rock wall | Knitting In Flashes

Welcome to Part II of the sewage, drainage and rock walls. Click here for Part I.

To get to the front downspout the raised flower bed had to be torn down. Well, at least part of it.

My daughter and I built this rock wall about 22 years ago, It didn’t hold up as well as expected but I learned a lot about building a stacked stone/rock wall in those 22 years. And I got to use that knowledge to tear it all down and rebuild it. During the hottest part of the summer.

As usual I didn’t get a picture of the before but the wall undulated ( fifty-cent word) in and out three times from the steps of the front porch the side of the house. The downspout is behind that bush and the pampas grass.

Daffodils and lilies of the valley were strewn about that section so as I torn out the rocks, I rescued those plants/bulbs to replant later in the fall. I put off that project for a few years but it’s funny how one thing leads to another.

Landscape fabric went between the rock wall and the soil.

There are ~~better~~ other ways to keep the soil from leaking out and stabilize the wall but it’s the way I chose to do it.

The raised bed/rock wall went doesn’t come out as far as the original and does circle around the side of the porch. It kind of eases into the same height as the added soil around the foundation and heat pumps.

All this work happened over the course of about three weeks…mostly because I couldn’t work on the raised bed/stacked rock wall for more than a few hours in the mornings and evenings at a time. We’ve had some heavy rains and our basement is dry.

Grass is growing over the newly seeded areas though we will reseed some of those areas again this fall.

After the tomato plants are finished for the year, I’ll work on the other side.

Whew!

The ups and downs of owning a home…

As part of the new and improved water service, we had to abandon our septic system and hook up to a new sewage line. The new line went through the back of our property which “they” cleared for us. I don’t know how many trees were cut down but new ones were planted during the hottest and driest part of the summer so far.

Abandoning a septic doesn’t mean one just walks away from it. Oh no, it involves having the tank drained (by a professional company that specializes in doing that), then crushed. The now crushed tank, rock fill, pipe connection to the tap, and under fill of said pipe have to be inspected by the water company.

Only then can one abandon the septic system. And all that work gets covered up with dirt, dirt, and more dirt. Or in our case, shale. This was an all day project beginning around 7:00 am.

But wait. There’s more.

Since heavy equipment was already involved, we decided to have some drainage issues resolved. Our basement would flood during heavy rains. Not often but more than once is one time too many. The rain couldn’t get away from the house fast enough so it backed up through the basement floor drains. One thousand square feet of floor space six inches deep of water. 500 cubic feet = 3740.25974026 gallons of water. (I cheated and got that number from here.) That’s a lot of water!

So we had our downspouts diverted from the French drains that are deep down around our foundation away from the house.

One goes out towards the back yard and the other hides behind the lilac bush in the front.

That process also involved increasing the height of the window wells and additional soil around the foundation so the ground sloped away from the house.