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By the time this project started, I had already re-done the front yard, the driveway, the side driveway, both side yards, the fence, and ground out some stumps in the back yard. Pretty much all that was left was to re-do the rest of the backyard, so I broke out the shovels and got started. What can I say, I need to have stuff to work on or I get bored... The plan is similar to the work out front, but with some extras specific to the nature of a private backyard setting. The goal is to make the yard more functional, more enjoyable, lower the current maintenance requirements, and to increase the overall resale value of the house.
PicturesEarly WorkRemoving the stones and existing planter beds. I saved the stones for use later. Deb was shooting the pictures, so you get to see me work along with Caitlin.
Various pictures of the backyard after I removed all of the wood chips and planter beds.
Fence building remnants saved for future fence work.
Stump remnants and wood chips yet to be disposed of.
Fence building remnants to complete the open corner of the yard, yet-to-be-disposed of railroad ties, various landscaping and drip irrigation supplies, plus a spare section of hose from the pond.
Grill, small shed, and yet-to-be removed gravel from under the hose reel.
What gravel?
More wood chips. The previous owners loved them; I do not share their enthusiasm.
Staking out some possible deck and hot tub ideas. This area turned out to be way too soft to be easy to put a hot tub here - there used to be a tree right in the middle of the possible hot tub location, so the ground ended up being very soft for a long time after this - as in, years later. And, it's on top of a gravel pit for the downspouts on this side of the house, another bad thing to put a hot tub on top of. It's fine to cover this area with a deck, but bad to put a bunch of weight on it from a hot tub.
Staking out some possible ideas for a new set of stairs to the deck. This turned out to be a bad idea - the stairs landed almost on top of the septic tank. I'm glad another project let me find that out before building the stairs and paver walkway over top of the tank...
Temporary Sprinkler SystemThe temporary sprinkler system. I bought the final manifold and valve assembly, and rather than do all the work to bury it, I just used a pair of simple sprinklers and hoses set out of the way to water the lawn. I did this after I brought in some dirt and re-seeded after some septic line work so that I wouldn't have to get up and water the lawn every morning. Now, the same timer that controls the front sprinklers and drip irrigation system controls the temporary rear sprinkler system. I'll be able to re-use almost all of the parts, and the sprinkler valve control wire exits the house in the final location; it's just not buried yet.
This large leafed plant behind the deck is the primary reason for the drip irrigation system being installed along with the lawn sprinklers. This plant was one my father in law cultivated at his house and was very proud of. After he passed away, my wife transplanted it to our house to remember him, and I'm under orders to make it thrive in memory of Dad. To ensure both domestic tranquility and to honor my father in law's memory, I made sure it's well placed and well watered. It's known as "dinosaur food" to some gardeners, but it's proper name is Gunnera tinctoria. It's doing quite well in it's new home. I actually kind of like it now that it's been there for a while.
We had a bit of a freeze for Thanksgiving 2010, and I found out I forgot to turn off the water to the temporary sprinkler manifold. A burst valve was the result. And easy replacement in the spring, but I should have known better and it's money I didn't want to spend. Oh well. Such is life.
Major Work - Day 1Major work on the back yard commenced in June 2011, with the borrowing of a friend's Kubota. Sweet! I had some time off work across a month or so of calendar time, so I worked on this. Each day of progress is noted, those these are not consecutive days, nor are they all "full" days of work. But, it was all days where I made progress worth noting... This is unloading the retaining wall blocks from the trailer. These will be used to build a retaining wall along the back edge of the property so I have a level back yard. Also, my daughter decided to take a number of pictures as I worked, so you get to see me working, and some things that are interesting to a 9-year old.
This is the pile of gravel that will be used for the base of the wall and to surround the French drain I'm putting behind the wall to keep it dry. My daughter turned it into a castle before it got moved.
This is the first pallet of retaining wall blocks moved into the backyard.
My wife decided she wanted a container garden, so here's the hanging part on a simple frame of 2x4's screwed into the side of the deck. Apparently Topsy Turvey has some nice units to grow tomatoes and strawberries, and my wife got a good deal on two of each kind. They are set low enough for her to water them without a stool, which makes her happy. Later, they'll have automatic drip irrigation, but they still need to be reachable to tend to and pick the fruit when it's ready...
Digging the first section out for the wall. I used the backhoe to dig out the uphill side and get a level patch of ground to start using the bucket loader on.
A video of the same. More of the same. Yes, my daughter loves to take pictures.
Finishing touches on the hanging garden. Looks great!
With the first section level, I was able to start using the front loaded and move some dirt. Due to the slope here and loose soil on the downhill side, I had to dig down a good bit to get to a stable wall base. Some sections ended up hip-deep on the uphill side. Wow!
I needed someplace to put the dirt for a few days, so I made a pile up by the house. It won't get too big, right?
Deb watering the hanging garden for the first time...
Nearly done with the rough-in of the trench. The pile is getting bigger than I was expecting...
More trench work. That pile by the house is still growing, and now I've started placing some of the dirt at the far end of the trench near the shed. I'll move that first when it comes time to backfill the wall.
A random picture of the retaining wall block pile from my daughter.
The trench is basically done and down to the proper level. Wow.
The first load of gravel for the base of the wall. Yay!
My quick measuring stick to set the level of the base gravel relative to the string line.
More container gardening work...
This is my father in law's plant. It's doing quite well. We're going to have to divide it at some point and plant more starters from it along the back edge of the deck. It does a good job at screening the back of the deck, it doesn't have smelly flowers to bother my sinuses or attract bees, and my wife loves it. Sold!
My wife had me pose on the tractor for a picture from her camera phone. The only thing I could think of while posing was this song. :-) If your wife doesn't find you handsome, she should at least find you handy, right? No duct tape was harmed in the making of this page.
More camera phone pics from my wife of me working the tractor. The dirt pile by the house is way larger than I expected.
Deb was proud of her container and hanging gardening efforts, so there were more camera phone pics for that.
Major Work - Day 2The second day of work saw the retaining wall begin to take shape, including the French drain at the base of the wall. I was able to get about 20' of wall completed on a very shortened work day. It's pretty good progress overall.
While daddy was working, Mt. Caitlin was established and defended on one of the dirt piles.
Major Work - Day 3Despite some rainy mornings slowing things down and other "honey do" items taking up time, the wall is steadily getting longer by the end of Day 3...
Major Work - Day 4Day 4 was largely taken up with other unrelated work and errands, but I did make more good progress, and that was despite not having the tractor for part of the day. I started backfilling the trench up near the generator; Mt. Caitlin is already shrinking fast. It will need some careful sorting of the fill to get the grass clumps not on the surface later on - that will be hand rake work - and filling along the edge right behind the wall will need to be done by hand. I'm also almost ready to make use of some of the concrete debris as backfill in the bottom of the trench - I can get to it now with with tractor without driving across the septic drain field, though it's very tight along the edge of the trench. I'll be using that near the ramp - that's the deepest part of the trench, at least so far. To get this far, I've used up one new pallet of retaining wall blocks (112 to a pallet) plus the spare ones I had lying around from earlier work (15 of those), and I'm now working through the second new pallet of retaining wall blocks. At this point the wall is five blocks high and will become six blocks high in the next bit I add on. The max height of the wall should be seven blocks over near the edge of the lawn; to go any further I'll need to switch to larger blocks for more stability... At 6 blocks high, a pallet of 112 blocks goes fast - that's only about 18' of wall. I may need to get more blocks...
Major Work - Day 5Day 5 saw a lot of visible progress - I started backfilling the wall! This was the first real "full day" of work on this project, and thankfully, even the weather cooperated. To get there, I had to figure out how to do the sprinklers and what sprinkler heads I was going to use. To do that, I built this sprinkler test stand out of some basic PVC fittings and spare lumber, complete with individual shutoff valves, hooked it up to the garden hose. For the water pressure at my house and the distances I needed the sprinklers to cover in the backyard, three sprinklers at once was the optimal number. I selected the smaller gear driven units - not only were they cheaper (about 1/3 the cost of the other units due to a clearance sale at my local Home Depot when I did this work), but they are also quieter. The larger units were the kind that make a ratcheting noise as they move - they have an arm on a spring that slaps the unit over a degree or so at a time and the water pressure pushes it back out again to repeat the cycle. I'd prefer quieter if I'm going to do early morning watering just outside my bedroom window... I'll return the unused sprinklers. The test stand only cost me about $30 and a couple of hours to build, and was well worth it. I set it up in the side driveway and adjusted the sprinklers to a narrow pattern, and let 'er rip. The plywood kept me from getting soaked by any mis-adjusted sprinklers on initial startup, as well as keeping most of the "backsplash" away from me. I still got some, but it worked pretty well.
After figuring out the sprinkler layout, I hit up the local Home Depot for enough to cover the entire backyard. I got all of the needed fittings to assemble the flexible risers to the sprinklers and pre-assembled all six sprinklers I'll be using. I only have two installed so far, so here's the other four.
Here's the sprinkler in the middle of the run along the retaining wall, awaiting final positioning and backfilling of the trench.
Here's the sprinkler at the end of the run near the generator, after initial backfilling. This is the "end of the run" for this circuit- it will be the last of the three sprinklers along the retaining wall.
Since Daddy got to "play in the water", Caitlin had to as well. She spent the day making mud anywhere possible in the backyard, and Daddy tried to make sure it was in areas of the yard he wouldn't be working in today... I did managed to spray her with the hose once, though, so it was sort of worth it. :-) What is it with kids and mud? I did it when I was a kid, so it must run in the family...
The middle sprinkler along the retaining wall after initial backfilling. Caitlin helped with this by holding the sprinkler in place while I hand filled around it to hold it in place. I also hand backfilled around the water line to ensure it was not getting pulled or kinked in strange ways, and that it was reasonably well supported before I did any tractor-powered backfilling.
Initial backfilling of the half of the wall closest to the generator. I basically pushed the dirt near the wall into the trench and drove over it with the tractor to help compact it. I tried to get the grass clumps buried deeper so I could later smooth out the surface where needed. Also, I made sure to stay at least a foot away from the wall with the tractor to prevent "blowouts" due to excess point loads on the wall due to the tractor tires pushing directly (or almost directly) on the wall. It's new and not as stable as it will be after things settle into place. As the wall gets taller further along, I'll give it an even wider berth to be safe. Also, I was careful about not placing shock loads on the wall by suddenly dumping a ton of dirt on the back side of the wall. Slow and steady, and give it room. The tractor is plenty heavy enough to compress things quite nicely just by driving over it, and you can use the bucket to smooth things out and level the surface. I did have to hand rake the section right next to the wall to smooth it and pull sod clumps up to the open area of the trench, but that was pretty easy. For reference, I believe the tractor as seen on this page is about 2600 pounds without anything in the bucket and without me on it - add me on it and the chains we keep in the backhoe bucket to pull roots and hold stuff to the front bucket when moving about, and it's about 3000lbs total... It compacts stuff nicely...
Next, I started excavating the pile of dirt I had previously placed at the shed end of the wall. I spread it over the backfilled area of the trench for now, and it's clearly much higher than it needs to be. But, for now, this is keeping the dirt out of the way - I'll spread it more evenly later. I need access to the concrete debris up by the generator to use as backfill, and I don't want to drive over the septic drain field to get to it. This keeps the dirt pile out of the way until later work is done. I only have so much room in the yard to work with, so I have to do some shuffling like this...
The very end of the wall has a ton of roots there; basically, it's a root festival. Some of the roots are from the neighbor's live tree that you can see behind the fence in the first picture (don't dig those up!), but those are the deepest roots and should be out of the way. There are a ton of older more surface roots from my old Norway maple that are slowly rotting in place. The stump for that is cut off at ground level just to the right of the green metal post in the first picture, and the stump is touching the fence line at it's base. Fortunately, the Norway maple roots are above (as in, they are closer to the original ground level) the roots for my neighbor's tree, so I was able to remove a good chunk of the Norway maple roots with the tractor and not touch the roots from my neighbor's tree. There are also a bunch of even older mostly rotted roots in the area from trees removed before I bought the house, and those came . And to get decent access to this, I decided to just make the ramp into the ditch wider, all the way over to the edge of the lawn. It was easier than trying to back down the ramp and attack this area while the tractor was sitting at an angle, and it was faster too. I tried to separate the excavated dirt into "good topsoil" and "sandy junk" as I excavated it. The good topsoil went along the previously backfilled section of trench and will be surface level material when all is said and done. The junk went over to Mt. Caitlin and will be used as lower level backfill along the base of the wall, likely around the concrete debris.
The dirt pile on top of the trench is growing larger during all of this...
Remember all those roots I mentioned? As I pulled them up in pieces, I was simply throwing them up onto the grass area that I was not driving on with the tractor until I could take them to the yard waste bin. This is a small portion of what eventually ended up in the yard waste bin... Wow. The bin is quite heavy, and I still need to mow the non-trampled grass this week...
The dirt pile near the wall got pretty large, but can be easily pushed into the trench to the right once the wall gets longer... That's the theory, anyway...
Major Work - Day 6Day 6 got me to a major milestone - the completion of the retaining wall to the edge of the lawn by the shed. The retaining wall is not completely done - there is still a bit more to go behind the shed at some point, but that part is for later. For now, I can complete the backfilling behind the wall for the lawn area (and get rid of Mt. Caitlin - my daughter will be unhappy), finish the sprinkler installation, and get going on growing some grass again. The day was rainy in the morning, so I ensured a sunny afternoon by running out and buying a raincoat; Murphy lives. The yard was pretty slimy and muddy, but it was only the top few inches, so I pressed ahead and made good progress. I also had to buy another pallet of retaining wall blocks to get this far. I have a bunch more to complete the wall behind the shed for later, though. I was not able to get any pictures on the day of the work due to running late and working right until darkness fell, so any pictures of this work are form the following day. Also, as part of today's efforts, the drainage pipe behind the wall now has an exit outside the wall at it's low point about 2/3'rds of the way from the generator to the shed. Only a short section of the wall ended up being 6 blocks high. Most of it ended up being only 5 blocks high, which is good news for materials cost and the overall stability of the wall. Here's the wall. It got a bit wavy at one point. I was working fast in the rain about then, and it's the highest portion of the wall. I'm declaring that it "has character" and moving on. :-)
It got real squishy where I was running the tractor back and forth...
The remaining retaining wall blocks to be used behind the shed...
Mt. Caitlin in it's final form. The previous ramp excavation work put more junk dirt on here. It will all be back in the trench soon enough...
Major Work - Day 7First up was getting the tubing for the sprinkler nearest the shed situated, and hooking up the sprinkler head and the inline automatic drain valve at the lowest point in the lines. You can see it in the second picture. I also installed more filter fabric over the gravel covering the last sections of French drain at the base of the wall, and then covered it in dirt to protect it. The drain valve is covered with a healthy sized pile of gravel for good drainage.
Then, I moved all the random concrete debris and small rocks I had stored by the generator into the bottom of the remaining hole. That way it helps with drainage, and it will end up at least 12" below the surface when it's all said and done. And excellent use for all that junk, if I do say so myself. :-)
I did have to backfill and level a bit next to the generator after removing the debris. I just scooped it out with the front loader and that dug a small hole. Meh. It was faster this way.
This is the state of things after Mt. Caitlin was put back into the hole. Overall, it did a pretty good job of filling the hole, though I still will need more topsoil. I expected that, though. I am raising the level of the yard noticeably with the retaining wall...
I also had to remove the remaining gravel pile closer to the shed so I could pull a vehicle through the side driveway.
What vehicle? This one. I needed topsoil, and the dump bed was helpful, though only after unloading part of it by tractor and by hand. The topsoil was wet and stuck to the bed, and was very heavy. I got about 2 yards on this trip. By weight, the truck itself was officially overloaded, the dump kit even more so. It was still very helpful to have the dump kit, though.
Naturally, Caitlin needed to help. Even with the dump bed up, a bunch of topsoil was stuck to the bed at the front and had to be removed with a hoe and a rake. Whatever. What slid out on it's own still made a nice sized pile...
My wife noticed that her container garden was starting to sprout, so she took some pictures of it.
One more picture of the dump bed up for good measure. In fairness, this was the first time my family had seen it in use since I got it installed, so it was a big deal to them. I just wanted to make progress on the yard... :-)
And here's the rough leveling of the new topsoil with the tractor, plus some hand raking near the wall. I will need more topsoil at the far end, but it's definitely a good start on this piece of the job.
Major Work - Day 8This was a real work day, so all I could do in my spare time was get 2 yards of topsoil home, unload it, and smooth it out with the tractor. It's progress, though...
Major Work - Day 9Another "real work day", but I managed to both get some more dirt, and work on extended the wall a bit towards the shed. That's why the pictures are so dark and out of focus - it was late when I knocked off work on this. :-) By extending the wall another 4' or so further towards the shed, I can backfill the area at the edge of the lawn to the correct height and not have a cliff of dirt at the edge. This will help hold things in place until I can find time to move a bunch of things from behind the shed and move the car that's presently next to the shed so I can finish the wall back in that area. It's not critical to the lawn work, and can be done later, so this is a good stopping point on the wall.
I started trenching for the feed tubing for the sprinklers along the wall. I also had to re-do the fittings at the sprinkler take-off from the main line - the bend in the pipe was too sharp, so it kinked. I added a T-fitting on a much more gradual bend (that was further away form the corner) and a short piece of tubing that runs back into the corner to the existing fittings and flexible pipe to go to the sprinkler head.
While trenching, I found the edge of the French drain for this side of the house - this is where the gutters drain to. So, I'll have to make the trench a lot shallower in this area, which means I'll have to be more careful later when it comes time to till the existing lawn surface...
Major Work - Day 10Almost there... Another two loads of dirt (that's another four yards) today, plus a lot of leveling and more trenching. First up is some video of me digging that my daughter took while she was walking across the yard. You may want motion sickness pills before viewing... Work continued on the trench for the feed tubing for the sprinklers along the retaining wall. I made it as deep as possible to keep it away from any future errant shovels and the like.
Caitlin decided that riding around the backyard was a good way to stay un-bored.
The sprinkler feed tubing at the end of the trench closest to the house. I still need to hand-trench over to the location for the valves and do the hook-ups for all that...
More bike riding - this time with her tongue out in an attempt to get Dad to stop working and come play with her instead... Sorry, gotta work...
The trench is done! Note the union in the tubing not far from the house.
A close up of the union in the tubing in the trench in case I need to locate it in the future.
Same trench, looking the other way.
The trench, after backfilling and tamping down by driving the tractor over it.
The backfilled retaining wall and trench area after a full leveling and grading was done on it.
Same thing, just from a different viewpoint. Note the stack of left-over retaining wall blocks stacked in front of the car next to the shed. I'll use these when it's time to extend the retaining wall further behind the shed. That's for a later project, though.
Major Work - Day 11Laying out the final set of sprinkler heads and tubing, the planting beds along the house and deck, and the location of the valve box for the sprinklers.
Digging the first section of trench for the mow strip edging and the sprinkler tubing. Turns out I have some hard pan about 12" down in this area. Whee! And it's too tight to the house to the use the backhoe, so it's all hand-digging...
Major Work - Day 12I'm bringing out the big guns for final leveling of the yard - the tiller.
It did a quite reasonable job with ~2 passes over each area set to go down about 3" or so. What grass? If I'd have had more time, I would have done another 2-3 passes to chew up the small grass clumps some more, but this was quite good for the time I had to use the tractor.
Laying out the string lines to be used for leveling the lawn area. You have to click on the pics to see them full size to be able to see the string lines, but they are there.
After tilling and laying out the string lines, there was a bunch of hand work to rake the lawn area out smooth and level.
After all was done, there was one small area near the stairs that needed more topsoil to get it to the desired level that will match the existing concrete pad at the base of the stairs. I'll be using some gravel near the base of the stairs to connect the concrete pad to the lawn, so no sense backfilling that. The curve of the extra backfill roughly approximates the eventual mow strip edging line I plan to use.
Major Work - Day 13At this point, it's all hand work. Joint numbing, slow-going, hand work. You can't use the big toys for everything, unfortunately... I'm digging an 8" deep trench where the mow strip edging will go and using it for the mow strip and the feed lines for the sprinklers. I also excavated for the sprinkler valve box, and excavated over to where the water line will penetrate the foundation plus where the control wire comes out of the house and heads down into the soil. I excavated extra deep under the valve box to put down some gravel for better drainage in case of leaks.
A few pictures from Caitlin of things in progress. She tends towards close-up shots of things that don't give a ton of context, but they're decent pictures of various stuff, so I'm posting them for-the-record.
The corner by the side driveway is taking shape, and the sprinkler head is installed. There is an automatic drain valve next to it, buried in gravel for good drainage. The feed tubing is almost right under the mow strip edging for the first few feet. I used a special 90 degree corner piece to hook up the edging; I think it looks pretty good.
Adding gravel under the valve box so that the top of the box will be at ground height. The valves will lay on this, and there will be some more gravel around the edges so the box rests on gravel and not on the tubing.
Working my way around the corner by the stairs... I had to move the stakes to be able to dig here. I'm still not 100% sure where I'm going to mount the sprinkler head yet, but it will be somewhere in this area. Maybe in the gravel, maybe in the lawn... We'll see how it works out...
The first corner after backfilling, tamping the backfill down, and raking/leveling the lawn surface. This may need some hand-tilling later on... It's pretty packed down here, and I had to shave a couple inches of hard-packed sod and dirt off in some places to get it reasonably level.
Major Work - Day 14Next up, more hand digging, mow strip installation, moving and tamping dirt, and installing the manifold and valve assembly. I need to get it all hooked up and ready to go out-of-the-ground, then install it in ground. I also need to drill a hole through my foundation and hook up the sprinkler feed properly at some point. For the initial work, it will probably be a temporary hook up to the garden hose, though...
Major Work - Day 15Not much real work here, just some pictures of preparing for a parts run to the local Home Depot. For some reason or another, I couldn't quite get it figured out right, and needed not two, but four trips across two days to eventually get all the little pieces I needed to complete the sprinkler system. Not expensive, just annoying. There is a theory floating about that having my daughter around during the planning and along for the trips may have contributed to the altered mental state that led to this situation... :-)
Major Work - Day 16The sprinklers are hooked up and working, and more of the mow strip edging is in place and done. Getting the valves hooked up and in place proved to be the most tedious part of this, mainly because the drip irrigation stuff is is no way designed to be hooked up to an automatic sprinkler circuit easily. It can be done, but it takes some creativity to do so. It could be a lot easier if the manufacturers made the right parts, but they don't. They design the drip irrigation to be hooked up to a outdoor hose connection and run manually, or maybe on a dedicated timer. So everything is made for hose connections. Sure, they have adaptors to go to pipe thread, but you end up with 50% of the hookup being adaptors by the time you're done. Want to hook up a backflow preventer valve on the drip system? You need a pipe thread to home thread adaptor to mount it to, and then another hose thread to pipe thread adaptor to get to the adjustable pressure regulator. *sigh* Oh well, it's almost all done now... The only thing I have left to do it to try and hook up an automatic drain valve to keep the lines empty so they don't freeze in the winter if I forget to drain them. The valve box after testing the two sprinkler circuits and properly aiming the sprinkler heads - that's why it's wet. I did have some amusement when the sprinkler head at the foot of the deck stairs first came on - it was pointed right at the deck. Where my wife was standing. Oops. :-) The wiring hookups can be clearly seen here. Orange is the far circuit for the drip irrigation, red is the middle circuit for the three sprinkler heads along the retaining wall, white is the near circuit for the three sprinkler heads closest to the house, green is wrapped out of the way and is unused, and black is the common/ground connection for all of the valves.
Here's the main shutoff valve that will be buried near the foundation with an access cover over it. For now, it's connected to the hose for testing with a pile of spare adaptors left over from previous work plus a PVC fitting I bought on my third trip to Home Depot. I'll replace the adaptor with a some hose fitting fort the 3/4" poly line I'm using to plumb the system when I get it run through the foundation and properly hooked up to the house water supply. I already have the plumbing in the crawlspace to hook up the outside faucets and sprinklers, it has a backflow prevention valve and individual circuits for each faucet or sprinkler feed that each have their own shutoff valves. It's a nice looking piece of copper work that no one but me will ever see...
The sprinkler head at the foot of the deck stairs. It's set to rotate through ~200 degrees so that it waters along the back edge of the deck and then over towards the house. I couldn't have it do a full 270 degrees (aka, a 3/4 circle) since the deck isn't deep enough and it would end up spraying the back of the house badly. It works out pretty well though, with the sprinkler head by the corner of the house getting the area this one misses. The area in the corner is in shade much of the day and stays damp anyway, so this works out quite well to water that area less that the rest of the yard.
The sprinkler head at the far edge of the deck. It's temporarily set above ground using rocks to hold it in place until I get the trench that far along. This is good enough to test the system and rough-set the range, angle, and throw of the sprinkler heads, though. There is an automatic drain valve near the sprinkler head, though it's hard to see in this photo.
The valve box after some more testing and refinement.
The valve box after the initial backfilling with gravel for good drainage. I pulled up on the box slightly after some backfilling so that the box wasn't sitting right on the tubing that runs under the box edges.
The valve box and surrounding area of mow strip edging after final backfilling. The pile of dirt on the left is still being used to backfill other areas along the mow strip edging along the back edge of the deck. The black tubing coming out of the ground to the right of the valve box is the drip irrigation tubing. That will be on the surface for now, and later barely buried under a layer of decorative rocks. When you plant something out here, you add a drip irrigation nozzle for it, so you want it to be accessible to do that when needed.
The sprinkler head at the foot of the deck stairs and the mow strip edging in that area after final backfilling. I'll put gravel between the mow strip and the concrete pad at the base of the stairs later on to level things out. Also, at the far left and running behind the stairs you can see the drip irrigation tubing laying on top of my pile of random left-over tubing and other parts from various projects. I've been saving the oddball bits and pieces until everything is done. It's nice to have spare parts to complete various pieces of work. I'll get rid of it all when I'm done, likely when I re-do the deck...
The mow strip and sprinkler tubing trench along the back edge of the deck. I switched to a single-shovel-blade-wide trench here because I only have one sprinkler tube to bury and it's a simple straight run all the way down the line. I have some extra mow strip edging from another project that I can use to fill out to the end of the deck for now. Eventually, the deck will get redone and things may change out along the fence, but for now, this will do just fine and I don't have to buy another 60 feet of mow strip just to go 10 feet... This is why saving left-over bits from earlier projects can be helpful...
Major Work - Day 17This day was final work on the mow strip along the back of the deck, installing the final sprinkler head, and getting the sprinkler valves hooked up correctly. The mow strip is now finished, complete with a short "return" at the far edge of the deck.
And now the sprinkler head and automatic drain at this end of the sprinkler line are also final installed and the trench backfilled.
Same thing, just viewed from over by the generator.
The 2" PVC line that houses the sprinkler wire needed a longer pipe to be run down into the ground to prevent exposed wire along the foundation - compare to previous pictures to see the difference. it's subtle, but important. The 2" PVC pull point and tubing was spare stuff I had laying around when I did the temporary sprinkler valve install the previous summer, so it's way overkill for size, but it works fine and it was free. The down-pipe was intentionally left short before so the cable could be accessible above ground for the temporary valve install. When I did this, I temporarily unwired the cable form the valves, pulled the spare cable out of the crawlspace, final tacked it down inside the crawlspace, and ran a longer piece of 2" PVC down below ground level.
I laid the wire in place and made sure it was out of the way of the main shutoff valve ad backfilled a bit to keep the wire in place. I then re-ran the cable back into to the valve box, cut it to length, and did the final hookups to the valves using the same wiring colors as noted previously on this page.
Same thing, just with more backfilling around the sprinkler wire.
I also moved the pile of dirt off the lawn and next to the deck so that I could final level things and plant some grass seed. I'll need the dirt to backfill the hole next to the foundation after I run the water line into the crawlspace and hook it up for real, but that may not be for a while. The front sprinklers have been on a temporary hookup for a few years now... :-/ Major Work - Day 18This day was the final drip irrigation hookup work, wiring up the new 6-station sprinkler controller, and testing the sprinklers + drip irrigation setup. I needed one last fitting to hook up the automatic drain valve on the drip irrigation system - a 1/2" PVC 90 degree elbow that went to 1/2" female pipe threads. Now, once the pressure bleeds off of the drip irrigation system, it will automatically bleed off the water so it can't freeze in the winter time, the same as the sprinkler lines.
I also took the time to run drip irrigation to all of the containers in my wife's container gardening effort. I was pretty sure that getting up in the morning to water it would be hit or miss, and sure enough, it has been. I had a ton of spare parts laying about form the previous work out from, and with a few new adjustable emitters and about 60 minutes of time to sort it out and hook it all up, it was all set and working. No more waking up to water the garden in the morning before it gets too hot. Whee! I did have to adjust the pressure regulator all the way down - the previous setting was way too high and it literally took 12+ hours to the tiny emitters to bleed off all the pressure in the system. That was a lot of overwatering on the first try... I hooked up the new 6 station controller and tested it out. Nothing special here. It's laying on a shelf in the garage until I get that area of the garage fully re-done. I can reach it when I need to get to it, so it's fine for now. And it's now set to water the back yard starting at 9am. I should probably plant some grass seed pretty soon so I'm not watering the back yard dirt for nothing... :-) Major Work - Day 19This day was for spreading grass seed and fertilizer and doing the "watering in" of them to get things started. Nothing too special here, but I do officially have grass growing on my back yard again, so it's a big deal. :-) I buried the automatic drain valve for the drip irrigation system in some gravel so it drains properly; the picture is in the ones for the previous day (see above) because I took the pictures out of order from the work. I also found a few minutes to apply some weed/grass killer along the edge of concrete pad at the bottom of the deck stairs so it will be ready to place some weed block fabric and gravel there in the near future...
Major Work - Day 20This was an evening of small work, but it was progress worth noting. First, a couple of pictures of the stuff my wife is growing in her container garden. I think she may have planted a wee bit much in those first two containers...
Here's the real work for the evening - drilling a hole in the foundation for the sprinkler feed hose. Notice the copious quantities of pulverized concrete below the hole. All that material ground up while drilling the 1 3/8" hole had to go somewhere....
I rented a huge hammer drill and 1 3/8" (!) bit to do the drilling for this and for the front sprinklers. It made short work of the drilling, but it was heavy, beastly, and so large I had to excavate a slightly larger hole to make room for the hammer drill and bit to sit level and drill into the foundation. Impressive!
I installed a short piece of 1" Schedule 40 PVC as a surround/shield/rub protection for the eventual 3/4" poly tubing that will go through the foundation and hook up to the water lines in the crawlspace. Remember that it's 1" inside diameter, so the outside diameter of the hole needs to be larger. I used copious quantities of Liquid Nails as both to glue it into place to keep it from moving around relative to the foundation and as a sealer to keep small critters out of the crawlspace. Why Liquid Nails? I had a brand-new tube of it lying around, and it seemed like it would do the job nicely, so I used it. Before installing the PVC I even remembered to file down the inside edge of the PVC at both ends into a smooth radiused edge so the poly tubing wouldn't have any sharp spots to catch/rub/break on.
I also took a quick picture of the grass - it's slowly but steadily growing in now. I discovered that I needed even more water that I had been applying - the most heavily watered spots (the sprinklers are not perfectly even in how they water) came up first and are growing the best. :-/
Major Work - Day 21This was a full day of work around the house, both on this project and on similar work for the front sprinklers. The big deal here was doing the final/proper hookup of the sprinkler feed to the house water supply by running it through the new hole in the foundation and hooking it up to the feed lines waiting in the crawlspace. Installing the 3/4" poly tubing was pretty straightforward with the exception of the usual wrestling with getting it on the fittings - they are a tight fit. In the crawlspace, the hookup to the previously installed feed line was easy. However, after turning on the water and leaving it sit for an hour or so, I discovered I had a small drip on the pipe thread fitting on the outlet side of the shutoff valve in the crawlspace. Since it was copper line, I had to turn it all off, cut the line, remove and re-install the leaking joint with better thread sealer, and then solder in a coupler where I had cut the copper line. Not hard, but it took a bit to get it all done. My copper pipe soldering skills are getting better, apparently. None of those have leaked, so far... *knock on wood* Here's the outside shut-off valve hooked up and working for the first time. W00t!
Same spot, after installing the access "box" with gravel around the base, plus backfilling it with dirt and compacting it down a bit.
I still have a non-trivial dirt pile here, so I'll have to put it behind the shed or something after I can walk on the yard again. It's annoying, but I'll need backfill in that area eventually, so no biggie.
While doing the crawlspace work, I also took the time to repair the copper feed line that goes to the side faucet I had installed earlier. I previously had to do a similar repair on this feed line with the leaking pipe fitting, and I chose to try and install a threaded union in the line instead of soldering it - bad idea. The union always dripped/leaked, so the shut off valve for the line to the side faucet was off until I got it fixed. This time I did it right by cutting out the union, loosening all the clamps so the line could be spread apart an inch or so, and soldering in a piece of copper tubing with couplers on both ends. With the feed line fixed, I finally got around to installing a hose reel on the side of the house. Too bad the hose I was using over here is so old the the end fitting leaks and the hose is too stiff to wind around the reel. I'll replace the hose soon enough, though. That's the easy part of all this... Also, when working over here, I realized that I could see the top of the footing directly under the faucet (!) - not good. You can see the original dirt line on the foundation - much higher than the current ground level. The previous owner had re-leveled this area to make a decent side driveway and then after I bought the house it seems that things settled some more. The net result was that the top of the footing was at ground level on the outside. I brought in some gravel to help fix that, and that's the new gravel you can see here against the house. It's about 8" think in places. The gravel here was very low for some reason, I'm guessing settling, so adding more helped fill this area in nicely.
Major Work - Day 22No major work this day, just a photo of my well-watered and fast-growing back lawn. Houston, we have grass! I also too the time to remove the various car parts from the planter area behind the deck and get then stowed out of the way elsewhere. Yeah, I'm a car guy and I have spare parts for a ton of different projects stashed all over the place. Meh.
Major Work - Day 23Another real/full work day with lots of progress. First up was clearing the grass from the foot of the deck stairs, adding weed block fabric, and laying down some gravel. I made the gravel level with the concrete base pad for the stairs so that the 2" tall concrete pad wouldn't be a tripping hazard like it used to be.
The last of the dirt pile is gone - it's all been moved behind the shed, where eventually I'll finish the retaining wall all the way back there. Eventually...
Clearing the grass and old weed block fabric from the planter area behind the deck. I used a grub hoe to pull up the grass that was there and disposed of it all behind the shed. It'll rot and compact into dirt by the time I get around to working back there. I hope... Dad's plant is safely tied up out of the way, and the drip irrigation line is temporarily routed behind the deck railing supports to keep it out of the way while I'm working.
Laying down the weed block fabric in the rear planter area. My daughter got a hold of the camera, and she can pick some real great times to take pictures... The weed block fabric came out pretty good, though.
I laid the drip irrigation tubing back down and staked it in place, and put large rocks over it to help mark it and hold it down. Naturally, Caitlin managed to get in middle of one of the pictures... The pressure gauge on the line is there to check the adjustable pressure regulator. I'm still having some issues with it dripping for hours after it shuts off, and I was trying to make sure the pressure was set right. It is, so that's not the problem. It previously worked well when run for a slightly longer time, so I'm resetting the timer to let it run for a bit longer to see how that works.
At this point I'm finally starting to get some decorative rocks into the planter. I had a huge pile stored over by the fence, and I'm moving them over one 5-gallon-bucket-full at a time. I've placed my few larger rocks near the corner and other places of interest. The rest will be filled in by the medium and small sized rocks, with the very edge of the planter being filled in with the same 1-2" rock that I used in the planter beds out front.
Here's the rock pile underneath the stored truck canopy for my 1986 Ford F250. The pile is steadily getting smaller, and by the end of the evening I was finally able to get the canopy sawhorse supports setting on the ground instead of on the rock pile, which is good news. I also managed to catch Caitlin while she was helping load the rocks into the buckets. The last picture was taken the following morning.
Another "the next morning" picture to show the progress on the planter behind the deck.
This picture was from the day of the work. While moving the rock pile, we found a small frog living in it. Caitlin managed to get an unexpectedly good photo of it while avoiding work for a few minutes. I decided it was worth posting here.
Not shown here was some re-arranging work behind the shed so that I had room to dump the extra dirt back there. It will eventually be part of the backfill behind the final section of retaining wall that will be put there. For now, it's basically "dirt and debris storage" in the form of a compost pile... Major Work - Day 24Today was filled with more time spent altering the locations of many small
rocks. Without too much work, the remaining rock pile by the fence was gone and
moved into place in the planter beds. Now I have more area to grow
Next up was filling in around the larger rocks with smaller 1"-2" sized rocks. I had an excess of these stored in the front yard planter bed from previous work there, so I removed them and relocated them back here. This killed two birds with one stone, so to speak. I filled in and finished the planter behind the deck plus some of the one next to the deck, and I finally completed the front planter bed. W00t! I also finally was able to remove the straps holding my father-in-law's plant up against the deck. Now that I was done working in that area, the plant can flop around more or less however it wants to. Unfortunately, I think the stress of being tied up for so long was a bit too much for some of the main stems - two of the main leaves fell flat to the ground and right onto the lawn. I don't think they will recover this year, but it should do fine next year. I hope... The final result here looks quite nice and it hasn't really cost me anything yet for the rock as it was all on the property already - it just needed relocating from different parts of my yard.
Major Work - Day 25This was an evening of work getting started on the planter bed on the rear of the house. I moved the car parts out of the way temporarily so I could work. They'll go back here until they get used on their various projects, but only after the planter bed is installed and has the decorative rocks in it. Less weeds, it will look better than not having the planter done even with the part there, and frankly, the planter work will be done and I can cross off another project from my to-do list. The grass and weeds were stripped, the ground was leveled, and weed block fabric was put down, same as everywhere else. Note the drip irrigation line is running along the foundation so it's out of the way of any future planting work.
Same thing, but after I installed my sonic mole chaser in the gravel near the corner of the lawn, and after laying down a bit of gravel at the end of the planter bed to level things out. The second picture is a better view of that end of the planter bed work. It turned out that the mole chaser was not installed deep enough in the ground, so it was way too loud. I could hear it inside the house when I went to bed - the master bedroom is on that corner of the house - so I had to turn it off until I can dig a bit deeper of a hole and solve the nighttime noise problem.
I also purchased four large square stepping stones to put in place under the hose reel and shut off valve to provide stable and sure-footed access to that later on. They're grey and will blend in with the decorative rock nicely. I also remembered to staple down the drip irrigation tubing so it would (hopefully) stay put. Not shown is the vehicular shuffling I did to make sure I could back my truck down into the side driveway with a load of decorative stones when I find time to pick them up.
Major Work - Day 26Next up was an evening of work to complete the planter bed along the back of the house. I need to get a load of 1"-2" decorative stones to complete this work, and one pickup load of 1 and 1/4 yards (about 3000lbs or so) did perfectly to complete this area. These pictures are before washing the stones down. They come fairly dirty from loading and unloading, and need a final wash after placing them to get them to look correct. This also helps settle them into place a bit. Check out the third picture - isn't the lawn doing great? I need to mow it again. It needs mowing twice a week right now - it's growing very fast, which is a good thing. It's getting nice and strong and thick and hopefully will be crowding out any weeds that might want to take hold.
After rinsing the decorative rocks and letting things dry, it looks pretty darned good. The pressure treated wood is to go under some of the car parts to prevent damage from the rocks.
Major Work - Day 27Another part-day of work, starting with a lawn mowing. Looking good!
I moved all of the car parts out form behind the shed so I could work in that area to complete the wall. It hasn't been this empty back here in years...
I needed to put the car parts back against the house to get them out of the way, and I also needed to move some other car parts from behind the shed to be able to complete the retaining wall in that area, backfill it, and put down some gravel there.
Before doing anything else, I needed to remove the weeds and wood chips from the area behind the shed, so the yard waste bin was filled up. Caitlin got a hold of the camera and took these pictures while I was working. The final picture of the area near the fence shows I need to remove some dirt and loose fill from there, but overall it's not too bad.
The final result of the de-weeding and de-wood-chipping. Not bad for an hours work. I ended up filling a spare trash can with more weeds and wood chips that did not fit into the yard waste bin - I'm planning to dump that into the yard waste bin as soon as it has room again.
Major Work - Day 28This was actually spread out across a few days of spare-time work, but it adds up to about a days work. This was the work on the side of the shed to deal with the ~3' tall stump that was left from the previous tree removal work I had done. We simply cut it off as flush with the ground as possible. To do that effectively, I rented a monster 32" bar chainsaw. The 20" saw I had access to for free just wasn't cutting it, literally. All I can say about the 32" Stihl chainsaw that I rented is "wow!"; that was a serious tool! Very cool, very powerful, and very tiring for someone not used to using it.
After doing that, I moved my car parts stashed beside the shed rearward to the area where the stump was, and then cleaned up the last of the wood chips and weeds alongside the shed near the front. After that, I used the last of my spare gravel alongside the shed near the front to get the area under my parts graveled in so they wouldn't need to move anymore for this work. They are heavy, and I often get to work alone, so I didn't want to be blocked waiting for a hand to move them later on in the project.
I've decided to build a simple 8' tall x ~16' long lattice screen behind the shed and just inside the retaining wall. I'll be using three fence posts to make two 8' long fence sections and lattice instead of fence boards to ensure it's not a huge sail in the wind. I will use three cross-beams - one at ground level, one at 4' and one at 8' - which will make it easy to nail full 4'x8' sheets of lattice to, and put trim boards on the side facing the neighbors to make it look nice. This will help screen the parts I'm storing back there from view and make it look a lot nicer from the neighbor's point of view for very little work and cost on my part. After figuring out the wall location, I can figure out the fence post locations and prepare for them. I will be using 12' 4x4's for fence posts so that I get a full 4' of post in the ground to help ensure a stable fence, even with so much of the post sitting in what may end up being very loose backfill for the wall. As part of this batch of work, I got the first two of the three fence post holes dug and I put in 4' cardboard footing tubes that were on ~8' centers and plumbed up. The dirt in this area is very sandy with lots of small rocks and lots of roots, so a manual post-hole digger is a real joy to use here here. Each hole was dug on separate days - my arms just couldn't take more than one at a time. Why use footing tubes? This way I can dig them first, then build and backfill the wall, and then set the posts in concrete last. Why last? After I backfill the wall and have a reasonably level surface on top, it will be very easy to bring a concrete mixer over there and do the required mixing and pouring work without worrying about the mixer or a wheelbarrow full of wet concrete taking a tumble down the steep area of the hill back there. In the first picture, you may be able to see the yellow mason's line that's been strung up to represent the top outside edge of of the wall all the way back into the corner. This allowed me to figure out the footing tube locations and get them dug and in place. You may also be able to see the very creative bungee cord usage to keep the huge bamboo plant I have back there held out of the way so I could do this work.
This is the first post hole I dug - the far corner in the back. This one ended up being a larger 8" tube because it was laying around unused from some previous purchase at Home Depot. Since out of the three fence posts, this one will be most exposed to backfill and most prone to move, I decided to use the larger one here. It uses a ton of concrete - about 1 bag for each foot of the tube you need to fill. That's a lot of concrete for just this one fence post...
This is the second post hole I dug - the middle fence post of the three. This one was a huge pain to dig - roots, rocks, and sand that didn't stay in the posthole digger without excessive force on the handles. Whee! To make my digging life somewhat easier, I bought a smaller form tube this time, only 6" in diameter. I think I'll use the smaller tube for the last hole as well...
This is a really bad cell phone picture of the 32" Stihl chainsaw I rented. Since I had a full day of rental time and my stump cutting went quickly, I let a friend use it to get started on dealing with a huge old stump in his yard. It did a very impressive job of cutting off the top ~2-3' of this stump and then cutting that cut off piece into quarter-round pieces that could be more easily moved/disposed of. What's left of this particular stump will be the target of a very large stump grinder on another day...
Major Work - Day 29TBD...
Work Left to DoMove my 1973 Electra out of the way by moving it back a bit, so we have room to work on the small dip I had to put in that area of the lawn when re-doing it so it would meet up with the existing ground height where the Electra was sitting. Dig the last post hole for the lattice fence behind the shed. Finish the retaining wall behind the shed, complete with a good gravel base and the drainage tube at the base of the wall that drains to daylight in the rearmost corner of the yard. Remove and dispose of the railroad tie that used to separate the parking area from the woodchips. Fill in the small dip in the edge of the lawn by the back of the shed. Reset the mow strip in that area to the new/proper height. Back fill the wall with gravel and pack it down for stability. Finish the lattice fence behind the shed. Continue the Roman Stack Stone under the side fence so it goes alongside the shed and so it meets up with the rear retaining wall. This will help to make the area next to the shed more level for easier parts storage, and it will help ensure the gravel doesn't migrate under the fence and into the neighbor's lawn over time. It will also allow me to bury the remaining stump in the gravel so it's not a trip hazard. Add gravel for the final surface behind and alongside the shed to reduce the future growth of weeds in that area. Move saved car parts so they are located behind the shed and between the shed and the fence so they are out of the way and out of view. Move my 1973 Electra back into place, and perhaps a bit closer to the rear retaining wall so it will be more out of the way. At some point I need to add some more plants into the planter areas and get the drip irrigation going for them - you know, the little stuff that helps turn it into a finished project... |
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Page last updated 04/17/2011 04:13:36 PM |
