Draining the Swamp

The actual swamp, not the metaphorical one.

Step one is to figure out where to drain it to. Luckily the previous owner had installed some drainage around the back and side of the house, and while it was kind of ineffective in keeping the back yard from forming a lake that then drained into the crawl space, it turned out to be quite convenient for me to splice into.

But more on that later. Before I splice into the pipe, I need something to splice into it. Thus begins the Big Dig.

With equipment gathered and a route planned, we dig.

And at the end of the trench, an annoyingly deep sump pit. Made doubly annoying because the last foot of it was apparently never excavated back when the house was originally put in, and was extremely hard packed gravel and rock. It was then I remembered that I have a rotary hammer, and lord almighty did I put it to use. It was a gift from heaven, making the job immeasurably easier.

Installation of the drain went fairly smoothly, up until the point where I ran out of gravel. It's a lovely crushed marble gravel, that just happened to be the cheapest kind available at the home center. It will be buried under landscape fabric and mulch when the job is done.

But that will have to wait for another day, as I also ran out of daylight and energy with only a few tasks left. I'll need to pick up a few more bags of gravel, plumb in the sump pump to the drain pipe, and add an outlet on the wall to plug the pump into (luckily it's right next to the electrical panel).