2004-5 Pipe

2005 04 15, Last Riprap, Grading

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After most of a week of very nice warm weather and the anticipation of getting started we finally did get started again on Thursday, although things did not get very far. About 30 minutes after the real work started on the addition of riprap at the head end of our project a city inspector turned up. And this after almost 9 weeks of waiting for the weather to improve and allow things to dry out. Without going any further I have to say this is suspicious. I can add that the contractor was found not to have a "work in the street" permit, which allowed or caused the inspector to shut the project down for the day. Not happy. But the contractor went out that same day and walked an application for this permit through the city maze and was able to return Friday morning. (Why this permit was all of sudden required, after all the work you've looked at and all the very large equipment in the street .. well, it's a mystery.)

So today (4.15) the contractor got going in earnest. There are four things that need doing: Finishing the rock work at the head of the pipe, grouting and rock at both ends with concrete grout, stopping the stream so a crew can walk the length of the pipe and seal all the joints, and then final grading.

The first task was placing a lot more rock at the head of the pipe. This is what it looked like after some initial clearing. Still a mess.

This next shot is here so you can see one of the things the city inspector was concerned about. The grey sand on the street is to keep the tracks on the excavator from "wrecking" it. And this after having two excavators that probably weighed 3 or 4 times as much out there from time to time. In fact, one of them had to be driven out of the neighborhood when they were done with it, and this is about a half mile!

Anyway, back to digging and clearing out for the rock. This machine has an articulated bucket and the operator was quite skilled at picking up and moving small but heavy things.

And rock starts to arrive. This is "class 1" riprap, the smallest. A load of class 2 had already been dumped in a few weeks ago.

More rock.

More rock getting pushed around and into place.

And more. A total of 4 loads of this went in, which was at least 2 or 3 more than they thought would be needed, I think. These loads of rock made a huge crash when dumped.. it echoed around the whole neighborhood.

And getting pushed around.

The end result. The extreme wide angle of this lens makes the field of rock look a lot bigger than it is in life. Still, it's a lot of rock.

From the middle of the creek, which is mostly under this rock. It makes a nice noise going through the rock.

We also had a lot of grading and junk removal today. This grading would not have been possible a few weeks ago. This little bulldozer would have sunk a foot and a half into the yard, which was like cake batter if you went down a few inches.

More grading .. it looks quite nice. There were a couple of yard drains in here that are being left out. The drive will be a few inches higher and on either side the grade ought to be enough to get the local rainfall to drain on the surface. (And there sure won't be any more flooding!)

Mostly done.

One thing I had done while the yard was ripped up was the addition of some 4" PVC pipe in 4 places.. one from the utility pole to the house. We will put the phone and cable wires in that, and never have to dig the yard up again to replace them. One or the other of those had to be replaced three times in as many years. I will also have the same 4" PVC run under the drive in 3 places. This is so we can put 1" sprinkler pipe or the dog's electric fence wire in it without having to dig up the drive.

More on Monday.. another nice day coming. It is predicted to be close to 80.

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