Tag Archives: Burial

In the previous two segments, we put dirt over the shotcrete and then added our waterproof insulating umbrella.  In this segment, we put an additional layer of dirt over our umbrella, then plant grass and work on the retaining walls.

For your viewing pleasure, here is the timelapse video…

Video

Lessons learned

1. As always, not everything makes it into the videos.  One part that didn’t quite make it was adding the layer of blocks along the top edge of the wall above the back door.  That wall is an ICF wall, basically 6 inches of reinforced concrete poured between two sides of insulation.  We put a good amount of blue max waterproofing on the top edge and then I made sure that the billboard vinyls (17 mill reinforced)  also overlapped the edge and I mortared 3 layers (about 12 inches) of block along the top edge to hold it all in place…  I thought this would be good enough.  However, water finds a way…  It was able to get between the ICFs and the concrete and run down the inside of my wall all winter…  I’ll need to tear those blocks off and put in some continuous metal flashing at some point.
2. When we started laying it out, I assumed that the experts would know what to do.  Of course, they were pretty uncomfortable with my not having a detailed plan, but were nice enough to work with me. So, the first lesson learned was that I really should have come with a plan and not put that on the contractor.  As it turned out, I really didn’t bring enough blocks to for that back wall.  Some sort of math problem. So that was my second mistake.  The compromise solution was to turn the blocks side ways and lean them back against the hill…  I know this is not ideal and I already expect a lot of negative comments on Youtube.  I decided the only way to overcome that was to put a lot of concrete and rebar behind the blocks to tie them together and form a continuous dam.  This chewed up a bunch of time, but it is over a year (two winters and two springs) later and the wall is so solid that the mortar hasn’t even cracked.

Other tricks up my sleeve

Sherri was concerned that someone would fall off that boulder wall, in fact, she always calls it the “death wall”.  She insisted that I put a rail along the top and bottom edge.  I wanted that rail to be as slender as possible and decided I could use copper pipe for posts and rails.  This isn’t against code if I don’t put a walking path within 6 ft of the rail.  When used as the posts, the copper pipe would be much easier than a wooden post to attach to the boulders…  Just drill it in.  The problem is that it wasn’t really stiff enough.  I found that “L type” copper pipe was quite a bit thicker and stronger, but I still wouldn’t want to rely on it.  I also found that 1/2 inch L copper fits almost perfectly inside 3/4 inch L copper…  This made it more than twice as stiff, especially if I filled the gap with epoxy…  So that is what I did.  The last problem was that the holes were not drilled perfectly vertical (that is harder to do than you might think), so you see they are a bit off plumb at the start, but later we were able to bend them vertical.

The Gallery

Here are some pics, mostly just old scenes since this wasn’t really a photogenic stage.  Enjoy.

These boulders were used to keep the dirt on the roof from spilling around the front… You can also see the billboard vinyls, some carpet, etc.

Walking with the dog

Walking to pick up the camera…

When building a stone wall like this, you often need to spread the stones out as you search for the perfect one. That leads to this sort of messy chaos.

Michael being goofy for the camera before turning it off.

Sometimes we forget to turn off the camera at the end of the day and bring it back into the shop still on… I saw the little red light flash as this pic was taken. I included it so you could see how the shop looks.

The shop, on a clean day (not usually this clean) viewed from the front doors.

Cleaning up the north wall… On this day, I arrived just at sunset, so the first few pics are quite nice.

This guy had seen my stuff on line and also happened to work in Aerospace at one of my customers… He wanted to come check it out and volunteered to help me out to make up for the tour time… That worked for me. He brought his little brother also.

David likes to jump from the death wall… Climbing it is also fun. Hence Sherri likes to call it the death wall.