Excavating the West Lawn Bottom Zone, Part 3

More digging.

 Extending the Retaining Wall.

Digging up to the back yard patio sidewalk, to begin laying down the other end of the River of Rocks.

We need to find proper height rocks to extend the Retention Wall over the excavated path, and then put the River of Rocks over them.

While we were working on this, the Fall rainy season arrived.  At one point we got 5 inches of rain, which flooded the pit that we've excavated.

And then five days later, we got 8.5 inches, flooding it again, and even higher.

The result is that it is too wet to work.  The dirt is very heavy and sticks together; I think this is from a high clay content.  After two weeks, it's difficult to dig, but possible.  I used this time to finish the Retaining Wall and link it in with the beginning of the River of Rocks by the back sidewalk.

Water Supply for Zones 6 and 7

We saw some weeks ago that irrigation zones 6 and 7 had valves in the middle of what is now the West Lawn Bottoms.  We dug these up and found that they had a common water supply line heading back towards the house.

We removed these lines and capped it off, and then extended the Retention Wall up to where the water supply line was capped off.

Both Zone 6 and Zone 7 will be for the lawn sections below the Retention Wall (Zone 8 is above the Retention Wall), so we need to bring them thru the Retention Wall. 

First we dug back to discover where the water supply line comes from.  It turned out to Tee off the main irrigation water supply line.  The main irrigation water supply line is a 1 1/2 inch PVC line running, in this section, parallel to the back of the house -- about 31 or 32 inches away from the foundation of the house.  The Tee for zones 6 and 7 is 72 to 74 inches West of the corner of the house (next to the Iris Garden).  We replaced the schedule 20 PVC with schedule 40 PVC.

We then ran the line down to the Retention Wall, dropped it down (since the ground is sloped down)

and then we ran it thru where the Retention Wall will be and reattached the valves for Zone 6 and Zone 7.   We taped the electrical control wires to the bottom of the PVC pipe.

This positions them to be used for irrigation lines to service what will some day be the lawn part of the West lawn, and the Central Lawn area.

The main lines are 1 1/2 inch lines.  They are stepped down to 1 inch lines for the valves.  The valves have 1 inch input and 1 inch output.  We will probably step that down to 3/4 inch lines with 1/2 taps for each sprinkler head.

Excavating the West Lawn Bottom Zone, Part 2

For the past month plus, we have been continuing to dig out the Bottom of the West Lawn while extending the Retention Wall and filling in behind it with the dirt excavated out of the Bottom.

We continued with the digging.  Both next to the Jungle,

and next to where the Retaining Wall needs to be extended.

Until, at one point, I hit a main irrigation line taking water to the control valves for Zones 6 and 7, which have pretty much been taken apart.

and once the valves have been found, we exposed the entire water supply line, and removed it, keeping the valves so they can be reused.

Continued digging exposed more and more rocks, big and small.

Some of these rocks were used to extend the Retention Wall.