Week 21: Phase 4: 1st half of the week.

 This week I've got Ben helping, so a lot was done yesterday and today. The start of the day looked like this...

The plan was to get all of the stone out, cleaned and put back in to the middle section today, but with it being 29-30c in the shade, down here in the this sun trap surrounded by white walls the temperature was probably 40 plus. We made a start but it was mental, so I had to come up with a cunning plan...

I put a tarp up and this made it possible to work, so we cracked on with plenty of drinks and breaks. You can see in this image above the middle third that we were focused on. The black bucket is the bit that's been dug out with the stones moved to the area at the bottom of the image where they're dried and sieved before being piled up at back of the picture to be put back in the hole cleaned once it's dug out. The gravel you see in the image to the right of the bucket was really mixed with clay and it took ages to dig out and work with. 

In this shot you can see the pipe which is a part of the existing drainage system. This section of the pipe had holes in it and this pipe runs along the back of all the houses in our terrace and the water drains away in the direction of the wall into the next garden to the end of the terrace. 

Above; Ben sieving the stones and filling the middle section to the left of him. 

This is an end of day shot for Monday. All the dirt in the foreground in section 1 and 2 is the wetter clagged up stones that have come out of section 2 which is what we were working on today. These are laid out on the old paving slabs ready to dry tomorrow which'll enable easier cleaning and sieving. Then they'll be put in section 2 and the paving slabs will be removed.

The focus tomorrow will be to take all the stuff in the background away, either throwing it out or putting it in to the garage and then remove the final slabs and cleanse the stones before putting back into the 3rd section. 

Once that's done it'll be ready for 2 or 3 drainage pipes and the Geotextile down ready for the MOT. At the moment we're ahead of schedule.

You may have also noted the big bag of top soil has gone. That was taken up to the top. It looks like we might have too much!

Tuesday - Not many images today as we cracked on with it aware that it was going to rain in the afternoon and through the evening potentially. By midday, the dark earth above had dried out and was easily sieved...

All the stones cleansed and in their place less the mud and clay. The slabs are mostly up and we've moved all the tat that was up that end of the patio area. The rain did come suddenly and was biblical, I've never seen rain like it with hailstone clattering on the windows of our roof. But we did make decent progress and it allowed us to see how well the water drained away and it seemed to be okay. It collected to an extent on the gabion side, but then drained away over a few hours. I think I will need to have a feeder pipe or two that run from the gabion side to the drain side, so that might be something we do either tomorrow or Thursday. 

A lot more had been done than the images above suggest, so I'll do some more pictures tomorrow morning. 

Wednesday: Warm again 29-30c in the shade, down here in the sun trap 40 plus. 

The stones dried out okay over the day and we've pretty much dug out all the pure clay leaving the mixed clay and stone bit under the buckets in the image to be dug out and separated tomorrow. Then hopefully we'll move all of the old paving slabs and set the level of the pebbles raking it so that it's even and level ready for the MOT. Again what with this being a first time experience and learning on the job, I'm not sure whether we've dug too low and I'm going to end up having to order more MOT to get it up to the correct level. Things I need to do soon...

(1). Buy some pipe for drainage x 3 and bury in the stones. 

(2). Put in the leveling pegs and set the string lines accurately 

(3). Rake the pebbles so they're at the correct level and even. 

(3). Lay out the Geotextile fabric and figure out how much more I need to buy as I know I haven't got enough.

Then it'll be MOT time!