Greenhouse gone, New Raised Bed

Back in 2012, we got a greenhouse from a neighbor, mostly as a favor to them -- they were selling, the buyers did not want it, and they needed to move it.  We felt it would probably be too hot in the Summer.

And we were right.  For us, it was just blazing hot in the summer (it literally would melt crayons) and not insulated enough in the winter to protect from the cold.  So we listed it on Craig's List and it went away to someone else.

That left the gravel that had been the floor of the greenhouse, but another guy took that, so we were left with just the foundation frame and a slight hole.

What to do with this spot?

Linda decided she might like another raised bed.  Basically build up the sides somewhat more, and dig out the insides to put in good dirt.

So the first step is digging out the insides.  This part of the South Bed has not yet been excavated -- we put the greenhouse in before we excavated all around it. But that just means that as we dig it out, we get both rock and dirt.

and after a couple of days of digging out the dirt, separating the rocks and hauling the dirt off to make space

we have a pile of dirt in the back yard (to mix with leaves and grass to make it better dirt):

a pile of rocks on the driveway (to get rid of)

and a hole in the ground, surrounded by the greenhouse frame.

We have one large rock still in the hole; it's too big to lift and I need to built a ramp or step or something to roll it out.

But this only gets us down 18 inches; we want to go deeper.  So we break out the jack hammer and start taking this next layer of rock apart.

This takes several days.

But we are able to get out this layer of rock.

which gets us down to 32 to 34 inches deep (from the top of the wooden frame).

But we can not get out all the rock -- there is still a layer that is under the wooden frame.  This is only on 3 sides; the East side was apparently taken out when the South bed was excavated.  The other three sides, however, either did not go down as low, or did not get as close to the frame.

Irrigation and the Back Bedroom Bed

There are two parts of the in-ground irrigation system that impact the back bedroom bed.

First, the main irrigation water supply line runs thru the entire bed, about 8 to 10 inches below the surface.  It runs roughly parallel to the back bedroom exterior wall, from 25 to 27 inches from the concrete wall that seals off the foundation.  When it gets to the Iris bed, it's only 12 inches away from the bed.  On either end, it then disappears under the river of rocks.

The other related irrigation system component is for the bed itself.  This is all done in 1/2 inch PVC, as an extension of Zone 9.    We ran a 1/2 inch PVC line right next to the house, with pop-up sprinkler heads that spray out from the house, covering the bed.  Any over-spray will go onto the river of rocks, and water the monkey grass between the rocks.

There are 4 heads equally spaced along the back of the house in a straight line from the corner to the Iris bed.  We jog out slightly to get around the Iris bed stone work and continue to the end of the bed for one last head.  Each head should be just at ground level, and then pop-up 4 inches.  As with our other new beds, we are using the Rainbird 1800 series heads.

Filling in the Back Bedroom Bed

With the foundation wall in place, and the bed excavated down to 2 to 3 feet,

we can now start to fill it back in.  The first thing we did was empty all of the contents of the compost bin into the bottom of the bed.

and now we are filling the rest of the bed with the contents of the dirt pile in the back yard that we built as we pulled the dirt out of the bed in the first place.

The dirt on the pile is still pretty wet from being rained on, making it heavy and hard to shovel.  This is going to take a few days.

And it does, but it's just moving dirt.

And then, once we have all the dirt in place, we can put the monkey grass between the rocks of the River of Rocks along the bed.

The dirt that is in the bed is all just the dirt that came out of the bed, mixed up and blended with leaves and grass to give it more organic content.  We even had a small amount of dirt left over after filling the bed.  Clearly, it will settle and compact over time -- it is currently full of air and leaves that will break down.  So we intend to leave it alone for a few months -- maybe until next Spring -- and then bring in enough good dirt to level it back up after it settles.

But, for now, after starting the excavation of this bed back in April, seven months later, we are done with the bed.

Replace Front Porch Light Switch

The switch for the front porch light (which is right inside the front door) was a timer, set to come on about 8:30 pm and go off about 11:00 pm.   But it broke; it stopped being able to turn things on or off at particular times.  So we looked to replace it.

A search on Amazon, Lowe's and Home Depot web sites showed a small set of such timers, but one seemed particularly interesting.  One problem of using a fixed time to turn the front lights on is that in the Winter it gets dark earlier, and in the Summer it gets dark later.  The ST01 Timer from Intermatic includes an "Astro" feature that knows when dusk (and dawn) occur in your location and can be set to turn the light on at dusk.  So we bought one of these ($34.55 at Home Depot).

First thing we do is remove the old switch

The other switch is for the light in the entrance way.  We end up with two wires to control the front porch lights.

The ST01 Timer comes with a standard paper installation guide, but the documentation on this guide is terrible. 

 

 There is a "mode" button that controls what is happening.  As you cycle thru the modes, there are modes that show up that the installation guide does not even mention.   They say to open the battery drawer to install the battery, but it is not at all clear how to do that (until after you have opened the battery drawer).

But it's a light switch, so from an installation point of view, installation is pretty easy.  Attach the black wire and blue wire to the two wires that go to the front porch lights.  The red wire is not used.  Attach the green wire to the ground wires.  Done. 

Bend the wires so that they all fold into the electrical box and use the two screws (top and bottom) to hold it in place.

Oops.  Now we see that the new switch is one of the large rectangular switches, not the small toggle switch, like the one for the front entranceway. So the old switch plate won't fit.  And if we get a new switch plate, we also need a new switch for the front entranceway.  So back to Home Depot, to get a new switch ($1.98) and switch plate ($1.59) for the "Decora" style of light switch.  Remove the old toggle switch and put in the new Decora switch for the front entranceway, then put on the new switch plate.

So that took longer than expected, because of the unplanned for trip to Home Depot for the new switch and switch plate, but things should work better now -- the front porch lights should come on at dusk and go off at 11:00 pm, when we go to bed.  Even if I forget to turn them on.  Or off.

Back Bedroom Bed Foundation Wall, Part 2

Having dug out as much as we are going to, we can clean up next to the foundation, removing loose rock, trimming roots, and spraying it down to wash any loose dirt off. 

Then we can form up for the concrete

The concrete calculator again says it should take about 28 bags of concrete, but this time we are getting 50 pound bags from Lowe's (on special) for two trips of $28.64, a total of $57.28.  Mix them up and pour them in the form.

The next day we can take down the forms.

The Back Bedroom Bed, Part 3

We are continuing the excavation to the bed by the Back Bedroom, after pouring the first part of the concrete wall sealing off the foundation.  A couple of days of digging gets us enough dirt to, when mixed with leaves and grass, fill in the deep area next to the concrete wall.

This also gets us to the point we need to use the jackhammer again, to break up the rock that has been uncovered.

We clean those rocks up.

And continue digging to the end of the bed to expose more rocks.

which brings out the jackhammer to break these up.

And these are also hauled around front to be gotten rid of.

And after another day of digging and hauling off rock, we should be ready to frame the cement wall to run along the foundation.

Back Bedroom Bed Foundation Wall, Part 1

Having dug out more than half of the length of the bed, we have exposed the foundation of the house.  While it may be sitting on rock further under the house, around the edges, it seems to be a mix of rock and dirt.  As with much of the rest of the house, it seems reasonable to seal this off with a cement wall, to keep trees and other plants, or animals, from getting under the foundation.

Using an on-line concrete calculator, we figure we will need about 24 bags of 60-pound concrete.  Two trips to Home Depot gets us 24 bags for $72.48.

Next we frame up along the foundation.

And after two days of pouring concrete and letting it dry, we can take the forms down.

Now it's back to digging out dirt and rocks.

The Back Bedroom Bed, Part 2

It's been a couple months since I was able to work in the backyard, but we left off with rocks and dirt that had been excavated, but not cleaned up.

So the first thing to do is to clean this up.  This takes a couple of days.

Then we can extend the excavation, pulling out more rocks and dirt.

At this point, we need to use the jackhammer to break up the larger rocks.

This broke out a large rock from the center of the excavated bed.

To get this out of the pit, we shaped the front edge of the bed by digging out the top part of the dirt, to fill in the bottom part, creating a dirt ramp.  This allows the rock to be rolled up the dirt ramp and out of the pit.

and then we need to dig out that ramp.

After a rain delay, we can remove those rocks,

but the dirt is really too wet to work.  But we can spend the day with the jackhammer and produce a lot of rock that needs to be be cleared out.

Clearing out the rock leaves a well-defined excavation.

We still have dirt and rock to excavate, but this first part looks done.

Cat 6 cable for the TV

Our wireless router is in the computer room, at one end of the house.  The TV is at the other end of the house.  We've tried to get wireless to extend from the router to the TV, but it's iffy, at best.  So to try Netflix, we ran a 100 foot cat5 cable from the router to the TV (actually to the Blu-ray DVD player which then connects to the TV).

But running a cable along the floor from one end of the house to the other seems to me to be a safety hazard, so given that this may be a long term issue (not just for our free trial month), we wanted a better solution.  We tried a wireless range extender, and considered some other approaches (like using our electrical power wiring), but it seems that the best approach is the cable -- lowest cost, no maintenance, highest reliable bandwidth.

So we decided to just run the cable thru the attic, instead of thru the house.

Starting in the TV room, we have a wall plug that provides the cable and a telephone plug.  Taking that off, we see that the wall is insulated (it's the wall between the TV room and the back deck).  We should be able to use the telephone wire to pull a cat6 cable down the wall, if we can find these in the attic.

 Going in the attic, we can pull back the insulation

and then we can find where the cables go thru the top plate of the wall and down into the wall.

We attach a string to the telephone wire, pull it up, connect the telephone wire and the cat6 cable to it, and pull it back down.

We bought a 100 foot yellow cat6 cable for  this purpose.

Patching the wall, repainting it and getting a new wall plate, we have a connection for the cat6, cable, and telephone.

We bought this wall plate from Fry's.  It's a Shaxon Keystone Wall Plate 3 Port, and then we got a 110-type RJ12 Keystone Jack (Cat 3) for the telephone (we had red, green, black, yellow 4-wire telephone and matched the red/green to the white/blue pair 1, and the yellow/black to the white/orange pair 2 for the RJ12), an F-type coaxial (Catv) Keystone coupler for the cable, and a RJ45 Keystone Coupler (Cat 6) for the ethernet cable.

Once the cable was set on the TV room, we ran the cable down the middle of the attic to the area over the A/C system (look for the yellow cable).

We fished the wire around the skylight housings and into the attic over the back bedroom.

In the attic over the back bedroom, the cable comes along the side of the attic,

under the catwalk, and along to the corner that goes outside the loft and back to the computer room.

The idea is to put a wall plate in the wall next to the A/C vent in the computer room.

Cutting a hole for an electrical box , we can then fish the wire back to the corner in the attic and pull the cable out into the room.

We then installed another of the Shaxon Keystone Wall Plates.  This time we only need one port for the RJ45 (Cat 6) coupler.

Running a simple 14-foot cat 5 patch cable from this outlet down to the router, we have what we need to run the TV or Blu-ray DVD player with internet connectivity.

As a side-effect of all the work in the attic, running the cable, we found areas on all 3 main work areas -- over the TV room, near the A/C system and in the back bedroom around the loft -- that were under-insulated.  So we bought 6 more rolls of R-30 unfaced fiberglass insulation (2 trips: 4 rolls of 23 inch wide $181.77 and 2 rolls of 15 inch wide $42.17; all 25 feet long, 9 inches deep) and installed that to boost the insulation in these areas.

So the wall-plates, inserts, and cable were all fairly in-expensive, the insulation was the most expensive part of this project.  Plus the three days of work in the attic.