They Say That Granite Rings - Xeriscaping in the Postnuclear Free-World

looks fantastic. one of those 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration projects. I guess keeping your property dry is a great motivator! now I want to find something like that to do. years ago, I was broke after the separation. I worked for extra cash with a landscape guy building walls with bricks and railroad ties. very satisfying work.
 
Around here, if you do work that interferes with the natural flow of runoff from your property without a permit. engineering plans, etc., you get your pee-pee slapped (along with your wallet).
 
Around here, if you do work that interferes with the natural flow of runoff from your property without a permit. engineering plans, etc., you get your pee-pee slapped (along with your wallet).

It's the same in this neck of the woods. Gotta have a grading permit to do anything that substantially alters the grade, and absolutely cannot let water leave any faster than it would naturally.
 
All I can say is, it looks great. :thmbsp:

I'll second a previous posters wish to see how it functions when faced with some rain. :thmbsp:
 
Between fetching rocks and uploading, I haven't had a proper chance to reply.
Let me say thanks to all, before I get into the individual replies.

Super cool, nice job and very good looking rig. I really want to see a video of it in action.

Well, it would take an extreme rain to see any real action in it. There is no sealing of the silt fence at the headwall, by design. I want to slow the water, but not stop it. So small flows will not be something that are likely noticeable. In the event of larger flows, the water will still not be as visible, as everything is a facade, a very heavy facade, made to look like a creek, but, in reality its a diffuser that is meant to break up and spread flows, and slow them down deep in the maze of rocks, until I get the water down from the steep area, to a less steep area.

Wow, really nice work and a lot of it too.

Murray

Yeah, tuckered out is a regular phrase in my vocabulary. Thanks.

Wow, that's some serious water re-diversion work. My first house was in the Hayward Ca foothills, we had some water drainage issues there. My house had french drains around it and it wasn't too bad. 4 houses downhill we called the swamp house. There was so much water constantly draining off it the sidewalk was covered with slick moss - slipped on it once walking the dog. :yuck:

"French drain" was one of the first things that I did to this place. Ponding water was an issue that we had, and didn't recognize until the first rains came after we moved in.
The issue that we realized is that silt, even what we generate on our own property, had raised the grading across the rear of the house enough to block the graded drainage away from the rear of the house. Its tight back there, with no room for a tractor, or bobcat-skid. The silt had pinched off the tight area between the house slab foundation, and a graded slope; right at the pinch point between them. So I trenched and set up an extensive drainage system across the rear of the house, including capturing the rain gutters into filtering drain boxes that lead into the system.
I also built another retaining wall that I'm getting ready to show; the other half of 180' of concrete stacker retaining wall that I've built here now.

Rockin' and rollin' down San Diego way. :thmbsp:

Yep. Fallbrook is like the Mayberry of SoCal; downright homey at times, and redneck'y at others.


Your Nuts man! I mean really, your Nuts, look after them! and your back. That looks like hard work, I done a lot of similar work years ago and now I have a back like a kicked about crunchie bar....be careful, doing a good job there though, nice one

I've had a mid-back ism since high school football. But it doesn't slow me down. It does scream at me on occasion. My lower back is good. The worst I've ever experienced thug was brought on by lifting a gallon of water about 15 years ago. It was really weird, as when I lifted it, I felt a jelly like squish in my lower back, and then about 10 days of pain. Then it went away, and no issue since.

thanks!

Very old world European (Mediterranean) looking. Reminds me of Spain, Portugal or Israel. Very nice job. Future generations will be enjoying your work for hundreds of years from now. Wish I still had the energy (physic) to be able to do what you are doing. This will just get better and better looking over the years as everything settles and ages. Great improvement to the land!

Very kind words, thanks.
I come from a line of rock lifters, it seems; my grandparents on my moms side; and my dad.
My g.parents had a home in Pasadena at the bottom of a hill; very similar to my situation. In the 30's or 40's, they found a rock source in the Arroyo Seco creek drainage, and built extensive terracing of the slope above their house, creating different garden room scenarios. Their work was all based on concrete footings and with mortar - wet stacking.
Mortar walls in Cal get earthquake shaken and crack. I prefer dry stacking, mortarless stacking that moves with the earth shaking, and resettles back to something like it was. I've never had a failure in my years of doing it.


That is very nice work.

My father built french drains like that on his property on a steep hillside in SW Washington.

Thank you, kindly.
I bet in Wash., you've got to be ready to move lots of rain water. I'm sick and tired of drought, and thinking a rainy climate would be a nice change.

looks fantastic. one of those 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration projects. I guess keeping your property dry is a great motivator! now I want to find something like that to do. years ago, I was broke after the separation. I worked for extra cash with a landscape guy building walls with bricks and railroad ties. very satisfying work.

Yeah, the realization of what could occur was a great motivator. I don't think that there has ever been a massive inflow here; rather, lots of smaller flows over decades. The house seems fine, except it was showing signs of efflorescence coming up through the concrete slab, resulting from poor drainage
 
Around here, if you do work that interferes with the natural flow of runoff from your property without a permit. engineering plans, etc., you get your pee-pee slapped (along with your wallet).
It's the same in this neck of the woods. Gotta have a grading permit to do anything that substantially alters the grade, and absolutely cannot let water leave any faster than it would naturally.

OK,… at the risk of politics, which I don't even want to do, other than to clarify:
The Fed gov't has the EPA, and it has enacted the Clean Water Act, which governs any and all actions to riparian, and wetlands, rivers, etc.
At any rate,…. lots of uproar lately about the Clean Water Act. If the neighbor above me acts at all counter to what I've done, something like that is a trump card to hold.

All I can say is, it looks great. :thmbsp:

I'll second a previous posters wish to see how it functions when faced with some rain. :thmbsp:

Many thanks.
As I stated in a previous reply in this post; The concept is to keep water moving through a maze, to diffuse it and aerate it. This takes the eroding scouring away. The dry creeks are a lot of facade with most of what happens in the average rains going on somewhat out of view (except exceptional flows). It would take a major rain to actually get the thing flowing like a creek. For the most part, I don't expect to see water flowing through it all that often.

As far as if it will work:
I have quite a bit of experience in rain water runoff drainage, and snow melt runoff drainage. I've also built multiple koi/goldfish ponds filter return flows, and waterfalls.
The rain runoff drainage experience came during the '97/'98 El Nino winter rains.
In '97, a golf course developer started grading for a 36 hole golf course on what had to have been at least 200 acres that was in a valley in a different local hillside valley drainage. Part of their grading plan opened that large acreage onto our community via a keyway notch cut, where they removed an entire hillside that divided our community from a whole other canyons drainage. They didn't have a single sandbag in place, and our community got smacked. We were hit especially hard where my house was, in that the silt flows took out a hill top drain, that removed a v-ditch flow, and piped it down off the hill. The golf course flows totally plugged the drain,and we had a 50' tall waterfall going over a 50' tall engineered crib-wall.
Our community rejected my drainage plan, and opted for that from a civil engineer. They built his plan, and it failed in the first slight misting of rain, with hundreds of feet of black plastic sheeting blowing in the wind, over the same crib-wall.
So, with storms stacked up all the way over to Japan, I had a week to secure materials for, and assemble a crew to assemble a hillside drain that would have to last us a winter. This consisted of thousands of sandbags, chicken wire to make gab ion cages and debris filters.
I was told by everyone that my temporary design wouldn't work.
Not only did it work, it worked flawlessly for a whole winter, and in particular, a month where we got two years worth of rain in a month, something like 35" in that month, with some storms registering extended periods of rates of 9" per hour (in bursts). I was up and out working in every rain, for that winter/spring, cleaning filters and making sure that the design wasn't compromised.

In the early 80's I worked at a ski resort in Utah, during its heaviest snowfall records ever.
We were tasked with getting snowmelt runoff water off the slopes, while protecting a stream that ran across the bottom of the slopes, which held a protected species of trout. So we had to get the water down, without adding silt, and, removing silt prior to its confluence with the stream.
I learned a lot about drainage doing that; damn muddy and messy though. And I've shoveled more snow than can ever be imagined by anyone, especially for a SoCal born-and-raised surfer kid.

At any rate,…. blabbering.
This is the community hillside drain that I designed; that also got f'd with by the same civil engineer whose plastic flags flew in the breeze of failure. I asked for solid, tall sidewalls, and he changed my design to having short sidewalls, which I had to fix after the first storms blasted over the shortened sidewalls.

My drain in action. This is a steep 2:1 slope that is 85' long:
The Moke Memorial Hillside Drainage Channel, in action and dry:

3' v-ditch load breaching the ditch:
3el-rio_vditch.jpg~original


At top of hillside drain. My house was the last one upstream in the image, on the right; a fantastic view, toenailed to a hillside:
4el-rio_vditchflow.jpg~original


3' v-ditch flow hitting the head of the drain:
5el-rio_drainhead.jpg

6el-rio_drain100.jpg~original


7el-rio_drain_side.jpg~original


dry:
8dry-drain_meat-grinder.jpg~original


I asked for tall sidewalls on both sides, like the one on the right. The engineer spec'd the short wall that you see. I added the two top courses of cinder block myself.
 
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OK,… at the risk of politics, which I don't even want to do, other than to clarify:
The Fed gov't has the EPA, and it has enacted the Clean Water Act, which governs any and all actions to riparian, and wetlands, rivers, etc.
At any rate,…. lots of uproar lately about the Clean Water Act. If the neighbor above me acts at all counter to what I've done, something like that is a trump card to hold.


First of all, your work is beautiful to say the least.

But your neighbor above you isn't the one I'd be worrying about. I'm playing the devil's advocate, but I've been through it myself.

All the water that may have normally dispersed over a wide area is now concentrated to one drain spot. If that concentration of water would affect someone downstream, (like someone who has their pickup parked at the gate), or perhaps someone's yard or house below you, and they come looking for where all the water came from that never did before, it won't be too hard to figure it out.

I used to own a small piece of property that had a habit of flooding during overly wet years (local creek overflowing). I happened to mention at the county one day that I wanted to infill the property to stop it, and the told me that I would be held responsible if ANYONE complained - especially the neighbors.

Regardless of what the feds say, the county/city will still say you should have gotten the proper permit first.

Love the work, though.:thmbsp:
 
Thats why I put it on that upstream neighbors land.
Kidding aside,…
My headwall berm replaces a three or four course tall sandbag berm that attempted to serve the same purpose, but had rotted out leaving just the sand. It was built by the counties prisoner/jail task force, after a massive wildfire burned through this same area in 2007, to control the flows from the hillside that had just burned off. From what I understand from neighbors, she graded the road after those fires to allow access to fire trucks, so they can get below her house.

My neighbor, whose land this flow does also cross, below mine, has full knowledge of my effort. He thinks its great.
None of the flows from my effort are entering into any new ground, as they would have eventually flowed back into the same main outflow.
Our shared side access dirt road is deeply graded to a V to quickly evacuate the water. This grading was done during his home building permitting process. He is a general contractor and built it himself. Once the flow crosses his front corner, it hits our street, and turns sharply to the north, flows about 50', and drops into the main tributary for this area. The only point where he is questionably impacted is already built up with shouldering materials by both he, and myself.
In contrast: Another neighbor at the same point where our flow joins the main tributary, has run his tractor up into that tributary creek, for a two acre length. drastically altering the creek, removing rocks and boulders, straightening the channel, and, putting a 30" corrugated culvert into it, and then back-filling the creek to make a new rear of property access road; non-permitted work.
The County Public Works folk came out, and had him create a dirt silt basin within the creek bottom just above an under road culvert (which plugged up last winter, due to his work). His culvert and bootlegged driveway are still there, and the stacked concrete retaining wall creek bank plating that he did around his culvert mouth and tail-out has collapsed into the creek bed (probably 6' deep banks in its natural state). This is but one example of any number that I can point out here locally, of work that far surpasses mine in scope.
So, I'm not so worried about the collector headwall berm. I can have it dismantled in a couple of days, if anything should arise, and back to square one, easily enough.
 
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Nice work Mike. Now if we could only get a nice El Nino to fill our reservoirs. :thmbsp:

Yeah, desperately needed.
There have been so many indicators looking towards an El Nino winter this year; I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
In early summer, there were gigantic shoals of anchovies all along the San Diego coast. And the exotic fish species front the south have been abundant this year. The hurricanes knocking on our backdoor, etc.
Hoping,…

thanks!
 
Some denizens of the postnuclear free-world xeriscape,….
Sarge calls it Bikini Bottoms.

Mutated pipefish, broken off propellers, and bubbles:
DSCN1591.jpg


Psychedelic geckos:
DSCN1592.jpg


Golden S-slug, and starfish:
DSCN1588.jpg


Bottlehead Fish and urchins:
DSCN1589.jpg




Glow in the dark stingray - yes, it's radioactive!:
DSCN1586.jpg


Octopus and various corals:
DSCN1583.jpg

DSCN1584.jpg

Note the shark fin to the left, ^^
We also have a squid in the shade garden.

Denizens of the night: The Mutant Potato Bug:
potato_bug3_zpsef66d135.jpg~original


Dinosaurs:
DSCN0745.jpg

DSCN0740.jpg
 
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Serpents:
DSCN0749.jpg

DSCN0748.jpg

DSCN0758.jpg

DSCN0541_zps31cae9a5.jpg~original
DSCN0540_zps67e7579d.jpg~original

These guys seem particularly "bitey", and in fair abundance, until I hammered the earth with the thunderstick:
4a.jpg~original


And the event that sparked the postnuclear existence - Camp Pendelton Weapons Depot explodes, sending nuclear fallout directly over Fallbrook (impossible to see town in the image-right, below the fallout):
fallbrook2014may15_fire_zpse65ce295.jpg~original

(OK, so maybe not a real nuclear event, ^^)

Did I mention, that we have rocks?
DSCN1582.jpg
 
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Sarges delicate cairn, made from small rock chips:
DSCN1609.jpg


The valley of the rocks, left with some anonymous temporary art:
DSCN1617.jpg
 
OK, here is a sample of water works on video.
This is a "French Drain" drainage pipe daylight termination point. I installed the drainage a couple of winters ago, and just left the pipe end raw. Its one of those, "I've been meaning to do something about that" projects, that actually got finished.
This is at the end of our shade garden area, which is somewhat woodlands-like, with layers of canopy over it. Its a good 15º cooler in there, than just outside of it.
The flow is from the lowering of our swimming pool, to refresh the water; drawn down about 3/4 depth; the flow from a 1.5" drain hose.

The Bird Bath Drain End Diffuser, at its *first test firing this morning:
http://youtu.be/3HLdgBxfo5Q

*It's also my first time trying my camera in video mode, and first time offloading it, and uploading anything to Youtube.
 
Around here, if you do work that interferes with the natural flow of runoff from your property without a permit. engineering plans, etc., you get your pee-pee slapped (along with your wallet).

OK,… I realize we've already debated this, but I thought I'd add this little experience from earlier today.

I got a visit today from the local public utilities district. It went like this:
I was draining water from the swimming pool, per the video above. The water enters the same channel that the main headwall/dry creek feeds. As I said in a previous reply, it flows from my property, onto my neighbors, and then hits the street. At the street it turns north, and runs along the street shoulder for a short distance, and enters the main creek drainage channel that drains away this area.
The utilities district handles sewer, and water. They received calls about a possible broken line, and came to investigate.
At first, I heard their work truck dispatch radio, and then see them walking up the access road. I walked down and met them. I told them about the pool draining, and showed them the outflow in the video.
The supervisor was loving it, and looked up above at the dry creek work, and begged a tour.
His reaction was great. He is a mid-to-late 50's guy, my age. He jumped into the creeks, and proceeded to climb all over, just enthralled, all but challenging me and his workmate to a game of Capture the Flag, or a rock fight. He was like a little kid, climbing all through it. Totally positive reaction.
The water district owns the water rights in this area, including the main river bottom that I'm part of, in the upper tributary drainage for this area. He understood my effort, and totally applauded it.
Ultimately, they were also really excited that they didn't have to do a dig for a broken water main,, and got to fart around on the clock for a half hour or so.
 
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Ok, it sounds like you have a really good handle on things. I see things like this attempted by folks that truly have no clue too often. I don't think it was anybody's intention to rain on your parade - it most certainly wasn't mine; rather just raising issues you ought to be aware of, which it appears you are. I'm a surveyor, and the firm I work for is very involved in the land development industry, and I see firsthand the hoops that our clients have to jump through, and on occasion the consequences of not jumping.
 
Well, it took a couple of years to finally see my dry creek system flow. But yesterday, I saw it flow for the first time since building the dry creek system.
We've been getting steady storms this year. And yesterday the soil reached total saturation, and the surface flows started.

Images: I’ll start downstream where my property angles away from the flow, and it enters into my next door neighbors property.

I sandbagged our adjoining property interface to keep the flow from breaching onto his property. He is building a new barn there, and has a lot of raw soil exposed. I didn’t want to be responsible for causing erosion in that area (due to county inspectors, and regs). So, I created a series of diversion berms with the sandbags at the areas that were at risk of breaching, as there was scouring along the edge of the property line.
DSCN3305_zps17fnvmbu.jpg~original
DSCN3304_zpshkuyrbzx.jpg~original


overview of the sandbagging effort:
DSCN3303_zps2j6qcfc6.jpg~original


This is the upper portion of the drainage, where I’ve created the dry creek runoff course:
DSCN3300_zpskbyh7dyg.jpg~original
DSCN3289_zpsmmjmxphn.jpg~original
DSCN3297_zpsd0nsextu.jpg~original
DSCN3298_zps7ehol0nk.jpg~original


This is the top of the shade garden where three minor creeks come together. I never expected it to show a flow, but it did yesterday.
DSCN3301_zpsdjqefimk.jpg~original
DSCN3306_zpsokjq6tgc.jpg~original
 
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Thanks, @BlindBoyGrnt !
I found something that I was not expecting.... Gopher tunnels. The water from above was entering into gopher holes/tunnels and traveling to distant places that I wasn't expecting. It would then pop up downstream/down slope, as spring-like flows; I had no idea that they would travel that far in thier digging. This goes a long way in explaining to me how some flows reached the house (we had silt deposits at the foundation). So I'm going to have to trace the water flow on the neighbors property (upstream), and try to fill and compact some of those holes. I know for a fact that yesterdays flows killed a bunch of gophers in their burrows.
Tomorrow is supposed to bring two days of heavy rains, again.
 
Thanks, @BlindBoyGrnt !
I found something that I was not expecting.... Gopher tunnels. The water from above was entering into gopher holes/tunnels and traveling to distant places that I wasn't expecting. It would then pop up downstream/down slope, as spring-like flows; I had no idea that they would travel that far in thier digging. This goes a long way in explaining to me how some flows reached the house (we had silt deposits at the foundation). So I'm going to have to trace the water flow on the neighbors property (upstream), and try to fill and compact some of those holes. I know for a fact that yesterdays flows killed a bunch of gophers in their burrows.
Tomorrow is supposed to bring two days of heavy rains, again.
Visions of Bill Murray's character in Caddy Shack. Flood out the varmints!
 
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