The Walkway across the yard, part 1

We have decided to dig out the first layer of rock for the walkway that goes from the raised garden to the back patio. When David was here, we started this work, but didn't really have time to do much. Our approach is to define the inner curve of the walkway, and dig out from the other side, leaving one side to use for framing the wall that defines the walkway.



So here, we can see the initial digging, going from the edge of the walkway, digging South. We encounter rock (and the sprinkler line) just below the surface, so we have only a couple of inches of dirt to remove.



As we expose the rock, we need to break it up and get it out of the way. The easiest way to do this is to use the dirt as a ramp, allowing us to roll the rocks up and out of the growing pit.



Days of this sort of work, gets us a roughly triangular pit two to three feet deep with a well-defined edge for a wall to define one edge of the walkway.



We are now in position to be able to frame and pour the concrete for this wall.

First we form and pour the wall along the remaining dirt.



Then we frame and pour the other wall. This is more difficult, since we have to simultaneously support both sides of this wall.



We have to make sure that both walls are about the same height and will form a level walkway from the gate to the back patio walk.



Once that sets for a couple days, we can put the limestone blocks on the top and the walls are done.



Now we need to dig out the yard, and fill the area between the two walls with rock rubble to create the stable, filled area for the decomposed granite and finally the flagstones.

Granite counter-tops in the kitchen

We have finally upgraded the kitchen counter-tops from Formica to granite.

Linda looked around and found some granite that might work at Austin Stone Works. It turned out those slabs were already taken, so we had to look further. There are 4 or 5 major yards that have granite in Austin, and we went to all of them. Repeatedly.

Eventually we found some granite called Copper Canyon Exotica.



We reserved it at the yard and told Austin Stone Works about it. They quoted us a price and started work to cut and shape the stone in their shop. They called and told us that installation would be on the 15th.

On the 14th, I then started clearing off the counter tops. All the drawers and kitchen ware under the counters was removed. The gas stove top was disconnected and removed. The sink and faucet were disconnected.

I also removed the disposal. The City had been indicating that they didn't want us to use our disposal -- they suggested putting food scraps in the trash to lessen the difficulty in processing waste water. So I figured we would just not put a disposal back in. I put an electrical box in under the sink and put the electrical wiring into it.




On the morning of the 15th, two workers showed up. First they removed the old Formica counter-tops.




And then they installed the new granite counter-tops. All the space had been carefully measured, so that the granite pieces were just put in place and fit.



As part of the counter-tops, we also got a new sink. It's a 16-gauge stainless steel sink from Soci.

The contract with Austin Stone Works was for $7245.83. That covered removing the old Formica, the granite (getting the granite, cutting it to size and installing it), and the sink.

I got a new faucet from Lowe's for $246.81, a Delta Ashton Stainless Steel Model: 19922-SSSD-DST. It comes with a soap dispenser, but we didn't use it, so we only needed one hole drilled in the granite for the faucet.

Finally, I called Sully's Plumbing to connect the new sink to the drain pipes. That was $220. I figured that with the new sink and the now missing disposal, it required more skill than I have to design and implement a new way of connecting the sink and dishwasher drains to the old drain line. Now that it is done, I can see what is involved -- maintenance is easier than creating the initial system.

The next day was spent with putting in the faucet and getting the plumber and with putting everything back in place -- all the drawers and kitchenware, reattaching the gas stovetop and cleaning everything up.

The main missing piece now is a new backsplash.

Switch land-line phone service

AT&T was providing our land-line telephone service. It was about $20 a month after the base service plus taxes and fees. But then they raised the base cost by $2 a month in January, and then another $3 a month in August, which put the total monthly cost to more than $30.

Time Warner Cable provides our cable TV service and our internet service. We can throw the telephone service to them too, and get their "triple bundle". The triple bundle would provide both land-line phone service and long-distance. Normally we pay little for long-distance, about $5 to $10 a month, but with the higher cost of the AT&T service, it becomes cost effective to switch to Time Warner.

And now that AT&T has dug up the back yard and repaired our land-line connection, we at least know that it is possible to switch back and have working service.

So we made the move. In theory, our phone number is "portable", and we can continue using it. According to Time Warner, all we needed to do was switch out our previous internet cable modem with a new cable modem that also provided phone service and then wait for the magic to happen that would switch our service.

Originally our service was to switch over on 13 September, but that came and went with no apparent change -- picking up our phones still gave us a dial tone from AT&T. When I called, they said there were "technical" difficulties and the switch would happen on 15 September or no later than noon on the 16th.

Nothing seemed to happen on the 15th, but on the morning of the 16th, our phones were all dead -- no dial tone. To check, I plugged a phone into the Time Warner cable modem, but got no dial tone there either.

Waiting until after noon, I then called Time Warner. It took all afternoon to get the phones working. First they thought it was a problem with the modem, so I
took the old "new" modem back to the service center and swapped it for a new "new" modem. No change. Then there were issues with their data base, and several fields and "codes" that had to be changed. Around 5:00 pm, they got the phones working. It took over an hour of cell-phone minutes to make this happen.

Once the modem provided phone service, it was fairly easy to plug that into a nearby phone outlet, which takes the signal upstairs to our phone switch board. I could then run it to the distribution bars and then back down to the active phones downstairs.

Two problems developed. First, the phone line cords that connect phone equipment -- the kind with two RJ-14 clips on the end -- reverse the red/green wires. That reverses the polarity of the signal and causes problems with some telephone equipment.

The other problem was that one of the connectors was shorting out internally. By taking it apart and adjusting the position of the internal wiring, I was able to get it working correctly.

Walkway for the South Pit

To complete the walkway, we need to put it on the South side of the raised garden. We have it already excavated, walled, and filled with rock on the back side (East), North, and West.

As we excavate the yard, it would be useful to have the South side ready to accep the rocks we dig out.

Also, the South Pit has been excavated and filled back in, so all we have to do is shovel out the dirt and put in the wall. A couple of days of digging gets us almost there.



We need to trim up the dirt next to the South Pit, so that we get a clean vertical wall under the string, which would be 36 inches from the raised garden. Then we can frame it and pour the retaining wall. The retaining wall took 23 bags of Quikrete.



To finish this section of the walkway, we poured the corner that connects the South wall to the West wall.



Using mortar mix to attach the 4x4 chopped/sawed limestone blocks to the top, we have a finished wall separating where the walkway will be from the South bed.



Now all we need to do is fill the walkway area with rubble rock and top it with decomposed granite and flagstones.

Adding a shelf over the workbench in the garage

I had 4 feet of a wire shelf left-over from another project, so I put it up in the garage, over the workbench.



The wall area over the workbench is covered with a 1/2 inch or 3/4 inch piece of plywood, so it was easy to attach directly to it with wood screws. I had a little bag of clips left over from other wire shelves (in the closets, utility room and garage). I had to buy the two diagonal shelf supports. This took about an hour and a half to install -- the hard part was getting it to be level.

Changing Zone 1 irrigation to just bubblers

Earlier, we changed the Zone 1 irrigation to add bubblers for the crepe myrtle trees, described in the posting Changing the irrigation in the driveway peninsula. That left Zone 1 with 4 spray heads, as well as the 3 bubblers.



But the only things that are being "watered" by these heads are the two Barlett Pear trees, and maybe one crepe myrtle -- there used to be ferns and lamb's ear plants, but they have all disappeared. Either they were eaten by the deer or died from lack of water or sun.

And -- observing what happens when the sprinklers run -- only the top of the mulch gets wet; the water does not seem to get under the mulch to the dirt.

So we are replacing the three heads that are for the two Bartlett trees with bubblers. These will saturate the soil itself, under the mulch, and (hopefully) get water more directly to the trees roots.

This took half a day, but was relatively simple. I dug down to expose how the sprinkler riser was attached to the buried sprinkler lines.



Then we removed the long riser, replacing it with a shorter one that just comes up to ground level (or slightly less) and then put a bubbler on top of it.



Now when the sprinkler runs zone 1, there is no visible trace -- all the watering is being done by bubblers underground. At least we have little water wasted by misting and evaporation.

The fourth head (which really was not watering anything) was just capped off underground.

The main problem with this is going to be finding these bubblers if/when we need to do something with them. And then there is also the issue of whether it will be enough (or too much) water for the trees.

Finishing the Headwaters of the Walkway

With the telephone land-line working and re-buried, there should be limited activity going in or out of the gate, so I went back to finishing the walk way from the raised garden up to the gate by the garage and the driveway.

This was pretty much straight-forward excavation. Break up the dirt. Separate the rocks from the dirt. Haul the dirt in a wheelbarrow to a storage pile, to use elsewhere later. Put the rocks in a pile to use to fill under the walkway once it is defined by the two walls on each side.



It took a couple of days.



But now we have the digging done.



The one thing we had to be very very careful about is the irrigation supply line. This is a large white PVC pipe which supplies the water to all the sprinkler system zones. This supply pipe is attached directly to the city water supply (thru a back-flow valve). If we were to nick it, we would have a flood of water gushing from it (we've done this elsewhere). But (so far) we've avoided problems so far. This supply line starts at the street and goes all the way around the house.



Once the digging is done, we can then frame and pour the concrete.



To help protect the irrigation water supply line, we surrounded it and the control wires with a 4 inch drainage tube. This should give us a bit of warning when we get close to it.



Then we can lay the white limestone blocks on top of the concrete.



And finally, we fill the trench created by the two walls with the loose rock that we found while we were digging.



This should make it usable for awhile. Longer term, we want to cover it with decomposed granite and then flagstones.

Extending the Walkway to the Back Patio

The landscape plan shows the walkway going from the gate to the raised garden and then around to the back patio. This creates a landscape bed between the walkway and the house, next to the garage and kitchen. I decided to go ahead and start this work, since it ties into the walkway in front of the raised garden, and I'm almost done with that, ready to pour concrete and fill in with rock.

First we lay out the location and shape of the walkway extension, using a garden hose to define both the left and right sides. Once that is correct, we spray paint the lawn along the hose.



Then we remove the grass from where the walkway will be. This gives us a good view of what the walkway will look like.



The real purpose of this, at this time, is just to see how it interacts with the walkway in front of the raised garden. We will need to dig it out at least for a short section where the two intersect, so we can pour the cement wall that defines the boundaries of the walkway.



Continuing to dig out the dirt, we are struck by how little depth there is to the dirt before we hit solid rock.



But we continue digging it out, exposing the rock where the walkway will be.



Our first attempt was to pour a cement wall directly on this rock outcropping.



Then the idea was to dig out the dirt yard behind the cement wall, and use the jack hammer to split the rock in the yard, so we could lift it up and out -- creating a deep dirt-filled yard.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out. We dug out the dirt, exposing the rock. But when we went to jack-hammer the rock and pry it out, all the rock moved and came out, including the cement wall, leaving a big hole.



Part of the problem was probably the sharp straight edge of the wall in front of the raised garden, as well as the real shallow depth of the wall on the rock.

But this changes the approach we will use. Rather than trying to put the walkway on the rock directly, and then dig out the yard on either/both side, we will dig out the yard and the walkway, and then pour the support walls for the walkway, as we did for the North Pit and South Pit. It's more work, but it should be a much better result.

So the next step is to dig up the yard just south of the new walk-way area and get that rock out of the yard, using it to fill in the areas around the raised garden.

The Walkway in front of the raised garden

While waiting for the telephone company to fix our land line phone cable, I've started digging out the area where the walkway will go in front of the raised garden. We already have the area behind and to the North of the raised garden, so we have the front and to the South to do.

The first problem is to mark the area to be excavated.



Next we remove all the grass, exposing the dirt to be moved.



We dig down with the dirt. In some places, we only go a couple of inches before we hit rock. One day of digging gets the first half.



A second day of digging gets the second half.



As you can see, rocks lay just below the surface. So now we need to take out those rocks. We were hoping that we could use the dirt edge as one side of the framing for pouring a vertical cement wall, but it looks like the rocks do not happen to separate where we want them to, so we will need to extract rocks that will leave a void under the ground in the yard. Eventually we will want to dig out the yard too. It may be sooner for parts of the yard than we wanted.

So far we've done pretty well with just taking the rocks out of the desired area. Most of these rocks are too big to manage as is, so I've brought out the jackhammer and split them at the edge of the trench.



We have about half the rocks out now, and just need to continue to split them and remove them.

Continuing with the excavation, we are down to one (big) rock to remove, right at the corner of the walkway and the North Pit. In preparation for the cement wall defining the boundary of the walkway, we have to consider how the walkway continues from the raised garden to the back patio, so we have laid that out and will need to excavate the extended walkway, probably 3 feet or so, to provide the right support and connection to the extended walkway.



The objective now is to fill this trench with rock, ready for flagstones to make it a walkway. To do this, we need both sides of the trench well-defined. So we are going ahead and putting in the retaining wall that will separate the yard (dirt) from the trench (rock). Once we have that wall in place, we can fill the trench with rock. We use our standard technique of using the dirt for one side of the frames and the masonite boards as the other, separated by multiple 1x4 boards, and held in place with our bags of compost/manure.

Replacing our Telephone Line

We've been having problems with our telephone for some time. This is our AT&T land-line telephone, the one that was installed when the house was built in 1986.

For a couple of years now, the amount of static and noise on the line has been increasing. Last year (September 2010), when Hurricane Hermine came thru, we got 14 inches of rain in one day. A couple of days later, the phone line was generating so much static that we couldn't dial out, or hear much when someone called. At that point, a couple of guys came out and said the problem seemed to be below the concrete pedestal in the back yard with the electrical transformer. Then they went away, and gradually, the problems with the phone line went away.

This year, the static and noise increased again (and we've had no rain). Eventually it got bad enough I figured we needed to try again. I put in a trouble report with AT&T. In retaliation, the phone line decided to just die altogether. No signal. No dial tone. So at least it wasn't a subjective or transitory problem.

After 4 days, a repair person came out and agreed that the line was dead. The next day, a locator came out to (a) agree the line was dead, and (b) mark the lawn with where the line went and where the problem appeared to be. They can apparently send a signal down the line and when it gets to the break, it reflects and comes back. From the time it takes to get the reflection, they can compute how far down the wire the problem is. 39 feet. Which put it pretty much at the electrical transformer.

Another 4 days later, a crew of two guys showed up to dig up the lawn, to get at the phone wire at the point where the problem should be. They dug down and found the trench in the limestone where all the utility lines are (phone, cable, electrical). But they could not find the telephone line.



So this digging crew left, needing another locator. F days later, another locator person showed up, and found a spot on the other side of the electrical box. Another dig crew came out and dug down and found where our phone line was split off from the main cable.



Since it was now some 14 days without a dial tone, the installer put in a new telephone line by opening up the main line and splicing on a new cable, and then ran that cable across the yard to the interface box on the side of the house and attaching it instead of the old line. The old wiring is still there, buried in the yard,
but useless, and detached. The new wiring is just a black cable running across the yard. Another dig crew needs to come out and bury the line.



Turns out two dig crews came out. On Wednesday, a crew of two guys came out and filled in the holes and removed the plywood and orange plastic fence.

This left the telephone cable coming up out of the ground on the right side of the electrical box, and then going back down on the left before coming back up and crawling across the lawn to the house. And they said that another dig crew would come out and just "shove the line under the grass", which is what the cable people did when they needed to replace the cable.



This seemed short-sighted, so I went out and dug up both sides, to find the cable, and then along the front of the electrical box, down to bed rock (which isn't very far right there), and threaded the telephone cable from the one side (where it attaches to the main telephone trunk), over to the other side, where it will continue to the house. There was lots of extra cable, so I coiled the extra on both the left and the right sides.



Then I buried all this, so that the right side of the box is completely finished, and the cable just comes up out of the ground on the left side, and then runs across the yard to the house.



Literally 5 minutes after I finished this work, the final dig crew showed up and 3 guys pushed the cable under the grass in about 10 minutes.



That should hold everything until this entire area of the yard is excavated.