Story – Page 4 – Rookie Renovators

The main issue with this house is keeping it dry. Water seeps through our back walls from the high ground on the other side of them. This water needs collecting and sending safely away. So, before we install anything that will concentrate the water, we have to have somewhere to send it. Otherwise we’ll just end up with one very damp corner of our house!

The easiest place to make exits low enough in the floor structure would be through the new foundation for the new wall in place of the garage door. We had booked the concrete pour for the foundation for 3 days time, so needed to put pipes through the trench in place before this – setting us up for a very enjoyable bank holiday weekend.

The bulk of the water comes through the back wall in one place, and is collected in an existing drain at the back of the garage. The previous owners told us there was a pipe taking this water under the garage floor and out the front of the garage, which we confirmed during the foundation digging. This had apparently been carrying away the water for years; we had seen it flowing throughout the buying process (10 months, including over winter) and so believed it to be fairly reliable. Presumably this pipe went on to join some public infrastructure, taking water away from the property. Our plan is to connect all of our new drainage to this outflow.

We will be adding channels at the edges of the new floor slab to collect the rest of the water coming through the walls (that doesn’t end up in the garage drain). We need to ensure there is always a way for the water from these channels to drain, or our whole damp-proofing plan falls apart! We decided we would keep the existing pipe connecting the garage drain to the public infrastructure at the front, but unfortunately, we were about to pour a concrete foundation in the way. We also decided that the only sensible (and maintainable) way to route the water from the slab channels was through two new pipes through the foundation; this would result in everything being rod-able should anything block. Three pipes to go through the foundation, join together outside in an inspection chamber, then join to the existing exit point – easy.

Having a plan, we bought the pipes, connectors and inspection chamber, and began to install. On digging a hole in front of the garage for the inspection chamber, we discovered that the original exit pipe just… stopped. It didn’t seem to be connected to anything, but simply be depositing the water into some bricks and stone underground; technically a “soakaway”, but that would be a very generous term. It was as we were having this realisation that we noticed something else; the water level in the “soakaway” was rising. As it turns out, digging a foundation trench next to a soakaway has a tendency to block said soakaway, as all the loose soil and silt is washed into it, filling all the little drainage holes emptying it.

The water level was already quite high, only a couple of inches below the bottom of the foundation trench. So we dug, hoping to discover some hidden, more capable water-drainage mechanism – surely this tiny soakaway hadn’t dealt with all the water for all these years! The water was cold, and the hole was full of stones and bricks and horrible silty gunk. We dug some more, hoping to clear some blockage and see the water disappear. The deeper we dug, the deeper the water got. The hole got closer and closer to the edge of our property, both in the direction of the road and our neighbour’s front patio; we had to stop before we collapsed either!

We tried poking the depths of the hole with various instruments – including the garage door locking bar. Multiple times our hopes were raised as the bar slid deep into the surrounding material – surely we’d found an exit point, and the hole would empty as soon as the pokey stick was no longer embedded – but no change. Whatever was down there was not taking the water away very quickly at all. It was maintaining a fairly consistent level below the of the foundation hole, so we tried to convince ourselves this was how it had always been. Maybe it had been at that level for years now. Then I decided to have a go at clearing some gunk… the level got higher, and higher and started to fill the foundation trench…

Whoops.

By this time it was Monday evening, with the foundation being poured on Tuesday morning. We removed more and more gunk but eventually we admitted defeat, hoped for the best overnight and planned to rent a pump the next day.

In the morning, the water was even higher, threatening to come all the way into the house. Thankfully, the local plant hire had some ridiculously over-specced pumps, complete with fire-engine style hoses; we almost felt silly for all the panic when the one we rented emptied the entire trench in less than a few minutes.

With the pump standing guard, the foundation was poured. Thankfully, instead of trying to assign blame for the additional blocking, Ethan came up with the idea to order an industrial wet and dry vacuum. We thought it was a long shot, but maybe if we could get some of the silt out it would start draining and we could finally see what was going on, rather than scrabbling around in muddy water.

We looked crazy spending our evenings hoovering our front garden, right next to the road so every passer by could watch us. But when that water started flowing away – what a feeling. That hoover is the new love of my life – sorry Ethan. I was so happy, our house wasn’t doomed to flood.
After we had cleared up, Ethan’s dad happened to pass by, and I was still so excited I dragged him over to see it exclaiming “LOOK AT THE HOLE! LOOK AT THE HOLE!”.

So:

More realistically, this is likely not the last chapter in the saga of the silty soakaway.

Mud, glorious mud

Apologies for the slow down in blog post frequency. The house decisions and activities have felt constant and have been leaving us feeling exhausted – physically and mentally. So while writing the blog has been somewhat therapeutic for me, right now it’s hard to muster up enthusiasm to spend any more time thinking (and writing) about the house than we absolutely have to. We’re very much at the point that we would just like to forget the house exists – ignore it, and hope it goes away.

That being said, we are planning to keep going. After all, we really would like somewhere to live. And the blog will keep coming, if at a slower rate. We’re hoping that once we’re over the damp proofing and subfloor hurdles things will feel a little more controllable and there’ll be fewer surprises. Ethan has less faith in this theory than I do. Anyway, here we go on the subfloors.

In order to install modern, structurally-sound subfloors with insulation and proper waterproofing while maintaining a sensible ceiling height, we had to have the existing 2cm thick concrete floors and the mud and stone beneath them dug out to a depth of around 35cm. We had cleared the floors, but realised that the walls were still covered in blacksmith soot, construction dust and grime – none of which we want ending up in our drainage channels.

So, it seemed sensible to get as much of the wall dirt onto the floor as possible, so that it would be taken away along with the masses of floor material being dug out. As the place was already wet, we decided the best course of action would be to use a pressure washer – inside the house. It felt strange. However, it was satisfying to see the dirt pour down the wall into the underpinning trenches.

I even managed to get involved with my bad back with a little support, which made the whole experience even more surreal:

Along with the floors, we were also having a hole dug underneath the garage door. This would allow for a foundation for our new wall. However, a few months ago we noticed a blue tit disappearing behind the piece of wood that is acting as a fascia for the RSJ, above that garage door. We also noticed some mossy type material trailing out from the bottom – the escaped parts of her carefully constructed nest. Unfortunately, despite having seen her fly in and our several times, we’ve not been able to get any pictures or videos. One day we were stood looking at the house and saw her poke her head out and watch us, waiting for us to leave before she could fly away. And just days before the ground worker would be starting work we could hear the baby birds chirping away. We may have caught this on camera, although hard to tell with all the other bird noises we get in the area.

Thankfully, all had gone silent by the time the ground worker was planning to start , so we think they had fledged and finished with the nest.

One of the first things to be removed for digging the foundations was a large slate slab that sat under the garage door and supported the upright between the up and over door and the personnel door. We had considered keeping this slate and using it somewhere later. However, the ground workers only just managed to move it using a tractor with a forklift, so we decided perhaps it was better to let them deal with it, as we had no such equipment!

The upright had also somehow been driven through the slate, rather than just resting on it, limiting its usefulness. Now that the slate is is gone, the upright between the two parts of the door is hanging above a muddy hole. As are both the doors. Opening and closing both the personnel door and the garage door itself has become a highly skilled procedure that we are desperately trying to avoid having to perform, particularly as it had to be done from down in the pit that had been dug below it. We’re not sure how many repetitions either door will survive.

We had been somewhat looking forward to this trench digging, as we would be uncovering the answer to one of our few remaining questions about the house. Before purchasing the property, we had been told there was a pipe buried under the floor of the garage, that exited the front of the garage, carrying away the stream that comes into the back of the garage. The sellers could not remember exactly where this pipe exited and what form it took. When the foundation was dug this pipe was discovered. Unfortunately, it was also broken, but this didn’t really matter, given it was a perforated pipe and would have poured water into the hole anyway.

We found a piece of guttering and placed it under the pipe leading to where the pipe exited the outer side of the foundation hole. We added a cut off piece of the RSJ to weigh down the end of the pipe and keep it in the guttering. All that engineering experience has really paid off. Things started to seem a bit more stable, apart from the small amount of water exiting the pipe before it hit the guttering, the majority of the water was ending up NOT in the foundation hole – ideal(ish).

The next step will be to find out where this pipe goes and work out a better and more serviceable way to transport this water through our new foundation and away from our house. Next blog topic sorted.

Back to the floors: they no longer exist.

Pros and cons of having your floors dug out: pro, the ceilings look really high now – so fancy. Cons: our kitchen is a little… damp; we now need to hose our shoes down as we leave the house, rather than when we enter it; we have large gaps under both the garage door and the front door to allow maximum rainfall directly into the house; and we have a loose doorstep that ensures any water on the road outside will be shepherded and trickled in through our front door!

The welcoming doorstep splashing up water

So there you have it, you can tell the house looks much better than when we started with it, and in no way does it feel like we’ve gone backwards. Oh, and the floor digging revealed that there is more underpinning needed, so we get to have muddy floors for a while longer while we wait for that to be done.

Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia Thumbs Up GIF by HULU

Category: Story

The Saga of the Silty Soakaway: Volume 1

Floors Schmoors

Mud, glorious mud