Monday, January 17, 2011
Here's the before picture of the patio area. Next to the bucket is a drainpipe that will be connected to a planter that catches the roof runoff at that point. The copper downspout in the corner will get a similar treatment using either a planter or a birdbath. The house does not have any traditional gutters to clean out.
This is the "before" picture taken from the parking area. You can see that the footing of the house is exposed.
The "after" picture shows the area surrounding the house having been filled in behind a small retaining wall.
A little more fill was needed in some areas behind the patio retaining wall. To the left is my road down to the beach.
Here's the start of the path to the studio. It's still kind of steep, but it closes off the road and looks a lot better.
There are only three small areas where the roof drainage drops on to the patio. For the center one, I put up a copper leader box and a 3" copper downspout. It drops into a birdbath that I have modified so that any overflow goes into a footing drain under the patio. During our heavy December winds and rains (6" one day), it worked perfectly. The leaves and needles end up in the bird bath, where I can just grab a couple of handfulls and toss them over the front of the patio. 
This is one of the planters that sits under the drip line on the corners of the patio area. A pipe runs out of the planters and in to a drain pipe. I'm thinking of planting it with pond plants and having it almost full of water.
We will have to spend several weekends moving ferns, salal, oregon grape, nootka rose, etc. for the landscaping. This picture shows that the pea gravel from the patio edging continues around the rest of the house. I might give me a little vegetation-fee area. We shall see.
If you click on the picture, you can see the path to the studio in the background. It now has a layer of crushed gravel on the path. This also is a good shot of the entire patio/yard area having been brought up about 18 inches with the hardscape.
# posted by gnome-honey @ 8:50 AM 
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Thanks for taking the time to post your blog Mark. There is a lot of solid information here that has helped me up the learning curve. I've read your comments elsewhere concerning moisture penetration in Rastra walls and that has given me the confidence to continue cosidering it for my next project.
Also, thumbs up on a great job.
Also, thumbs up on a great job.
# posted by 
: 8:07 PM
: 8:07 PM
I had seen other building blogs where the owner/builder stopped posting halfway through the project. Just too much going on to be messing with a blog. I forced myself to post (sometimes falling months behind). I'm going to continue for a while with the final landscaping, etc.
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