Author: David Linnard

It almost seems a shame that we are finally covering up all our hard work but at least we know whats down there which is:

• Repaired foundations
• Chamfer on footings to direct water away from wall
• Dimple board to allow any trapped water to seep away
• Geo-texitle fabric to keep the dirt from blocking up the gravel
• Tons of gravel
• Pipework with two clean outs
• Chamfer on the top level of gravel
• Sloped top layer of gravel and added on top a thick plastic top layer to again divert water away from house
• 5″ of soil with a few bags of peat mixed it

It is a relief to finish this job as it’s taken many months and lots of of grunt work.

We do have a bit of gravel left over but we’ll find a use. In total I think the three deliveries dumped about 25 cubic yards of gravel which equates to around 60,000 lbs, no wonder it took us weeks to shift it. Again a big thank you to all who helped.

[Show slideshow]

This weekend I added the capping strips to the dimple board, thanks again Andy from DIY Basement Solutions for your kind donation. These strips help seal the top of the dimple board to the wall. I used the white Tapcon screws with stainless steel washers to attach the caps. I will have to tweak some of these as in places more lime plaster needs to be added, including the corner, but that can wait to spring. We also have some Stego mastic left over, so I may add a bead along the top. You’ll notice in the pictures that the capping strips hold in place an apron of the geo-textile fabric, this covers the edge of the wrapped around fabric to fully encapsulate the gravel.

[Show slideshow]

After smoothing down the fabric and apron I added the plastic membrane, for this I used an 18″ wide roll of rhizome barrier which is used to prevent bamboo rhizomes from spreading. This is tough stuff and I got it in 40 mil (a little over 1mm) and it would be hard to puncture this stuff with a shovel. As I had previously sloped the gravel away from the house the membrane is similarly sloped to help divert ground water away from the house. Once this was down, it was time to cover up everything.

It was nice to to get the wheelbarrow down there as it made it easy to move soil around. I also added quite a bit of peat and bio-char to improve the soil quality and in the spring we’ll also mix up some of our kitchen compost.

[Show slideshow]

I still have to finish off the drain on the side of the house but that can wait until after Christmas now and will only take a day.

We want one access route to the house that is step free and this route will be up the drive and around the back of the house. In the last photo the flat area to the right will be the start of our path. It will be about a foot higher than the ground outside our rear windows which we plan to plant plants that do well in the shade like ferns. The transition from this lower level to the path (12″ higher but increasing) will be via a rock garden as we have many huge stones laying around in the garden. This will be a fun project to work on and we’re both looking forward to.

Below I’ve ordered a few images chronologically so you can see how we progressed through the year. I’ve included some pictures of the rear so you can see how it looked when we bought it.

Part 1. Digging the trench, fixing footings, plastering and whitewashing.

[Show slideshow]

Part 2. Fixing more trench collapses, installing dimple board, geo-textile cloth, piping, gravel, caping strips and finally soil.

[Show slideshow]

Lastly if we had paid someone to do all this I think we would have probably had to pay in excess of $30,000 and possibly double that.

By the way Kingston (and similarly the Hudson Valley) have experienced a housing boom and earlier this year Kingston supposedly had the hottest real estate market in the country, hard to believe until you look at housing pricing.

See Why Kingston’s real estate market is the hottest in the country

and

As home prices soar in unlikely places, the most vulnerable residents pay the price

I bring this up as it’s difficult to find contractors, who can now pretty much charge what they like. It’s certainly great to have the energy of new people moving into the area but it is sad to see people being evicted and rents increasing sharply.

All in all I think we added quite a few defences against damp and I don’t think we could have done a better job. If my Dad was still alive today he would definitely have approved of the work.

At last we’ve started to fill in our trench and start to regain the path around our house. It’s been a a long slog and I think we started on this project in 2020. On Thursday we almost run out of the gravel but fortunately I was able to order another 4 sq. yards on Friday morning which pretty much kept us busy the for the rest of the long weekend.

By Saturday evening I think all the shoveling and carrying had caught up with us and we were both beat. Big thanks to the Mayor of Ponckhockie, Barry, who helped us on Saturday. Sunday it started to rain around mid-day so I didn’t get a lot done, pretty much just trimmed the top edge of the dimple board and some cleanup inside. We will cap the tops of the dimple board with these dimple and sloped caps which help to seal the top of the dimple board. Thank you Andy for your kind gift of some free sloped caps, every little helps.

We’ve probably got about 1.5 cubic yards of gravel to shift, which may not sound much, until you realise that a cubic yard of gravel can weight between 2,300 and 3,000 lbs and we’ve already shifted 14.5 cubic yards.

I know that’s an odd title for a post but I’ll get to that.

So another Gravel Day, I can’t tell you how happy I am!!! Possible I’m coming down with something but today seemed a bit of a slog, it wasn’t I just felt like it. Probably close to freezing but the sun was out and within ten minutes I needed to ditch some clothing.

I’m bucketing the in gravel but I’m only filling the buckets to halfway and taking them one at a time. Our friend Derrick suggested that we should add any unwanted stone so I’m adding the stone rubble which we took off the top of the walls, this has helped a lot. I probably added about 6″ of gravel on Saturday and today was similar. We’re probably halfway done and have added enough to prevent any trench collapse, in fact I now want the trench to collapse to save us shoveling dirt back in. If it doesn’t rain or snow over the next few weekends we’ll probably finish the project this year, though I do think we may need to order some more gravel, joy to my ears!!!

It was a bit of a slog today also so I’m not coming down with anything, it’s just the nature of the beast.

[Show slideshow]

By the way we added the thick grips to the buckets to make carrying a lot less painful. The green one on the left cannot be transferred to a new bucket, however, the rubber one on the right can be. I highly recommend them.

So, pushing a car, how does that tie in? It’s something Aimee and I witnessed a few years back when we lived in Oakland. It was evening and we were sitting on the front patio of Beer Revolution (3rd and Broadway) when we saw a chap, maybe in his 50’s/60’s pushing his car through the intersection. I thought he’d just bring his car to rest as soon as he had cleared the junction, but no, he kept on pushing it. I kept on expecting him to pull over, but no he kept on going. Feeling sorry for the chap I caught up with him and asked whether he wanted a hand, “no” he said politely, he was fine. Being inquisitive I asked him where he was going and he said Berkeley. Berkeley!!! That was a couple of miles away and there was a slight incline on the way, nothing if you’re walking or cycling, but pushing a car, crazy!!!!

On returning to our beers I mentioned this to Aimee and we decided to leave and catch up with the chap who was heading in the direction of our loft. We caught up and after some persuasion he let us help him push his car. Turns out when we first saw him he had already pushed it a few miles, I think from East Oakland or Fruitvale. I can’t remember where his final destination was in Oakland but at the time the total distance seemed to be at least 5 miles.

So whenever I have a daunting task I think of this chap, who incidentally must have had the heart of an ox, and think can this be has hard as pushing that car.

Aimee has a bit of a bad back at the moment so she spent her time raking up the leaves on our lawn and it does look great clear of leaves.

Dedicated to Aimee’s Mum who passed away today. Bye, Bye Doris you will be missed, love you. 20th April, 1929 – 20th November, 2022.

Did you know that 16th October is National Gravel day – that’s news to me. First off a big thank you to Giovanna and Derrick who helped us shift gravel for a few hours. That was a huge help and thank you. It’s amazing how much difference a couple of extra people can make.

[Show slideshow]

We probably removed about 3 cubic yards of gravel which is half of what we ordered. We’ll probably need to order more and I’ll do the calculations so we’re not left with much over.

My plan was to pull the plywood shuttering up as the level of gravel increased but I didn’t and now it won’t budge. I should of also paid attention to the metal spikes holding up the shuttering – I managed to rescue all the long 4′ ones (that’s what I’m doing at the end of the video), but the shorter 30″ spikes got buried which is a shame but I don’t want to dig up the gravel again – lesson learnt.

We bought 6 more sheets of 4’x8′ OSB which we had cut lengthwise and that will provide the next layer of shuttering. I’m thinking that as the weather is getting colder this weekend we may spend plastering the inside walls as this can’t be done when it gets too cold and gravel can be shifted in most weather conditions.

The camera decided to stop working halfway through so apologies for the discontinuity and I’m sorry I didn’t get Aimee and Giovanna on film as they did a great job shoveling the gravel into the buckets.

This weekend we finally got to install the dimple board and started to fill in the trench. This job has been going on for over a year so it’s fantastic that it’s finally coming to an end. It will be great to get our driveway and path around the house back again!

The dimple board being plastic protects the wall from moisture in the ground and its 5/16″ dimples, which face towards the wall, allow the wall to breathe (important for our lime mortar walls) and moisture to condensate outwards so it falls by gravity to our foundation drain.

[Show slideshow]

I’m really pleased I came across this product as it’s the perfect solution for our house. We bought ours from the fine people at DIY Basement Solutions who provided excellent customer service on numerous occasions, thank you Andy.

Before we could add the dimple board I realised that we needed shuttering around the side of the house to contain the gravel. This meant removing a decent amount of gravel so I could pull back the geo-textile fabric, hence why the video is rather long.

Warning: may contain butt crack.

I had planned on wrapping the dimple board around the house horizontally and then trimming it to hight once we had backfilled but on the day for some reason I changed my mind and added a slope to it, bit risky as we’d only know if I got the angle right once it had been fully installed and if I got it wrong we’d have to take it all off and re-position it. As it turned out I think we were lucky and we got it right the first time. We’ll still have to trim it back in parts but it’s easy to cut with scissors. You’ll also noticed that we wrapped the board over the footings to further direct water away from the wall. To seal the top edge of the board we also bought some top caps which we’ll add towards the end.

All in all a great product and easy to install and I doubt we’ll ever have any issues with damp in the future. Loved the attachment plugs. Huge physical job overall but this will help keep the house dry for another century.

Last picture is of a female Downy woodpecker, there were two of them playing a few feet away but I couldn’t get a good shot of both of them.

[Show slideshow]

I’m getting a bit tired of this drain, as must you readers, but it would be a shame to stop reporting on it now. It’s taken us ages to get where we are today, but we’re not cutting corners and we had a lot of things to deal with such as:

• Dig out trench – no mean task, especially as it kept collapsing
• Repair poor footings and add bevel
• Remove old wall plaster, repair wall, re-plaster and white wash
• Remove old cast iron sewer pipe
• Grade channel to correct depth
• Install geotextile, gravel, pipe and dimple board etc …

So a few weeks ago we parged the side wall, we only did the lower half as once we have filled in the trench it will be easier to do the top half. Again the ToolCrete sprayer was invaluable and I can highly recommend it, okay cleaning it is a bit of pain, but then cleaning always is. Last week we limewashing the plaster, cleared out the trench after another landslide and started to grade it.

This last weekend we pretty much finished preparing the trench for the pipe which involved getting the slope right so when we added gravel, the pipe would have a gradient close to 1/8″ per foot (0.6°).

[Show slideshow]

We couldn’t find the pre-drilled pipe locally so we had to drill about 50 3/8″ holes in each pipe. We assembled most of it on the lawn and then dragged it into the trench. The vertical pipes you see are clean out points in case the pipe ever gets clogged. I’ll probably bury these a few inches below the surface but mark their locations somewhere.

So first down in the trench was the heavy duty geo-textile fabric, this will help keep the gravel from getting clogged up with fine particles and this will wrap around both pipe and gravel. Next down was 2″ of gravel followed by the pipe which was set a gradient of a little less than 1°. And now at last we can start to fill in the damn trench!!!

We bucketed in the gravel as it was tricky to walk down the trench with the pipe there, but as we start to fill it up we may be able to get a wheel barrow down there. Luckily we weren’t alone in this task and Aimee’s friends came around to help, wow, what a difference a few more hands make.

I can’t thank Kerry, Rich, Jesse and T-E-A-L enough for their help, in addition to which, Kerry and Rich brought over the most delicious food and wine, incredible!!!! Unluckily for us we had less gravel than we thought so worked stopped on the early side, that said, people said they’d help again and we already have a fresh pile of gravel sitting on the drive, just waiting for you all! I can’t thank you enough and I was touched by your help and enthusiasm.

[Show slideshow]

Kingston is having it’s yearly O+ Festival this coming weekend so there won’t be much happening at the house. The following weekend however we’ll be installing the dimple board and then continue to fill up with gravel.

P.S. In case you’re interested in what the back of the house looked like before we dug this trench, check out these old posts:

• Work continues on back path
• Grading the rear path

And also some photos, we almost forget we have a drive!!! Sometimes all this work seems a step back, but at least we’ve got rid of that horrible wall behind the rear windows, now hopefully you’ll be able to see the garden from the ground floor.

[Show slideshow]

This coming Sunday (13th October) we’re hosting another gravel moving party so if anyone has any spare time please consider helping us out for an hour or two, it would be a huge help to us 🙂 We’re still bucketing it in and we’re filling the buckets to about a 1/3 full so we’re talking maybe 15lbs.

Just got back from a lovely vacation to the UK and now we’re full of vigor and a positive attitude to get stuff done on the house, probably…

It’s still our aim this year to fill in the trench behind the house and although we’re getting closer we keep coming across additional tasks that needs addressing before we can lay the pipe and start filling. Today it was to remove our old sewer pipe as it was in the way of where the foundation drain will be. The wall of this 5″ pipe are 1/2″ thick so it’s very heavy which is why I’ve been cutting it in 5′ – 6′ lengths and I think removing two such lengths will be enough.

Cast iron is pretty tough stuff and it probably took me about 40 minutes to cut through one completely. I used a Sawzall with a 9″ diamond blade (thank you Jude and Kadidja for the Home Depot gift card, it pretty much paid for the saw!).

From the photos below you can see the rust nodules that have formed over the years, some of which are at least an inch high. You’d probably think that the pipe was junk if you looked at it, however, after cutting the pipe you can see that it’s still pretty much intact, not bad for a pipe that’s been underground for probably half a century at least and I bet it could survive another half century. So next time you pull up an old rusty cannon from the depths, just go over it with a grinder and it will be as good as new 🙂

[Show slideshow]

This coming weekend we plan to finish off all the remaining tasks such as adding a angle to the footings (to drain water away from the house) and to add lime plaster to the side wall. Temperatures here are starting to cool here so this is great timing as in few weeks it might not be possible to plaster.