Ron Maggi's nothing new town home patio system

Ronmaggi

Here is a Sketchup rendering of my planned system:

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what is not visible, because it is buried is the ibc for the sump, the rain water catchment system, and the eighth growbed because it will be placed around the corner in the front of my townhome. The digging will commence on the week of the 11th. I took the week off at work to make it happen.

RupertofOZ

Nice sketchup drawing...

Ronmaggi

Thank you.

Jislizard

can I see it without the walls?

I have a couple of very low raised beds (about two besser bricks high) and I was thinking that I could convert them from dirt into growbeds but I was wondering where the water would go when it drained out. Obviously down but there wouldn't be much space beneath the growbeds and not much hieght for a submersed pump either. Do you dig the sump tank lower than the ground?

Cheers and sorry for the newbie question

Ronmaggi

Jislizard,
the sketchup plans that i rendered are mostly a rough block out of where i intend to place things. Then i dressed it up to look pretty with plants and such so my wife would get more on board (think Ralph McQuarry's drawings that got Star Wars a bigger budget) If I remove the walls there would be little to see. The sump is in the sketchup plans but underground. I'm still playing with the sump's final position and right now it looks like it is going to be a little less under the gb's than it is in the sketchup plans, but I don't feel like moving it in the plans, nor showing it. I did make another rendering at a different angle:

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I used kerkythea this time, I'm not sure I like it as much as the sodium renderer, but I dont want to spend the money on sodium!

Ronmaggi

I have a larger Image being rendered right now. I will scale it down after then post it. That should make for a crisper image.

Ronmaggi

re-render, I'm not sure why the first came out so blurry. This one came out better.

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Ronmaggi

Supposed to break ground this week... But it is RAINING! I don't really want to dig in the rain. It has been a suprisingly wet winter for San Diego. Hopefully tomorrow will be dry. I am hoping to be able to post some real pics soon. I might even go bare foot in some...

Ronmaggi

got started today this is what i have so far

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I laid out the barrels and ibc's where I wanted them. Their actual locations are a little different than what I put in the sketchup layout.

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Ronmaggi

I used some of my daughter's chalk to trace the pavers that will stay.

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Then I pulled up the ones in the way.

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File comment: look ma... dirt

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I thought I would be creative and stack them in a way that would hold dirt...

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PerlGuy

Looks exciting, you're a few steps ahead of me!

Ronmaggi

I put a tarp over it in an attempt to contain the dirt...

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And it's dig time!

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Ronmaggi

I quickly realized that the dirt would not all fit in the paver throne, so I piled it up over the area that will house the rain collection barrels.

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Digging is hard!

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My wife took some shots of me digging saying something about her "private stock," or something to that effect...

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Ronmaggi

I got pretty deep today. Some nuggets of wisdom that I learned today: figure out what to do with the dirt ahead of time. I am in a townhome, so I don't exactly have the luxury of being able to dump it in a secluded corner of the property. I found that there comes a depth when the shovel just wont do much. The solution is to whip out the pick ax, and pummel the hell out of one side of your hole. This will loosen the dirt, and when you shovel out the clumps, you will have enough of a hole that your shovel will be able to break ground a few inches behind with a nice bug chunk of dirt to toss on the pile. I found that it was easiest to stand in the "ledge" that was the higher part of the hole and hop onto the shovel. When I could no longer stand on the ledge, I would whip out the pick ax (or Mattox) and carve out the last bits. Once that dirt was cleaned out, I would chop away at the same side to create enough of a hole to use the shovel again. Today I went for depth. Tomorrow I am going to widen the hole to fit the IBC. I am going to install it upside down, and use the pallet to hold the pavers, with a hatch cut into it to access the sump. I picked up some 6 mil plastic sheeting to wrap the IBC in so it wont get crushed when it rains. Though, I suspect that will not be too much of a problem here as even with all the rain we have had, I found the dirt to be dry when I got down to about two feet or so.

Ronmaggi

Just about finished digging the hole for the sump. Life keeps getting in the way... Tomorrow I'm pretty sure I'll be posting pics of that beast in the ground!

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