Water and Agi pipes

Been a while since my last post, and have been meaning to update things for a while, but simply forgot about the blog. ;)

Over the last couple of weeks we've had the phone pre-provisioned and the electricity hooked up to the circuit box that will eventually find its way on to the outside wall of the garage.

Logan Council have hooked up the water meter, and I've run the 25mm polypipe up the trench to just near the water tank, and then buried in sand to an appropriate level, taken photos to prove it was done to spec, and then backfilled the trench in. This now gives us water up to the house, which has allowed me to put down some Jap Millet seed, and can then water it whenever I can get out there. If it works as planned, then it will give me some erosion protection at the same time it makes the place look a bit greener.

So now all trenches from the front to the house have been backfilled, so my main concern of flooding rain washing soil through the trenches then out on the road is no more. Just have to get the sloped ground in front of the house greened up or erosion barriers put in place.

A couple of weeks ago I was able to hire a 1.7tonne excavator to bring to the block to dig some drainage trenches behind the house at the base of the batters that go up to the high spot of the block, so that water won't just sit behind the house to soak under the slab (being a P block with H1 character, you don't want water to pool and soak under the house). I put in some 100m socked poly agi pipe in there, backfilled with 20mm gravel and then soil above it.
The agi pipe exits the ground near the side boundaries of the block. Since the sun was going down, we started to pack the excavator down, only to have the neighbour on one side come over to question if we were going to leave the pipe pointing on to his block to 'flood' his block. Politely I advised him that we were not finished yet, and were going to ensure that it wouldn't when finished, poked him back with the comment that what sort of neighbours do you think we are, and that there's no way I would do such a thing to a neighbour.... I might add that my mate who was there helping me, noticed on several occasions them watching rather intently what we were doing all through the day.

Came back the next day to tidy things up, and ensure that the agi pipe was directed entirely on to our block, and cleared along my side of the fence line to ensure no water would end up on his block.

So why hire a small excavator to dig trenches, rather than a trencher ? Both cost about the same as each other, and the excavator digs deeper and quicker, and it also comes with several buckets that you can scoop up the 20mm gravel to pour back in to the trench... a wheel barrow would have taken up a day alone to do it all. The big catch is that a trencher is very easy and simple to drive, the excavator will take quite a while to come to grips with, particulary if you've had no previous earthmoving gear experience. I've driven backhoes and bobcats before, albeit I've never been licenced because of the lack of need/experience.