At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

Obed,

You are lucky, in our country you cannot get signed off on your final and get an occupancy permit without having a sodded lawn or planted seed with straw over the whole lawn...We went through that 6 yrs. ago...

Bob,
That would have been a nightmare if we had regulations like yours. That kind of beaurocracy is bound to result in people getting a much less satisfactory grade around the house than if you had a little more time. We went three or four months with very little grading progress because of rain. I'd hate to not be able to move into my finished house because it was raining outside. Go figure.

I'm guessing we would have found the cheapest grass seed we could find, thrown it on the hard red clay (where it wouldn't grow), and put out some straw just to get the occupancy permit. That would just be a waste of money with no useful result.

Obed

 

[brin]

Bob,
That would have been a nightmare if we had regulations like yours. That kind of beaurocracy is bound to result in people getting a much less satisfactory grade around the house than if you had a little more time. We went three or four months with very little grading progress because of rain. I'd hate to not be able to move into my finished house because it was raining outside. Go figure.

I'm guessing we would have found the cheapest grass seed we could find, thrown it on the hard red clay (where it wouldn't grow), and put out some straw just to get the occupancy permit. That would just be a waste of money with no useful result.

Obed

Obed,

I wish I had been as smart as you...but I was in the fog of construction , I know you know what I mean ...so we sodded Bermuda $2K in the front and side yards and sewed fescue in the back...just to meet the stupid bureaucratic code - So , as it turned out the Bermuda which needs almost full sun is almost gone ..the front yard is very shady and the Fescue needs shade and is in almost full sun so I had to reverse it all...All that money because I had to rush to get the final so we could move in...I had movers scheduled...Yada Yada...you know what I mean...grrrrrrrrrrr !

 

[Obed]

This area in the front of the house has been a challenge. In reality the retaining wall should have been a couple of feet higher. I removed a lot of extra dirt in front of the house and made a couple piles. Code requires that the grade drops away from the house at least 6" for the first 10 feet. We had dirt in front of the house that did not meet this requirement. I was working in very dry conditions so the red clay was extremely hard and slow to cut with my boxblade. On the plus side, the dry dirt crumbles once it was scraped off and could be spread fairly easily.

I picked up rocks and dumped them beside the driveway by the garden clearing where I intend to make a spot for driving a vehicle. I deposited extra dirt on a path through the trees that leads to the garden.

We found a yellow jacket nest at the front of the house somewhere below the dirt up against the brick. I apparently had covered the original entrance hole so they made a new hole lower down the wall. We poured some gas down the new hole but that only helped a little because the gas could not travel down to the next. We also sprayed wasp spray where the critters were entering the dirt. Those measures slowed them down enough that I was able to work in the area but it didn't kill them all. You can see the wetness against the bricks where we were spraying the bees.

My work ended toward the end of the day when my right front tire went flat. I have been fighting flats in this tire for over a year. I've had intertubes put in the tire a couple different times but the tire still would eventually no longer hold air. The people from the tractor shop were the last ones to put the wheel back on the tractor. They tightened the bolts so tight that I needed to use my digging bar as leverage against my tire wrench to loosen the bolts. The rim is not in great shape. I finally bit the bullet and replaced both the tire and the rim and haven't had any more leaks this past last month.

 

[Obed]

After my wife got the tire fixed, I did more work in the front of the house. You can see the gas can and cans of wasp spray I used to fight the yellow jackets so I could work near their next. I took more dirt away from the retaining wall. The foundation workers had added dirt there when they dug the footers. I didn't want that dirt there so I removed it.

 

[Obed]

I have more pictures to post. I've just been very busy and haven't gotten them up on TBN as quickly as I would like. We are getting close to the end of the grading job. I plan to slow down my pace a little after this phase of the house project is completed. I've been working around the yard after work until dark and on the weekends whenever the weather has permitted.

There are some times when you just have to do what you have to do. I determined that I would work all I could to now because once the topsoil and grass seed are laid, I won't be able to change the grade. I want mowing the lawn to be as easy as possible so now is my chance to get things that way. I'd rather put in the work now to get things as good as possible. Putting the hours in now seems better than kicking myself later for the next 30 years for not fixing something when I had the chance.

 

[dstig1]

Looking good!

Are they going to require you put a railing along that retaining wall? I'd think you could handle it with proper landscaping also, when you get to that point, but that is a drop off that could really catch someone by surprise.

 

[tony Cecil]

As we both have had our problems with the bees, wasps, yellow jackets, I thought I would share my latest....All this past summer I have been trying to eradicate a yellow jacket nest between the wall up in the mountains....I finally tried using `sevin` dust, in a hand held garden duster.....Just a few days of a light dusting where they entered the wall did the trick...It is not quick, but gets the job done....Tony

 

[Obed]

Looking good!

Are they going to require you put a railing along that retaining wall? I'd think you could handle it with proper landscaping also, when you get to that point, but that is a drop off that could really catch someone by surprise.

Dave,
The county never said anything about railing for our two retaining walls. In this area, I can't remember ever having seen a retaining wall with railing on it. We may put some bushes in front of the house which could help. My wife has all the ideas on bushes and such. I'll just be the manual labor.
Obed

 

[Obed]

As we both have had our problems with the bees, wasps, yellow jackets, I thought I would share my latest....All this past summer I have been trying to eradicate a yellow jacket nest between the wall up in the mountains....I finally tried using `sevin` dust, in a hand held garden duster.....Just a few days of a light dusting where they entered the wall did the trick...It is not quick, but gets the job done....Tony

Tony,
After failing to kill off the yellow jackets using gasoline and wasp spray for a few days, my wife put some fire ant killer (white powder) at the entrance. Within two or three days, all the yellow jackets were gone/dead. She tried fire ant killer once on a yellow jacket nest when we were in NC and it worked great. The ants walk on the powder and carry it into the nest. I guess they eat it. I'm guessing it kills the queen too.

I read that there is a trap you can put out in the springtime that baits and catches queen yellow jackets so you can minimize the problem at the beginning. I don't know how effective they are but I've read comments from people who say they work great.
Obed

 

[Obed]

I worked my way around the house doing the fine-tune grading the red clay starting with the front side (south), then the basement garage side (west), and last the back yard (north). The east side of the house is where the upstairs garage is located and was saved for last.

I made sure the grade fell away from the house with at least 6"/10 feet using my PVC pipe and level. It is a crude but simple and effective way to measure the grade. My level has a tick mark on the bubble glass that shows a 2 1/2" per foot drop that can be used to measure septic pipe drops. I just estimate the drop based on where the bubble sits in the glass.

I've had trouble with the contractor dumping too much dirt next to the house this entire job. I can't seem to get it through to him that the dirt, including the topsoil, cannot be any higher than 6" below the framing in the walls. I have removed with my box blade many loads of dirt from up close to the house and dragged them to my two spoils areas in the woods. It is much easier for him to dump dirt and grade the loose dirt than to have to cut the existing hard packed dirt. Also, dumping the loose dirt around the house prevents the contractor from having to cart off as many loads to the woods. I'm a little sore about this issue.

Some areas where he dumped dirt too high against the house, I had to remove by hand with a maddock and shovel because I couldn't get to it with the BB. In fairness, there's no way I could expect the contractor to spend the amount of time fine-tuning our grading as I would. They'd never make any money that way.

My wife and I raked up a lot of the loose rocks around the yard. I put them in the FEL and hauled them away. I also pryed out of the ground with my digging bar quite a few volleyball sized or larger rocks.