We've got this horrible drainage problem and have since the house was built. Was I smart enough to have them correct it, of course not. Am I crazy enough to dig a 12" wide x 18" deep x 47' long hole in the earth. You bet!
There's not really to many details to figure unless you come see it yourself but the half of the front of the house and half the garage all drains off one down spout to this corner. The driveway slopes here and the yard is also pitched toward it. All this makes for a very shallow swimming pool or a very wet yard. So after we got past the standard, "you don't know what your doing, this will never work" bit we finally got in a rhythm. Trying to salvage the sod was the worst part. Man that sucks. After that it was pretty easy short of calling each utility company and telling them we already had the lines marked, now just tell me how deep and all of them saying, "oh, we don't know, hope you don't hit it". The gas company actually came out and he was pretty cool and gave us more info than any of the separate utilities did. So we dug slow in those area and now we have to go under the cable and phone line which was only 6" deep. Pretty sure code is 24" unprotected not that I'd know or anything.
We made good progress this morning considering it was 40 something when we woke up so we just slept the morning away instead of getting out in that weather. Once it warmed up we went to the Home Depot and dropped some cash on some new tools. So technically we haven't spent anything on this project. Tools do not directly relate to the cost of the project since they can be used for many project, many more times.....yea, Mandy doesn't buy that either. We'll be getting up tomorrow and getting some stone to cover this bad boy with, then some corrugated pipe, then more stone, then landscape fabric then pile all that dirt back in there. Ah, good times.
I know your looking at the title wondering what the hell am I talking about now. My buddy Andy informed me it's called a Freedom drain, not French because of the whole war french/freedom fry thing. Casey pointed out the drain is being snooty to me so it must be a French drain. None the less, we still have a full pallet of edging stone to lay down when we are done. Aren't these weeks we have off supposed to be fun and easy?!
So here is our victim. We somehow manage to never get the completely undisturbed pictures. You can see where the utility lines are marked and the string and stake mark our position.
Here we are after a good start and me a water break. I've yet to understand how I don't go rent a skid steer every time I want to do something like this, I mean, I do get a discount.
Here is the end of the ditch, sorta. This is pretty much as far as it's going at least. We still need to get the slope right and I've still got several feet to of earth to move at this point. We'll get it.
Mostly done. We actually had to add some fill back in and remove some in other places to get the grade right. I think Mandy was heading for China underneath the phone line. She was determined to find that thing. Turns out, its right at the depth we need to be at. Slight adjustment mid stream, nothing new. Hopefully tomorrows pictures will be of grass back on the pile with 2 shovels in the ground and all will be done.....hopefully.
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