It never rains in Sunny Southern California

The top lawn is gone and being converted to hardscape. It'll make a large area for entertaining large groups. No more water or lawn maintnence in this area for me. The Son&Heir is off to college -- I need to reduce my mowing and edging commitments. /heh

I dunno how many years of water and mowing it'll take to get a return on this investment. Like every other project it's costing more than anticipated.

Case in point, that right there is an expensive hole.


Pretty impressive bit of stonemasonry though. 3 feet down and over 2 feet thick. Had to get a pro in to core it for a 4" drain line.

It never rains in Sunny Southern California, but, it POURS!

Tricky digging up here and getting new lines to slope adequately. There's a network of old tile drains that we keep running into that interfere with need for drop in new lines. They collect from the driveway, gutters and back yard. Nearly took one large junction out with a jackhammer yesterday before realizing it was a mortared cluster of tile coming together. Dodged a bullet that time. That would have been a pain to reconstruct.


Drainage of hardscape is a major issue on our lot. The soil below this large wall gets to be like jelly in a hard rain. After this drain is in up top, I need to get serious drainage solutions down below the old granite wall.