Working outside when it is fine and inside when it is not. With the Fall/Autumn on me, I am very concerned to have the outside of the house ready for Winter. A major focus is to have a path leading from the garden shed to the back stairs, up to the deck and across to lower entrance into the sun-room. Even though the Farmers' Almanac is predicting there will be little snow before February, I am sure we can bet on quite a bit of rain. Here in Corning when it rains it pours, often turning the back yard into a quagmire. Since I like to park in the back alley (means I don't have to figure out on which side of the street to park and can keep the front screen door locked), I do want to keep my shoes dry when walking up the rear yard. A slightly related issue is the need to improve water drainage from off the roof, since some really heavy falls of rain result in some water entering the lower level at the front corners of the house.
It is just over 50 feet or 15.5 metres from the rear stairs to the concrete slab on which the garden shed sits. As I am almost finished this project, I am ready to tell its story. This is what it looks like as of this evening (you may notice that I have a second raised garden bed alongside the path). The first step is to excavate a strip about four feet wide, eight inches deep, eight feet long (roughly 1 m x 20 cm x 2.4 m), then to place a moisture proof membrane in this trench. Next I lay in about three inches of rubble from the pile behind the shed (sorry, non-metric from now on).
This is very much smaller now, being originally some eleven tons of river rubble. The pile on the right of the picture is the crude material and has lots of large pebbles. This crude stuff forms the first layer. I then sieve the large pebbles out using the excellent Robert-made device in the center of the picture. The resulting large pebble pile is at the left. This material is very useful for making French drains. The refined stuff I mix with cement for a middle layer of about two or three inches. Finally I use proper concrete mix for the top two and one half inches to ensure a good hard, durable surface. All this is a lot of digging, carting away of earth (see the growing pile to the right of the path in the first picture), and various mixing, which is why I am only doing two slabs at a time and getting on with other jobs while the slabs cure.
I am very proud of the traveling form-work I have devised. You may be able to make this out in the picture at the left. This has enabled me easily to keep the path straight and to ensure a regular decline toward the shed pad. By some miracle, the eventual end of the path will be exactly at the level of the pad at the left of the picture. With luck and weather permitting, I shall have regained possession of the pad behind the shed, next to the alley-way, within the next week or so. Then I will be able to park the car and make my way to the rear of the house without getting my shoes wet all, or sinking into the mud or snow!
When not working on this, I have constructed a smaller path leading to the steps descending to the sun-room door (see the middle of the next picture). Between this path and the lawn is a strip that I have just re-seeded. Below this is a French drain to ensure water drains towards the fence and does not affect the dryness of the sun-room. You might recall that I have had a problem with small amounts of water moistening the foundation walls of this room.'What is a French drain?' you might well ask. Basically a trench about 18 inches deep and 15 inches wide with an agricultural pipe at the bottom (a drain pipe with lots of holes), covered with large pebbles (from the rubble pile at the back of the shed), and finally about three inches of sandy loam to enable grass to grow on the top. I am very pleased with how this has turned out. I have to relay some of the tiles to the left of the path as I did a poor job of it in the first place and they have become detached due to the freezing and expansion of casual water last Winter. Live and learn, as the saying goes!
I have done one French drain on the weather side (West) at the front of the house and will do three others so as to have good drainage at each corner of the main structure.
Well, what about the loft? More of this in the next posting. I have had a problem with air entering below the ceiling and above the stairways. This is a space about seven feet long, five feet wide, and four or so feet high, above the stairs. In a cold climate, when there is likely to be snow on the roof, it is essential to keep the air between the roof and the ceiling completely separate from the air in the house blow. This greatly aids climate control; more importantly, it prevents the formation of 'ice dams' at the lower edge of the roof and the gutters. That is the problem of the loft and how I have fixed it is the subject of the next posting.
