My Garden's Working Progress

Not really sure how much area we are gaining , i'd say we had gained more depth than anything else.

Got the fencing company who done the other fencing coming later on to get them booked in for the following to be built in the brick wall's place. Hope this sort of shows it clearly. Its a 3d model I built but am finding it difficult to get a clear position to show the fencing company what we want. The gate way will be further to the house and should run in more of a straight line than it currently is.





Not really certain what will defiantly go here we just wanted more security and privacy by doing as currently the brick wall is only about 3ft high, anyone could jump over it. We had an attempted break in a few months back which sort of made us think a lot more about security than before.

We hadn't thought of that, so thank you very much for pointing it out before it was too late!

It may be unrelated but we had a massive water leak from one of the radiator valves in the house a few days after we found that water pipe.It made a bit of a mess, but it could have been a lot worse.

 

Before we can do any building on the steps I have to sort the drain out. Before this picture was taken the drain pipes going into the drain were relying heavily on a concrete funnel surrounding the drain itself. After I removed this I found that the concrete was in fact very porous and had let a lot of water into the back of the drain which is against our extension wall.This is how it looked before I shuttered it off to create a concrete overcoat around the sides to prevent any future damage.



You can see the water pipe on the right side going into the house, which isn't the straightest pipe I've seen! Also the main waste pipe which heads straight downwards.

I have to extend both pipes going into the drain, one has already been done, but the other will have to be completely replaced. I stuck a piece of butter tub lid up there as a temporary measure though.

 

Thanks Jane for this additional information on your project. I understand from your drawings what you wish to achieve and why you need to do it. Hope things all go to plan. Looking forward to the next phase!
Like your butter tub lid idea - very smart!!

 

Haven't updated this thread for a while as I was struck down with flu within hours of knocking the brick wall down. The drains were also encased in concrete earlier that week too, which you can just make out on the left of this picture.



Water pipe turns out to be even more exposed to the surface where I removed the brick wall and the water pipe was practically sitting underneath the lowest brick! A gravel board will sit on top of this in the future, but fear that this won't add as much protection as the brick wall had done for the past 50 plus years.

Am a bit frustrated really as I have to get back to work with the shuttering of the step base but don't want to push myself too hard at this time.

 

Could you wrap some sort of insulation around the pipes JJ?

 

We are going to put as much pipe insulation as we can but the trouble is is where the pipe leaves our boundary and goes into the shared drive.

Here's a better picture of the problem I hope.



In the photo the pipe is no longer visible where the brick wall was but I know that is is only a few mm below and not deep enough to put pipe insulation around the pipe and then lay a gravel board on top. Also the concrete that the pipe is resting on encases the stink pipe, which is made from terracotta and really don't want to risk breaking it either.

Am in a bit of a dilemma what to do about it although some people have said to me that it should be ok if it's been like that for over 50 years and hasn't burst.

I think we will make sure we have burst pipe cover on our building insurance in the future though....

 

Wow - I'm exhausted just reading hwat you've been up to!

 

Better update this thread again.

Have had a pretty rough month, two colds, a death in the family and a problem with our sewer pipe. This was caused by the workmen who installed our fence. Thankfully they put it right, it took us two weeks to notice the problem. One of the workmen had knocked a hole in our clay pipe and it had to be replaced. This was discovered the day after the concrete bed was put down for the steps to the door and was told part of it would have had to have been taken up thankfully this didn't happen.

This is how it looks today. Much more space gained I think, even though it's only really a small amount.The double gates were removed and a new gate will be built by the other half when he gets the time to do so.










Next job is to build our new steps to the back door and remove the concrete overhanging the fencing, which was part of the old shared driveway.

 

Nice transformation

 

I haven't updated this thread for a while, but not much has been happening due to the cold weather, christmas etc

Work slowly begins again on the back door step last week. We bought some railway sleepers, which turned out to be still green wood and very wet! We had to wait months for them to dry out in order to be able to cut out notches so the water pipe could still run though without having to be disturbed. This was taking months to do before we decided to take drastic action and bring them into our spare bedroom to dry out. They dried out in 2 weeks and last Thursday we began work on putting them in place.

Here's how they will be positioned with almost all the sleepers cut to length with the water pipe running through them.



The next job is to creocote all of the sleepers, which will take forever to do! So will report back in a few months time. I've put one coat on already but find it alarming how quickly the treatment seems to fade in colour. I could have happily paid for pretreated old sleepers but they weren't thick enough.

 

Almost done. Only took us an afternoon to build this. Wanted to use scaffold boards for their worn effect but ended up having to go for decking instead.



I know this hasn't been built the way decking is usually built and most people would usually hide the supports with a face board but I decided to try something different.

The idea is to turn it into a sort of bug heaven with the 7 lower gaps stuffed with logs all with holes drilled in them to help hibernating insects next year.

The top layer will be full of these and a few beer bottles. Hopefully thread a few fairy lights into each bottle to create a glowing effect at night.



I wanted to use clay pipe, which is usually the traditional way of doing them but can't seem to find any local to me or really want to pay the earth for them either. So instead I'm going to try and use tin cans painted in hammerrite to stop them rusting.

Now I just have to work out what colour to paint the decking too.

 

As long as your sleepers are not treated then they won't smell. Some of the ones I had to bring into the house were creocoted and my spare bedroom stank of the stuff for a few days. Our spare bedroom is under construction anyway so it didn't matter what went in there.

The idea of the clay pots is an interesting one. I picked up this lot for free from a guy down the road who had them piled up outside his house with a sign saying "please take these for free". Some of them looked quite old.



Most of them have been broken though, I think by the cold weather or by being knocked around while other work was taken place. So could always use the broken halves instead........

I need to find some non split logs to to stick in the bottom level, but it seems everyone wants logs at the moment for some reason.