Durham, North Carolina

Practical things first. Permitting, inspection and stormwater rules are Durham County's and the City of Durham's, not Wake County's, so anything structural — a deck, a fence over a certain height, work near a drainage easement — goes through a different office with different requirements. Tree protection expectations differ too. Anyone quoting a Durham job off a Wake County assumption is guessing.

The reliable rule is that anything structural, anything near a drainage feature and anything involving a substantial tree deserves a phone call before a shovel moves. Decks above a certain height, fences above a certain height, retaining walls and work inside a recorded easement all commonly fall into that category.

Easements are the item that surprises homeowners most. A drainage or utility easement can run straight through a back yard without anything on the surface to mark it, and building a fence or a shed across one can mean removing it later at the owner's expense. The recorded plat settles it, and it is worth looking at before a fence line gets laid out rather than after.

Because the property has changed since the grade was set. A house built with a modest roof, a single-car drive and no patio sheds a certain volume of water. Add a rear addition, a wider driveway, a patio, a shed pad and a pool deck over sixty years and the same lot is now shedding a great deal more, off surfaces that absorb nothing.

Meanwhile the soft parts of the yard have gone the other way. Decades of foot traffic, parked vehicles and equipment have compacted the lawn, so it takes in less than it used to. Then there is the slow creep of mulch and soil against the foundation, which is how a house that drained correctly in 1965 ends up with water running back toward the wall.

Fixes are earthwork and plumbing rather than products: re-establishing fall in the first several feet around the house, extending downspout discharge well past the beds, and cutting a shallow swale to take water where it can legally go.

Careful, and mostly chemical rather than high pressure. Hope Valley and the streets around it have brick, painted trim, and concrete that has been in the ground long enough for the surface to soften, all of which are damaged by the pressure a new driveway ignores. Aged mortar in particular will erode under a narrow tip, and repointing is not a cheap correction.

The canopy makes the growth worse than in open neighborhoods. Shaded siding, shaded walks and the tree-covered half of a driveway hold moisture and grow black and green film, and after leaf drop the tannin from wet oak and maple leaf stains concrete and decking a rusty brown. Those stains lift far more easily in the weeks after the leaves come down than they do the following spring.