Hurricane Season Lot Prep and Drainage in Northwest Florida

Your lot is cleared, the pad is half built, and there is a storm spinning somewhere out in the Gulf. Maybe it comes here, maybe it goes to Louisiana, but you have bare ground with nothing holding it down. This is what we do on our own jobs when the coast goes on watch, in the order we do it. None of it is complicated. All of it is easier the day before than the day after.

Walk it and figure out where the water is going

Start with the water, because the water is what does the damage. Walk the lot and find the low side, the place where runoff is going to leave the property. On a lot in Navarre or Gulf Breeze that is usually obvious once you look, because sugar sand shows you every place water has already run. Inland toward Milton and Pace, on clay, the water sits instead of running, and the low spot is wherever the ground still looks dark after the rest of the lot has dried out.

Then look at the pad and the rough grade. A pad that is crowned sheds water off all four sides. A pad that has been sitting half finished with a low corner is a bowl, and a bowl holds water against the fill until it turns to soup. Cut a shallow swale to carry runoff around the house site instead of through it, and knock down any ridge of spoil that is damming water on the high side. A little grading before a storm can save you from redoing the pad after it.

Check the silt fence, especially on the low side

Silt fence is the cheapest thing on the lot and the first thing that quits. It goes along the low side and anywhere else runoff can leave the property, trenched in at the bottom so water cannot run under it, with the stakes on the downhill side so the fabric leans into the flow instead of folding over. That is the standard on every job we run, and NOBL keeps a state certified erosion control inspector on staff so it goes in where it actually does something.

Before a storm, walk the whole run. Look for fabric sagging between stakes, sections flattened by a delivery truck, spots where a sub pulled it aside to get a trailer in and never put it back, and any place sediment has built up until the fence is full. A full fence is a fence that is about to fail. Clean it out, restake the sags, and close the gaps. Straw wattles across a swale help slow the water down where a fence alone cannot.

Get the loose stuff off the lot

Everything that is loose becomes a problem in wind and moving water. Brush piles that have not been hauled yet. Stumps waiting on a truck. Pallets, silt fence rolls, form boards, a sheet of plywood, the lid off the portable toilet. The pile you were going to deal with later is going to deal with itself, and it will end up in the swale you just cut.

If a pile can be hauled, haul it. Our roll off trucks are built for exactly this, and the yard at 3125 River Rd in Navarre is not far from most of the coast. If it cannot be hauled in time, consolidate it into one low pile on the high side, away from the swale.

Deal with the staged fill

A pile of fill waiting to be spread is the thing people forget. A loose stockpile of sugar sand in a hard rain melts. It slumps, it washes, and a good bit of it ends up against the silt fence, which it will bury.

The fix is to spread it and roll it before the storm if there is any way to do that. Fill that has been placed in lifts and compacted stays put. Fill sitting in a pile does not. If the pile has to stay a pile, knock the top down, round it off so water sheds instead of pooling on it, and pack the face with the bucket. And if more fill is scheduled to land before the storm, hold it. Dumping loads on a lot you cannot spread just gives the rain more to work with.

The entrance and the road in front of you

The rock construction entrance earns its keep here. It is how the trucks get in and out afterward without cutting ruts into a soft lot, and it keeps mud off the pavement in front of your house. If the rock has gone under a layer of mud, it may need to be topped off.

Look at the road ditch too. If it is already full of sand from the last rain, it is going to back water onto your lot in this one. Getting your own sediment out of it before the storm is not glamorous, but it beats watching the water come the wrong way.

After it passes

When the weather clears, walk the lot before anybody drives on it. Take photos. Find where the water actually went, because the storm just gave you a free map of your drainage. Sand recovers fast. A lot in Navarre or on the sound side of Pensacola Beach is workable again well before one sitting in the Yellow River or Blackwater country, where the clay holds the water and pushing equipment onto it too early just makes ruts.

Then fix what moved. Retrench the silt fence, pull sediment off the low side, regrade any washed edge of the pad, and get the loose debris hauled before the next system shows up. Storm season on this coast is long, and it is rarely done after the first one.

NOBL Sitework is a licensed general contractor (CGC1537340) working across Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Escambia, and Bay counties. If you have a bare lot or a half built pad and the Gulf is heating up, call us at 850-238-3307 and we will walk it with you and tell you what needs doing before the weather gets here.