I've got quite a busy programme of work in front of me on the house this spring and summer, and the major job is to do the external works around the sunroom. This includes retaining walls, patio, ramp, and some edged planting areas. Let's have a look at what it looks like now.
Looking south, and moving southwards in order:
Looking north:
Looking west, towards the front of the property:
Looking north east:
The first job is to put an Acco drain outside the back doorstep, to enable a flush threshold to be used. When I did the main drainage works 6 or 8 years ago, I left a "Y" to connect the surface water from the sunroom and it's roof into the rest of the sytem. I marked it with a piece of wood, and back filled. So, I removed the dangerous temporary steps, and dug down the piece of wood to find the joint and set myself a depth:
I'd wrapped it in a plastic bag to keep the muck out:
I made the necessary joints:
(and yes, WD40 is a great lubricant for putting plastic drainage together). It falls quite steeply, but it's only taking surface water, not solids, so that doesn't matter.
Then backfilled with shingle:
To avoid a little strip of brick showing outside my aluiminium level access threshold, I took an off-cut and marked where the outer edge would come:
I'd have loved to have just taken an angle grinder to it, but the room is in use, so filling it with dust wouldn't be a good idea. I sacrificed an old hardpoint saw instead:
And then chopped off the shoulder of the bricks with a cold chisel and lump hammer:
I then cast up a concrete base for the Acco drain:
After that went off overnight, I mixed up a strong mortar and carefully bedded the gully into place:
I then spent a few hours digging away all the loose stuff and vegetation, spreading some hardcore, marking out levels, and then casting a sub-base of concrete:
Note the gully by the corner of the steps, and the adjacent level mark (which marks the top of the paving, not the concrete sub-base level:
There's another gully on the other side of the steps:
The level at the threshold is about 30mm above the level at the front of the steps, falling some 1 in 35 away from the house. Here's the Acco and adjacent level mark:
Here's a minor cock-up from the time I did the screed in the sunroom. I forgot to run this 'phone line (in a hose as a duct) in and under the floor. It runs out to the workshop so that I can have a 'phone out there. There's a chance of an alternative route, so I laid it out under the walkway/ patio area:
The concreting was held up by the explosion of my wheelbarrow tyre whilst the barrow was empty and un-used. It scared the life out of my dog, who was napping nearby, and it flung rubber 2 or 3 metres. I had to fix two puntures in the other barrow's tube before resuming. Anyway, it got done, and I just had time to begin the most complex part of this job: laying out the line of the curved brick retaining without having access to the centre point of the arc. I laid out a centre line the length of the garden, and put a peg on it in a random but useful location. This is the pivot point of the formwork/ pattern I'll make:
The two angled strings are the datum lines, mirrored about the centre line, so that I can take a pattern on one side, then flip it over, line it up with the other string, and use it to set out the wall on the other side.