4/21/07

More Building around the Outside of the House The moat is dug and the back retaining wall is going up. Click here to see the final pictures of the retaining wall.

 

Dug by hand to miss the water, sewer and electric lines. Now when we get heavy rains, it goes down the 8" pipe and not into the house.

 

Calico with a big yawn. The bottom of the moat will be lined with concrete and a cinder block retaining wall will go up on the high side. There will be a swale in the concrete to keep it running toward the drain.

Along side the house well put down fabric and cobblestone with a bit of a slant to keep the water off the roof from heading into the house.

 

The concrete bag wall is started. Downstairs garage on the left (used for storage) and 15' up the hill is the house on the right. We're building the wall to keep the two from meeting....

It is nice how they're leaving the trees as possible and creating nooks around them.

 

There's rebar through every bag.

The wall will end up being 10' tall and 65' long. At the far end will be stairs created out of the bags. I'm not sure that we'll use them, but there was more erosion at that point, so it seemed easier than bringing in fill and would make it more unique.

 

Right now the stairs down to the garage are rough stone with varying hights and depths. We have to be careful when we navigate them.

The view from the back without the wall.

 

Beside the garage before the wall.

This was the main spot of errosion. At the top is maybe 10' from the foundation of the house. The stairs will go here. The rest of the wall may have been overkill, but we needed that foundation to get this section right.