Wednesday 27 January 2016

Resurfacing the Drive

Work is due to start on the barn development this coming April and due to the need for a link to the new water supply we had to run a series of pipes along the drive. Whilst we are digging it makes sense to resurface/hard landscape and clean up anything else we might want to do in the future regards piping for power and water. We had local company R W Gale coming to help us, and to make things clear from the beginning, we prepped the site with some marker paint:

Service duct required laying from cider barn to chicken shed:


Chopping out the driveway to establish a new planting space and relaying tarmac to create more functional access to garage:


Establish a new drain on the corner of the cider barn:


Run 3 new water pipes down the length of the drive to connect to the updated supply and
ensure that the run off from the new drain connects with the existing land drain on the lower drive:


Establish a set of steps from the dairy door up to the drive and created new planting areas either side of this:


Employ additional drain and run off from the outside of the downstairs bathroom:


Phew!

So.....

 work began in earnest on a VERY COLD monday morning, with the chopping in and grading of the bank where the old leylandi trees were:


Amazed by the speed at which these machines got the work done, the old driveway was dug out in a mere afternoon:


Pretty scary seeing the place look like this, but we felt in very safe hands and by the end of the day you could really get a sense of how it was going to look:


Foundations were dug and laid for the new steps the following morning:


The water pipes laid:


Drainage and run off established from where we had requested:


 And the top layer compacted by the close of business: 


Due to the very nature of earth removal, the surplus had to go somewhere. 
Because we had already talked about some plans for landscaping the garden in the future, we thought we may as well start a bit of the process now. RWGale did triple check with us that it was ok to drive all over the lawn, we were fine about it and by the end of the day it looked quite the state:


We had slightly underestimated just how much surplus subsoil there was going to be and soon we had a small mountain in the back garden:


Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!

A worry for another day, but it was all worth it as we now had water pipes to service clean filtered water over to the barns:


A new set of steps up to the drive:


And a well graded, wider driveway leading up to the garage:


So another job done!

And all of that achieved in 1 whole week - well impressed!

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