Ha, ha, not THAT deep...
I'm so sore today. Martin dug a drainage well hole this weekend. I ended up helping him. Needed a bit of time away from the computer and some physical activity. Lets put it this way, I've used muscles I forgot I had.
Small test pit (Time Team lingo)
The hole in the end was over a meter (3.5 feet) deep and wide dug out of rock filled clay.
The reason for this dig is that the little zink trash can thingy you see in the right hand corner has had to deal with major down pour these past eleven years. It's collected the rain water from one of the drain pipes and after it has filled to a certain level a connected hose which ran under the grass led the water away from the house. Or was supposed to. Every time we've had really bad weather the system has over-flown and I've been out there in wellies with a brolly scooping the water away.
In these photos it looks like Martin and Wille are doing it all but I promise I did help! I even fell into the hole once and I've got the bruises to prove it...
Here the hole is finished, most of the soil distributed over the back of some shrub beds and the pipes all connected. Ready to be refilled. Please someone tell me why the pipes are diarreah colored?! I had to spray paint the parts white that would be visible above soil level!
We filled the hole with old cement drain pipes, cement paving stones and rocks. Before filling we lined the hole with a membrane to prevent soil from filling the voids we want the water to fill on rainy days. Here Wille adds the top layer of smaller rocks before closing the "bag".
"Bag" closed by adding a square of the membrane and tucking it in and adding top soil. After I took this photo Wille and Martin put the tufts of grass back which were removed on Friday. Couldn't find my camera so there isn't a proper after shot but I'm so, so, so happy that this project is almost complete!
Later this fall or possibly early next spring we will remove the grass in this area in front of the garage altogether (from the stairs to the corner of the house in an inverted S-shape) and lay some of the same black n' white gravel we have at the front of the house.
Yay! I can finally cross this one off my list!
