Building a French Drain

Scuse' my French


A belated happy new year to you all. Things have been busy both on the homestead and off, hence the lack of posts. Anyway, lets get into it.

One of the problems that was identified by the builder when we bought the house was the lack of drainage under it. The water was coming off the hill and seeping under the foundation. Whilst there is no damage, he told us it was a priority to get a french drain installed as it would eventually become a problem if it wasn't rectified. I asked the builder how much it would cost to get someone to do it and he said about $3000. Having no desire to spend the holiday fund on the moving of dirt, I enrolled in Youtube University.

So this is the back of the house. To the left, just out of the picture, is the water tank. The water seeps down under the house from this side.


I started digging from where I thought it would be the most difficult at the front of the house. Thankfully there was no rock, but the soil was so compressed, it may as well have been rock. The tools for the job were the Saxon Mattock and the Saxon Square Mouth Post Hole Shovel. I'm happy to report that the mattock held up to the job, and whilst it has been filed down somewhat, it didn't bend or crack as other brands would have done. For $20, I'm really impressed with the durability of it.



I then cut around to the back of the house, right up to the water pump. This job was slightly delayed as I decided to trim a small amount of my thumb off whilst trying to pry open an apricot seed with a survival knife. I'll spare you the photos, but the trip to New Norfolk Community Medical Centre was good driving practice for Shannon in a stressful situation.


Once the trench had been dug, I poured in a small layer of blue stone upon which to rest the drain pipe, then placed the pipe on top of it, covered it in more blue stone and then buried it in the earth.


I ran the pipe out about 4 meters from the house and dug a deep hole for it to run into. I'd rather keep the water on the property if possible. My hope is that it will seep into the earth underneath the Back To Eden food forest. The soil is a lot softer away from the house so it should be alright.



So that was pretty much it for the drain. I've seen them done a lot more elaborately, but we don't get a heap of water, just enough to be a pain. 

Onto the next project!
Location: Lachlan TAS 7140, Australia

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Homestead Happenings

Image
In The Loop So we've been pretty busy in the 5 weeks we've been here. I started a new job and Shannon has been spending 4 hours a day travelling to work and back. Yet, we've still managed to do quite a bit. The Back To Eden Food Forest is progressing well. Every chance I get, I'm out there spreading mulch with the wheelbarrow. I'm about a third of the way there. I think its about 40 cubic meters of mulch I've moved so far. I don't know how many hundreds of wheelbarrows, or better yet, how many shovel full's of mulch that is, and quite frankly, i don't want to think about it. But, it's getting done, that's the main thing.  You can see the remnants of the french drain trench in the photo below. At the start of March I can place my order for bare root fruit trees. It's going to be a pricy order, but buying in bulk will bring the costs down. I'm going to take a stab and say I'll get around 30-40 trees initially.
Read more

Raised Bed Gardening

Image
You made your bed, now lay in it. So we're fortunate enough to have a fully fenced backyard. However, it is rather boring and empty. I wanted to fill the entire backyard with raised beds, but Shannon wants a nice lawn. After reminding Shannon of her place in the patriarchal dominance hierarchy, I agreed not to build raised beds everywhere, but was allowed to build them along the fence, which I have agreed to do. So the first one I built was at the back of the kitchen window. There were a couple of pesky shrubs there so I dug them up. Then I built a rock wall and layed cardboard over the weeds. Then Shannon and I filled the bed with some sandy soil that was left in a pile beside the house. I then topped it up with compost and put a few bricks in there till I could get hold of some pavers. There is a tap on the wall so I'm going to screw a bracket into the fence near the footpath to hold a garden hose and hook it up to the tap. The final step was c
Read more

Constructing The Worm Bin

Image
The next small project on the list was the worm bin, or "worm castle" as I have now decided to call it. Worms are extremely efficient at converting food waste into a nutrient rich, plant available soil medium. This worm poo, commonly referred to as worm castings or black gold is literally worth its weight in gold. To buy good quality castings, you're going to pay a lot for it. You don't get rich writing cheques so I decided to build my own worm castle so I can have an endless supply of castings for my garden. The first step was to source an old bathtub. Thankfully, the previous owners had a horse in the paddock and left the tub they were using as a water trough. It's cast iron and weighs a tonne. I hooked a rope through the pug hole and tied it to the tow bar of the ute, then dragged it a good 100 meters through the paddock. Just as I pulled up beside the backyard, the rope snapped, so i re-tied it and hooked it around me like a horse pulling a plough. I
Read more