Step 14: Grading and Concrete

October 2018

First of all... yes, we made it through the hurricane fine. Many, many others didn't, please keep them in your prayers and donate to relief efforts if you can:

Here is a nation-wide article on NPR about how you can help: https://www.npr.org/2018/09/18/649238096/how-to-help-those-affected-by-hurricane-florence

Here are some local places you can donate, both of which are run by amazing people and where you know your money is going directly to help families in need:

4 Day Movement - http://www.4daymovement.org/

Make a Difference Food Pantry - http://www.madpantry.org/

Our house was totally fine, thanks to the prep work by the crew! As far as the lake, they drained the lake in advance of the hurricane and the very first night, we got so much rain, it filled back up and overflowed. You can see in the after shot that the decking of our dock is under water.

LEFT: Lake drained before Florence
RIGHT: One day later, not exactly the same angle because we couldn't get out there to take a picture because the roads were flooded. This picture is taken from our neighbor's porch.

But thankfully, it never got much worse than that, even when the river started flooding in the week (and weeks) afterward. Thanks to the board of the club who kept an eye on everything and adjusted lake levels accordingly, the worst we got was a soggy yard.

The house did fine in the hurricane. All of the preparations worked, but especially the gutters and trenches to keep water away from the house. As we said in the last post, one of the things that really needed fixing in this renovation was how water flowed down the hill past the house. Because the house sits on a hill and the road is higher, water typically would flow down the driveway into the carport area and gather at the back of the house:

See how there is a retaining wall at the back of the carport area (above) and another smaller one on the other side of the driveway (in the picture below, it would be kind of to the left of our van, but in front of it, before you get to the covered area of the carport). Those retaining walls are great and they serve a purpose, but it would mean that rain water would run right down the driveway into the carport area and towards the back of the house.

I don't know how well you can see it in this picture (below), but back in the '60s, before my parents even bought the place, the previous owner (our neighbor's dad!) built this concrete mound between the driveway and the part of the concrete pad closest to the house in an attempt to keep the water from getting puddled up behind the house. I wish I had a better picture. It was quite homemade-looking! But it never really completely worked. So, the contractor was tasked with figuring out how to pour a whole new concrete pad that would divert water away from the house and down the hill.  

I don't know if you can see the concrete mound better from this angle - it's that white line in the middle - kind of looks like a line of icing on a cake. The concrete guy said he could just pop it off of there. But see how there is gunk gathered on the left side of it? It did its job, unless the water came in so fast it went over that mound, which definitely happened on the regular. 

Do you see below how the bottom of that door is a step up from the ground? For as long as we've had this house, you had to step up to get into the back door. The new concrete pad will come all the way up to where that door is, maybe a bit higher than that (that door is now a window), and will slope down to the driveway, so ideally, the water will run off away from the house.

Maybe you can see it better below. The rainwater would just roll down the driveway (left) and towards the house, somewhat stopped by the concrete mound that runs along the same line of where the new roof ends, but many times going over that and puddling by the back of the house. Actually in this picture, you can see where water has puddled in front of the mound. The rain that day wasn't enough to go over the mound, so you can see - that dark area along the line of the carport on the ground is water and behind it is the homemade concrete mound our neighbor's dad put in in the '60s. 

To give you an idea of how bad it was on the regular, when we first switched our address to here, we had a package delivered one day when it was raining and by the time we got out there to get it, the cardboard box was completely soaked because they put it in on the ground in front of that back door. Good thing it was only Nerf guns! We had packages delivered to my parents' house in town after that.

So the contractor decided we needed to build up the concrete pad under the new carport higher and have it slope at an angle away from the house. So, first, they laid dirt on top of the current concrete pad to build up the areas that needed to be higher. because "dirt is cheaper than concrete": 

Then they laid new concrete, which slopes down away from the house:

So the whole pad slopes down, but then also at the end where the new pad meets the old driveway, they have sloped it down at a sharper angle. The hope is that we'll be able to pull in under the carport over that small lip. I'm not a great driver, so I'm not sure I can pull in there and not hit either the retaining wall behind me or one of the posts of the porch, but the contractor swears it can be done.

I think with this picture, you can see how the new concrete pad slopes down away from the house. This is the smaller retaining wall in front of the addition - where the back door to the mudroom is. It's clearly higher on the right, closer to the house:

Then they finished it off with a little path to the back door (entering the mudroom): 

 and a path to the front door (which is really on the side):

It's hard to tell from this picture, but this path is also sloped away from the house:

Both of those paths will make it a lot more wheelchair friendly if we ever have need of it as my parents get a little older. They also patched a place in the driveway that had been torn up by roots for as long as I can remember - over 35 years at least - so you don't scrape the bottom of your car driving in: 

Getting closer and closer!

AND CHECK THIS OUT! A few weeks later, I went out there on a day it was raining and look! It worked! 

See the water in the driveway? None of it got to the house! Actually, it only got stuck in the driveway because of that big pile of dirt they left there on the other end. Once they spread all of that dirt out, it will flow right down that hill and away. But it kept the rain away from the house, which is what we were going after. 

Also making me realize how much raking there will be to do at this house... ALL. THE. TIME.

NEXT: Step 15: Kitchen Cabinets