Our Minds are in the Gutters

It was pretty obvious that our front gutters had a problem. This was the way the water was flowing during our last summer thunderstorm:

Isn't the water supposed to go INTO the downspout?

The gutter is a little bent up from when a tree branch fell into it years ago, but it has always worked just fine despite that. We thought this was an installation issue after we got new siding. The siding company had had to come back and tighten the new back gutters, so it was possible the blockages was related to re-installing the front. But since these were our original copper gutters and downspout, we didn't want to drag them back out if it wasn't due to their installation. We figured we'd see what we could do first.

Cue a very long morning that involved attempting to send water down--and a plumbing snake up--the downspout. Here we are trying to fill the downspout with a hose to see how quickly it filled up. It seemed like the clog was at the bottom, based on what we could hear. We also couldn't push the hose all the way through to the bottom, so something was likely in the way.

Time for the snake (well, first, time to spend 10 minutes trying to *find* the snake in the basement, shed, and garage...). After detaching the downspout from the corrugated pipe, D spent quite a while trying to unclog everything, since it seemed like our best option. The snake did make it all the way up the downspout and barely dislodged anything, but repeated attempts to send water down it made it clear the clog was still there. He spent a while doing this over and over again, each time pulling out only a small amount of debris.

We hesitated to move on to the next step but reluctantly decided to cut the copper pipe. From knocking on the downspout and listening to the sound, we were pretty confident the clog was just past the bend. We didn't want to lose the angle though, so we cut to where we figured we'd be able to reach up and get it. We figured we could always cut higher if we had to.

And there it was! So much debris. Lots of leaves and decaying gunk. Fortunately no squirrel bodies this time (you think I'm kidding but note there's a link to an old post so...). I guess the plumber's snake was just too thin and flexible to break up all the debris.

This time we could send the hose all the way through. 

Obviously we couldn't reattach the copper part that D had sawed off (we have a lot of fancy toys but not a heavy duty soldering iron). So we just used more corrugated pipe to bridge the gap.

The next step, obviously, is buying some gutter guards. Our gutters are narrow (the siding folks said they don't usually install this width anymore, opting for greater capacity) but it does seem like a few options are available for sale. We're just trying to figure out what to purchase. Hopefully we get the guards on before everything clogs again.

Rain rain

My to-do list keeps growing, but I'm getting no home or yard things accomplished. So I thought it would be a good time to look back on something that happened almost exactly a year ago. A big storm flooded our yard more than ever before. We were lucky that no lasting damage occurred, but it was scary to watch:

Another view of the swing set:

We had to dry out the shed and all the items that were on the floor of it:

It was clear that the gutters and downspouts couldn't handle the volume of water--which itself wasn't surprising given how much rained down. Rain gushed up backwards from the pipes, which was especially bad since many of them are right near the basement stairs. It's hard to see from this picture but water was flowing UP the pipe and back onto the rocks.

This caused water to pour under the door to the basement, thought fortunately we were able to wet vac it up before it spread to anything it could damage.

The downpour also showed us that there were holes in the part of the downspouts that were underground--and under the patio--where water belched up to the surface in weird places. It was one of the reasons we decided to get a new patio, to give us an opportunity to see what was underneath and also to re-level it, since all the soggy spots had produced a really uneven surface. What we found was a mishmash of different sized clay pipes, most of them clogged and some of them smashed or broken:

When we had the patio upgraded, the work crew paid attention to the pipes running under the patio, even identifying and repairing a giant hole in one. We knew this was our only chance to fix everything. They also installed a rock garden at the wettest part of our yard in the hopes that it would help move the water along. D then dug a trench though that rock garden for water to collect in when we get downpours.

So has it worked? Well we've had a few big storms since (but nothing that bad) and the yard does seem to drain better, mostly collecting in the rock garden at the far end of our backyard. And we've certainly had quite a lot of rain to test it out in:

But we know that one of our drainage pipes under the patio must have sprung a leak, because after our last heavy rain, we had a bunch of gravel on our patio, pushed up from water spurting out a pipe. It seems unlikely we'll be able to fix this so now that the new patio is installed, unfortunately.

So I guess we just brush off the gravel and hope it isn't so bad that it weakens the ground underneath it. Fingers crossed...

Rocky River

So after the final tree at the back corner of our yard died and we were unable even to keep grass there due to the damp, we realized that we had to do something a little different. As we got quotes for a patio, we asked for suggestions for what to do for this back corner, as well. First, we considered a true rain garden that could pass a perc test and maybe even qualify for some rebates and grants. But one of the landscapers pointed out that you don't want to create a rain garden where there's already too much water - it already attracts too much water and has trouble absorbing it. Rain gardens are better suited for areas where you can redirect water to help spread it out. So we abandoned that idea but still decided to put in water friendly plants and replace the grass (actually, mud) with rocks. And finally, we wanted high enough plants to help cover up the fence line and provide privacy. Here was the proposal we went with, which included 4 cubic yards of river rocks:

They put it all together pretty quickly, given the little trucks that they were able to bring through the yard to deposit all that rock. They put in landscaping cloth too, to help reduce the weeds that might sprout there. Here's the view before everything woke up - you can see the birch in the back corner most prominently.

It makes a lovely sweeping arc from our yard and was the perfect place to move our giant concrete bench.

Here's the sedge, with a red chokeberry behind it. Sedge looks a lot like a spider plant:

There turned to be just one little problem. Apparently, if you raise up a wet spot (by putting rocks on top of it), it just moves the wet stop, it doesn't get rid of it. So the area in front of and to the side of this lovely rock garden ended up being constantly damp--and that included the area next to our shed. That was a big oops. So D took on a huge project. He moved a bunch of the rock, cut into the landscaping cloth, and dug a little channel in between the new plants. His thinking was that this would give the rainwater a place to collect inside the rock area, instead of in front of it. It was a grueling process, made more frustrating knowing that he was undoing work we'd just paid for:

The good news is that it seemed to work pretty well. He left it uncovered for a while, to test the concept when it rained.

Satisfied it was doing its job, he overlapped the landscaping cloth over the cut and put the rocks back into place. Here's what happens now when it rains (and we are going to try to be diligent about tossing in a mosquito dunk). The water drains within a day or two, depending on how wet the soil beneath it already is, and the ground in front of the rocky area has been staying pretty dry!

Fast forward to today and here's what the scene looks like. The plants have all woken up and there's a little (dry) channel running through it. You can even see the random metal sheet that D uncovered when he was digging the channel, resting on the fence.

I'm not sure why the landscapers covered the old tree trunk with landscaping cloth (after they took another couple of inches off the height of it) and left it like that. We put a flower pot on it but didn't love it. We could free it from the cloth so that it at least is a tree trunk and not a random gray circle. Any ideas?

A 3-Day Patio

Work began mid-week for the new patio--a 6-person crew worked all day on day to prep the site. First step of course was to demo the rest of the bricks, the framing, etc. The crew quickly realized that they would have to remove all the flagstone along our walkway beside the house, since they had to be able to bring heavy machinery in. That was a surprise to all of us, and we now have our trashcans and yard waste bins smooshed under some greenery in our back yard, making trash and recycling das a bit of a challenge.

More demo, including the flagstones right at the base of the stairs (we're keeping them, but they've been stacked in a corner for now):

The flagstones have arrived! They're so pretty--much more natural than the Belgard, because, well, they are! All stone instead of a composite that looked much more like concrete than rock.

A truck bed full of gravel seemed like way too much gravel--until they used it all up by Friday and still hadn't finished filling the patio.

Because no job is without a few surprises and disappointments, here were some we uncovered--literally-- during our first week. First, a pipe with a hole in it! We knew the drainage pipes from our back gutters had to be buried under the patio, and one of our goals during this project was to find them and make sure they were in tact and unclogged. Well, we found them. This large diameter clay pipe had a pretty large chunk missing. Which also happened to be, as we recalled, where a low, often damp, spot was in our brick patio. Not a coincidence, obviously.

Here it is from a different angle--you can see the ceramic drainage pipe uncovered, and where the hole is. That hole was the most dramatic problem, requiring a a PVC pipe be coupled up to that area for about a foot, but the team uncovered a few more spots that needed amending too--most were able to be fixed with mortar. And of course this was our chance to do these repairs, while the pipes were more easily accessed. They also replaced some of our cheap corrugated black plastic drain pipes right where they joined with the metal gutter downspouts with more sturdy PVC as well.

A second problem was coming outside to see our poor magnolia, looking a bit exposed. When we plotted out the footprint of our patio, we did our best to guess where the roots would be and steered clear of them. So imagine our surprise to see the tree uncovered like this. We spoke to the design lead, who promised to tell the crew to rebury them and treat them gently after that, but hopefully no permanent damage was done.

And so work continued--the crew built a giant trench along the edge of the new patio and filled it with gravel and fat rocks, three deep, to build up the wall.

They started dumping in the gravel that seemed so copious at the beginning of the project. They packed it down. Friday was noisy.

And then that was it, for now. The gravel didn't quite fill as much as it needed to, but it was solid enough for us to walk on this weekend, and at least the piles of gravel were out of the road and driveway where they'd been for a few days. And so, three days in, here we are, ready for another week of work.

 

A place for the sump to pump

Recently it became clear that the pipe that leads out of our sump pump and into our yard had become totally clogged. Water was sitting in the little well under the black grate. D tried to snake it with our 20' plumber snake and got nowhere. A professional plumber didn't do any better. 

The problem was that after the PVC pipe immediately jutting out of the little well, the pipe was all corrugated black drain pipe that can easily tear. So the snake may have just reached a curve and then broken through, or coiled on itself or who knows what. Likely the pipe itself got holes in it ages ago and slowly filled with dirt and debris. All we could figure out was that water wasn't draining.

D started out trying to find and unearth the black pipe but quickly realized that the path it took through our yard was curvy at best. He dug up a lot of grass and dirt trying to track it before we decided to cut our losses, abandon the black drain pipe, and start with a whole new path. This time he bought much sturdier PVC pipe, the same diameter as the short piece that was already there - 1.25''.

Then he dug a giant trench through our garden. I would have been sadder except that plot was a mess anyway. After years of attempting to grow lilacs there, beginning in 2011, trying to add more in 2013, and then significantly reducing their number in 2015, they're now pretty much gone (one of the newer tiny ones is still barely surviving in a corner). This gave D a lot of space to dig.

Here it is from the other direction:

He tried to angle the trench so that it got deeper as it moved away from the house, but it is mostly just level. The pumping water from the sump ought to keep it moving though. Then he bought a special two-compound epoxy to attach the pipes together to each other (with a junction).

After that, it was just a matter of filling in all that dirt. No small task of course, but it's finally done now. The garden isn't as awful as you'd think from all that digging, but it will need a refresh in the spring. At least now the water is flowing, which is good since we're having a wet fall. That sump pump has been working hard and now the water can get out.