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.

Head waters of the new Walkway

The landscape plan shows a walkway from the gate past the North Pit, joining a walkway around the raised garden and then extending back to the walkway around the deck in the back. One side of the walkway is, effectively, the North Pit, so we are going to start excavating it, using the North Pit as a working area.



We've "outlined" the walkway using the grubbing hoe on the one side and have expanded the North Pit over to the curving edge of where the walkway will be. The next step will be to dig all the dirt out, put in the two "walls" below ground level that will define the two sides of the walkway, then fill the space between the walls with rock and put down decomposed granite, as a base, and the "Oklahoma Thin" flagstones that we used for the walkway around the deck.

First step is to dig. I'm starting the excavation near the raised garden, working towards the gate. That way the gate can continue to be used until I dig out the part just in front of it. If I then back fill at that end first, the gate will be unusable for the shortest period of time.



The excavation goes thru the traditional (a) dirt under the grass, (b) construction left-overs, and (c) native clay. All of these layers, especially (b) and (c) have random rock in them, which we pull out. Then we hit the first layer of rock. We could use this as the base of our walkway, or we could take it out and go down another 6 to 8 inches to bedrock.



Part of the last 6 to 8 inches of rock comes out easily, so we removed it. But we are planning on leaving most of this layer in place and putting the walkway on top of it.



Once we have this much excavated, we can start putting the walls in that will separate the dirt beds from the walkway. We start with the outer wall, next to the un-excavated area. We use a piece of black plastic on that side to separate the concrete wall from the dirt. When (if) we eventually get to digging up that side, the plastic should allow a clean separation between the wall and the dirt.



Putting the wall between the North Pit and the walkway is more difficult because it has to be supported on both sides. It's hard to get either wall up high enough because our forms are only 16 inches tall. I'm doing it in layers, so I can pour concrete, wait for it to firm up, then remove the forms and raise them up to pour the next layer.



I added a piece of 4 inch PVC irrigation pipe stretching from one side of the walkway into the North Pit. This is to allow wiring or pipe to be run from one side to the other in the future. It is expected, for example, that we will want to run 3/4 inch or 1/2 inch irrigation for Zone 3 from the valve controller on the once side into both the North and South Pits, to provide a water supply.



Once the concrete was built up enough, I can then mortar on the limestone blocks on the top, to finish the wall off next to the North Pit. Now I could put the dirt back in, and let it settle before planting.



This should finish the North Pit, with the exception of putting in irrigation and planting. Both the North Pit and the South Pit should be Zone 2 of the sprinkler system.

Removing the Last Juniper Tree

In 1993, I removed all the male juniper trees on the property. Over time, I've removed the female trees too. All except one. Linda put an "owl box" on the least female juniper tree, and so we were keeping it. But Linda says the owls, if there were any, have left for the summer, so I took the opportunity to move the owl box to another tree and cut down the last juniper tree.



At first, I was going to leave the tree -- just sort of trim it up a bit, so I took off the lower limbs, to "raise the canopy", leaving stubs for the birds to land on.



But then Linda said I had butchered it so badly, why didn't I just take the entire tree down? So I did.



This works out reasonably well, since the City is picking up "Large Brush" and tree trimmings. (The neighbor across the cove cut down 3 juniper trees, and has a much bigger pile of branches as a result.)



The owl box was moved to the Monterey Oak outside the kitchen.

Partitioning the North Pit

With the master landscape plan in hand, I know what to do with the North Pit. Next to the raised garden, we want a walk-way, similar to the walk-way around the back deck.

The back part, between the fence and the raised garden is already basically in place. We have a cement wall under the fence and the whole area is filled with rock. Now we want something similar next to the raised garden and the North Pit.

The first step is to dig out the remaining dirt next to the raised garden.



Next we need to build the wall that will separate the North Pit from the rock-filled walk-way. We first clear a path for it.



We could pour a pure concrete wall, but computing it out, it appears to be less expensive to use concrete blocks. The concrete blocks are 8 x 16 x 4 inches. With the limestone block on top, the wall should be about 20 inches tall. With blocks of 8 inches, I can do 16 or 24, but not 20. So I figure I'll pour about a 4 inch base in concrete, which will even out the uneven rock surface and give us the right height.



Once the cement base has set, I can mortar on the cement blocks. I leave a gap in the lower rank of cement blocks, in case water needs to flow from one side to the other. This is not expected to be a problem, but just in case. I can't finish the entire wall, since it needs to tie into a similar structure that I haven't excavated yet.



Once the wall sets, I can put all the rocks on the right side and start to spread the dirt on the left side.