It was a mistake. Take a few days off and work in the garden I thought. Mistake. 8am to 5pm with a few short breaks and a 1 hour lunch break – all hard work. I don’t know how landscapers do this all the time…
Anyway, I did it. I got the drainage in. Well, ready to be concreted at least – the weather was against me on that one. As soon as there are a couple of sunny days coming up, I’ll do the concreting.
To take you back a step, I have spent the last few months clearing the garden being ready for this day. I have cleared out overgrown sections in the garden about a square metre or two at a time, getting rid of the weeds and potting the plants. Then I would lay weed mat over it to stop it coming back. I had been just putting the pots on top of the weed mat, but I need to clear a space so I pulled all of the plants into the middle of the courtyard to do the following work.
The next step was to pull up the coppers logs that were framing the garden. They also held the pavers in place, so I needed to find a way to fill that void. The drainage is not only a sensible idea, but also a way to hold the pavers together. Here a picture of all the logs that I have removed and stored temporarily under the verandah.
Then it was an easy matter of digging a trench, filling it up to make the drainage sit level with the pavers (or just below) and get it ready to be concreted. The following is a pictorial reference of what I did over two days with a few comments thrown in… (each comment relates to the picture above it)
This pic is pre digging. The grooves in the ground are from where I have removed the treated pine logs. The drainage next to it is what’s going in once I’ve dug the trench. Note also that the ground is totally bare and has been covered by weed mat for a few months.
Here I’ve started digging the trench. I’ve also dug a hole through into an easement at the back of the yard. I had to jump over a 7 foot fence a couple of times and needed to dig half way to China, but got some storm water pipe through. I’ll concrete this in, once I’m sure it all works. The two following photos show the same thing in a bit more detail…
On to the trench…
To dig the above trench, I needed to remove a massive root (above the above pic) that was in the way. It was roughly the same size as storm water pipe. I eventually got it with the mattock, but it was not an easy job.
Here I just cleared the path of the trench and worked out how wide it needed to be. Too wide! Also, as you may see in previous pics, the ground is not level and therefore I had to ensure dirt wasn’t going to fall back in as I dug it out.
Rear drain now sitting nicely in the trench. The size worked out well.
10 o’clock on the second day and I realised I had a blister. I was wearing gloves, but the wedding ring I normally wear (you can see the dent) must have pressed up against that part of my hand. I took the ring off and kept working. 🙂
Finally got the trench done. The other side now fits in as well.
The trench is the right size now to hold all of the drainage. A full check as you can see above shows it will fit. Now I just need to raise the beds to the right level and then stake the drain in place until I can do the concrete.
Stakes on the Barby – pun intended. I got a 3m length of wood and cut it into stakes using the circular saw. I also did a quick angle cut to help belt them in. These are just to hold the drain until the concrete has been poured.
I am supposed to fill the bed with sand, but I wanted to do dirt first. I also wanted to avoid big rocks, so I used a spare 1m length of drain (as you can see in the pic) and filled it by pouring dirt onto the top of the grate. It filtered out the big rocks and I used that soil the level the bed. If the rain that happens before conreting makes the level drop, I can use sand before the proper laying.
Once the beds were in, I worked out exactly how high the storm water pipe needed to be. I then cut it and a hole in the end of the drainage (prescored). This meant that the water collects in the drains and runs through this pipe out into the easement.
And that’s pretty much where it’s been left for the moment. It will be fine to sit as it is until I get a sunny couple of days and I can get the concrete in there.
More to follow!
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