The House That Smithbuilt - Part 2: Step 4

The House That Smithbuilt - Part 2: Step 4: One more step to getting the culvert installed. Too bad Wyatt had to go to school today I needed him to help.  I was in the back of the pick...

Step 4

One more step to getting the culvert installed. Too bad Wyatt had to go to school today I needed him to help.  I was in the back of the pickup getting ready to help Bill get the tin horn out. It is lift, scoot forward, lift, scoot froward over and over again to get it moved. A wonderful stranger stopped and asked if he could help. It was a Farrier on his way to an appointment to shoe a horse and helped Bill take the tin horn out of the truck and drop it into the ditch. People are so kind and helpful.

 Poured concrete around the joint and then raked the dirt we have around the tin horn so it won't float away. Now to wait for a delivery of sandy loam and the dirt guy to come back out.

Step 3

Still working on the new culvert. Rains are gone so we can set the joint with concrete. Wyatt mixed up the concrete for us. He didn't have any work clothes with him so he hit the pajama drawer and came up with clothes to wear. And of course my tennis shoes.

 After mixing up the concrete; his job was to build a dirt wall to hold the concrete in place. Bill and I threw dirt (the heavy work) to hold the culvert in place and Wyatt got to do the dirty work.

  His wall worked very well to hold everything in place. Wyatt got to lay on his stomach and push the concrete under the tin horn. Love having a 10 year old around so I don't have to do this stuff. Child labor is a wonderful thing.









Bill taught him how to tamp out air bubbles.

 

Now to finish the concrete. This was a skill he already knew how to do. Didn't even asked just picked up his tool and went to  work.

 Of course, after the concrete is smoothed out we have to mark it up. Wyatt put in his name, I did my handprint. Bill decided to do a nose print.

 Final step for the day is to water the dirt down. We didn't put all the dirt back in because we don't know the grade it needs to be. There will also be 2-4 inches of driveway material on top of all this. The dirt guy will have to come out again and let us know how much top soil to order in and he needs to decide on the slope.We decided it was better to do too little than too much. Do not want to have to move this dirt a third time. Part of this will be a driveway extension and the rest needs to be sloped for easy mowing. We haven't added the second tin horn yet either.

Wyatt learned how moldable our clay soil is. He is trying his hand at Claymation. He made clay men.

Step Two

This culvert project is going to be a multi step endeavor. First step was Darrick and I cleaning out the existing culvert. Nothing will be as difficult as that. Thank goodness or I would put a stop to this madness and figure something else out. Today we needed to get a 24 foot extension added to the existing culvert before the rains come and destroy the work we have done so far.

Step Two A;

First thing to do was to address the hole at the inlet side of the culvert. The tin horn opening is below soil level so if we just left it the culvert would fill up with dirt again. I will NOT do the job of cleaning that thing out  again. Bill had dug down and made this hole a month ago, I just needed to make it deeper and clean it out.

 When the dirt guy cut the ditch he found all kinds of concrete chunks. Some too big to move and small smaller ones.

 They are perfect for lining the hole.First thing I did was lay a solid piece on the bottom of the hole then stacked small pieces around the sides. Between the concrete pieces and the dirt I laid landscape fabric to hold the dirt back from filtering into the tin horn but water flows through it.

 After the rains move through we will pour some soupy concrete behind these pieces and it will serve its purpose. We will have a very nice storm drain.

 Step Two B:

First thing is for Bill and Darrick to use the transom and get our drop. Shane, the dirt guy, gave us a very good nine inch drop from drive to end of ditch. Now we just need to keep this. We were very surprised how well the water took away all the dirt we pulled out of the compacted culvert. There was just a little bit of dirt that needed to be smoothed out.

 Bill then went three miles down the road and picked up our new 24 foot tin horn. He only has a six foot bed, but then added this really cool thing we have that adds about three feet of support past the tail gate. Still, over half the tin horn is hanging off the back of the truck.

 Bill and I pulled it off the truck and rolled it into the ditch. We then had to pick it up and push it down to where it needed to be. It was a slow process but not too bad.

No, I am not relaxing. There was a hump of dirt that needed to be shaved off so the end of the new would line up with the end of the old. I  would push it to the side with my legs and Bill would shave the dirt.

 It's in! It still has a good drop so the water will flow out of it beautifully. I think we have decided to add another 24 foot section at the end to make mowing easier.  If we shaped and leveled at the end it would be too steep for the mower.

 At the joint we will be pouring concrete to seal the ends together. But, heavy rains with possible flooding will be here this afternoon so we can't pour concrete. We just used a Zip Tape for now. Hopefully, it will hold up until we can get this finished.

 Just in time; the rain clouds are coming our way.

Dirty Jobs

Need to call Mark Rowe with Dirty Jobs. 

One of the things worked on while we were gone was our front culvert. The north end of the culvert was underground. You can just imagine how much water was going through it. That's right; none. It was just flowing up and around our drive. This causied issues during this past Springs torrential rains.
 Here you can see how far underground the end of the culvert was.

 This is the south end. It was at least exposed on the top so we knew there was a culvert.

  Brynnlee was in charge of hauling all the tools out to the road.

This is what the culvert looked like. Completely compacted with dirt. We have a boring tool that I used for this  job. You use it if you need to go under concrete to lay pipe or anything. It is a 10 foot piece of PVC with a nozzle on the end. You hook it up to your garden hose and the nozzle on the end turns the water into a high power jet. It cuts a hole in the dirt. Then  the water helps move stuff out.

 Darrick came and helped with this job.

This is what we had to do to pull the dirt out that the tool had loosened.  Crawl in as far as we could with the hoe and pull mud and rock and trash out with us.

Then the boys came and crawled in to help pull dirt out.

 He's going in!! Wyatt went in with no holds barred. Wasn't quite strong enough to cut through the root ball we found.

But, he did have fun. I got completely covered with mud he was able to stay up on his elbows and keep out of the flowing water and mud.

The girls loved the muddy creek we made with all the water we pumped through that culvert. Really glad we don't have to pay for water.   

 

 This was truly a family affair.

Success!!!! Sunlight and it only took 6 hours. There is a root ball right smack in the middle that I am hoping the rains coming in the end of the week will wash out. If not I will need to crawl all the way in and cut it out. Ughh.

Going Up

The siding was delivered today. Corners and trim pieces are 16 foot boards. So the delivery forklift had to lift them  up and over our drive Butterfly bushes.

Oh, no that doesn't look like our stuff.












We're on the other side. Counting boxes and seeing if it is all here. Put a call into our salesman; we find only one color and there should be two. Hopefully, we just aren't seeing it.

Driveway Fairies

We were hoping our driveway would be worked on while we were gone for a couple of weeks. But, you never know with contractors schedules on what might come up and we were not a "have to get done customer". What a wonderful thing to see when we pulled into the drive. The drive is smooth, it is enlarged and it appears to have a slope on it so the water will run where it is supposed to run.

Bill spent the day with a compactor getting the material tamped into place. I used the trailer, shovel and rake and filled in low spots and places the equipment couldn't get to. Thanks to Shane with Doctor Green Thumb for making us look this good.

Whew! Got it done just in time. Delivery truck came and was able to back up and leave without a problem.

No Work Stoppage

Bill and I are going to be gone for a couple of weeks but work will continue at the house. Our drive is going to be worked on. The final layer of driveway material has never been put down. We have a huge drive and parking area and still need to tell people how to get out of it all the time. The trash truck backs on to the grass also.

  So today I spent the afternoon getting a drive expansion ready for the driveway road material. Weed eated the grass real low and then sprayed with Round Up. Laid driveway fabric down to hold the Granite Hybrid Mix we put down for the drive. The fabric stops the rock from being driven into the ground and needing to resurface every couple of years and slows down the encroachment of Bermuda grass. I was able to confiscate enough red rock from other areas that I had enough to line the  back up area.The little rocks in the middle are simply holding the fabric in place until the guys get here to put stuff on top.

Last spring's torrential rains showed us some problem areas on the drive with wash out so they will be addressing those issues also. We will come home to a spiffy drive. We will just need to compact it to make it great.

No Light Needed

If Bill hadn't installed lights in our office; we wouldn't notice. When you have windows like these, who needs to turn on electric lights. They are incredible windows. Lots and lots of light and great views. He put the smaller ones higher than normal so we can put tables or work spaces under them.

It is going to be tough to get any work done in this space.

He has the bull nose corners put on the walls as of today. We are leaving on a trip for a couple of weeks and when we get back we can both get to work and finish this off.