Ten Years in the Planning — Four Hours in the Execution

I’m a happy camper — satisfied with the results of a city project — satisfied with the performance of the private contractor the city hired to do the water main replacement in front of our house.

I have done several blogs over the past few months (starting in November) about the city’s project of replacing our small water mains in our neighborhood and the neighborhoods around us.

From the start we were very satisfied with the work done by the private contractor, and with how sensitive they were to the residents. We never had any problems getting in or out when they were working on our street. They always saw us, and other residents, and let us through at the earliest opportunity.

My only complaints with the project were two-fold:

1. When the water main burst it went for days with no one from the city doing anything. During that time the silt and sediment that it caused plugged our culvert pipe at least twice, and for all I know the pipe still is plugged or mostly plugged. And when I filed 311 notices about it (311 is the city number you call to report things the city needs to respond to that aren’t 911 type items), no one came out. The only city person that did come out was in response to someone else’s complaint about me — that I had allowed my culvert pipe to get plugged — something that could have gotten me fined by the city. As previous blogs indicated, this leaking and plugging occurred during freezing winter weather with water flowing across our street and creating and icy hazard.
2. Communication. There were several times during the project when people were supposed to notify us about various stages of the project. The only communication we got was the initial communication that they would be doing the project, and communication that we initiated. We never knew when they switched us over to the new main (which should have entailed shutting our water off). I had to ask to find out that the ditches in front of our houses were to be returned to the same status they were in.  I mentioned that ours had been concrete lined (though it had heaved over the years and been broken in several spots), and had to finally ask to confirm that they were actually going to concrete it (when I initially mentioned the concrete, the response was that they needed to go back to the original survey pictures to see if they showed the concrete). And after they poured the concrete, I had to call to finally verify that they were fully done with the concrete. I wanted to know, so I could start my own landscaping project.

   

So now the rest of this blog is going to be about my landscaping project. That is what the subject line of the blog refers to.On Friday, I called the contractor for the water main project, and he happened to be in the neighborhood when I called, so he stopped by, checked it out, and when I went out to talk to me, confirmed that their concrete work and earth-moving in the ditch was complete.

I was able to talk to them for that 5 minutes because I was working from home on Friday. So after everyone got home, and the regular work day was ended, I took an hour break to run over to Home Depot to pick up supplies for today’s project. Nathan came with me, and his insights helped me use the bungee cords we had to safely get 10-foot-long boards safely fastened onto a 5-foot-long trailer to bring them back home. Then it was back to work work until midnight to finish up a project.

I intended to get started on the project this morning, after going to a men’s breakfast with Nathan, followed by going to our church’s book club with Betsy. But I barely got out of the book club before receiving a notice that the work work project had issues with the files I sent and I spent a couple more hours resolving that. So the ditch project didn’t get started until this afternoon.

What is the ditch project, and what does the subject line of this blog mean? Well, ever since we moved into this house 10 years ago, I have had the idea that I wanted to put a border at the bottom of our front yard slope. Rains come by and slowly erode the slope. My thought was that a border of boards would hold the slope in place. But I never got to it.Over the years I talked to several people at Home Depot, church, and other places, who all gave me different ideas, none of which were exactly what I had in mind. So the project lay there in the idea stage. Then the water main came through and dug everything up, and now they laid new concrete down. It seemed to perfect time to execute. The earth is softer and easier to dig, and it is also in  more danger of eroding because it has been dug up. The concrete I would be putting the boards against is also both straighter and more level that the previously heaved concrete

Last night, before heading to Home Depot, we measured the length of the ditch, to figure out how many supplies to pick up.  We picked up 8 5/4 by 6 inch by 10-foot pressure treated boards, and 4 12-packs of 12-inch stakes.

This afternoon I took our pointed shovel and started digging a small trench, to bury the boards about 2 inches in the ground right next to the concrete, with 6 stakes per board in front of it. I dug the trench, Nathan helped me place each board and the stakes, then Nathan pushed the dirt back around the boards and tamped it down while I continued digging the trench for the next board.

We did this for 4 hours straight. Nathan worked steady, solid, consistent, with one short break. He put in what would have amounted to a half-work day in the work-a-day world. I was very impressed by how well and consistently he was able to work.

I expected to be more frustrated with the project than I was (projects of these types generally have things that don’t go according to plan for me and take longer than expected). As my projects go it was actually smooth. That and having a consistent worker with me made it about the best home improvement project I’ve done.

The concrete was fairly smooth, but the edge wasn’t quite as straight as it appeared.  Sticking to the edge meant that the border meandered a bit. Didn’t turn out straight. But it achieved its purpose of edging the slope and holding the dirt from eroding.

The weather got warm today while we were working outside.  I expected it to be in the 70s, but didn’t realize until we came inside that it was actually 84 degrees. So that explains all the perspiration while working.

We have the potential for rain tonight. So the border and new concrete might get their first real test. The rain and T-storms are forecast to continue through tomorrow, and then on Monday it turns into rain and snow.

Snow?