Driveway in Action - Part 1

For those of you who don't understand what all the driveway fuss is about, here's a short video with clips taken during a 15 minute rain-shower (storm) that passed through this afternoon. Keep a lookout for potential drainage problems.

Oh, and this is a lot better than it was.

WSDL Viewer

This won't mean anything to most people, but today I found a WDSL Viewer that uses XSLT to render an HTML page. It's a nifty use of XSLT and a nicely presented output. I couldn't have done better myself.

The Deck Project

With all of the work on the driveway, the rain barrel project, the garden, the walkway and getting ready to go to Alaska, you may have thought that we couldn't possibly have had time to work on anything else, but somehow we managed to fit refinishing the deck into the mix.

We have two very nice decks - a larger deck off the living area and a smaller one off the master bedroom. Unfortunately, the main deck had never been properly stained and sitting in the sun every day had left its mark.

The underside of the deck was even worse - because it never saw the sun, it was coated in layers of black mold. The smaller deck had been stained at some point and although it was not very well done, the wood was better protected from the elements, so we decided to start with the larger deck.

After doing some research on deck refinishing, we did the following:

Step 1. Clean the deck

Using a power washer, deck cleaner, and a lot of elbow grease, we sprayed, scrubbed, and rinsed until most of the black mold was removed and the most of the random remnants of old stain had been wiped clean. Between the power washer and the deck cleaner, it was surprisingly easy to remove the build-up, though still hard, hot work in the sun, so many thanks to the deck cleaning crew!

Step 2. Sand the deck

We did this by hand and with the help of a small hand sander. It was a big job and took longer than expected due to some rainy weather. Rainy, wet weather will definitely delay every step of refinishing a deck.

Step 3. Stain the deck

We choose a semi-transparent stain that was rich in linseed oil and promised to make the wood water, UV, and mildew resistant. Starting in one corner we worked our way across in stages. This took place over multiple weekends and mostly in the early morning and evening as the deck stain was easier to apply when the wood was not baking in direct sunlight - for me and the deck!

After three weeks, several rain delays, an extra tin of stain, and some close calls - including a storm alert as I rushed to paint the final few steps..........voila! A beautiful "new" deck!

The Driveway Project - Part 5

So, the thunderstorms that were in the forecast (and that left us hanging on the edge of our seats) in my last driveway post, never materialized. We got some light showers, resulting in 0.4 inches of rainfall, but nothing nearly as heavy as the prior ones.

However, over the past week we have had a lot more rain, including 1.21 inches on Wednesday alone. To get straight to the point, the driveway has been holding up much better than before. All the work that we've been doing is helping. The burlap and seed blankets have been holding the dirt and seedlings in place through-out the downpours. There's still been a heck of a lot of water running over sections of the ground (in little rivers), but now it's not moving so fast and taking everything with it. There's still some problem areas need attention, but the "tornado" effect has subsided.

The current problem areas are: at the top corner where the water goes over the edge (as shown by the arrows):


And at the bottom where all the water runs off the driveway after running down the hill. Here you can see the daylilys we planted as an effort to help with the erosion (minus the flowers that recently disappeared):


We just need to figure out the best way to handle these areas. Any ideas?

The other problem that we're going to have to deal with at some point is the growing number of weeds that are sprouting:


Although for the time being, weeds are better than nothing.

Packing for Alaska

I don't usually enjoy packing for trips: I usually leave it to the last minute and end up taking either too much or not enough. Packing for our Alaska trip, brings a whole new challenge to the packing process. We will be spending most of our time out in the wilderness (think no shops, no roads, no toilets, no running water) and are confined to what we can keep dry and fit in a kayak. On the plus side, we've got to buy some exciting new pieces of gear, including: dry-bags, compact light-weight sleeping pads, and water filter (with carbon element). And don't let me forget my new mosquito hat.

The Rainbarrel Project

There's something good to be said for conserving resources and it's always nice to get something for free. Bring on rainwater harvesting and rain barrel project! The project started a couple of months ago, by working on designing a solution to get the water from the roof of the house to the vegetable garden.

The simplest location for rain barrel installation is to place them under the downspout of your gutter. I didn't like that idea because I wanted the barrel near the vegetable garden (where the harvested water will be used) and not near the house (where the water is sourced), thereby eliminating the need to make several trips to carry water to the vegetable garden. I therefore decided to run a hose-pipe from the house to the vegetable garden. For this to work, and for gravity to assist in transferring the water from one place to another, I needed to get the water into the pipe as near to the roof as possible.


If you've been wondering what the funny looking attachment is, it's the somewhat improvised version of the component that redirects water from the gutter on our roof into a hose pipe and on it's way to the vegetable garden. The challenge was to figure out how to attach a hose to gutter and this is what I came up with:


The nice thing about this design is that it has an accessible filter used to keep leaves and other debris out of the pipe, and stop it blocking the inlet. You just need to unscrew the blue cap for access and to clean the filter:


The next part of the project involved finding a suitable (and reasonably priced) rainwater barrel. Google helped locate the New England Rain Barrel company who sell recycled (used) barrels that come with several useful fittings installed especially for rainwater harvesting.

To complete the project, Erin built a solid base to place the barrel on using concrete bricks left over from The Paving Project. Here you can see the job in progress:


Once the base was complete, I hooked up the hose, and all that was left is for some rain to arrive to fill up the barrel.

The Driveway Project - Part 4

Okay, so in The Driveway Project - Part 3, I told you how we came back from a weekend away to a bit of a disaster on our hands. We'd been trying to back-fill along the edges of our new driveway, with limited success. The good news is that things have improved significantly since then, even with a few set-backs along the way.

After seeing the paper based erosion control blanket ripped apart by gushing water, we decided to abandon that technique and try something a bit more heavy-duty. I found rolls of "burlap" (also known as "hessian") at the hardware store. This is a much stronger fabric like blanket that we thought should hold the soil and seed in place in the event of more rain. Well, after spending the entire weekend moving literally tons of dirt and re-doing the washed-out sections along the driveway, we got to see first hand what happens when a thunder storm hits.

On Monday morning at about 7am, the storm came through. I heard the rain on the sky-lights, went to check the weather radar online, and found a big red splodge heading right for us. I was outside within minutes and the rain was getting harder. With crashes of thunder loud and all around, the heavy rain turned heavier. A blanket of water quickly appeared on the large expanse of asphalt near the house, and like one big monster, stared moving, down the hill.

At about this point, Erin returned from her run (which was no longer a run as the rain was so hard and heavy that she couldn't run). Let's just say, after we saw the torrents of water running down the side of the driveway, we where able to understand how they'd made a 1 foot deep trench. We scrambled with sand bags to stop the water making the already damaged driveway worse. We saw the nylon netting holding the seed blanket in place ripped apart and the blanket wash down the slope. We saw our fresh top-soil, seeds, and many hours of hard work, being washed down the storm drain at the bottom of the driveway. And within about 15 minutes, the storm had passed. Not a very good way to start the day, especially if it's your birthday.

After the storm had passed, we assessed the situation and determined that it could have been worse. The burlap we'd put down after the first storm, actually held up pretty well - there just wasn't enough of it. The seed roll that broke free, did so because it didn't have enough stakes holding it in. So we bought more burlap, moved yet more dirt, and re-seeded again.

The paving company came and made their repair which turned out pretty well:


We haven't had any more rain since, so the burlap, top-soil and seeds are all still in place:


And lots of regular watering with the hose, means the grass is starting to grow:


We even decided to put some sod/turf rolls down over the area that had the water damage and has since been repaired, so that's looking good too.


After the last two storms, things have gradually been improving. However, the next test is coming tonight. Thunderstorms are forecast, and there's an 80% chance of rain. I might be waiting up with my flashlight to see what happens next...

Asphalt Prices Skyrocket

The price of asphalt is sky-rocketing (it's oil based) as you can see in this News Report. It's gone up by almost 50% in the past few weeks, for example:

July 16 - 31, 2008	$700
July 1 - 15, 2008	$625
June 2008	$517
May 2008	$447
April 2008	$410
March 2008	$362

I'm glad we got the driveway installed already!

Into The Wild

With our upcoming Alaska trip on our minds, we recently watched Into the Wild. It was good, albeit a little disturbing. Based on a true story of a young man trying to find himself, it's on my recommend-to-a-friend list.

The Driveway Project - Part 3

Disaster! We went away for a long weekend and came back to a disaster-zone.

Prior to leaving, we'd spent several days moving dirt, planting new grass seed, and watering. With over 1000 linear feet of driveway edge to work on (and with drainage concerns still in my mind), we prioritized the areas and began working on two main sections: around the bend at the top where I expected water to flow over the edge, and at the bottom where cars like to turn around.

We began by preparing the area by adding and leveling fill and top-soil, as you see here:


We then decided to try 2 alternative methods of seeding.

The first was using a paper based "seed roll" that had seeds and fertilizer mixed within a 80ft x 3ft paper roll.


The second was using a wood based 50ft x 4ft roll that was made of straw-like wood fibers against a nylon mesh.


At this point, the paper roll looked favorable. It was the easiest to lay down and had the seed and fertilizer all ready to go. With no rain and hot weather, several days watering followed. The first seedlings where starting to sprout just before we had to leave for a few days away. We hoped that they would survive until we returned...

We arrived back at the house in the evening just as it was starting to get dark. We'd seen rain in the forecast while we where away, we just didn't know how much. At the bottom of the driveway, in contrast to the jet-black fresh asphalt we'd left, this is what we saw:


You can see dirt, gravel, and wood chips washed across the asphalt. It looked like a mess, and we started to get a picture of how much rain we'd missed.

On moving up the driveway (walking at this point), there was more to come:


At this point, things where looking pretty bad. "This is not good.", I yelled back to Erin.


But the worst was yet to come. At the top bend, there was a complete collapse:


As you can see, we found a new 1 ft wide and 6-12 inches deep ditch running along a large part of the driveway. If you compare this to the earlier photo of the same area (as we left it) you might get an idea of how much of a shock this was for us. And needless to say, I was not a happy camper.

It turns out that while we where away some thunderstorms came through and dumped about an inch of water within 2 days. by the size of the ditches the rain created, I can only assume that the water must have come down pretty quickly, like 1/2 inch within an hour on each day. Once again, not happy.

So, I called the paving company and explained to them what had happened. They sent someone out to look at it, and will be returning to next week to try and repair it. We've started working on clean-up, and re-doing the areas that got washed out. I'm getting over the initial shock, things are gradually returning to normality, and we've got another weekend of moving dirt to look forward too.

On a more positive note, after all the rain, the new grass is growing:



But in the meantime, my thoughts return to drainage ditches and erosion control.

I'm sure there'll be more updates on The Driveway Project to come.

The Driveway Project - Part 2

In my last post on the driveway project I told you that the paving company was returning to continue working on the driveway. Well, I got a call that Monday saying that they wouldn't be coming because thunder storms were in the weather forecast. The same thing happened on Tuesday. I was getting increasingly annoyed at this point and told them that they should at least send someone out to have a look at the settling/erosion that had happened over the past couple of weeks. They must have got the message, because they showed up on Tuesday afternoon. They did some more leveling to smooth over the recently created water-ruts, and I helped them mark (with string, measures, and bright orange spray paint) where the asphalt needed to be poured. Things were looking good - it was all marked out and there was clear weather in the forecast.

On Wednesday morning the paving crew started showing up at about 8am. The crew consisted of 8 guys. Their roles were roughly: 2 truck drivers, 2 paving machine operators, 2 to ensure the asphalt was flowing, and 2 edging behind the machine. Of course there was other stuff to do as well, and they also switched around a fair bit. Anyway, shortly after the crew turned up, so did the first load of asphalt and we were in business. They started at the top of the hill near the house. This was probably the hardest bit, since it covers a large area which means there's lots of joining to do. By 1pm they had made it about half way around the bend at the top of the hill and where approaching the straight. Several truck loads later they were almost at the bottom of the hill. And at around 5pm they finally made it to the end of the driveway where it joins the road.

There were a couple of minor hiccups along the way:

• Dragging the plate compactor over the freshly laid surface. This left a mark on the driveway for about 50ft or so. Hopefully it will fade.

• Running out of asphalt for about 45 minutes until the next truck returned. Not good since laying asphalt should be a continuous process where joins are completed while the material is still hot. There's a slight bump you might notice when driving over the join that had cooled.
  

• Laying a "wiggle" near where the driveway joins the road. I guess they must have been getting tired at this point (they'd been at it for 9 hours). This would have bugged me, so I asked them to correct it by adding to once side, cutting away from the other, and now it looks much better.

• Steam-rolling over the edge. Again, this happened near the end and I attribute it to fatigue. It squashed the edge down for a couple of feet, but probably won't be that noticeable after grass is growing.

Overall, I think they did a pretty good job. I'm glad I was around to keep an eye on them though. I liked working with this paving company because they wanted to do a good job that I was pleased with. I liked the fact that they would listen to me when I suggested something or told them what I wanted. The leveling/grading is especially impressive: I tested this by using the hose create a puddle of water in the middle of the driveway at the top of the hill. As I added water, the water soon started to flow down the hill. The impressive part of this is that the water flow made it's way around the bend, and all the way down the hill, before crossing the driveway and exiting in the precise location I wanted - about 300ft away from where I'd started the puddle. After seeing this, I'm hoping that my initial concerns about the drainage will turn out to be water under the bridge.



Here's a link to photos from asphalt pouring day.
Next up is moving the 20 tons of dirt required to backfill 4000 square feet of new driveway-edge...