Bozzlife: The Joys of Home Ownership Part 2
About a week ago I wrote this post detailing the aftermath of a once in five hundred years rain event and how it impacted a pipe under my front yard.
As you can see in the photo above, the scope of the project was pretty immense.
After my friend got the pipe fixed and the hole taken care of, the next step was to get my driveway back to normal. Luckily, the new neighbor next door to us knows a guy who does concrete work, so after a quick conversation, a deal was struck and work was set to begin.
Because of our travel trailer, I have always wanted our driveway to be a little bit wider. According to the concrete guy, the area my friend dug up was too small to justify having a cement truck come out so it just made sense to expand the driveway. Due to the way they price the concrete it would have cost more just to do the small section.
Within a day or two, the excavator was out and they made short work of the areas that used to be my front lawn.
Basically, we ended up adding about six feet of drive way on the right side so that our extra parking spot would extend all the way to the road. Because we were having him cut the curb, I had to file a building permit with the local road commission. It was only about $50 to file the permit, so I didn't mind too much. Some townships really gouge their residents by requiring expensive permits for everything.
There was just one small problem with the excavation... Our house has a sprinkler system throughout the yard, so I knew there was a chance they might hit it. Sure enough, my prediction came true. Thankfully, I was prepared for this possibility, so a fix was a simple matter of buying about five dollars in parts.
I have never used the sprinkler system, but in the future I may want to, or whoever owns the house before us may want to. I knew that meant I needed to cap off that line so that water could still flow under pressure through the rest of the system.
While not exactly pretty, it does the trick and it will eventually be buried under six inches of concrete anyway, so who really cares...
With the sprinkler pipe capped off and the excavation done, the concrete guy came and did the rest of the prep work for the concrete. He laid down the mesh for the upper section where it was only going to be four inches deep and laid the forms for the lower area where it would be six inches.
Apparently, due to the slope down to the road you can't put the wire mesh in so he instead makes it two inches deeper just to maintain the integrity.
At about 7:30 AM on Friday morning the concrete trucks showed up and started to pour. We were on our way out of town, so I didn't get any pictures, but when we came home, this is what I found:
I am really happy with the job he did and now the worst part is that I have to wait two weeks before I can drive on it. I am really excited to enjoy the increased space that this project has given us. Now I won't have to park my truck partially on the grass when we have the trailer out of storage in the Summer!
Next up, we are having our fence replaced in the back yard. As I mentioned in the title, the joys (and costs) of home ownership are never ending!
Sports Talk Social - @bozz.sports
looks great man. One of the jobs I had in the past was installing irrigation systems and that pipe looks really small for what it needed for a rain bird system. So did the cut just eliminate one sprinkler head or an entire section? That could become an annoying fix in the future since it is now under the driveway!
Thankfully he just tore out one sprinkler head and it was at the end of the line. That is why I wanted to get it capped off so the system would still function in the future without spouting a ton of water under the driveway again. We have actually never used the system because that would mean I have to mow more!