Driveway and Porch Work

This is my biggest and expensive project so far, and it's directly tied into my hobby of working on cars. The problem I needed to solve was simple enough - you can't jack up cars on a gravel driveway. I could have just poured a few yards of concrete and called it good, but that would have had serious problems with drainage and appearance. And that would have bugged me - so I'm taking the time do do it right.

Basically, the driveway not only slopes towards the house, but much of it sloped towards the front porch and pond area - meaning as soon as the driveway was done in concrete, the pond would fill up with all sorts of nasty oil run-off and no fish would ever survive that. So I needed to solve that problem, but by running the level lines out and about, I realized the porch would have to be raised by nearly a foot in some areas. Ugh. Well, I wanted a bigger porch anyway, so I'm going all out on this. Fun stuff in this project includes:

Built-in drainage basins in front of the garage that tie into the existing downspout "French Drain" system.
Pouring a full 2 car wide concrete driveway all the way out to the street that has no "lip" to get into the garage (easier to get a loaded engine hoist or stand in and out).
Using decorative and functional brick pavers for the porch and for a walkway next to the driveway.
Making both the pond and porch much larger and more usable.
Adding a wide bridge over the pond between the driveway and front porch areas.
Re-landscaping the front yard to get rid of a low spot in the lawn that was always filled with moss.
Getting rid of as many hard to mow and edge sections as possible that border the lawn.
Completely re-doing the planter area out front to be lower maintenance and smaller in size.
Moving the existing front spigot to a more accessible location and adding a second one in the front planter area near the driveway.
Installing a 120V outlet in the front planter area near the driveway
Installing low-voltage lighting around the front of the house.
Installing a drip watering and lawn sprinkler system in the front of the house.

I'm doing all the work myself - I gotta get exercise somehow, right? The topper is that I'm doing this on as tight a budget as possible - I'm figuring I'll come in under $9000 for the entire project, and that includes the concrete, bricks, pond gear, rocks, and other materials. See the pictures below for the details to date - I'll add more as the project moves ahead.

The project expanded (again) to include the removal of the last stump out front in the planter bed so that the pond could be even bigger and I'd have less planter area to worry about weeding. Three of my neighbors also needed to remove stumps, so we split the cost of the stump grinder - my part was pretty fast; but one of the neighbors had a huge stump to get rid of - I'm afraid it could take all day on it's own. This time around with the stump grinder, I remembered to get some pictures of the stump grinder and what it does to the stump - it's a pretty impressive amount of destructive force.

We did get a lot done with the stump grinder - in spite of the fact that it was down for about 6 hours during the day! (First one of the grinding "teeth" came loose, and then the belt that powers the hydraulic pump broke. Both required a service call to the rental place to get them fixed. Blech.) We didn't quite get done with the big stump at my neighbor's house, but we got most of it done. I also hammered on the rental place for a reasonable deal on the rental for that day and to rent the grinder again later to finish the job. Only the first picture of the grinder is at my place, the rest are the work on the massive stump we worked on all afternoon. I neglected to get a simple "before and after" set of pictures, but you can see from the first few shots how big of a stump it was. The last few shots (the dark ones) will show you what we reduced it to. There is still some grinding left to do (and a lot of mulch to clear away!), but we got about 95% of the work done.

With the stump at my house gone, I was able to clean up the wood chips, start excavating the final outline of the pond, move ahead on the retaining walls, move ahead on laying in the water and electrical lines on the lawn side of the pond, and begin the first section of the walkway along the front of the house. I'm pretty much out of brick pavers again, so with the exception of a few pieces I have set aside to cut and lay in on the porch, I'm done with laying pavers for a while. I will be picking up a few more pieces of the retaining wall blocks to continue that work, and I will be doing lots of digging and (as my wife calls it) "playing in the dirt". I also finally got my roto-tiller back (I had loaned it out to a friend) and was able to till up the sod and dirt pile to level it out and get a plausible sub-base set up for the gravel path and re-grading of the front lawn. I managed to get the front corner done with gravel laid up there, and then I joined the railroad ties to the gray retaining wall stone along the gravel path. I also (finally) got rid of some of the old bark chips that had been used as ground cover and moved the pile back far enough to excavate for some more of the gravel path along the front edge. After all that I was able to put some new gravel in along the path and up along the street to finish things off.

Along the way, I bought and installed the first set of low-voltage lighting - if you look closely in some of the later shots you can see the lights and wires. It looks pretty impressive at night with the spot-lights shining up into the tree and into the rose bush, but I can't get a good picture of it. :-( I had to wire in a new GFCI protected circuit to run all of the outside stuff - pong pumps, low voltage lighting, sprinkler/drip irrigation systems, and the new outside outlet. All of the timers, switches, and outlets for everything are in one spot in the garage so it's easy to get to. I also took the opportunity to fix some wiring problems in the breaker box (the GFCI for the bathroom outlets was wired backwards at the breaker some stuff was doubled up at the breaker, and one circuit that should have been on a 20A breaker was on a 30A breaker - oops!) and label all of the circuits with a nice colorful printout. My wife wasn't happy that I kept flipping circuits off and on to find out what breaker handled what in the house, but I managed to not get her too mad. I also dug in and set the post that holds the new outside outlet and the junction box for the pond pumps. After the low-voltage lighting was up and running for a few weeks, I found out that a few of the connections were a bit flaky and I needed to do a proper job of splicing, soldering, and taping them before I put the rocks down in that area. It's the little stuff that will drive you nuts...

I laid in the the box that will house the control valves for the sprinkler and drip irrigation system and laid the water lines to their final locations for the new outside faucet. I also laid in a feed hose for the sprinkler system and figured out how it will work - see the scanned hand-drawn diagrams below for reference. At that time I also finished the rough-out digging work for the remainder of the pond. With the exception of some final retaining wall stones that will need to be cut to fit, the retaining walls are done along with the railroad ties next to the gravel path. I also installed the mow-strip between the gravel path and the lawn, and laid in the the final load of gravel so the path is basically done. I also removed the old plants near the front of the house in preparation for the work that needs to be done there. My wife came up with a nice idea of planting the rose bushes in that area in a giant pot later on so it would be easy to apply weed killer to the rocks. As long as you keep it out of the pot, it won't leach in and hurt the roses. I may duplicate that idea elsewhere in the planters I'm doing.

I've gotten the bulk of the work done for extending the planter area near the house and putting in the pavers along the front edge of it. I've finished the railroad ties that bound this area - to do this I had to do a little re-working of how the gutter ties into the French drain at the corner of the house so the railroad ties could be flush with the outside edge of the house instead of sticking out a few inches like they did before, but that was pretty easy. I did find some odd stuff while digging up the existing French drain hookups to get started on this. Basically, the front planter has always had many small pieces of broken window pane glass in it, and I always figured somebody broke a front window and those were the leftovers from the cleanup process. When I started digging, however, I found tons of broken glass and some construction debris - I figure the other little bits I found were just what worked their way up to the surface during previous relandscaping work. My best guess is that during construction of the house they broke one or more windows (vandalism, maybe?) and dumped the glass pieces in around the foundation as backfill along with lots of other fun bits - like the used plastic top/tip to a tube of caulk or construction adhesive I found... Anyway, the new gutter pieces are painted and installed, the modified drain hookups have been re-buried and are partially covered with river rock. I spread the existing river rock around, but I will need more to complete this area. The quality of the backfill under the river rock will be as good as it was when I started, messy, but not something that is a bit concern. After the railroad ties were in place, I was able to continue work on extending the paver pathway along the edge of the front planter - the last half or so needed all of the existing sod excavated to get the pavers to slope nicely away from the pond and be at the proper level. I still have to put in gavel, then sand, and then more pavers, but the basics are in place and awaiting more time to complete things.

At some point in here, I moved some of the existing river rock in the front planter around and made enough room to dig the hole for the control valve - I needed enough room to get down below the frost line and be able to drill a hole through the foundation into the crawlspace. I'm hoping I don't have to do too much digging inside the crawlspace, but I probably will have to do some. Once I drill that hole and run the line into the crawlspace, I can install the control valve and associated plumbing, fill in the hole, and cover it with river rock. I also have to install my newly painted "campground style" faucet in the front planter area. After all that I can do the plumbing hookup inside the crawlspace, move the front outside faucet to the side of the house, and see if all of my spiffy new plumbing works or not. I do plan on testing the outside portion of the system by rigging it to the garden hose before hooking everything up for good, though. I need to get a bit more done before I can do that, though. Mainly installing the new faucet by the driveway so the main feed line won't be open and spraying water all over the place. If that holds pressure, I can move on to testing the drip irrigation and sprinkler systems as I have time and get them installed and working.

I pulled all of the old bark out from the original large planter areas - I started with a huge pile off to the side and I put it out in yard waste a little at a time. As part of this work, I tried to keep the pile to the smallest possible area and to put it as out of the way as possible. Along the way, I was able to get it far enough away from the large grass looking bush to cut down the remaining pieces of the bush and dig up the roots. By doing that, I finally got room to stake and string line out the proposed new edge to the side driveway. I also staked out the two final corners for the smaller front planter area by the street to see how I like that. It's hard to see with the weeds growing in there right now and the bark pile still in the way, but it's enough for a rough idea. I also took the time to hit my overgrown weeds with a little weed killer to try and keep things manageable. In the process I wiped out the weaker of the two rose bushes we brought over from the previous house - not a huge deal since it was pretty sickly anyway. Just one more thing to replant when we're all done.

I also need to to re-do some of the forms for the next section of driveway (near to the garage, closest to the property edge) since I mangled the edge closest to the street while pulling the Ranchero onto the first section of concrete. Once I got that done, and put down some weed killer, I found time to pour that section of concrete and am now waiting for it to cure. That will give me one more slot close to the garage to work on a car, one of the original goals for this project. :-) I think I'll leave the front-most two sections of concrete by the street undone for a while and focus on the front of the house and the front planter and pond area. I still need to get a water level and start setting up the final level for the edge of the pond where the rocks will sit. I also need to find a local source for the large edging rocks I'm going to use and I need to figure out how to build a waterfall that won't leak water over time.

After figuring out how the sprinkler system for the remaining front lawn will be set up, I was able to install the feeder pipe from the control valve and get it ready to be hooked up to the lines that run out to each of the sprinkler heads. The area will be rectangular, roughly 30' x 20', so it's an easy installation. I'll be using 4 "quarter circle" heads (one in each corner of the lawn) and two "half circle" heads half way down each side. The goal here is to be able to water the lawn without drenching the gravel walkway, brick walkway, or the side driveway - and this arrangement should work out nicely. I bought the six sprinkler heads I needed along with the odds and ends to hook them up to the PVC lines; although it did take a few trips to Home Depot to get all of the PVC pipes and fittings I ended up needing it really wasn't that expensive. Once all of the trenches were dug, the entire system went together in an afternoon and I buried the pipes as soon as I validated the pipe joints were tight and not leaking. So, that wrapped up the sprinkler system and got it working - even the controller/timer is hooked up and programmed. I've run a temporary hose from the front faucet to the line that will eventually get connected to the buried control valve by the house. So far so good. I finished the edge of the lawn closest to the side driveway, finished laying down the pavers for the walkway across the front of the house, laid in all of the new topsoil I needed (about 2 yards!) and leveled the front lawn area. I put down grass seed and fertilizer on it already and managed to grow a pretty darned lush lawn without much work - that sprinkler system was a great idea that's working very well.

I cleared out the rocks (the big ones from around the edge of the old pond) and got them out of the way, and then I pulled up the remaining 3' strip of sod in what will be the expanded side driveway. Now all I need to do is get another set of low voltage lights installed over there and then I can get more gravel and lay it in that area. I may raise the whole side driveway a few inches - if so, I'll get about 5 yards or gravel delivered and dropped on the middle of the side driveway, then spread and level it by hand.

I finally got all of the old pond rocks out of the way (the big one that formed the waterfall weights about 300 lbs!) and the old pond liner out, cleaned up a bit and folded away until I can figure out what to do with it. The fish was donated to a neighbor with a pond, so he'll be happy and safe over there. Once I got the liner out of the way, I was able to do the final bit of digging to join the new pond with the old pond and see what it will all look like what it's done.

The side driveway has been fully widened now. I pulled out the old planter bed (both in the front yard area and in the back yard area) and am ready for a large load of gravel to finish things up on that side. I also finally had a chance to move the massive rock up from a neighbors house that will be a nice centerpiece in the area near the pond. It took two people and a very big pry bar to move it - we're figuring it was 500 lbs or so. It was free and I was going to help my neighbor get rid of it anyway, so we just moved it into my front yard. Not much more work, and my landscaping will look a bit better in the end. I still need to do the final "setting" of the rock to get it in the exact right place and get it settled into the ground a bit, but that's pretty easy to do on my own later on.

I also finally ordered all of the pond gear so that will soon be in as well. That stuff is expensive (see the pictures below to see what $3800 worth of pond equipment looks like), but will be worth it in the end. The rock to be used in the pond is also expensive and heavy. I ended up using about 10 tons of various rocks and gravel to build the pond. I managed to get that for around $4000 total with some creative bartering, but I still had to move all of it on my own. By hand. My back took weeks to recover, but man, the results sure are awesome. I added some shelf areas to the final design to have someplace to put plants and I also had to do some final forming on the stream and waterfall areas, but that was pretty easy. As part of the pond work, I also completed the main planter area by adding new plants, hooking up all of the drip irrigation gear, laying down weed barrier around the pond, and laying down river rock to finish it off.

On the short side of the yard, I completed the final planter design with my neighbor - the final planter straddles the property line and encompasses plants from each property. The railroad ties on the front part are a near mirror image of the other side of the driveway and the planter itself has been extended around the ditch area that is now filled in. It has a short line of bushes in line with the driveway that will grow to be a natural screen that does not need trimming - I choose my plants with an eye towards their final plant height so I won't have to trim them much if at all. Again, the drip irrigation has been hooked up - I ran drippers to all the plants, even the ones I don't own, so that the planter will look nice all the time. I laid down more weed barrier and then more river rock to complete the planter. The only thing left is to add gravel in the "walkway" area near the street. I'll do that mostly with gravel excavated from the driveway when I do the concrete, so I'm holding off on that for now. I even got around to buying and assembling a bench for the porch.

At this point everything is basically completed except for 1) the final water line hookups through the foundation and into the crawlspace, 2) the side gravel driveway, 3) the front half of the driveway, 4) the gravel walkway on the short side of the yard, and 4) the asphalt work out front. It's all about hitting small milestones so you feel like you're making progress, and so you only have so much torn up at once.