Stuart Ablett
Member
- Messages
- 15,917
- Location
- Tokyo Japan
My buddy Neil who lives in the area has been doing a bunch of work at his house, he recently bought it from his former landlord and the old place needs a lot of work. He is the guy that I did that tile work for a while back.
We found out when the inside of the first floor was renovated that the two downspouts on the back of the house were not plumbed into any drains, they just emptied UNDER his house! No wonder there was so much rot in that corner of the house. Of course the wooden structure was all repaired, but the downspouts were not. We found another downspout drain pipe around the front of his house the came from the neighbour's house that was then plumbed into the sewer, so we planned to tap into that. We have had a few typhoons blow through and we are both busy guys, we had bought all the needed pipe and fittings a few weeks back, so it was just a matter of finding the time and a day that it was not raining, that day finally came on Tuesday.
We dug a trench along the side of the house to the back corner, which is the high spot and hooked up the two downspouts and carried on along the house.
This is the back of the house.
Then I had to sneak it around this corner, under the neighbour's slab and connect into the existing drain.
The green pipe you can see is the neighbour's gas line and the small pipe is the water line.
Took a bit of doing but we got it done, then we back filled it all.
Here is the front of the house, it is pretty much done, Neil put down a couple inches of crushed gravel and then this sand like stuff that you shovel into place, smooth with a trowel and then hit it with a light spray of water, then two hours later water again, and in a day it becomes almost like concrete. Not the best surface, it will wear, but much cheaper than concrete and you can also dig it up with less effort if you need to. MUCH better than mud!
There were a bunch of old rocks and such in the back yard, so I took some and made a step for their back door.
We still need to haul some dirt around this side of the house and finish back filling, but the palm tree on the right is coming out, so we are waiting until that is done to figure out how much more dirt we need.
We put eighteen 20Kg bags of crushed gravel in the back yard today, we need about 60 more bags, but I can only haul 20 at a time with my little van, and we have to wait for that tree to come out. The once it is all smoothed out we will put a bunch of the fake grass you can see here down over the crushed gravel.
This is just one small piece he bought to see how it looks, and it looks great.
He would love real grass, but it just does not grow well here and the maintenance on real grass is a bit hard to do. This stuff should last fairly well, we will put flag stones along the high traffic area at the side of the house, and with all of the fake grass carpet stuff staked down we hope will make a nice back yard. Can't wait to fire up the grill and have a party!
The stuff I do around here makes me laugh, there is ALWAYS something on my plate.
Cheers!
We found out when the inside of the first floor was renovated that the two downspouts on the back of the house were not plumbed into any drains, they just emptied UNDER his house! No wonder there was so much rot in that corner of the house. Of course the wooden structure was all repaired, but the downspouts were not. We found another downspout drain pipe around the front of his house the came from the neighbour's house that was then plumbed into the sewer, so we planned to tap into that. We have had a few typhoons blow through and we are both busy guys, we had bought all the needed pipe and fittings a few weeks back, so it was just a matter of finding the time and a day that it was not raining, that day finally came on Tuesday.
We dug a trench along the side of the house to the back corner, which is the high spot and hooked up the two downspouts and carried on along the house.
This is the back of the house.
Then I had to sneak it around this corner, under the neighbour's slab and connect into the existing drain.
The green pipe you can see is the neighbour's gas line and the small pipe is the water line.
Took a bit of doing but we got it done, then we back filled it all.
Here is the front of the house, it is pretty much done, Neil put down a couple inches of crushed gravel and then this sand like stuff that you shovel into place, smooth with a trowel and then hit it with a light spray of water, then two hours later water again, and in a day it becomes almost like concrete. Not the best surface, it will wear, but much cheaper than concrete and you can also dig it up with less effort if you need to. MUCH better than mud!
There were a bunch of old rocks and such in the back yard, so I took some and made a step for their back door.
We still need to haul some dirt around this side of the house and finish back filling, but the palm tree on the right is coming out, so we are waiting until that is done to figure out how much more dirt we need.
We put eighteen 20Kg bags of crushed gravel in the back yard today, we need about 60 more bags, but I can only haul 20 at a time with my little van, and we have to wait for that tree to come out. The once it is all smoothed out we will put a bunch of the fake grass you can see here down over the crushed gravel.
This is just one small piece he bought to see how it looks, and it looks great.
He would love real grass, but it just does not grow well here and the maintenance on real grass is a bit hard to do. This stuff should last fairly well, we will put flag stones along the high traffic area at the side of the house, and with all of the fake grass carpet stuff staked down we hope will make a nice back yard. Can't wait to fire up the grill and have a party!
The stuff I do around here makes me laugh, there is ALWAYS something on my plate.
Cheers!
