Every house has its story. What's yours?

Well, another Summer project is nearing completion. This time I've dug out around the portion of my house that is the most susceptible to moisture/pressure from the mountain upon which our house sits. It's a hill actually, but, for whatever strange reason, they call it a mountain.

The first stage, of course, was to dig out a trench around the house. Luckily, most of the work was sorted out by a friend of my neighbor who owns a little backhoe and loves operating it. I just had to man the trusty shovel and scrape dirt away from the foundation as well as roll pesky rocks/stones/boulders into the scoop, which, thanks to the last friggin' ice age, Swedish soil was the lucky recipient of many rocks, stones and boulders (see Wilhelm Moberg's "The Immigrants" for a good summary).

The trench ranged in depth from a little over a half meter to more than a meter since we wanted to run at a slope of around 1 cm per meter down to the drainpipe. We also had to be pretty careful since the telephone line ran through/under much of the area. Once this was completed to our satisfaction, I was able to check the foundation, which to my surprise wasn't in all that bad of shape considering the age of the house and total lack of previous draining.

In the pictures below you can see the state of the trench and foundation, which only had three places where I needed to make forms and reinforce with concrete: 

After the concrete was dry I took the forms off and got busy measuring, cutting and attaching the waffle-like plastic membrane to the exposed foundation. This membrane not only directly protects the foundation from moisture, the "waffle" form provides strength against the pressure of the soil and also allows air to circulate between the membrane and foundation to dry out any condensation that may occur.

Once the membrane was attached, I used special nails with plugs that were made specifically for this, I was ready to dig into the 5 tons of gravel that was heaped on the middle of my driveway (now, that's what I call a mountain!). Trusty new wheelbarrow at the ready, I put down an initial layer of gravel about 10cm thick throughout the trench and raked to the desired slope for the slotted drainage pipe. I then wrapped my 20+ meters of pipe with a special cloth that allows water to penetrate, but keeps sand and sediment from getting in.

I then began laying the pipe out as I wanted and then covering it with the remainder of the gravel. Like so:

I had many piles of dirt laying around so I got my not-so-new-looking wheelbarrow and spread dirt over the gravel on the back side of the house. Here's a look at where it stands now:

I'm planning on letting everything settle over the winter/spring before getting on with our grandiose plan for the landscaping (not to mention new facade....ugh!).

In the meantime I have to sort out the pesky drain before I can backfill the rest of the trench. I'll make a form for concrete and get the 3 drainpipes all set, but that's for the next post.

Until then...Ciao!