New Garden Project

Nice saving and much better than before . Where the water going ? looks like a bunker of bottle crates is that the soak away area.

 

It goes into soakaway crates which create a void for the water to sit and soakaway into the ground

 

Hello! Some updates on the garden project.

First thing to sort out was the soakaway. This took way way waaaaay too long to dig and complete. Unfortunately, there was no way to get a mini digger in the back garden, so it all had to be done by hand and that process took months.

I absolutely didn't expect them to work given the amount of clay in the soil, however it got through the winter of 2021 and everything since then just fine with no sign of overflow, so I guess it must be OK enough.

After doing the soakaway, I started on the sleeper step that will separate the garden and its two different elevations. The plan is to have a patio and seating area on the upper part, and then lawn on the lower. Like the soakaway, this was completely new to me, having never done anything like this before. I had to use a circular saw for the first time (thankfully no fingers lost) and figure out how to drill 150mm pilot holes through oak and screw them together. Lots of new things.





The sleepers are yet to be treated. Once there is some grass and less soil everywhere, they'll be sanded and treated with Textrol oil.



The next bit now is doing some prep work to get some electrics into the garden which is going to involve more digging. Urgh!

 

Gosh you're courageous! Well done!
I'm sure you've thought of this, but if ever you're likely to want a water feature or pond, best to plan it now and get the electrics in place before it's all grassed/patio'd.
Bon courage!

 

Today was the start of something I've been looking forward to for a while; garden electrics!

The desire is to have lots of nice ambient lighting in the final garden, but to get that requires a bit of early work to make sure things like power is available (you certainly don't want to be ripping things up once you've laid a nice lawn, or patio).



Step one was me digging (urgh it never ends) a trench from the house to the back corner of the garden, behind the oil tank. Once this was done, armoured electrical and Ethernet cable was laid.



The two cables feed into a cabinet which houses all the electrical stuff for the garden. I love this because it doesn't matter what garden electrics might be desired in the future, there is a dedicated box, on a dedicated fuse, for everything to use rather than drilling into the house and hacking connections together. It's neat, tidy, and certainly costly, but feels like an excellent bit of organization and future proofing.



Inside, the cabinet is looking a bit bare at the moment, but it has plenty of room for expansion and will start to fill with lighting controllers. Apart from all the digging, I didn't DIY this. When it comes to electrics always let the professionals do it!