Today, we attempted to block off the rain water spillage coming from the workshop. See the little movie of the “river” gushing out of their workshop area (river starts at 12:24 and lasts for over half an hour!).
Washed-out-section-1
Washed-out-section-2
As you can see what damage their water has caused!
So we decided to mount a barrier of two 8 foot by 4 foot OSB boards, covered on one side with DPM plastic to waterproof it, and bury them both down 5 feet below the fence footings.
We had to dig out a long narrow trench for the boards to sit in, it took a lot of digging by hand.
Trench-dug-for-boards-e1466194453203
We then inserted the boards and attached them to each other and the end of the swimming lane.
Boards-in-place-1
Boards-in-place-2-e1466194032680
Then we filled up all around both sides of the new barrier to make sure that there is a strong berm of soil to stop the water from flowing up hill and around the side of the new boards. The other end overlaps the end of the swimming lane’s back wall by a foot.
All-filled-in-and-compacted
We had to dig out quite a lot of soil from the mound nearby the area to fill in around the boards (replacing the soil washed away)
Area-dug-out-to-fill-trench
Hopefully, that will prevent the river from forming and etching away our soil again. it might pool up there in and under the workshop’s fence but it will be contained and not flow anywhere.
One of the problems, is the fact that the workshop building doesn’t do anything with the rain water collected off their roof. It just goes down two gutter pipes and splashes straight out onto the ground!! These downpipes are right next to our fence!!
Gutters-droping-water-on-the-boundary