This weekend we prepared the footing drains.  When the structure gets buried, it will be very important to have good drainage away from the house.  On the north side, we are using  10’ sections of ridged drain pipe, which is smoother on the inside than the usual flexible “ribbed” pipe. This allows the water to flow better.  Of course there are very few straight lines in our house so we had to encourage the pipe to make the curve. (thus the picture above with a heat gun and curved form) We did end up using the flexible pipe in the two bermed areas on the South side. There were just too many corners and bends.

Both the ridged and flexible pipe are covered with a “pipe sock”.  This prevents silt from building up in the pipe.  Next we will need to cover the pipe with drain rock.  This will be easy to do on the north side as it is accessible and the delivery truck can dump it close by.  We will have to hand carry the rock around to the south side one bucket at a time.  There is a very narrow path to get to the SE side that is not wide enough for a standard wheelbarrow.  I made this “BucketBarrow” out of an old wheelbarrow frame.

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