It rained long and hard all day yesterday and into the evening past bedtime. Today brought more rain, though not as hard and not quite as persistent. Although we have low spots around our yard that turn into small temporary ponds when we get this kind of rain we are not in an area that is prone to flooding. That’s because we live just south of the boundary between two watersheds–the Huron River to the south and the Shiawassee River to the north–so water tends to flow away from here, eventually.
Phil (Best Precision Grading) stopped by around 10:30 AM to look at the pull-through driveway he built for us last year. He said it looked solid enough to drive the bus on it, but was obviously no longer level and had a low spot in front of the new front stairs. He will need a half day and a small load of 21AA road gravel to repair the damage done by Village Landscape Development while building our front stairs and sidewalk. The cost won’t be too bad (although it shouldn’t have cost us anything) but getting him to find the time to come do it could be a challenge. He’s had a busy summer and suffered the same delays as other contractors who do outdoor work due to the wet spring and summer we’ve had.
He was also here to see the work Village Landscape Development had done. He agreed that the hardscape work looked good but the grading in the rear did not look right and the tracks in the yard from the equipment had not been raked out properly. He suggested I let the grass grow in and the ground dry out before assessing whether anything needs to be done.
He also looked at the west end of our property, which sits lower than the east end where the house is located. The timing of his visit was good as all the low-lying areas had water standing in them, allowing him to see clearly the exact nature of the (lack of) drainage problem. His suggestion was a “French drain.” Basically it’s a trench that is shallow at the far/high end and gets deeper as it goes towards the place where the water needs to end up. Plastic drain tile, the kind with perforations and a nylon “sock” covering, gets laid in the trench and then the trench is filled to grade with pea gravel. The dirt that came out of the trench gets spread around to cover the pea gravel and blend in to the undisturbed soil on either side.
When completed, the drain would take all of the standing water plus much more out of the surrounding soil and allow it to flow to a culvert that runs to the southwest under the road just west of the culvert along the side of the road that will eventually be the entrance to our bus barn driveway. A French drain is cheaper to build than hauling in large truck loads of top soil and re-grading that part of the yard. We probably should have had Village Landscape make a French Drain around the two plastic drain lines they ran out into the yard from our basement walkout. Oh well, “can’t should‘a done it.”
We had tofu hot dogs for lunch and then Linda left to meet up with Diane to see a movie (Boyhood) and then go out to dinner at Bahama Breeze. I stayed home and worked at my computer, taking a break mid-afternoon to make popcorn. The worst weather of the day was happening at that time, so I stayed upstairs for a while and read the new 2nd edition of The Mobile Internet Handbook that I had just downloaded this morning. I worked until 7 PM and then stopped to have a light dinner consisting of chickpea spread on whole grain toast and half of a small watermelon. Linda got home as I was finishing my watermelon.
In spite of AT&T switching our phone and DSL service to all new wire pairs our Internet service went out occasionally throughout the day and evening, although it usually returned quickly. I think the sad truth is that their landline infrastructure is not as tolerant of wet weather as it should be and most of their money is going into expanding cellular service. We had the same problem over the years at our house in Farmington Hills.