Week 21: Phase 4, second half of the week.

Looking to get the bottom digging and clearing finished and be working with the MOT by this Sunday. Let's see how it goes...

Here's Wednesday (22nd) progress. Another hot day, but good for drying out the pebbles. Too hot to work without the tarp up, so that went up and we got on with it. 

The final shot of the day. All that needs to be done tomorrow is the stones that you can see on the concrete slabs dried out and sieved and then shovelled into the nearest section at the bottom of the image.

Then the slabs will be removed and all the levels established using string lines and pegs.

We'll also put in 3 drainage pipes draining from right to left and then get the compactor and compact the stones before possibly laying the Geotextile fabric and possibly start putting the MOT Type one down, but that's being super optimistic. What we need to keep in mind is the fact that it's probably going to rain on Saturday and Sunday, so the more we can get done the better. 

Thursday/Friday - 

Saturday - Cricket today (We came 2nd) I bowled pretty well though with a wicket off a Leg Break. In the little bit of time during the evening I bought some wood and nailed one of the level markers to 'Marks wall', so if it doesn't rain tomorrow I'll get that done and then it'll be leveling and MOT time!

Over the latter part of the week we laid three pipes to help drain the water away from the gabions towards the 'Land drain', which has always worked well. Having put up the first of the wooden battons for the levels I've realised I've done that potentially wrong with insufficient angles to facilitate draining. I'm even contemplating the direction of the slope. General theory has it that you drain away from the house, but our house has the drainage designed to work best right next to the house with the land drain and the pipe I've photographed in the earlier blogs. 

I've now realised that I didn't dig the clay out enough when I set the gabions and at the minute when the slabs are laid - especially if the slope is lowest at the gabions draining away from the house, the clay bed the gabions are set on will be visible. So, now I'm thinking - make use of the land drain and have the higher side of the slabs on the gabion side? It's something to think about. 

Perhaps not... Sunday was spent cleaning up cat s**t from the pebbles as it seems they've designated it as a latrine. Then I had to cut up all the big paving slabs so that I could get them up the top. I then had to smash up the 3 pallets outside the back gate to make space for the concrete slabs. Other things done Sunday included getting a Karcher and starting to wash the walls before painting them. 

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!

Week 20: Phase 4. 2nd half of week

 First session...

Wasn't sure about what to do about the pebbles initially after speaking to the bloke at the cricket club, but decided for this section which constitutes a 3rd of the space I'd carry on sieving the clay and dirt out of the pebbles. Then I thought - what would happen if I walked over the pebbles and twisted the pebbles underfoot - surely that would help rub all the dirt off the stones? So I gave it a go and lo and behold it worked a million times better than sieving. Combined with the fact that it's dry and warm, the dirt rubbed off easy leaving on a few shakes of the sieve before getting the stones on the sub base!

Thinking about the trench I dug last night on the Gabion side, I decided rather than pay money for gabions and the like I'd just fill it with stones, so that's what I've done - mainly because of the discussion with the bloke (Paul) at the cricket club and his question about whether it had previously flooded down there? 

This is pretty much how I've ended up after the first session before dinner. The drainage gully up against the gabions filled with stones and more stones in the prepped area, all of the stones that had been previously dug out de-dirted and put back. The dirt that came off them saved for the grass area at the top.

Below the progress up to tea time. The patio area I'm looking at in terms of being three sections, so this is the 2nd section being worked on now. All the concrete paving slabs taken up and placed in the first section out of the way. The first section will now be used as a storage area. As well as moving the slabs I've moved stuff into the garage and had a tidy up generally.

Above the view looking towards 'Tony's'. Below as it wont be too long now before I need to get working on the 3rd and final part of the patio (Far end in this image) I need to start throwing stuff away. Or, using it e.g. the 1 tonne bag of topsoil, so I've made a start (Below) of transferring the topsoil up to the top part of the garden which will eventually be grassed...

At the moment the topsoil is being put around all the tat that's up the top part of the garden. I realistically need to have a tidy up and a move around in order that I can get more of the topsoil up there. I also need to think about some of the plants and where they're going. 

The last session (After tea) Made a start on digging the clay out. What you see here equates to 6 barrows of clay. Once this first layer has been dug out another slightly lower layer needs to be dug out as well! I reckon if I get help from Ben and or Joe all of the digging might be done within the next 10 days, meaning we could be laying the patio by July 25th - so possibly the patio might be done by August? 

Week 20: Phase 4 - The Patio. First half of the week.

 This is the bit I'm a little nervous about, but to be honest not knowing what I'm doing each phase has been a bit worrying. I've done a lot of research on what not to do and how to do it, so with a bit of luck it should go OK? But I've basically got to dig a load of clay out and get the area to a certain depth below the damp proof course and then fill it with MOT and lay the tiles. Let's see how it goes...

Over the last week I realised because of all the rain there was an issue with water collecting at point where the patio meets the gabions and I've dug a trench with the idea that this may help, but with just one nights worth of rain look what has happened and over the period of a day this water didn't disappear. I may have made the situation worse by putting a tarp over the whole area directing the water to the gully rather than allowing it to permeate into the whole area. I still think I need to make a fairly big drain though of some sort to collect the water.

I've looked at a bunch of different methods now and that's concerned me further. Now I'm thinking that perhaps I should be channeling the water back towards the house to make use of the existing drainage system? It's raining again tonight, so it'll be interesting to see how much rain collects in the gully.

For the moment I'm thinking I'll make a system similar to what I had planned previously using gabion cages filled with rock, but now I'm going to have 3 pipes that will direct the water back to the original drainage soak-away system that was installed when the houses were built in the 1970's. 

Monday and Tuesday. Strewth. This bit is hard, dull and slow. I had a plan to dig out about a square yard a day and I've just about done it. I'm probably making it harder for myself for the following reasons.

Tuesday: Working with the levels and putting back the stones once they've been sieved today. The sieving is tedious and slow. I'm pleased with the use of the pegs and setting the levels as it means as I put the stones in I'm able to see how consistent the levels are. I'm not sure how deep I should go with the stones, but I need to keep in mind that they're going to be compacted and a bloke at the cricket club - Paul Singleton mentioned the fact that the bed doesn't have to be that amazing as it's only going to be walked on and wont be subjected to any real weight. so that's something to keep in mind. He also said that it's not necessary to go as far as I am with the sieving of the dirt. 

Week 19: Phase 3: The steps: Week commencing July 5th.

 Monday writing at 00.30 - weather doesn't look too clever for the first part of this week, heavy rain and gales for today and more rain Tuesday. Let's see what happens.

Little bit of work Monday night before it rained. Joe made the last Gabion. I've started to move stuff around readying for Phase 4 - The patio. I'm not sure whether I need to get a skip as I've got a feeling there's going to be a fair bit of mud coming out over the next couple of weeks.

I'm kind of nervous about this next bit because of the costs involved and not wanting to make any mistakes. The damp course aspect is worrying me and that'll relate to how I dig out, but tonight doing my research I've found this video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGhvkVdBCMY  and the bloke recommends that 2 courses of bricks should be above the surface (Driveway/patio). Alternatively as I've seen before, the patio can be higher if you have a gap that's filled with rocks/shingle to allow any water to drain away. I need to photograph what the situation is at the moment and what I've dug out already and ask someone for their advice. There's other videos that show the slabs against the wall and they have 2 complete bricks visible above the level of the slabs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNU9ECnVPVE

When I can, I reckon I'll take up a few more paving slabs and then start to prepare one half of the area that I need to cover.

Other complicated aspects include the laying of the slabs, there's a couple of conventions that you should stick to  (1) No cross joints (2) No straight lines longer than 3 slabs. Sounds pretty straight forward till you start to do it. I cut out some bits of paper proportionally the size of my slabs and then spent the best part of 4 hours trying to come up with a working template for the order my slabs will be laid. Here's the pattern...

Tueday 6/7/21 More rain, but I've had some ideas...

(1). Im concerned about the damp proof aspect and feel inclined to put a drainage border around the slabs so they don't butt right up against the wall. Similarly with the patio slabs being put down with a slope all of the rain water that drains off will end up at the base of the gabions and potentially form a puddle? The diagram above shows how I might address this issue using some of the waste that we've either got around or will generate over the coming weeks. 

(F) Is a 8" x 8" gabion cage in the same style as the steps - we've got a fair bit of this left so we can use that for the main drain as such. So the intention is dig a trench and line that with the 25mm -40mm stones (E)  that are under the concrete slabs that we've got at the moment. Then put the gabions in and fill them loosely with broken up bits of the concrete slabs (D) that we're about to take up. Then on top of that use the remainder of the cobbles that we've got left to make it look decent - might need to add some smaller cobbles which we'll have to buy. That as far as I'm concerned should be a fairly decent drain? *Note before finishing I'll wrap the gabion in geotextile so that there's no slow ingress of dirt/dust/leaves etc that'll clog up the drain. 

On the house side we wont use the gabions, instead just dig a smaller trench and line it with geotextile fabric, then the 25mm - 40mm stones, finished with the big cobbles...

The diagram here shows a cross section of the plan, but having shown Ben and looking at how much mesh we've got left, we're almost certainly going to scrap using the gabion (F) and just put the stones in loose as in the left hand side of the digram, but still wrap them in Geotextile. 

No work today...

This isn't a puddle this is looking out through our glass roof. 

This is the thing that concerns me the most. On the left is the existing paving slabs which sit a brick and a half below the painted part of the wall. I'm guessing the white part of the wall is above the damp course? These slabs have a gravel margin (not easy to see because the clay's got mixed in with the gravel. To the right is where I've removed the slabs and then dug down through a bed of pebbles and dirt. 

At the moment, I'm thinking If I dig dig enough out to lay about a bricks depth of MOT once it's compacted and then a bed of cement with a slab will leave approx one brick exposed. I'll also have a margin around the edges of the slabs. I've just seen this website and this has details about the use of a drainage gap https://www.pavingexpert.com/dpc01

Been thinking about the drainage and feeling that there needs to be some structure e.g. a box so I've been looking around and see these - https://www.sure-green.com/steel-welded-wire-panels.html

This evening I did an experiment at the bottom of the steps - going back to the idea of putting a Gabion in a hole as part of the drainage system... 

So the starting point is this...

This is the bottom of the steps before we've moved the clay and put any MOT down, So you can see water easily collects at the bottom of the steps and once the patio is finished all of the water will run off into this area along the line of the Gabions.

So the idea is to dig a hole about 20cm or more deeper and fill it with small stones. (Below).

Then a smaller gabion made of much smaller mesh 2" is formed into long gabions...

These will be filled with loose bits of broken up concrete paving slab like the one seen here that are coming out of the existing patio area. These will then fill the cavity. These gabions be wrapped in Terram Geotextile fabric so that the rain water can drain through the gabions, but wont allow any ingress from dirt or leaves which eventually would clog it up and effect the drainage capabilities. 

The images below are approximations using black fabric and testing the feasibility of using the larger cobbles that I've got left over and small stones. I think I'll have to buy smaller cobbles that Wickes sell and use them as they'll match the colour or perhaps some other form of stone, possibly even a slate grey type to match or maybe even contrast against the light grey slabs? 

These look good as a contrasting option and they're a good price £5.00 for a 20KG from Argos. Click on the image to go to the website.

Wednesday 7/7/21 - Called a skip hire company today with a view to having the skip parked in the parking layby at the back of the house. This is a lot more problematic than I'd have expected. (1) The price initially seemed okay £180. (2). It was going to take 12 days to sort as I needed a permit despite being in a parking bay. (3) The permit was another £60! So a grabber lorry is by far the best method. 

Thursday 8/7/21 - Dry day again today and last day at work for some weeks now, so should be able to crack on with the patio area soon. Tonight made a start on digging out the dirt in readiness for putting the MOT down. I'm still not sure about the damp course and what the deal is there with the proximity with the slabs. At the moment I've gone low on the house side, so will need to go lower on the gabion side, so potentially a lot of dirt. The image here resulted in about 20 -25 buckets and I'm gradually getting the stone out and sifting the dirt from them to potentially put back in with the MOT?

Friday 9/7/21 - Joe's birthday today, so didn't get out that much to do the garden. Manage to get several buckets dug out and sieved a load of stones from the main area. Also started to dig more of the drainage gully against the gabions, but that was done last thing, so the photos' don't really reflect how far I've managed to get today. 

The main news though is I've managed to score a wheel barrow and a cement mixer for free from a friend, I just need to drive up to Hertford to collect it. 

Saturday 11/07/21 Nothing today as I've played cricket and it's been raining again. What I will show you though is - Ecobricks in use. Ben and I have been doing this for some months now and we've managed to make about 7 bricks. A quick outline of what an Ecobrick is - You don't throw away your soft plastics, generally plastic recycling of this type is non existent and it'll either end up in the Ocean or being burned in some 3rd world country in a beautiful pristine environment. So you have a few options. The best one is don't buy products in plastic wrapping which isn't that easy and another is Ecobricks. An Ecobrick is a plastic bottle stuffed/rammed with soft plastics that have been cut up. Typically a 1.5 litre box takes about 2 - 3 pink sacks (large bin size) worth of soft plastic. There are rules e.g. there's a minimal weight for each size bottle. Once you've filled one up you register it with the Ecobrick people and then use it, making sure it doesn't go back into the 'Recycling' system because that's a load of BS. Admittedly in the UK at the moment there are not a lot of things you can do with your Ecobricks, but we could have used them in the gabions at any point, but we've ended up using them in the steps...

Sunday Phase 4 begins in earnest. 12/7/21

I've been kind of dabbling with ideas about what I'm going to do next and how to do it, but today I committed to a plan. The lower side is going to be dug to a depth of 4 bricks below the damp-proof line and the upper side 3 bricks below. I'm going to work on it a yard at a time and see how long that takes and how much earth comes out. The first yard took about 20 + buckets and about an hour or so to dig, so realistically I can get two a day done easily by my reckoning.

In the afternoon I drove over to Andrew and Jackie Benson's gaff and borrowed their cement mixer, wheel barrow and a shovel, so it really is all systems go and using the wheel barrow compared to working with a bucket at a time is so much easier, but that's obvious and it should mean now I'll make good progress if the weather holds out. It's rained tonight and the forecast is for rain all day tomorrow which is crap. I'll have to see how it goes. 

Week 18: Phase 3: The steps of woe: Week of June 28th

  Raining again, the rain's been heavy in between the sunny spells so it slows things down. This morning Ben and I were up at silly o'clock again to be at the wood yard for 7.30 and bought another 4 x 2.4 railway sleepers - another £112. Then on the way back home we stopped at PGR and sorted out the Wednesday delivery. They've refunded me for one of the bags of MOT and added a bag of sharp sand and 6 bags of cement. The price for the sand and the cement seemed very reasonable, so I'll have to check that tonight in case I've got the wrong stuff. I need to order the steel mesh today as well... another 2 sheets of 2 x 1 metre at either 4mm or 5mm gauge steel.

So, the orders gone through 2 panels 1 mtr x 2 mtr @4mm - cost £81.58.

Monday and it's rained on and off all day, so this evening all we did was move the Railway sleeper from the top to the bottom in readiness for the delivery on Wednesday. Looking at  the delivery note I saw that the cement bags are paper and not plastic, so we need to keep them dry, possibly store them in the garage as they're not required till the steps are finished, so possibly not still around July 8th. 

With the rain I'm not sure we're going to get the steps completed by July the 8th which was the intention.

Tuesday - Fine Mesh Metals delivered the mesh today, that's impressive with a less than 24 hour turn around! Tomorrow is a big delivery day - Sand, cement and MOT. I need to get the sand out of the garden as soon as it's delivered and get it in the garage to keep it dry. 

Wednesday - Still raining. The lorry turned up at 7.30 from PGR - half expected it to do so as we only live about 1/2 a mile from their yard. 

I had to go to work though leaving the cement in paper bags on top of one of the bulk bags albeit wrapped up in cling film. I've asked Ben to move them into the garage during the day if the rain eased off a bit, so hopefully he'll have done that by the time I get home? 

That evening. Yep, Ben had moved the cement and cut some of the mesh up to make step gabions. The rain has eased a bit today, but it's far too wet to do anything. 

Sunday. It had rained a bit in the morning, but the last couple of days I've had a trap over the steps to keep the clay as dry as I possibly can, so around 1pm the rain seemed to have stopped and we got outside (Ben and me) and made a start to see what we could do in between showers. 

Images above shows where we were at this morning (Sunday) with regards progress. Very little had been happening this week as it kept raining and we weren't able to get out and do anything.

This morning the rain eased and around midday the sun came out and we were able to get out and crack on with some work. I wanted the steps to be pretty much done by July 8th and it was looking touch and go, but with both Joe and Ben at home today we got on with it and good progress was made...

So tonight Joe and I finished off the top step and it looks like one more gabion will do it and that's it the steps are 95% done. In the short term as we're up and down the steps with dirt, cement rocks and crap we're leaving the concrete slabs on the gabions, but, nearer the finish they'll be replaced with sandstone slabs (Light grey). The intention is the final gabion will be in place by the end of tomorrow and then we'll be moving on to Phase 4 - the patio.