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marty_w_white

Advice Needed: Kids keep farming my yard

marty_w_white
16 years ago

I own a home with a large level front yard that sits at a three way stop in a neighborhood. The neighborhood kids, including my own, love to play football, baseball etc in my front yard. It is a great front yard. My problem is about every 4-6 months someone decides to drive thru my front yard. I think it is the same folks because they always do it after a good soaking rain and no one else around me gets hit. They just did it again tonight around 11 pm and it has left very deep ruts in my yard.

Has anyone else had this problem and how did you solve it? I have thought of rocks, fence,etc but I don't want my home looking like a fortress. Has anyone had any success with security cameras to combat this problem? Any advice would be appreciated.

Comments (15)

  • joed
    16 years ago

    A few well placed bolders at the edge of your yard should keep the vehicles off.

  • davidandkasie
    16 years ago

    kids will be kids. i remember doing this when i was a teen. i regret it now, but back then it was just excitment. i never drove a vehicle into a yard, but i was riding with folks several times when they did. the thing that would make us not do a particular yard was if there was not an easy in and out path. kids don't want to have to stop, turn around, then drive back out, they want to go pretty much straight thru. plant some shrubs/trees or put a fence or rocks up. anythign that will make them not have clear paths.

    next time it rains, either setup a camera in a window or hide outside and get their license plate. the one guy tha tcaught us actually parked his car a couple houses down and sat and waited. when we went in his yard, he followed us right to my friends house. after a talk with my friends dad, we were out there at midnight in the cold rain with shovels fixing his yard. that spriing we both had to chip in to buy him new grass seed and fix the yard as it was. never did again after that!

  • drummer13
    16 years ago

    Since I have a low tolerance for these kind of people, my vengeful side would suggest bury some spikes in the grass, sticking straight up, so that the tips are just below the surface (thus safe for kids not to get hurt on them) but when it rains and the ground gets soft and mushy, the massive weight of a car will cause the ground to displace around the spikes and pierce their tires.

    Oh, and make sure the spikes are nice and fat, so that they render the tires un-repairable.

    I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

  • dgmarie
    16 years ago

    drummer13: you are lawsuit waiting to happen! ;-)

    Check with your local zoning/building/road department for their advice. Ours told us nothing over six inches if it is a rock, and if taller, it must be a 4 x 4 wood post with a reflector on it (we have snow plows here). This is roadside, of course. And please, no buried spikes!

  • drummer13
    16 years ago

    Of course I said that with tongue in cheek.

  • texasredhead
    16 years ago

    Some years ago I put a stop to this kind of activity by placing a couple of large bolders in front of my home and painted them white. I barely had them in place when a kid impaled his dad's car on one of the bolders rupturing the oil pan. Seems this one kid was driving through lawns all over the neighborhood. Never saw him again after his dad's car was towed out of my lawn.

  • bmmalone
    16 years ago

    we have a house at the lake, and do not live there full time. We found that someone was using our front yard and driveway as a way of driving down to the lake. (there is no lake access for vehicles). So we put some nice big rocks at the property line by the roadway and put up a couple of posts with a chain across the driveway. Seemed to work for a while and then they MOVED the rocks out of the way! we cemented the rocks in place (in the spring i will plant around them) and have not had any problems since. I did call the police and they said they would patrol the area three or four times a day. Not sure if that helped as well.

  • micke
    16 years ago

    I had a lot of this, and it is actually just one neighbor and his guests doing this, one actually drove over my Princess Di Cannas, needless to say I was not thrilled, and they were doing this in day light as well as at night, using my yard to turn around in. I did the only thing I could think of with the supplies I had handy (and yes I did think about putting spikes in the ground, but there are way too many kids running around to do that, but it was a nice daydream) I actually used landscaping timbers with blocks, not pretty by any means, and yes they get knocked over, but everytime I see a chunk taken out of one of the blocks I get some satisfaction over the thought of what kind of damage was done to the car. I would not do this to nice neighbors by any means but it is so apparent they are running a drug operation out of their house that I really don't care, the owner of the house is actually the one that normally knocks the blocks over but since he had the accident that turned his vehicle into 4 ft. high kids toy (he tested positive for drugs and almost killed a passenger in the other car) I have not had to pick up the fence once.

  • davidandkasie
    16 years ago

    buried spikes work fine as payback, and they are safe. get the tips a inch or two below grade and you do not have to worry about someone hurting themself on it. but when a vehicle plows up the ground, the spikes will puncture the tire(s). the only drawback to this is that YOU could possibly be held liable for the damage it causes. not fair at all, but a good lawyer could argue your actions resulted in damage to the other guys car.

    the biggest problem with spikes is since they are not visible, they are not a deterent. large trees/shrubs/rocks/fenceline are a deterent. these will stop them from intentionally driving across your yard. follow all legal setback requirements, and there is nothing anyone can do to you. you may still have areas between this and the road that get rutted up, but you just have to deal with them.

  • bus_driver
    16 years ago

    Read this.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Story

  • mikie_gw
    16 years ago

    I had a neighbors boyfriend who would pull two wheels onto her yard to park his car and those two wheels usually were skidding through the corner of my front yard too.

    I trained him to not drive across my yard by placing two red street bricks in his skid mark.

  • sue36
    16 years ago

    I know someone who put spikes in his mulch to prevent this. He put them in a board and buried it in the mulch. Car drove over, flat tires, and then left. Friend went out and retrieved the board- no evidence. Never happened again.

  • softballmom
    16 years ago

    The vengeful side of me would want to plant something that would tear up there car, but the better half of me says try to set up a camera to tape them, then make them pay for the supplies and then work in your yard to fix this problem. Hopefully one time of having to fix the problem that they have created will teach them available lesson.

  • kwickiekarma
    16 years ago

    Since sunflowers get so heavy when it rains it may be a good idea to bury 3inch steel pipes next to them. If you live in an area where there is lots of rainfall you may want to fill the pipes with concrete to make sure you have enough support.