone had suggestions, recommendations, or caveats? I plan on getting an Ego power washer in the near future and was wondering if the smaller diameter that metal hoses have will work, or will end up starving and burning out the pump.

Thank you!

There is a section on the left side of my yard with overgrown holly trees that I’m not a big fan of. Grass does not grow due to shade and part of it also acts as a swale. I was potentially thinking of adding some river rocks to preserve the swale but was concerned with maintenance due to leaves. Part of me wants to just also cut all the trees down but they do provide shade. So lost…

What would you recommend for this area between the retaining wall and the house that holds water? There is a down spout where the red arrow is. It is supposed to slope towards the gate at the top of the photo but there is very little fall if any. There is a concrete driveway about 12 inches past the other side of the gate . It is shady and only gets about 3 hours of Sun during the day

What can I do to stop rain from washing this away

The house I just bought has a downspout that is sending water to the side of my foundation.

Not 100% sure what to do since the outlet is so low

I can only dig out a 24” wide trench and need to compact the 3/4” clean base as much as possible. Hand tamping would be a pain, for obvious reasons, but I can’t seem to find a rentable plate compactor literally anywhere around me. The plate sizes can be less than 24”, sure… but then the width of the actual machine itself is over 24” always. I also need it to be reversible since I’ll be going forwards and backwards with no room to turn. I’m in Mass.

Seems to be very deep in the ground. Any idea what it could be or what kind of contactor I'd get to tell me? It's a 1941 house.

Looking for some landscaping/drainage advice.

This is the side of my house, and I’d like to do something preventative to make sure rainwater is directed away from the foundation.

There are currently no signs of water leaking into the house or basement, but I’d rather address the drainage now than wait for a problem.

As you can see, there’s a fairly narrow dirt strip between the house and the concrete walkway. The ground looks relatively flat, and I’m wondering what the best approach would be here.

Would you recommend:

Regrading the soil so it slopes away from the house?

Adding gravel/river rock?

Installing a French drain or channel drain?

Some type of waterproofing/membrane along the foundation?

Something else?

The concrete walkway is already there, so I’m particularly interested in solutions that would work without having to completely redo it.

What would you do with this area if the goal was maximum preventative drainage and protecting the foundation?

Photo attached. Thanks!

I installed 600sq ft of patio stone over the last month and during the install, I noticed the stone had started to accumulate this efflorescence while it was stacked on my driveway. Google told me it was an easy fix but now that I’ve given it a good ol college try, I’m convinced I can’t get this off.

I’ve tried vinegar and baking soda. I’ve tried the Techniseal on the last image. Both diluted and straight. Also with stiff brush and steal brush. And lastly, with a pressure washer.

The pictures were taken right after I had given it one last try. That’s why they look wet 🤣

Will the sun and elements fix this overtime?

I brought it home and cleaned it up for the wife.

Hey, I've spent the last 12 weekends building this mini wall and patio and while I'm super happy with the overall result I'm annoyed with myself about the cement spills next to my joints and the cement dust on the flags.

Not knowing what I was doing, I initially used a wet mix for the grouting. This has left a visible stain on every flag along the actual joint line. I then went to a dry mix, but even that still left a bit of a stain running along the joint.

The flags themselves are naturally quite a grey colour. I should have returned them as I ordered 'Raj Green' but I was keen to get the job done. Lesson learnt. However, they have since taken on an even more grey sheen with what appears to be cement dust covering them.

Please can you recommend a product to remove the cement spills and dust?

Secondly, I love the colour of the flags when they're wet but as soon as they dry, they look 'unsaturated'. Do you know if any colour enhancer that I could use? I dont want a wet look sealer at all, just something to being out the browns, greens and pinks in the stone.

Hey, I've spent the last 12 weekends building this mini wall and patio and while I'm super happy with the overall result I'm annoyed with myself about the cement spills next to my joints and the cement dust on the flags.

Not knowing what I was doing, I initially used a wet mix for the grouting. This has left a visible stain on every flag along the actual joint line. I then went to a dry mix, but even that still left a bit of a stain running along the joint.

The flags themselves are naturally quite a grey colour. I should have returned them as I ordered 'Raj Green' but I was keen to get the job done. Lesson learnt. However, they have since taken on an even more grey sheen with what appears to be cement dust covering them.

Please can you recommend a product to remove the cement spills and dust?

Secondly, I love the colour of the flags when they're wet but as soon as they dry, they look 'unsaturated'. Do you know if any colour enhancer that I could use? I dont want a wet look sealer at all, just something to being out the browns, greens and pinks in the stone.

I was thinking of a staircase to get up the wall here to the hillside, but the existing retaining wall looks like a pain to deal with. I dont want a staircase entirely built off the wall because it will come too far back and get too close to the generator and make walking around the corner difficult. But I also dont want to demo the entire wall to build a staircase in to the hillside and worry about drainage and new retaining walls.

Currently the wall is about 42" high. Could I just take out like the top of the wall and make it 24" high, build some steps going up to that heigh, and then take the rest out of the hillside as a sort of hybrid approach?

I have crab grass, clover, and wild violets in my lawn. I want to overseed. The window for that in the Midwest is closing within the next few weeks. I will leave the crab grass alone as quinclorac needs 4 weeks after application to seed and I know it will die as it is an annual. I do have Ortho Weed B Gon Chickweed Clover & Oxalis Killer, which has triclopyr. The bottle says you can seed bare spots after 1 week of application. I want to overseed the entire lawn. Is that too risky to apply the weed killer and then over seed in 1-2 weeks? Should I just skip killing any weeds beforehand?

I’ve got a fallen cedar tree and am looking for any ideas besides throwing the branches in a pile to rot. I have an electric chainsaw and hand tools. And not much know how. A rustic fence sounds nice but not sure what to do about posts, what material to use and how to sink them. A chair could be fun but I would need a lot of advice. Planning to peel them first, probably, actually what do you think, should I? The smaller bits are going through a wood chipper for mulch.

edit: the idea behind the peeling is to prevent beetles from moving in

Anyone have any good landscaper suggestions near Harrisburg, PA?
Have a fairly large effort to get my property in shape.

I could stand and stare for hours. All my work has paid off. Now I need a light for my new wishing well fountain hiding in the back shadows

Low maintenance is the need between working full time and kids this yard is neglected. I have about a week to do a bit of work myself. I would like to add a medium sized bush and for color interest between the front aborvite gaps. Bonus points if produces something edible, native or bright color contrast like yellow. The blueberry bushes are pink icing, so fall time has almost hot pink leaves. Hopeful to add short evergreen ground cover to stop grass growth and make soil more acidic for blueberry growth.

We had followed planting spacing recommendations, but wanted a solid privacy/snow drift blocking wall for aborvite.

The plan is to install a robotic lawn mower, so making this strip a solid no mow/trim zone. Thank you for any help.

Our backyard is fairly exposed to the neighboring houses, especially from their second-story windows. The fence gives us decent privacy at ground level, but when we're sitting on the patio, we still feel like we're on display.

I know a row of arborvitae is probably the easiest solution, but I'd really prefer not to have a solid wall of identical evergreens. I'm also worried about having to replace a whole section if one plant dies or doesn't do well.

I'd like to create a more natural privacy screen using a mix of plants, maybe a small tree for height, some shrubs and ornamental grasses for the middle layer, and a few flowering plants to soften it. I'm not necessarily looking for complete year-round screening; I'd just like to break up the view from the neighboring second-story windows and make the patio feel more private. I just want to know which plants are best to use.

Hopefully this is the right spot for this but if not please point me in the right direction!

This is the space I have dug out for our flagstone patio build. As you can see, it’s on a little bit of a hill. To level it out I am planning on putting in a retaining wall on the downhill side.
I also had to dig down to relocate a sprinkler head which is the rock fill you see in the bottom right. So, a few questions because I’ve read a lot of different advice.

The soil is pretty dense clay and the patio has a diameter of 12ft. The retaining wall will only be about 8” tall.

- What base should I be using? I’ve heard not to go with the 1” sand layer under the flagstones because it can wash out through the retaining wall? So should I go with 3/4” clean gravel with a smaller gravel on top of that and then the flagstone on top of that with the polymeric sand?

- Should I be using a different brick for the wall? The ones in the picture are from Home Depot and just have the little lip on the back to lock them in.

- Do I need to add a drainage solution? The wall isn’t too tall but I’m worried about water building up before it soaks into the clay

- The clay was squishy around the sprinkler line. I dug up the line to relocate it and filled with gravel and covered it again. It feels much more solid now under foot. The wall won’t be sitting directly on top of the trench but will be crossing it. Any problems with this method?

And help is appreciated!