Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Lazy Sunday and a slower week coming up for me.

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Me too. I DID eventually go out and weed, and over the course of the week filled up a 65-gal bin with weeds, and two 65-gal bins with leaves that need to be shredded. But mostly took it easy, didn;t cook much since for various reasons we were all doing something different with our meals, so that definitely made a lazy day for me!

I hope you enjoyed your lazy day. I know I did!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Ah, indeed ... weather.

I used to like dreary landscapes, all dun and taupe and gray. I found it soothing. But now thatI've lived with sunshine in my life, I'm not sure I could go back to that anymore.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Ah, indeed ... weather.

I used to like dreary landscapes, all dun and taupe and gray. I found it soothing. But now thatI've lived with sunshine in my life, I'm not sure I could go back to that anymore.

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Where do you go to see Sun? I only recall seeing hazy smog in SoCal.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SIX, over here wunderground's " calendar" function - which shows archived rain and temps- is granular only to the nearest official weather station, which is usually an airport. It may not reveal the rain that YOU had at your house, especially if you were under a series of cloudbursts. Sorry.

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Quote:

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I was trying to figure out whether the water at your sump pump is coming from ponding around/near your house or someplace farther away. The figure that I calculated from this website (in feet per hour)

https://civilweb-spreadsheets.com/drainage-info/infiltration-rate-of-s
oils/

just doesn't match my own personal experience of watching an inch of water disappear in 15 minutes, especially since you have sand in your soil, like I do. I have a feeling, entirely unsupported by calculation, that the water at your sump pump is coming from someplace farther away. What is higher in elevation than your house, which could be a source of water?

But then, I could be entirely wrong.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
6ix, what is the deal with posting photos? You are afraid of revealing an email or geotag if posting a pic?
Or you don't want folk to see a pic of your house?

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Would be good to include basement wall, sump location, crawl space walls, attached structures resting on the ground, sidewalks and driveway, garage, that sand pit, fencing, downspouts, steps, gardens.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
6ix, I am not sure if you are ignoring my posts.

Can you review my posts to you since 2 May?

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Quote:

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Maybe you missed part of what I said. You could use those pieces you already bought, to make a U-turn in your extenders.

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If you brought your extension to abutt the chain link fence, I would think you could slope/contour the opposite side of the fence to drain it all away - I'm assuming towards the street in front. We really should be able to make things work without having downspouts all over the place, spread across your entire lawn.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Looks like I got a teeny tiny recluse spider bite.

Looked up online, no specific treatment except antibiotics and debridement and steroids if systemic reaction. Since no systemic reaction so far, if I make it until Friday without my skin dying and falling off, I'm in good shape.

Yanno, I THOUGHT I saw a tiny spider in my shirt, so I shook it out b4 I put it on. I guess I didn't shake hard enuf.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
What I found is ... don't do everything bassakwards, like I did.

Plan first.
Decide what you want your space to do. (Originally I just wanted it to shade the property and house, be drought tolerant, wildlife friendly, have a walkway from drive to front door, and be pretty, but as McMansions sprung up nearby I decided I wanted to screen out the ugly view. Also, it is very important for me to imagine walking thru a space, not just look at it.)
Pencil in adequate walkways for maintenance
Decide on the theme (I have an excellent book on that you can borrow) and a "look"
Hardscape and irrigation first, then sculpt your yard

THEN you can do "total vegetation control", plant the plants that you want, and mulch!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

KIKI: I actually have a plan! that I drew up.

Mostly I want the house to be shaded in the summer and sunny in the winter, so - mostly deciduous trees around the house. And because this is a narrow city lot, mostly smaller trees/ very large shrubs (to about 25'). These I'm confident will provide shade and still let any sea-breezes through underneath them that I usually get in the evening. Of course I want them to be reasonably drought tolerant (even natives are having problems with our serious extended drought, so in my mind drought tolerant is a relative term. To me it used to mean no watering (under normal circumstances), but now it means limited watering.)

I want it to be low-maintenance. I know you're having an epic battle with weeds, as did I when I had a very, very lovely wildflower front yard.

It was full of:

which is not native but is extremely drought tolerant, and the first thing that blooms in spring that seems to be a lifeline for the also non-native honey bees
another native, but which blooms all summer
and other assorted flowers.

PICTURES REMOVED FOR FORMATTING PURPOSES

So I've decided mulch is my best friend, which I'm going to need to kill the Bermuda grass anyway. I'll be limiting my bare dirt for the native bees to more easily maintained spaces instead of large areas.

Another thing I want to use for its drought-tolerant, low maintenance qualities is a fair bit of decking and pavers.

Mostly I'll be using decking instead of concrete around the house. Decking is easier on old bones if you fall. It provides stable footing. AND it covers up the lead-contaminated soil and keeps it from blowing its lead-contaminated dust around. (That being said, I did have about 1' x 7' dug up and removed from around the house, to be capped by decomposed granite, then overlaid with decking, just to be extra-sure the lead-contaminated soil doesn't go anywhere in large amounts.)

And where I'll be using pavers is the 'lower 40' part of my back yard near the alley. By judicious use of slopes and drywells and decomposed granite underneath the pavers, I think I can keep water in the yard, and have it percolate through to the earth. Pavers will allow that, whereas a solid cover of concrete won't.

And I've decided ahead of time the little details like - do I want the decking boards to run lengthwise or cross wise? (crosswise, lengthwise looks too industrial) - do I want the curb under the fence to follow the slope or stairstep? (stairstep - there are too many different slopes and I think having it follow the varying slopes with their varying angles would look awkward, and it would also require a 100% custom-built fence) - how wide do I want the decking? (on the w side of the house w/ a 10' setback, nearly all the way to the fence, with a 2.5' gap for planting small deciduous shade trees, on the e side with a 15' setback, 7.5' with a 7.5' garden) - what trees do I want flanking the front walkway? (crape myrtle) ... and so on. OH! yeah - recently there's been A LOT of aggressive coyote activity in certain areas, like cats and small dogs being taken, and coyotes staring down homeowners in their backyards. Now, these areas abut directly to open wildland, so nobody there should be surprised by coyote presence, but the aggressiveness of particular individuals in concerning. One of the things I looked VERY deeply into was how coyotes manage fences. I probably looked at 40 videos of coyotes getting across varying kinds, from low post-and-rail to 6' block walls and 10' chain-link (around a park). And they always - !! ALWAYS !! - gain a toehold at the top before going over to the other side. So chain-link fences and block walls are particularly conducive to that behavior (which I think is instinctive - they need to have a last-minute bail-out moment in case something on the other side is dangerous). But wrought-iron fences don't provide a toe-hold, and if the bars are close enough together they can't squeeze through, and if there's a curb underneath, they can't dig under. So I'd already intended to have a 6' tall and plainer version of the wrought iron I had installed in the front installed elsewhere, which I like because it allows expansive views and lets the breezes through. But the coyote issue confirmed it as a better choice. (BTW there is more than 1 'fix' to coyote-proof block walls, if it becomes necessary.)

And I've gotten a confidence boost in my visualization abilities. Basically, I have none. It's so bad, I think if there was such as thing as anti-visualization, I'd have that. So I spent many many hours drawing to-scale perspective drawings to 'see' the end results of my various ideas. I'd considered, and drawn, what a dog-eared picket fence would look like on the west side (it would make the 10' narrow side yard very cramped and mingy-looking). But my neighbor recently installed one, and it looks about as bad a I thought. I'd say it looks exactly as I thought. The upside is, having 'visualized' it in many different permutations, I think I know how to turn it around into a nicer look.

I even have my 'plant pallet' figured out for the entire lot. There are just a few non-critical decisions left. And btw THANKS for the many ideas for native shrubs!! I've incorporated those ideas in many places. And since for the most part I have NO idea how these things will grow here (except for privet (garden thug, but useful for honeybees and birds), Catalina Island cherry and it's 40,000 year-ago parent hollyleaf cherry (I prefer hollyleaf, but both are very useful), and crape myrtle (a summer bloomer loved by honey bees, with beautiful fall color), and of course the many, many coast live oak trees that planted themselves in my yard (my area is either chaparral or southern oak woodland, depending on soil depth, I guess my particular lot is southern oak woodland) ... ... I even have alternates picked out in case my first choices don't thrive in my difficult extreme climate and clay soil. I fully intend to 'edit' my landscaping after the fact, depending on how things are doing.

But basically near the house will be shaded 'woodland' with decking patios. That's really not my favorite look, but seems to be the most useful in terms of heat-control, accessibility, low-maintenance, drought-tolerance, and wildlife-friendly checkboxes. And the rest will be open sunny space with pavers surrounded by v large evergreen shrubs.

I'll also have a couple of bird-bath 'water features' for the wild life. And I'll have a fair number of planters for some garden plants, herbs, and so forth. (The lead contamination makes for uncertain food-growing.)

If you can think of anything I should do to improve my planned habitats, or to alter my plan for any reason, I'd much appreciate it!

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Looks like I got a teeny tiny recluse spider bite.

Looked up online, no specific treatment except antibiotics and debridement and steroids if systemic reaction. Since no systemic reaction so far, if I make it until Friday without my skin dying and falling off, I'm in good shape.

Yanno, I THOUGHT I saw a tiny spider in my shirt, so I shook it out b4 I put it on. I guess I didn't shake hard enuf.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I was trying to figure out whether the water at your sump pump is coming from ponding around/near your house or someplace farther away. The figure that I calculated from this website (in feet per hour)
https://civilweb-spreadsheets.com/drainage-info/infiltration-rate-of-s
oils/
just doesn't match my own personal experience of watching an inch of water disappear in 15 minutes, especially since you have sand in your soil, like I do. I have a feeling, entirely unsupported by calculation, that the water at your sump pump is coming from someplace farther away. What is higher in elevation than your house, which could be a source of water?

But then, I could be entirely wrong.

---

Well... I don't REALLY have sand in my soil. I have a sand pit in the back yard that was created when Uncle bob dug up all the dirt and threw a ton of sand down there under the pavers and never bothered with the step where you put plastic down before the sand. So it's got a really heavy mix of shit sand in my dirt where there wouldn't otherwise be any sand.

Pretty much everything is above me, except for the few blocks behind me where the people are unfortunate enough to live even lower in elevation than I do. The "main drag" street to turn into my neighborhood is probably 12 feet or more higher than my front door, and is a bridge over the ditch across the street that has water at least 7 or 8 feet higher than my front door when it's full.



I'm just finally getting to the point now where it will only go off twice in an hour, but just barely. I'd say by midnight tonight we'll finally get to the point where it's over 20 minutes OFF between 22 second ON cycles. Except for a brief shower that gave us .03 inches this morning, there hasn't been any rain since 10:30AM yesterday, when the pump was only off about 4 minutes and 45 seconds between ON cycles.


I did dump a LOT of water in the sand that went around the side and pooled up against the front porch wall though. All of that 3.5" of rain on the back porch roof ended up right down there.

When I extend the pipes down the driveway past the point it will roll off to the street, that water won't be a part of the equation anymore.

I don't know how you'd calculate that, but the gutter there is 25 feet long. I never measured how tall the roof is, but it's probably 15 to 20 feet. Times 3.5" of rainfall on that surface area... If that's how you'd equate it?

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
I REALLY am not convinced that your sump times and issues are solely a result of your roof/yard water getting into your sump well. There is at least another problem or source causing your sump to keep running. I'll get to that, after I cover the topics that you are planning to dig at soon. You also might not like the solutions I will mention, but it will be for you to decide.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I've been looking at Theodore Payne garden tour photos to see what I respond to and why, and spent a lot of time looking at this garden

Not achievable in OUR yard bc architectural features not the same, but if you want to look at various ideas the archived photos from 2013 onwards are here. Interestingly, I can usually tell the difference between professionally designed gardens and homeowner designed gardens. Homeowner gardens tend to be less structured, look messier, and don't have a driving theme. The best homeowner designed garden is at cynthias native gargen

https://theodorepayne.org/calendar/annual-garden-tour/
https://cynthiasnativegarden.wordpress.com/

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

---

Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Looks like I got a teeny tiny recluse spider bite.

Looked up online, no specific treatment except antibiotics and debridement and steroids if systemic reaction. Since no systemic reaction so far, if I make it until Friday without my skin dying and falling off, I'm in good shape.

Yanno, I THOUGHT I saw a tiny spider in my shirt, so I shook it out b4 I put it on. I guess I didn't shake hard enuf.

---

Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I've been looking at Theodore Payne garden tour photos to see what I respond to and why, and spent a lot of time looking at this garden

Not achievable in OUR yard bc architectural features not the same, but if you want to look at various ideas the archived photos from 2013 onwards are here. Interestingly, I can usually tell the difference between professionally designed gardens and homeowner designed gardens. Homeowner gardens tend to be less structured, look messier, and don't have a driving theme. The best homeowner designed garden is at cynthias native gargen

https://theodorepayne.org/calendar/annual-garden-tour/
https://cynthiasnativegarden.wordpress.com/

---

That's beautiful. I envy you for being able to aspire to such things.

With so many problems and projects I need to be spending time on here, and already breaking that up with the need to have mowed my entire front and back lawn 4 times in the last 9 days already (at about 2 hours each now since I bag the lawn every time), I have to settle for just "clean, and weed and bug free".

I think I might split a few of my striped Hastas this year though. One or two of mine went up and disappeared over the years, and the side of my house could use a couple too. I keep saying I'm going to do it but I never get around to it.

Maybe I'll do that today since I've done nothing on this very cold day.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
What I found is ... don't do everything bassakwards, like I did.

Plan first.
Decide what you want your space to do. (Originally I just wanted it to shade the property and house, be drought tolerant, wildlife friendly, have a walkway from drive to front door, and be pretty, but as McMansions sprung up nearby I decided I wanted to screen out the ugly view. Also, it is very important for me to imagine walking thru a space, not just look at it.)
Pencil in adequate walkways for maintenance
Decide on the theme (I have an excellent book on that you can borrow) and a "look"
Hardscape and irrigation first, then sculpt your yard

THEN you can do "total vegetation control", plant the plants that you want, and mulch!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

KIKI: I actually have a plan! that I drew up.

Mostly I want the house to be shaded in the summer and sunny in the winter, so - mostly deciduous trees around the house. And because this is a narrow city lot, mostly smaller trees/ very large shrubs (to about 25'). These I'm confident will provide shade and still let any sea-breezes through underneath them that I usually get in the evening. Of course I want them to be reasonably drought tolerant (even natives are having problems with our serious extended drought, so in my mind drought tolerant is a relative term. To me it used to mean no watering (under normal circumstances), but now it means limited watering.)

I want it to be low-maintenance. I know you're having an epic battle with weeds, as did I when I had a very, very lovely wildflower front yard.

It was full of:

which is not native but is extremely drought tolerant, and the first thing that blooms in spring that seems to be a lifeline for the also non-native honey bees
another native, but which blooms all summer
and other assorted flowers.

PICTURES REMOVED FOR FORMATTING PURPOSES

So I've decided mulch is my best friend, which I'm going to need to kill the Bermuda grass anyway. I'll be limiting my bare dirt for the native bees to more easily maintained spaces instead of large areas.

Another thing I want to use for its drought-tolerant, low maintenance qualities is a fair bit of decking and pavers.

Mostly I'll be using decking instead of concrete around the house. Decking is easier on old bones if you fall. It provides stable footing. AND it covers up the lead-contaminated soil and keeps it from blowing its lead-contaminated dust around. (That being said, I did have about 1' x 7' dug up and removed from around the house, to be capped by decomposed granite, then overlaid with decking, just to be extra-sure the lead-contaminated soil doesn't go anywhere in large amounts.)

And where I'll be using pavers is the 'lower 40' part of my back yard near the alley. By judicious use of slopes and drywells and decomposed granite underneath the pavers, I think I can keep water in the yard, and have it percolate through to the earth. Pavers will allow that, whereas a solid cover of concrete won't.

And I've decided ahead of time the little details like - do I want the decking boards to run lengthwise or cross wise? (crosswise, lengthwise looks too industrial) - do I want the curb under the fence to follow the slope or stairstep? (stairstep - there are too many different slopes and I think having it follow the varying slopes with their varying angles would look awkward, and it would also require a 100% custom-built fence) - how wide do I want the decking? (on the w side of the house w/ a 10' setback, nearly all the way to the fence, with a 2.5' gap for planting small deciduous shade trees, on the e side with a 15' setback, 7.5' with a 7.5' garden) - what trees do I want flanking the front walkway? (crape myrtle) ... and so on. OH! yeah - recently there's been A LOT of aggressive coyote activity in certain areas, like cats and small dogs being taken, and coyotes staring down homeowners in their backyards. Now, these areas abut directly to open wildland, so nobody there should be surprised by coyote presence, but the aggressiveness of particular individuals in concerning. One of the things I looked VERY deeply into was how coyotes manage fences. I probably looked at 40 videos of coyotes getting across varying kinds, from low post-and-rail to 6' block walls and 10' chain-link (around a park). And they always - !! ALWAYS !! - gain a toehold at the top before going over to the other side. So chain-link fences and block walls are particularly conducive to that behavior (which I think is instinctive - they need to have a last-minute bail-out moment in case something on the other side is dangerous). But wrought-iron fences don't provide a toe-hold, and if the bars are close enough together they can't squeeze through, and if there's a curb underneath, they can't dig under. So I'd already intended to have a 6' tall and plainer version of the wrought iron I had installed in the front installed elsewhere, which I like because it allows expansive views and lets the breezes through. But the coyote issue confirmed it as a better choice. (BTW there is more than 1 'fix' to coyote-proof block walls, if it becomes necessary.)

And I've gotten a confidence boost in my visualization abilities. Basically, I have none. It's so bad, I think if there was such as thing as anti-visualization, I'd have that. So I spent many many hours drawing to-scale perspective drawings to 'see' the end results of my various ideas. I'd considered, and drawn, what a dog-eared picket fence would look like on the west side (it would make the 10' narrow side yard very cramped and mingy-looking). But my neighbor recently installed one, and it looks about as bad a I thought. I'd say it looks exactly as I thought. The upside is, having 'visualized' it in many different permutations, I think I know how to turn it around into a nicer look.

I even have my 'plant pallet' figured out for the entire lot. There are just a few non-critical decisions left. And btw THANKS for the many ideas for native shrubs!! I've incorporated those ideas in many places. And since for the most part I have NO idea how these things will grow here (except for privet (garden thug, but useful for honeybees and birds), Catalina Island cherry and it's 40,000 year-ago parent hollyleaf cherry (I prefer hollyleaf, but both are very useful), and crape myrtle (a summer bloomer loved by honey bees, with beautiful fall color), and of course the many, many coast live oak trees that planted themselves in my yard (my area is either chaparral or southern oak woodland, depending on soil depth, I guess my particular lot is southern oak woodland) ... ... I even have alternates picked out in case my first choices don't thrive in my difficult extreme climate and clay soil. I fully intend to 'edit' my landscaping after the fact, depending on how things are doing.

But basically near the house will be shaded 'woodland' with decking patios. That's really not my favorite look, but seems to be the most useful in terms of heat-control, accessibility, low-maintenance, drought-tolerance, and wildlife-friendly checkboxes. And the rest will be open sunny space with pavers surrounded by v large evergreen shrubs.

I'll also have a couple of bird-bath 'water features' for the wild life. And I'll have a fair number of planters for some garden plants, herbs, and so forth. (The lead contamination makes for uncertain food-growing.)

If you can think of anything I should do to improve my planned habitats, or to alter my plan for any reason, I'd much appreciate it!

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You have different slopes on the east and west side of your yard, correct? i.e. slope runs from northeast to southwest.

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Does decking wrap all the way around? Or just east and west sides? Either way, if decking is level all the way around/ on both sides of your house, will there be a tall gap under the decking, and will the decking be supported by posts? Or will you fill in with dirt underneath, esp on the west side?

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I would definitely use ipe as the deck support, even if you use cedar for the planking.

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Also, how do you intend to stabilize the slope in your backyard? Soil does seem to creep downhill. Low retaining wall? Stabilizing trees/ shrubs?

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I like the idea of shaded decking. It sounds friendly and comfortable! Especially with planters! (I believe you mentioned horse troughs and the idea has stuck with me since then!)

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But I LOVE shade, especially looking at dappled shade on soil, walls, fences ... any surface that allows the patterns to be viewable.

Maybe this is part of MY inability to visualize, but CA shrubs, for the most part, tend to be as wide as tall, and they're full, all the way to the ground. That goes for coffeeberry, ceanothus, currants, hollyleaf cherry, hollyleaf redberry, shinyleaf mahonia, etc. The only shrub that is taller than wide in my experience is californica carpenteria which IMHO is a very pale-leaved and unimpressive shrub, and manzanita, which tends to have a more open form but is sparse with leaves.

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The point being that most CA shrubs take up a lot of room but provide no effect shade. So your backyard might look sun-blasted during most of the day, and the pavers will reflect a lot of light, and absorb and re-radiate a LOT of heat in the evening, so I think you need some actual shade trees on the "lower 40".

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BTW we have a cinderblock wall on the south side of our property, and the sun-facing side (our south side neighbor) has no vegetation shading a large part of the wall, and the heat transmitted thru, and radiating from the SHADY side of the wall is phenomenal, and heats the whole southern side of our house. So heat buildup from blocks and pavers is something to be considered!

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EDITED TO ADD: IF you need shade at noon, look for trees that are wide. But if you're looking for shade in the AM or PM, took for tall/ skinny trees like Canary island pine, because the low angled sun will cause tall trees to cast hugely long shadows- all the way across your backyard and into the neighbor's yard!

But as I understand your lot, it's narrow and runs north-south, more or less, so you'll need noontime shade over at least part of your pavers to keep the property cooler. Since live oak seems to want to grow in your yard, that might be a good choice. But you could also try one of the larger forms of manzanita (Dr Hurd to 15') or sambucus, which is deciduous and has a lovely structure when in leaf.

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ALSO, there are lead+test kits for soil. You may not be as limited as you think for planting.

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Hey JSF, you still there? Grab this quick if you are.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Quote:

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
I REALLY am not convinced that your sump times and issues are solely a result of your roof/yard water getting into your sump well. There is at least another problem or source causing your sump to keep running. I'll get to that, after I cover the topics that you are planning to dig at soon. You also might not like the solutions I will mention, but it will be for you to decide.

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Oh... I'm not convinced of anything. Especially stuff that's underground that I can't see. I haven't had any new mole tunnels in going on a month after the second round of poison smoke bombs, but I'm not convinced that I killed it or have taken care of that problem either. Water downfall has been MUCH lighter this year than the last 5 years and could be responsible for the lack of mole activity.

But the current drainage has to have at least a hand in it. The entire surface area of my back porch ended up in that sand pit and snaked around the front of my house in the hasta bed, with much of it pooling in the front of the house for many hours up against the foundation.

At least I have recent data to go on now, and something to compare it to the next time we get a rain this heavy and I've got the drainage going to the street. It will be better next time... But the question is how much better? Hopefully more than negligible.



At around 9:30 AM it was 23 minutes exactly between sump cycles. This is about 47 hours after the large rain stopped, and we only had a brief 0.03" shower yesterday morning in between then and now.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Hey JSF, you still there? Grab this quick if you are.

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OK, I think I just got it, just as I timed out.



It's mostly a mirror of how I envisioned it. But the porch seems opposite of how you had described.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Quote:

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Maybe you missed part of what I said. You could use those pieces you already bought, to make a U-turn in your extenders.

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Nah. Those are garbage and half the strength of the corrugated black pipe, if that. And those "popoid" features it has is just a potential weak spot just waiting to break on you. Plus they're super expensive by the foot compared to the pipe. I got 100 feet of that pipe for just a little more than twice what those two extenders cost me, and I measured them before I took them back and they were only 5 feet each.

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The drainage tile comes in both perforated and non-perf, so figure which you want. The 100' was practically the same price as 2x 50', and I wasn't certain you needed that much.

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Depending on if I'm going to do down both sides of my driveway for three of the downspouts (two of them connected with either a Wye or a Tee), I might actually need more than 100'.

Non Perf all the way. From my reading, you only buy the perf stuff if you're planning on putting them underground. I have no interest in doing that. Not because of the work, but if they get clogged you can't rod them out and you have to dig them up again.

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If you brought your extension to abutt the chain link fence, I would think you could slope/contour the opposite side of the fence to drain it all away - I'm assuming towards the street in front. We really should be able to make things work without having downspouts all over the place, spread across your entire lawn.

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The only chain link fence is my neighbor's in the back yard, and then a little 6' one from my house to the corner of my neighbor's fence to block off my back yard from the front yard. Unfortunately, when I had the gutters done, we made the downspout go down the back instead of between both of our houses. Knowing what I know now, I'd love to have a snake from a downspout that was on the side past the fence (not in the back yard) and hide it behind the bushes and the hastas and have it feed out past the hasta bed where it would roll of into the street in front of my house. It sucks that it has to stay in the back now. Well... either that, or I have to cut a hole in the bottom of the chain link fence to feed it through to the front.

I was thinking I could just get on my 12 foot ladder and take the downspout down and put it on the side, but then I realized that if we were going to put it on the side instead of in the back that would require the hole in the gutter to the downspout to have been about a foot or more further down the gutter than they actually put it. That was my longest gutter at 45', and the one that would require two people on very tall ladders to re-install, so that's not an option either.

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:This was what I didn't know if you had read. You had not responded, and I didn't know why you didn't want to. For me, I would have still been using them.

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Yeah. I didn't know you were updating old posts and I was supposed to go back and read them. I wasn't ignoring you.

Those things were cheap garbage and wouldn't last long. They also don't fit with any of the corrugated pipe materials and I would guess were only 3" diameter instead of 4" like all the new stuff.

Also, they were super expensive at around $7.50 before taxes for roughly 5 feet, compared to $42.50 for 100 feet of the black corrugated pipe.

If there really ever is a need for something like those in the future, I'm sure I can find better versions that might link up well with the new system instead of that trash.

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Correct. You really want that curved solid metal at the bottom of that 30' drop from gutter height.

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Good to know. Shouldn't be a problem just fitting the adapters to the end of the male end of the elbows then.

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Unless you have some specific plan/purpose - it is your house. But that tubing might be more unsightly than you want for selling the place.

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Well... my plan for right now is to get all roof water away from the house and out into the street. That's the most important thing... far more important than looks. At the rate I work, it will probably be a few years until I'm ready to start thinking about selling it, and the more major issues like this I shore up, who knows? I might decide to live here a while after all of this work.

I can always revisit beautifying the drainage solution at a later date before I sell the house, and I don't intend to throw any of the downspout material I'd be replacing with plastic pipe for now. That can go up in the garage. These materials are what I consider an extremely cheap fix at only around $90 for the service they will provide while I do other work and get this house further along the road of being able to sell it for a good price.

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do have several plans in mind for traversing that small fence, so remind me if I forget later to mention them. It might be a moot point after we tackle some other things first.

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Will do. I'm very open to suggestion on that front.

You did see the thin line denoting my neighbor's fence and that short length of fence I'm referring to then, right?

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How much elevation change is there between where the driveway meets street, and the nearest part of the sand pit? I assume the sand pit surface is higher than the street.

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The sand pit is almost certainly higher than the street.

The driveway is actually dangerous for low cars. A LOT of people have banged the bottom of their car on the curb as they pulled in or out, even after I warn them. Most have never done it a second time. Most.



The pit is lower than the driveway. It's roughly even where they meet, but it goes deeper the further away from it it goes. I've graded the sand/dirt mix away from the structures.

But there's no way we could ever make the sand pit higher than the driveway. It's impossible because of the settling that's happened with the porch and the driveway.

3 feet in front of the garage door the driveway slopes back to the garage. I took a LONG time and quite a few bucks patching a huge crack where the asphalt covers the front of the garage slab that goes down at an angle before putting the top coats on last year and it didn't even survive one heavy snowfall and is cracked again.

The best I can hope to do is get any and all roof water as far away as possible through drainage, and then grade everything down from the garage/porch/house (the Bermuda Triangle) and have a low center "well" in between it all for the rainwater that doesn't fall onto any of the roofs.

Unless, of course, you have some other solution. But we can't make the sand pit higher than the driveway.

One of my problems here is that after decades of settling, I'm pretty sure the house and garage are lower than they should be. I'm certain of that with the shed and the back porch.

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If you don't know how to measure or estimate, take a working level (longer is better) and put one end on the edge of sandpit, and prop up the other until bubble reads level. Then stick a tape measure on it's back, with the tape upright, vertical. eyeball the surface of the level until you see the tip of the tape measure.

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Well, I've been bent and folded. Go back in 2 weeks to see if they found anything. I don't think they will.

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Looks like I got a teeny tiny recluse spider bite.

Looked up online, no specific treatment except antibiotics and debridement and steroids if systemic reaction. Since no systemic reaction so far, if I make it until Friday without my skin dying and falling off, I'm in good shape.

Yanno, I THOUGHT I saw a tiny spider in my shirt, so I shook it out b4 I put it on. I guess I didn't shake hard enuf.

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Brown recluse?

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I've been looking at Theodore Payne garden tour photos to see what I respond to and why, and spent a lot of time looking at this garden

Not achievable in OUR yard bc architectural features not the same, but if you want to look at various ideas the archived photos from 2013 onwards are here. Interestingly, I can usually tell the difference between professionally designed gardens and homeowner designed gardens. Homeowner gardens tend to be less structured, look messier, and don't have a driving theme. The best homeowner designed garden is at cynthias native gargen

https://theodorepayne.org/calendar/annual-garden-tour/
https://cynthiasnativegarden.wordpress.com/

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

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That's beautiful. I envy you for being able to aspire to such things.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And finally... After weeding, raking, shredding, planting, mulching, edging, mowing, and sweeping, the backyard looks ... pleasant. Nothing looks so terrible that it grates on my nerves!

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

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KIKI: Signy, I just wanted to point out that the landscape benefits VERY much from 'borrowed' landscaping - specifically, the neighbors' trees, shrubs, and vines that provide a beautiful green backdrop and pretty shade-patterns.

SIGNY: Oh, I definitely noticed that!

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Well, I've been bent and folded. Go back in 2 weeks to see if they found anything. I don't think they will.

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Oh dear.That doesn't sound good!

What happened?

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Oh hey Brenda - I too hope everything is OK.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I'm sure I missed a cycle since they're way further apart and I've been doing other things.

But at around 9:30AM my stopwatch said that it was 1 hour, 12 minutes and 11 seconds since the last cycle I caught stopped.

So I'm pretty sure minus a 22 second on cycle in between I'm at around 35 minutes and 55 seconds between ON cycles now.

That's about 71 hours after the big rain stopped, with only 0.03" afterward and two laundry loads last night shot into the sump well in addition to the original 3.5" rain.



I could be wrong and that's only 1 cycle. I figure at some point we're going to start doing better than gaining 10 to 15 seconds per cycle and it will basically just disappear, but I don't know when that's going to happen. I'll be monitoring it again tonight when I'm done working for the day. Going to be outside and in the garage for the most part until then.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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I will likely tell you some secrets that you might not use, so my suggestions might be fluid, able to match various tricks for your situation.

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OK.

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Is your goal to just have grass up to the wall? bushes/scrubs? gravel, flower bins?

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Not grass. Because of that incidental overhang I mentioned above, it's a real bitch mowing it. I don't know what my end goal would be, but it needs to keep the water away and stay put. Bare dirt with occasional tunnels right up against the foundation is terrible. I can't really do anything until I know the mole problem is gone.... or maybe I can?

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what is the elevation different between basement windows (or glass blocks) and the grass/dirt level?

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Double pane up/down glass windows. Probably 5" to 8".

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To seed your brain, I'll try to describe an overall drainage plan for your outside, which is where most wet basement causes are.

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Except for sidewalk, driveway, stepping stones, etc, we want to have the 3 feet nearest the basement (and garage) to slope away from the structure, at least several inch drop. This can be done by adding dirt up against the wall/concrete, or raking away excess dirt from about 3 feet away from the wall.

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I always do my best to grade the dirt away from the house after collapsing the mole tunnels.

One of the first things I'm doing this year once I start working outside is to trench out the dirt from the foundation that is above grade, clean it all good, and paint it with the black tar a few inches below grade, then fill it all back in.

I'm definatley open to any low-maintenance ideas you have for putting a border around the foundation that will keep water away. Like I said before, I don't want grass there for easy mowing, and if something can be put down there that would block the moles from coming close even better.

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How far below the dirt on the outside is your basement floor on the inside? you can measure from a window, how far below is dirt on outside, and floor on inside.

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I measured it this morning while I was down there. About 44" to the window on the inside.

So probably in the mid to high 30's for the dirt level. I'd guess around 3 feet.

It occurs to me that I never mentioned the sump pump is in a crawl space and only has to push the water up about maybe 3 1/2 feet before it goes out the drain. The drain pipe is low compared to the windows on the livable side (the pipe goes through the foundation), but the dirt in the crawl grades down to the pump and then there's the extra depth of the well.

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Hoo boy, it looks like you are running ahead of me on this facet, so I'll start on this one. Seems you have a number of issues we can resolve in varying ways, but I'll focus on this first, since you plan to dig at it soon.

One of the secrets is subterranean water control, channeling, sloping. This means just below the surface. I plan to tell you about 2 for lawns/dirt, since it doesn't sound like you have a lot of gravel drive/park area. If I forget to tell you about sub-surface gravel channel, be sure to remind me.

For now, the sub-surface control against the basement wall and the top treatment against the basement wall are not exactly the same thing, but they can be planned together and done at the same time.


To start, you might already know some of these things, but I'll explain in case you don't.
If you were to drop your garden water hose in the middle of your grass, the ground underneath normally becomes waterlogged in the shape of a cone, spreading wider the lower it goes. If the surface does not allow the surface water to spread, then the waterlogged subsurface dirt does not normally transition horizontally. We can use this to control things, and also later to divert water.

Consider next to your basement wall, say that surface water cannot get closer than 48 inches to your wall.

water
source,,,,48" of grass,,,,|
xxxxxx\xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|
xxxxxxx\xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx| 4
xxxxxxxx\xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx| 8
xxxxxxxxx\xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx| "
xxxxxxxxxx\xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|
4xxxxxxxxxx\xxxxxxxxxxxxxx| b
8xxxxxxxxxxx\xxxxxxxxxxxxx| a
"xxxxxxxxxxxx\xxxxxxxxxxxx| s
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx\xxxxxxxxxxx| e
oxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\xxxxxxxxxx| m
fxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\xxxxxxxxx| e
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\xxxxxxxx| n
gxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\xxxxxxx| t
rxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\xxxxxx|
axxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\xxxxx| w
sxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\xxxx| a
sxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\xxx| l
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\xx| l
water drainage patternxx\x|
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\|

Then that drainage pattern would not get to your wall until the bottom, where it meets your foundation, and your drainage tile takes in the water.
Imagine that is a 45 degree slope in the above image.

So one trick is to install a diversion/protector below the surface. Again, imagine this is a 45 degree slope of the diversion.


xx|,,,,,grass surface,,,,,,,
xx|
xx|\
xx|x\
b |xx\
a |xxx\
s |xxxx\
e |xxxxx\ ---diversion material
m |xxxxxx\
e |xxxxxxx\
n |
t |
xx|
w |
a |
l |
l |
----- <-- foundation

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In this way, if your distance from foundation up to grass surface is only 36", then a diversion material of about 24" size would extend about 18" from the wall, and protect your whole wall from most waterlogged dirt or water settling pattern. The top of the material rests against the wall (like against your tar), either flush with or usually below the surface a bit.
Now your water will find/make new channels to take the water away, not against your basement.
One material I've cheaply used was garbage bags, the leaf kind, cut open and laid flat single thickness. Having holes in it is mot a tragic problem, because the vast majority of the water is being diverted away from the wall.
But you might be concerned with moles. I really like cheap plastic or rubber sheets or runners. I go to Farm & Fleet, to the flooring section, and look for the stair runners, or carpet protector runner. Used to be less than a $ per foot, and in 2 foot width on the roll. This I would conjure to be adequate deterant to your moles - but no guarantee.

I hope that is explained well enough, the under surface part.

For the surface, conjure if you added about an inch or 2 of dirt (with grass on top) to all of the 3-foot border nearest your basement wall. For the vast majority of waterfall, this would keep surface water at bay, until the surface water flowed to someplace else, or soaked into the dirt.

One or both of those could give you thoughts on your upcoming digging.

For the surface treatment against the wall. Bushes, scrub, that mulch type stuff, big flat rocks, 1-2" stones, etc...
I understand you are planning to sell your house. This is something that contributes to "curb appeal" often. Remember that the new owner will have their own ideas about what they want - so just having something easy to convert could be good enough - like a blank slate. I think Signym may have ideas of these things, even though her water situation is about the opposite of ours.
Just grass is the least sturdy against unguttered roofs, which is what you had, and there was likely a line of bare dirt where the rain water dropped straight from the roof edge. Other plants absorb some water, while resisting weathering from dropping water.
Really, just keeping the abutment to the wall a higher elevation than a few feet from the wall will do you good. Having downslope area for water to run away is the goal.
I assume you were planning to use that garden divider stuff tp keep the grass away, makes mowing easy.

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Man... I didn't even know you edited this post. When did you do that?


I wasn't planning on digging several feet down when I did the tar. I was only going to take a few inches away from the wall when I put the tar on... maybe half a foot.

That sounds like a great idea, but I don't know if I have the energy to do all of that digging. The back wall is 42' long, and if you add the porch it's about 65' long.

Yeah. When I didn't have gutters, there was a HUGE rut that formed along the back wall directly under the roof. Then, at the same time, it got higher along the foundation. I thought that was just displacement of the dirt, but it was actually the mole tunnels inside the area between the rut and the foundation.

Somewhere along the line, all of the grass died about 5" away from the wall. It makes mowing easy, but as windy as it gets around here I know I've lost dirt when it's dry because the ground keeps being displaced.

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Whoa, what??
You are putting LAUNDRY load waste water into your "sump" well?

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What is the diameter of the pipe that this discharge pipe is connected to, flows into?

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