Week #8

 Sunday night I ordered more lining fabric which is scheduled to arrive Tuesday. This is a black lining that is going to go behind the nice cobbles, between them and the rubble. It'll be interesting to see how we do on the rubble front as everyone else says we haven't got enough and I've got a suspicion we just my have enough. 

Friday 23rd the day the cobbles were allegedly going to arrive and nothing. No answers to emails or phone calls. A little disappointing when the order was placed almost weeks ago and they gave a date for the delivery. I thought at the time the extended delivery time was probably to give them a chance to get it right? Seemingly not.

On the Gravelmaster website there appears to be a tracking option for my delivery. It doesn't look promising. All the icons apart from 'With collection depot' at the very start of the process (Seemingly) are not coloured, so I'm assuming my rocks are still at the depot at the start of the process? At least it appears I have 2 full pallets? Worryingly though there's a date 5/5/21. Looks like that might be the delivery date? That's 2 days short of a month from the day it was ordered. I'm not holding my breath.

What I might do is start putting the rough rocks in the gabons at the back and try and tidy up the area at the bottom and get a sense of whether we've got enough hard core and rocks/stones. 

Sunday 25/4/21  This afternoon Ben and I started to work on getting some of the rocks into the Gabions leaving space at the front for the nice rocks to be placed. Once we got started we realised there were a few issues...

(1). The gap down the back of the Gabions is a bit tight and in some places pretty much too tight to get anything down the back of it other than really small stones, so we may have to buy some tiny pebbles or gravel to put down the back, 'Pea shingle' would be the perfect option, so we'll have to see how that pans out and give that some thought.

(2). I realised the lining should have been attached to the inner divider before I put all the wires in to help the gabions from bulging. The lining now has had to be attached in strips between the wires which was a real pain and I've done that using small cable ties which was impossibly fiddly and only just possible as I could only just get my hands in between the grids of the cages to tie them up.

Other than that it does look like there's not enough rock/rubble and we're going to have to source some more from somewhere. These is a load in the garage and there's loads around the estate that we can clean up and use. 

Anyway, here's the pictures...

Week #7 - Sunday

 Another dry day and I've been able to crack on with Gabions. Most of the day was spent tying in the internal bracing wires. Each cage has numerous wires attached to the backs and fronts and from the panels from side to side. This means that once you start filling it with rocks and it starts to misshape and bulge you simply twist the wires as in a Spanish windlass manner and correct the bulge. The wire's thick and this takes some.

Before the Gabions go in the Geotextile lining goes in first. (Above).

The Gabions made up and ready to drop in. (Above)

The small pebbles are smoothed out to level the base which was a bit of a faff.

Joe on a test run to see if the Gabions sit level. We had to do this a few times before I was happy having to lift them in and out each time to re-level the stones. 

Above a view from the ramp looking down at the Gabions in position now ready to rock.

By the end of the day the Gabions were in position ready for rock and I'd painted the wall a bit.

The next big phase is this Friday when the rocks turn up, Ben's going to have to get them all in from the back road into the garden or guard them till I come in and I can give him a hand.

Then the filling will commence.

In the meantime if time and weather allows I'll have a bit of a tidy up of the bottom area and maybe work on breaking the clay up a bit more on the top section.

Week #7 - Saturday

 Saturday 17th April

Still no stones, they're not due till the 23rd. So today after some cricket, all three of us went to Mopsies "The home of cricket" as it was a lovely sunny day albeit a bit chilly (We've been getting frosts in the morning). Once back we cut the big gabions down to size and fixed the properly with wire. 

A little bonus at the end of the day was I've eventually found some Bourgainvillea after searching for them for a few years now. 

Week #7 (Tuesday 13th)

 Tuesday 13th

Between this post and the previous we'd been waiting for the Gabions and we couldn't do a great deal. I dug out the base area again and angled it a bit more and tided up and then today (Tuesday) the Gabions arrived and Ben and Joe were there to receive them, so here they are in the garden all wrapped up.

Over the next few days we unwrapped them and had a look with the idea that we'd start to put them together.

Towards the end of the week Ben opened them up and set one up temporarily using cable ties, so get a sense of what we're working with. 

It was decided that instead of having the Gabions 2m x 1m x 1m - meaning that the gabions encroach 1 meter into the empty space we cut them down to that they were 750mm into the space.

We then had to source a disc cutter which we did from our friends Carl and Dawn.