Threading the new conduit

Getting the cable and telephone lines into the conduit was a farce.

I called both AT&T (telephone) and Time-Warner (cable) on Monday to see if they wanted to do this work.  Both said they would schedule someone to come out and put their cable in the new conduit.

But Time-Warner didn't give a day when they would be out, and so on Wednesday, I decided to do it myself.  I disconnected the cable from the cable box out near the fence and put it in the conduit at the house, eventually getting it out of the conduit back near the fence.  I hooked it back up at the cable box, and tested that everything still worked.  As I was cleaning things up, guess who shows up? A cable guy.

He goes over the work, and decides that it would be better to just run a new cable, replacing the old cable.  That way it can be exactly the right length.  Also he inspected the big cables in the ground that I uncovered and figured they should be repaired and maintained.  So he put a service call in for another person to come out and fix them.  On Thursday, they came out and re-did those connections.

So the Time-Warner work went pretty well.

The AT&T work, on the other hand, was different.  After the call on Monday, the AT&T repair customer service said that someone would be out on Tuesday, 8 to 12.  No one showed up.  I called back and they said someone would be out on Friday, 9 to 7. 

On Thursday, they tried to get a hold of me, but I was pouring concrete and didn't hear the phone.  I wasn't expecting anyone to call on Thursday, since they had said they would be out on Friday.  The guy on Thursday said that they were given the address "Harbor Ridge Cove" instead of "Barker Ridge Cove", and since they couldn't find that, had tossed the work order into a "junk" bin.

On Friday, I call them, again, and they said the address was correct, but they couldn't decide what area of town it was, and no one would be out -- they would have to reschedule for a later time.  I thought this was ridiculous, so I told them they were incompetent, and I would just do the work myself.

I started with the Network Interface box just hanging there.

First we record which wires are attached where, and then disconnect the wires and attach the box to the wall.

We ran the telephone line thru the conduit and reattach the wires to the AT&T side -- two of the pairs of wires -- the blue and white/blue, and the orange and white/orange.  Also replace the ground wire.

Then re-attach the house telephone wires.
 

And, again, as I was finishing this off and cleaning up, an AT&T repair guy shows up!  He looks things over, says it is done pretty well, and then proceeds to take it apart and do it again.  The main change was moving the ground wire.  After all that work trying to get someone out, and being told it wasn't going to happen, someone shows up anyway.

After he was done, I put a cap on the conduit, both ends.

Underground Electrical Conduit

We bought 2 inch PVC electrical conduit, matching what Austin Energy does with the power line.  Byrd says that telephone and cable conduits should be at least a foot away from the electrical lines, so we positioned a separate run up the wall for the cable and telephone lines.

From the wall, we put in a 90-degree connector to change from vertical to horizontal, and then after a slight distance a 45-degree to head to the back of the yard.  A 10 foot section takes us under the bridge (and where the pathway will be) and into the main pit.

That's were we run into problems.  We need to turn the conduit to head towards the green City transformer box.  Both the cable and telephone lines originate neat the green transformer box.   But the angle we need to turn is probably something like 16 degrees.  Standard connections come only in 90 and 45 degrees.  In the picture below, you can see that both a 90 and 45 degree turn would be way too much.

But we had seen that there are two flavors of 90-degree connectors.  One is fairly small; the other takes about 2 feet to slowly turn 90 degrees.  Byrd says that is meant for fiber optics, which can't turn quickly.

We noticed that for the larger, slow turning 90-degree connector, that if we cut it at any given point, the pipe is almost straight at that point, at least for a couple of inches -- long enough that a connector won't notice that it is slightly curving.  So we can find the point where the tangent to the curve is pointing in the direction we want, and cut it there.  Then connect the 10-foot straight piece and we have a good connector for our specific angle.  The slight curvature in the connectors might mean it is not a perfect fit, but since this is for a conduit, not for pressurized water, that should not matter.

This extends the conduit all the way to the area near the electrical transformer box.

 
Now all we have to do is find one end or the other of the cable and telephone lines and run them thru the conduit.

Lowering the Water Supply Line

 With the foundation repair out of the way, we can begin on lowering the PVC line that provides water to our irrigation system.  The idea is to lower the line down to bed rock, as it comes out from under the path by the gate and then keep it down on bed rock along the house, around the corner and up the the edge of the current excavation.  Later we can excavate the rest of the backyard and lower more of it.

Since we are replacing the PVC line, the extra distance is not an issue.  But in addition to the PVC water line, the electrical wiring for the various zones also travels with the line.  Apparently standard practice is to dig a trench, throw the wiring into it, put the PVC pipe on top of the wiring and then cover everything over with dirt.  So the wiring now has to go down an extra couple feet and then, eventually, back up a couple feet.  So we need about 4 feet more wire.

To do this, we called American Irrigation Repair, as we have before, and had them cut all the wires and splice in an extra four feet of wire.  Each wire had to be cut, spliced on both ends, and the splice stuck in a special adaptor that keeps it waterproof under ground.

 Once that was done, we could remove all the old PVC pipe, and begin laying our new PVC.  We used "Schedule 40" which has thicker PVC walls.

We had to put in connections for Zone 2 and Zone 3.

And we then came back and connected Zone 3 to the existing piping for it.  This leads to underground drip irrigation lines in the North and South beds.

 We continued the line around the corner and hooked it into the existing PVC which runs across the backyard, where we haven't dug it up yet.  We put a connection for Zone 4 into the line before connecting it to the existing PVC.

 Before we sealed it off, we ran water to try to flush out any dirt or debris that got into the line.

And then we connected the Zone 4 control value.  We don't have a plan yet for what Zone 4 waters or where the lines go, but we have it ready.

Foundation repair

Once we have cleaned out the trench along the East side of the house, from the corner all the way to the fence, we can see that the house is not sitting on rock, but on rock on dirt on rock on dirt on rock.  And there are many tree roots going into the dirt under the foundation.  This seems to be just inviting trouble, so we would like to seal off the foundation.

We first clean out as much of the dirt and loose rock as we can.  Then we fill that space with cement.  To facilitate getting the cement in and holding it there, we use our standard cement forms, held about 4 inches away from the foundation, so we can pour the cement into the 4 inch space between the foundation and the forms.

This gets us partway around the house, then there is the area by the kitchen bay window.

 We do the same with that part -- creating a form and filling the area with concrete.

 And on around to the gate in the fence, first the forms.

  

and then the cement.

In all this took 72 bags of Quikrete.   At $3.10 per bag (plus tax) is $241.61.

We hope that this will seal off the foundation, making it stable.

 The cement did the main job of sealing the foundation, but notice that at the top, there were issues of trying to get the cement to seal up with the existing foundation.  Once the cement was poured, we then went back with just pure mortar mix and slathered on a layer of mortar to finish off the top of the cement and the existing foundation siding.

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.