We borrowed the excavator again for the long weekend. The primary goal was to upgrade the drainage in Granny's driveway and rebuild the rock-wall across the low side of the driveway. Of course when we have the excavator there are numerous jobs that can be done and so it was.
The drainage at Granny's end has been a problem from the outset. Simply put you get enough rain and it runs straight down the driveway and straight through the carport. Granny's drive came into being because when we pulled a large marri tree out that stood in that location it pulled all of the cap rock out there with it leaving a natural hollow that lent itself to a driveway. In hindsight we should have realized that drainage would be an issue but at that stage we were focused on building the house.
After the first flooding instance we put in some drainage. The initial work of adding a channel drain, pit and diversion pipes at the carport entry done last year generally works ok but if you get a large downpour the drain silts up and the water flows straight over the top and through the carport (usually in the middle of the night).
The solution is to put in a second channel drain at the top to divert water and a big spoon drain cut into the embankment above the driveway to divert water around the driveway. That combined with some changes in levels in the driveway will hopefully alleviate the problem. So far we have only had moderate rainfall and not a really heavy shower to test it but it seems to be working as we anticipated.
Spoon Drain
Spoon drain across the embankment to divert runoff away from Granny's Driveway. The excess dirt out of here went into changing some of the levels in the driveway to help divert water to the top channel drain and to the edges where we have cut some extra drains that feed into the pit and diversion pipes at the bottom.
Channel Drain
Change of levels through the driveway and addition of a channel drain to divert runoff. Note rebuilt rock wall in the background. We went through and used the rock breaker to smash a lot of the larger rocks into smaller manageable pieces.In addition we also cut back into the wall bank in front of the house to make room for a formal set of entry stairs to the front door. This required quite a bit of rock breaking. Most of the rock to come out of here went into the driveway rock wall.
We dug a trench from the bottom poly tank to gravity feed water to the chook pen and plumbed in a tap.
We dragged a bunch of stumps and logs into a pile in the paddock.
We also tidied up the levels a bit more in the future vegie patch.
