Trenching along the House to the Fence

With the monkey grass moved out of the way, we can continue the trenching along the side of the house, exposing the irrigation water supply line.

 


 We are concentrating just on the section from the Bay window to the gate.





 Using the jack hammer for a day, we have broken up most of the rock into pieces that we can remove.



Removing all this rock reveals a few more pieces that need to be removed, to get us to a clean trench, excavated down to bedrock.

Moving the Monkey Grass (again)

When the back deck was replaced, and expanded, there was a bed of monkey grass along the old deck.  I moved that to an area alongside the East wall of the garage. This was reported in a November 2003 blog posting. It's done reasonably well, except for a section where the garage roof creates an overhang, and the dirt underneath it gets no water.  I hope to fix that by moving the down-spout up to the top of the bed, right next to the fence, so that rain water, from the roof, is applied at the top of the slope and does everything in the bed as it flows downhill.  At the moment the down-spout is in the middle of the bed, so only half the bed benefits from any rain.

But in the meantime, we need to dig up most of this monkey grass to expose the irrigation water supply line so we can lower it to bedrock.  Since we don't want to just discard the monkey grass, I will transplant it again.

In theory this is just a temporary transplanting, until I can finish digging up this bed, Zone 2, and transplant the monkey grass back, but the list of tasks includes digging up the water supply line, and then digging down to bed rock, laying the water supply line on the bedrock, which requires changing the two zone controls (for Zone 2 and Zone 3), putting the telephone and cable lines in the conduit, finishing the pathway (which defines one edge of Zone 2, clearing out any remaining rock in Zone 2, filling it up with dirt, putting in new underground drip irrigation for Zone 2, and then putting the monkey grass back.  So it may be several months.

We started by putting it around the greenhouse, both on the East side

 behind the greenhouse, and along the West side.

 But this was not enough space, so we also used part of what is supposed to be the lawn alongside the walkway, since it had been dug up and had good dirt dumped there, at least until later.

We used some limestone blocks to define a lower edge of this area.

With favorable weather, we hope that this grass will do well, and we can put it into its final home once we finish Zone 2.

Foundation repair before the new Conduit

As we have been excavating to put in the conduit for the telephone and cable wiring, we have dug down next to the house to bed rock -- or at least something that seems like bedrock, a continuous sheet of limestone.

When we had the house built, we selected this area because it is rock.  Our previous house had been built on dirt and so it shifted as the dirt contracted and expanded with changes in the weather.  The idea was that at this location, we would have a solid foundation laid down on rock, and the house would be stable.

It appears this is not the case.  As I dig down, I can see that there is dirt, then a layer of large rocks, then a small layer of dirt, then a layer of smaller flattish rocks (shelf rock someone called it), another thin layer of dirt and then bedrock.  The foundation seems to be, at least at the edges, sitting on the large rocks, but there is still dirt and rock below that.

This continues from the corner of the house all along under the dining room and kitchen.   I dug out all the rock and as much of the dirt as could reasonably be removed.

In place of the dirt, it seems that concrete is a better choice.  So I used my standard wooden frames and poured concrete under the foundation along this section.  I used 21 80-pound bags of Quik-crete to fill this section in.

All of this will be underground, once it is finished, so the appearance is not the main issue.  We want to seal off the dirt and rock under the foundation, so that we don't have roots and water getting under there, making things unstable.

There is one more section, further up under the bay-window for the breakfast nook that I want to do also, but I have more excavation before I can do that.

Bridging the backyard

As I have been digging to lower the irrigation water supply line and put the cable and telephone lines in a conduit, so I can finish the path from the gate to the patio, it has become difficult to get from the house, via the patio, to the garden. This will get worse as I remove the shelf of rock that has been exposed directly under the irrigation water line.



To solve that problem, I built a bridge to go from the patio, across the hole, to the lawn. The bridge was made out of exterior treated 2x4s. I used two 10 foot 2x4s, on edge, as the main supports, and then nailed 2 foot lengths of 2x4s between the two supports.



This gives adequate support on either end and is rigid enough to support any one of the occupants of the house -- me, Linda, the dog, or the cat. I did something like this when we were doing the patio, and it worked fine, except when it got wet and icy. I hope to be done before it gets icy.

And to move that along, I extended the digging along the side of the house, following the irrigation water supply line. My plan is to take it back to the gate and lower it down to bedrock. That will require exposing and then removing all of this rock. Another 10 feet or so, and I should meet up with an area that has already been excavated.




Which is what happened. I scraped the dirt off the rock for this entire area, exposing several very large rocks, both on the side of the house and under the irrigation water supply line. Mostly, they were not very far under ground.



A day with the jackhammer and I have most of these broken up into manageable sized pieces, with the exception of the big one closest to the bridge. I've chipped off parts of the edge, but it's a really big rock, with no obvious natural breaking points.



Once I have cleared out all the broken pieces, we'll be able to see what is left.

This took another week, due to a 3 inch rain.

Continuing to dig up the back yard, part 2

A month later we are still digging in the backyard, taking out rock and piling up dirt.

We have now found the trench for the electrical line. In this trench, not far down from where we are digging, is a plastic conduit. Presumably the electrical supply lines are inside that conduit.



The conduit curves up as it gets to the house and vertically connects to our electrical meter and circuit breaker box.



In addition, we have found the cable and telephone lines. They were buried a couple inches into the dirt. The intent is to put them in a conduit like the electrical line.

In addition, we found another phone line that was left in the ground when we had a problem (last summer I believe) and they replaced the line with a new one.

We broke the water supply line once, just after we had the on/off valve switch replaced. We've put a temporary patch on to fix the break, until we can get to the point of dropping the entire water supply down to bedrock. At the moment we are supporting it in place.

Changing the Outside Water Cut-off Valves

Our work in the backyard is almost bound to break the irrigation water supply line. So we figured we needed to shut it off before we broke it. The cut-off valve is in the front of the house, near the water meter. Alas, when we went to turn off the irrigation water, the cut-off valves -- one before and one after some test ports -- were both frozen open with rust.



So we need to replace this cut-off valve. We called American Irrigation Repair, who had done such a good job just last June on repairing the two broken solenoid valves.

They came out and replaced the old cut-off with a brand new one.



They also provided a newer, bigger box, since there is an additional, easier to use cut-off at the very beginning -- with the yellow handle.

Throw some dirt around the box, and put the lid on, and this problem is taken care of.



Unfortunately, in doing this, they created a different problem. To replace the cut-off valve for the irrigation system, they had to shut off all the water to the house. But in trying to do that, that valve broke. So they replaced the main user water cut-off valve for the house.

The main water cut-off valve is just on this side of the meter. Notice that the city put two meters in this box -- one for me and one for my neighbor.



Just this side of the meter are then two cut-off valves -- one for me, and one for me neighbor. Each is in its own small hole. You have to reach down and turn the valve until the water is complete turned off. After talking with my neighbor, it seemed better to have one big box to access both cut-off valves, rather than two little ones, so I dug up both our cut-off and theirs, and got a box from Home Depot -- $20 -- for both cut-off valves. This should make it much easier to get to both my valve and his. Mine is on the left with the new red 90 degree cut-off handle; his is on the right with the turn, turn, turn handle.



Once the box is in place, put dirt around the outside, and slap the cover on.



This leaves us with two new valves in two new boxes. This should solve that problem for awhile. The old valves each lasted 25 years, so maybe these will last another 25.

Continuing to dig up the back yard, part 1

In continuing to dig up the back yard, the main difficulty is finding and protecting the communications and electrical lines while doing the digging. I called 811 to get them to mark where the lines were supposed to be, but ...




Working carefully from East to West, we first found the cable line. It was about 6 inches underground. I've wrapped a big section of it with yellow tape, to make it easier to see (and hopefully harder to cut accidentally).

Next we should have found the electric line, but so far, we haven't found it or an obvious trench that it could be in. We did find an underground white PVC sprinkler line. It was about 9 inches underground.

Finally, we found the telephone line. It was about 10 inches underground.




This is a triangle running parallel to the fence (about 5 feet away from it) up to the green electrical power transformer box and then back, parallel to the telephone line towards the house.

So far I'm only working on the part to the one side of the main irrigation water supply line which is about 7 inches under ground. The next section to work on will be on the house side of the main irrigation water supply line.

After about 3 weeks of digging, I have three areas exposed: (1) the big triangle to the East of the water supply line, (2) the triangle between the water supply line and the fence, and (3) the rectangle from the water supply line (on two sides) to the current patio.



This third area exposes the telephone landline and the cable line. The electrical line is still buried somewhere down in a trench that was cut into the limestone rock. In addition, this area has exposed some large rocks which I will need to break down to get out of the hole that has been dug to expose them.



The remaining section will be the neck of this area going along next to the patio over to where the various electrical, telephone and cable lines come up from the ground and attach to the wall.

Excavating the Backyard, Part 1

We are trying to clean up the backyard, by removing all the rocks and making the dirt both deep and good for growing, for example, trees. Starting from the East Side of the backyard, we first scrap off the dirt, to reveal the rocks just under the surface. We have to be careful not to break the irrigation water supply line, so we mark it on the surface with a PVC pipe and try to stay back from it.



Then we dig out and pry out as much as we can -- dirt into one pile, rocks into another. This leaves some really big rocks, so we bring out the jack hammer and break them into smaller pieces that we can move out of the hole.



Once we remove all these rocks and the dirt, we have a pit. We need to make sure that it is all deep enough.



We are staying about 5 feet away from the back fence to leave enough room to move the wheelbarrow and lawnmower from one side of the pit to the other. We are running half inch PVC pipe on the surface just to mark this "5 foot from fence" line.

We have tried to be very careful around the irrigation supply line, but notice that it is barely above a large block of rock. Despite trying to stay 4 to 6 inches away from the water supply line, the dirt next to it just fell away, so the line is very exposed (while still being buried).



We still have one big rock to remove, up near the walkway. This rock appears to extend back under the grass into an area we were planning to leave undisturbed for now but it is probably better to get it out now than to wait until later.

The general plan for the back yard

With the South Pit done, we want to get back to finishing the walkway.

To finish the walkway, I need to excavate the section that connects what has been done to the back patio. This goes over the main irrigation water supply line -- a one inch PVC line that runs from the meter, by the street, along the East side of the house (thru Zone 2), and then across the backyard, and up the West side, and then across the front yard, effectively a rectangle around the entire house.

In addition, the remaining walkway goes over the telephone line, the cable line, and the electrical lines, all of which are buried and run roughly from the edge of the house, near the rain barrel, to the green transformer box in the middle of the backyard, by the fence.

All of these need to be below the walkway. I can't do much about the water supply line, but the others -- the cable, telephone and electrical lines, I want to put way down under ground, so that they don't get messed up if we work in the back yard. I know that at the moment the telephone and cable lines are just below the surface.

The idea is to bury a large 4 inch PVC tube as a conduit that will house the telephone and cable lines, and if they need to be replaced, the new line can just be slipped into the conduit; no one will need to dig up the back yard to do this.
So I need to find the lines, excavate down as far as I can and put in the PVC conduit from the house to the fence and run the cable and telephone in it, before I can finish the walkway. That is the current project.

I keep forgetting to take a picture before I start any work, but this is pretty much what the backyard looks like now. The idea is to excavate it down about 24 inches, starting on the East side and going all the way across the back yard to the West side. That will allow a couple of new trees to be put in, providing shade in the hot summer sun.



I started to dig in a line along the East edge.



I'm hitting rock almost immediately -- an inch or two below the surface in spots. No wonder that the grass would not grow.

New Smoke Detectors and the Electrical Circuit List

We have been having the smoke detectors going off for no apparent reason, in the middle of the night. One possibility is that these are the wired-in smoke detectors that were installed when the house was built, in 1986. Smoke detectors, in general, are only supposed to last 10 years; these are now over 25 years old. Probably time to replace them.

I put in two new new Kidde FireX Model PI2010 Dual Sensor Smoke Alarms. Home Depot, $64.89. These provide both an Ionization sensor and a Photoelectric sensor. This replace the earlier ones that were ionization only.

Both the previous smoke alarms and the new ones have a "easy connect" feature that allows the smoke alarm to be plugged and unplugged easily without the need for re-wiring, but, of course, the connectors are incompatible, so I had to first disconnect the old connector and re-wire in the new connector. This requires finding the appropriate electrical circuit for each smoke detector, so I could shut off the power at the circuit breaker box.

The bedroom smoke alarm is on circuit 25; the hallway smoke alarm is on circuit 35.

As long as I was doing this, I created a spread sheet to list each electrical circuit and what I think is on it.

Circuit
1	Air Conditioner Compressor, attic subcircuits
2	Air Conditioner Compressor
3	Lights and Outlets in Guest Bedroom, GFI for all bathrooms, back porch
4	Air Conditioning Fan
5	Garbage Disposal, Light over Sink
6	Dishwasher
7	Dryer, Washer
8
9	Kitchen Island Outlet, outlets Left and Right of cooktop
10	Refrigerator
11	Outlets in Living Room
12	Kitchen Counter by Living Room, Dining Room outlets
13	Garage Outlets on outside wall
14	Central Bathroom Heater/Fan, Light near heater/fan.
15	Breakfast Nook
16	Microwave
17	Front Office outlets
18	Solar System Grid Tie-Breaker
19	Solar System Grid Tie-Breaker
20
21	Stove, Oven
22	Stove, Oven
23	Electric Dryer (?)
24	Electric Dryer (?)
25	Master Bedroom lights/outlets, Master Bath Lights, Floor Plugs in LR, Master Bedroom Smoke Alarm
26
27	Back Bathroom Fan/Light, lights over sink
28	Outside Backlights (Flood), Back Bedroom Fan/Light, Closet
29	Outlets in Front Office (some)
30	Dining Room Lights, South Track Lights, Hall Light, Outlets on South LR Wall
31	Kitchen Fan, Pantry Light, Utility Light, Garage Lights, Front Flood Lights, Attic Lights
32	Bathroom GFI Circuit, all 3 bathroom outlets, Computer Room outlets, Loft outlets, attic lights
33	Kitchen under cabinet lights (new work), left of sink
34	LR Track Lights (North), outlets on LR North Side, Fireplace, Entry Way, Hall outlets, Central Bathroom
35	Loft outlets, Computer Room/Closet Light/Fan, Master Closet Lights, Passthru Room outlets, Hallway Smoke Alarm
36	Kitchen Light, Breakfast Light, Office Light, Front Porch Lights, Entrance Way Light
37

This complements the previous circuit list that I had on two sheets of yellow tablet paper. One problem is how to refer to the rooms; trying to identify the bedrooms by occupant ("Kids, Guest, Lauren's, ...") is problematic since they have moved in, out, and around.