Grass for the East Lawn

With the digging and dirt done for the East Lawn, the question becomes what to put down in this space.  The landscape plan has it as lawn.  The City of Austin suggested using Zoysia Palisades as a grass that needs little maintenance and is drought tolerant.  We experimented with two pieces last year and it seemed to survive, so we will continue with it.

We find several places that sell Zoysia Palisades, and using Angie's List, we decided to use The Grass Outlet.  They sell Zoysia Palisades for $200 a pallet.  Each pallet is supposed to cover 450 square feet, and my estimate is we need 800 square feet.  The total cost, including delivery is $497.95.

The first pallet covered one end, leaving space around the base of the Monterrey Oak tree.

The second pallet gets us all the way to the end of what we have worked on so far.

This ties in nicely with the new walkway flagstones.

And we had a small amount left over, as expected, so we spread that out in the small area near the Bamboo Grove behind the Jungle.

This area will be interesting, since it has no irrigation (at least so far). (Update: all this grass died.  Clearly need irrigation to get it established, at least.)


One of the main questions in this work was should we install the sod now (early Fall), or wait until next Spring.  We decided that, temperature and water-wise, now should be about the same as the Spring, and it can rest over the Winter, before going into the heat and stress of next Summer.  Plus it will give us a grass cover instead of mud for the next few months.  And, in this particular case, we were fortunate enough to put the sod down just the morning before getting 0.5 inch of rain, followed by 1.5 inches the next day.  So we are getting it well watered in its new home.

Digging up the East Lawn, Irrigation, Zone 4

Having dug up the East Lawn, and brought in another dirt to even things out, we are ready to install a sprinkler system and a lawn.  We have zone 4 of the 11 irrigation zones in reserve for this area, so we just have to plan it out.

We pick the RainBird 1800 sprinkler heads -- they have adjustable angles, plus a fixed 180 degree and 360 degree.  And we will put bubblers by the two trees -- the one that is there now and the new one to be planted.

We laid out about where everything went using old PVC pipes.

And once we had it laid out, we trenched where the lines went.

We are using a 3/4 inch PVC pipe, with 1/2 inch Tees for the RainBird 1800 sprinkler heads.  We glue all the pieces together, test it out, and then fill the trenches back up with dirt.

Somehow in this process, we ended up with not enough dirt to fill things up, so we went to Whittlesey Landscape Supplies and got two more cubic yards of dirt -- professional mix ($86.92).

This allowed us to fill in the trenches and smooth out the backyard that has been dug up. 

We moved a volunteer tree to one of the spots where we want a tree in the back yard, and also moved the two pieces of Zoysia Pallisades to close to the patio walkway (to get it out of the way of the irrigation lines).

We should let this settle for a bit, and then put down new grass.

Finishing the stone work along the fence

We have stone, on top of a cement wall going down to bedrock, along much of the fence, from the driveway, along the raised garden, the South bed, and all the way to the electrical box in the middle of the back yard.  The next section to do is from the electrical box to the Bamboo Grove.

 The basic approach is to dig down to bedrock,

 and just continue that until we get to the other end.

After we extend the ditch far enough, we mark the fence and attach a black plastic sheet to separate the cement wall on our side from the earth on the other side.

And then we can create the forms -- sheets of Masonite, separated from the fence by 1x4 and 2x4 pieces (to create a 3.5 inch gap).  Bags of mulch and compost hold the Masonite sheet in place.

This first form is only about 14 feet long.  After it is done, we extend it along for a second section.

And when these forms are removed, we have the basic cement wall that we want for this section of the fence.

The third portion of this work extends the digging along the fence all the way to the Bamboo Grove.

and we can then trim it up along the fence to get a clean line for the concrete pour.

We frame it up and pour the concrete -- 10 bags of it.

and removing that finishes the concrete wall support, all the way from the electrical box to the Bamboo Grove.

Adding the limestone blocks on the top of the concrete wall finishes out the construction for this area.

This took two bags of masonry mix.

Then we have to move the pile of dirt back into place, filling the yard up next to the new limestone blocks.

We still have a small pile of dirt left over.  Presumably we will need that when the dirt next to the fence settles, over time.

This whole process took about 2 months, from Aug 1 to Oct 1 (but there were other things going on at the same time).

Irrigation system water usage

If we are going to be able to reduce the amount of water that we use for lawn irrigation, it would help to know how much we are using for each Zone.  So I ran each zone by itself, reading the water meter before and after.  Our water usage now is:

Zone 1      42
Zone 2    136
Zone 3    279
Zone 4       0  (currently off)
Zone 5    164
Zone 6    167
Zone 7    165
Zone 8    215
Zone 9    174
Zone 10  246
Zone 11  146


That gives us a total of 1692 gallons.

When I did this, I notice 3 leaks in the system and fixed them.

When I just read the meter on Tuesday night and then again on Wednesday morning, after the system has run its entire sequence, it seems to take 1128 gallons.

Digging up the East Lawn, Part 3

We have dug up the East lawn close to the Monterrey oak and then next to the part that had already been dug up.

The last part of the East Lawn that needs to be dug up is this last part that hugs the stone wall.  We have to remove the top level of dirt.

And then remove the rock that is under the top layer of rock.
 

 And then move down and remove the top layer of dirt

 and break up the rock that is underneath to clean it all out.

We still need to trim closer to the stone wall.

Another day of work finishes that off.

And now it is just filling the hole back up with dirt.  That just takes a couple of days for all the dirt we have, but we are seriously needing more dirt.

We satisfied the need for more dirt by two orders of dirt.  Each order was for 8 cubic yards.  The first went to Austin Landscape Supplies for Grower's Mix -- $378.87 for 8 cubic yards ($35 a cubic yard) including a $70 delivery charge (8/19/2014) (and tax).  That order was not enough, and not really of very good quality, so the next order was to Whittlesey Landscape Supplies for  8 cubic yards of Professional Mix  -- $434.30 ($40.15 a cubic yard) including a $80 delivery charge (8/21/2014).

Finishing the walkway

The walkway has been completely defined at this point.  It goes from the fence to the raised garden, around the raised garden, and then over to the back patio.  It was designed to be 36 inches wide and follow the slope of the yard.  It has two walls, of cement, going down 2 to 3 feet to bedrock, topped with limestone blocks.  The area between the two walls is filled with rock rubble and then topped with decomposed granite.  It has been allowed to settle for months now.  Seems like it is time to put down the flagstones over the decomposed granite, so that it matches the patio.

My  rough measurements show that the actual width of the walkway varies from 27 to 36 inches (between the limestone block edges).  From the fence to the raised garden is about 17 feet.  The raised garden is about 17 feet by 20 feet, and then 60 feet from the raised garden to the back patio.  So assuming it was 3 feet wide, that's about 450 square feet of surface.

The back patio is covered with "Oklahoma thin".

We need to find a source for the stone, and stone people to put it down.

Saul's Masonry did a good job the last time, so we went back to them again.  Now they are working as "Max's Masonry".  They looked it over and figure it will take at least a week to do.  $2000 for labor.

Plus materials.  We found the same stone as the patio at Austin Custom Stone: Oklahoma Thin MC.  Plus 2 cubic yards of masonry sand from Austin Custom Stone and 10 bags of Alamo Portland Cement from Home Depot.

The delivery from Austin Custom Stone was scheduled for Thursday.  The two cubic yards of sand have to be moved around back.

 And we have 3 pallets of the Oklahoma Thin MC flagstone. The pallets are 1.70 ton, 1.73 ton, and 1.92 ton.

Total cost for the sand and the flagstones -- $1718.01.  The Alamo Masonry Cement was $73.73 from Home Depot.

They started putting the flagstone down on Thursday, starting at the far end, where it meets the back patio.  The flagstones are selected and cut to fit (this is the hard part, selecting one stone out of all of them and then making it fit).  Then a layer of mortar is laid down on top of the decomposed granite to allow the flagstone piece to be levelled and held in place.

This continues, one piece after another.  Some pieces larger; some smaller.

until the entire area is filled in.

Then it continues around the corner over to the raised garden.

The pieces are selected and cut before they are mortared in place.  Around the raised garden.

It took 5 days to finish laying the flagstone.  Once it is in place, I put three 50-pound bags of Techniseal RG+ Polymeric Sand (Southern Grey) on it to fill the cracks between the stones.  $36.49 per bag from Ewing Irrigation (14 August 2014).

Digging up the East Lawn, Part 2

Having dug down to bedrock around the tree, we now turn our attention to the other side of this section of the back yard.

It appears that we have one very large rock under this patch of the yard, so first lets try to outline the rock.

And then take the dirt off the rock between these two sides.

Once we remove the dirt, we can see that it is not one big rock but two big rocks, plus something there in the far back.  So the next problem is to break it into manageable pieces. 

And then haul the pieces out to the front of the house, leaving a big hole where the rock had been.

A little clean up and we are done with this part of the backyard.