I took it to the ditch. I wish the ditch was close enough to my house to do that, but the water under my house drys up in a day or two. I sure prefer trailer houses. They are high enough that you can sling the dirt under them with a shovel. It's also a whole lot easier to find leaks
French drain
- Thread starter bgott
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I left the flier with my handyman and I forgot the name of the stuff. The flier states that it is good for leach lines. I know it has to be better than what's happening now. This lot is so saturated that we dug the trench and amazing amounts of water ran out for a week and it was still saturated. Water is leaching up in the ranshackle old garage next to the house and it is marginally higher ground. I thought that there was a leak in one of the buried water lines but neither the water bill nor the low flow needle on the meter show that. After the underside dries a little bit we are re-plumbing the water lines. After that if there still is a problem I'll spray under there for mosquitos once a week and they can deal with it. Water stands under all the old houses in this neighborhood after a rain, it just wouldn't go away under this one.
wroughtn_harv
Super Member
It's pretty obvious to me what has happened here. In the old days they built the houses without building up a pad. They just used footings and had a crawl space of sorts underneath.
Then they walked in, around, and over the place all these years. Anyone that's walked in a clay area knows that you are an earth mover. You can't help yourself. You pick it up here and it falls off there. The only variation worth mentioning is when you picked it up there and it falls off here.
So over the years the underneath of the house has become a shaded bog. We have one next door to the shop. They're waiting until it dries up a bit to demolish it. The good old boy who has the contract to demolish it has a stipulation in there that if he has to demo prior to what he considers right the property owner gets to pick up the tab for the extra cost of dumping the clay and mud that will be attached to the debris. Good old boy told me it will double the cost of the dumping just because of the mud.
Then they walked in, around, and over the place all these years. Anyone that's walked in a clay area knows that you are an earth mover. You can't help yourself. You pick it up here and it falls off there. The only variation worth mentioning is when you picked it up there and it falls off here.
So over the years the underneath of the house has become a shaded bog. We have one next door to the shop. They're waiting until it dries up a bit to demolish it. The good old boy who has the contract to demolish it has a stipulation in there that if he has to demo prior to what he considers right the property owner gets to pick up the tab for the extra cost of dumping the clay and mud that will be attached to the debris. Good old boy told me it will double the cost of the dumping just because of the mud.
wroughtn_harv
Super Member
Morning Patrick,
I see you came out of so Cal into this clay. It can be a shock to the system.
One day I was digging with my dad here in norte tejas. Of course when you're digging in the wet clay you need a sharpshooter shovel. You need it to scrape off the mud off of your shovel you're digging with. So it takes three times as long and six times the effort to dig a comparable hole here to so cal.
As we stopped for a break my dad looked at me and told me about my grandpa. He said that when he was growing up grandpa would tell about driving a wagon through wet Texas clay. And how they'd walk beside it with shovels scraping off the clay off the wheels of the wagon. He'd also tell them to not be afraid of Texas cowboys cause they couldn't move fast with their boots on and they weren't near as tall with their boots off.
My dad shook his head a bit and then confessed that all these years he'd suspected his father of stretching the truth about Texans and their clay. Now he understood his dad had really been soft soaping the issue.
There is one good thing about clay though. There is one phase in it's journey between wet to dry that has it like glue. And man with the right set up your car on a dirt track can hook up. Whoa! a good thing as the blond in a bind would say.
I see you came out of so Cal into this clay. It can be a shock to the system.
One day I was digging with my dad here in norte tejas. Of course when you're digging in the wet clay you need a sharpshooter shovel. You need it to scrape off the mud off of your shovel you're digging with. So it takes three times as long and six times the effort to dig a comparable hole here to so cal.
As we stopped for a break my dad looked at me and told me about my grandpa. He said that when he was growing up grandpa would tell about driving a wagon through wet Texas clay. And how they'd walk beside it with shovels scraping off the clay off the wheels of the wagon. He'd also tell them to not be afraid of Texas cowboys cause they couldn't move fast with their boots on and they weren't near as tall with their boots off.
My dad shook his head a bit and then confessed that all these years he'd suspected his father of stretching the truth about Texans and their clay. Now he understood his dad had really been soft soaping the issue.
There is one good thing about clay though. There is one phase in it's journey between wet to dry that has it like glue. And man with the right set up your car on a dirt track can hook up. Whoa! a good thing as the blond in a bind would say.
http://www.ezflowlp.com/
I went back to Lowe's and remembered to get another instruction sheet. We aren't going to be burying the drain as deep as it recommends so I'm going to wrap it with landscape cloth, cover it with sand and them put some concrete base pads every three feet or so for weight in case it decides to float.
I went back to Lowe's and remembered to get another instruction sheet. We aren't going to be burying the drain as deep as it recommends so I'm going to wrap it with landscape cloth, cover it with sand and them put some concrete base pads every three feet or so for weight in case it decides to float.
patrickg
Veteran Member
wroughtn_harv, Yup! It is different from So Cal. A lot of So Cal when dry is like concrete but the rocks are bigger. I used the largest walk behind DitchWitch to work on my front yard. Too difficult to work up the whole thing so I dug intersecting ditches, N-S & E-W, in part of it and filled them with ameliorated soil, lots of saw dust, sand, mature compost. Put out the recycled tire sprinkler hoses and covered the whole thing with HD Visqueen. Put plantings in the ditches by cutting small "X's" in the plastic and then covered all the plastic with lava rock. Keeping the rain out with plastic isn't such a BAD thing when there isn't much rain anyway and the plants were chosen for low water needs, easily supplied by two or three good soakings/year. 13 inch of rain where we were in So Cal and about 33-34 in south central OK.
I recall seing a short documentary about John Ford filming a western (probably John Wayne epic) where everyone got several inches taller during the course of shooting a scene, depending on how much walking they did in the mud from a recent rain.
Patrick
I recall seing a short documentary about John Ford filming a western (probably John Wayne epic) where everyone got several inches taller during the course of shooting a scene, depending on how much walking they did in the mud from a recent rain.
Patrick