A drainage trench

We had an issue with water pooling on the side of our house, we originally thought this was related to the neighbours driveway – it was caving this way, but after they replaced that recently, we’ve still seen water pooling at the side of the house.

I thought it might be a storm water issue after having rain pool at a specific spot and so dug around only to find there is no storm water pipe along that part of the house – the PVC pipe from the back of that side runs out to the granny flat’s pipe work then back around to the front via the driveway.

So with that ruled out, and council useless as usual, and water pooling under the other side of the house as well, I decided we’d stick in a drainage trench to remove the water from the side of the house next to the wall, and see if that fixes the water going under the house on the other side (it might if it’s travelling under or over the foundation brick work).

The painful bits of the trench are digging it and trying to plan a usable path for it. I didn’t put a lot of thought into where we were going at the start, originally planning to run the trench toward the backyard, and link to storm water there, but we have plans to extend over that part of the backyard, and the foxtel dish is in the way.

So the other way, towards the front yard seemed to be OK – and this was what we ended up doing – the path the pipe takes is actually not unworkable – there’s a good garden beds space on the side of the fence facing the pipe – so it’s not going to get in the way.

After digging the trench and walking around in mud, the next bit was to get the gravel and sand. I came stuck planning on how the storm water connection was going to work from the pit considering the water was going to be 400mm underground and the storm water is at 110mm.
The fix to that was to use the angle we are on to our advantage and connect to the pipe further down – 9m down from the pit – but again, all worked in well because the fence and pipe leaves about 900mm of room to have a garden bed in without interrupting the pipe.

We then glued the pipe in and started on lining the drainage trench with geotextile fabric, then inside this was a layer of gravel, and then the ag pipe goes in, and fill with gravel.

That was 2 weekends worth of sorting out.

We got sand and turns out we got by without it – the sand was originally going to line the trench to make grading it easier – turns out you are better off grading mud. The kids have been playing with it – so may be they’ll have a sand pit (and even a gravel pit if there’s gravel left).

Last night, I was determined to see it start flowing after having the pipes in place and seeing water build up behind the pit. I pushed the pit into the ground a touch more and it started bubbling into the pit through the ag pipe.

After going out and coming back, the water was flowing through the storm water connection out to the street. No more water pooling near the house now.

Of course, now we have the drainage trench in, it’ll hardly ever rain until next winter, I bet.

There’s always the clean up and finishing bit – that is, finish filling it with gravel, get the soil somewhere else and make it look good again.

The hope is also that the front lawn will be less soggy and so more green grass. I can only hope.

With that out of the way though, this afternoon after work, I made a start on the Sonata, it’s sitting around doing nothing, so I’ve been planning on tidying it up and seeing whether anyone wants to buy it. Today, I stuck in thicker oil to sort out a leak it had developed. The rocker cover has a bolt or two in it that seem to let oil seep around it, but also, it seeped out and onto the exhaust manifold.
The alternator of course had oil drops on it. That was with 10W30 oil.

So I stuck in 20W50, thick oil. Not good for fuel economy, but should sort that leak out.

I now need to rip out the front door lock assembly and fix or replace it because you can’t open it from inside – not good to pass rego with that.

Once that is sorted out, we’ll have to refit the glove box – I took it out when I installed the fuel monitoring circuit direct to the ECU. Never got around to putting it back in because the leak in the windscreen had to be traced through there too.

Once that’s done the Sonata can probably get a clean and see what people are prepared to buy it for and good timing too, because the Pulsar’s rego is due soon – there goes $900.

I’ve been keeping an eye on it’s consumption and it’s getting 6.4L/100kM at the moment, far better than the 10L/100kM the Sonata was pulling – of course they are both very different cars and very different engines – the Sonata has a large 2L engine.

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