Gardening Sunday!!

Breakfast to fuel up before the big day.



Susan, John, and Ava survey the scene.



The first task was to move out the sand pile left over from plastering.





Melissa and Giuseppe work on the path. Melissa : "I feel myself returning to my Irish potato farmer roots".





12 cubic yards of topsoil to be ferried about by wheelbarrow and raked out for the garden areas. The rest of the soil area on site will be remediated and improved with plantings.



Terraced beds are built into the hillside, and wheelbarrow loads of topsoil are brought down site to fill them in about 6" deep. Reena, John, Lauren and Kit finish up the morning's work.



Straw is spread above the beds as mulch; the small mounds of earth on the slope are for creepers like squash, cucumbers, and zucchini.



Gravel left over from the rainwater tank installation, and reclaimed p.t. timber steps make a good path. Anna and M'lex finish it up.



John and Chris tackle the weeds beside Roseview Ave.





Andrew and Anna against a late afternoon sky threatening rain.



We put down newspaper and topsoil over the weeds, to ready for Chris's corn plantings (interspersed with zucchini plants). Put it in the history books: Man from Sasketchewan plants his first corn seeds in Cambridge Ontario.



Laura nestles in some pepper and tomato seedlings



Our new snaky path and gardens! We couldn't believe how much we accomplished in the day.

Rainwater tank - backfilling and first collection!

Thursday, June 11: The beginning of another day of major transformation. Before.





Ferrying more gravel down the site...





The overflow pipe in place.



Once sufficiently covered in pea stone, the cistern is completely swaddled.





The inflow pipes are put in place.











It was raining as we hooked up the pipes... which meant the instant gratification of getting water in the cistern right away!
(this inflow setup was obviously temporary).
On the right, you can see the trickle of water coming from the filter overflow.



The gravel over and around the cistern is complete.



.. the final grading, at last. 2" of rigid insulation (4' wide) went in over the length of the inflow pipe - you can just see it peeking out at the far left.




Big thanks to our project sponsors:

Unit Precast for donating their labour (co-ordinating and installating the pump system)

ZCL for donating the massive fibreglass tank!

...

and to our excavators and earthmovers, Alltask Property Improvement.

Rainwater Tank Hookups

The plumber and electrician met on site with the folks from Unit Precast / RH20 to co-ordinate their systems. On the left (below) is the filter chamber, and on the right is the tank access manhole.







the pump



installing the inflow pipe



looking down into the tank



the tank outflow connection, through which water is sent back to the building



Here is the filter system in place. The white pipes are the overflow . The upper pipe is an overflow at the filter - about 5% of the inflow water drains away immediately, to get rid leaves and any other matter that might find its way along the eavestrough. The lower pipe is an overflow directly out of the tank. (Inflow pipes still to come.)



Big thanks to our project sponsors:

Unit Precast for donating their labour (co-ordinating and installating the system)

ZCL for donating the massive fibreglass tank!

The Patch

After some back-and-forth, it was decided that it would be most expedient to get the tank fixed by a local marine repair person rather than the Quebec-based manufacturer, ZCL. Our retired professor (and expert boat-builder) Mike Elmitt graciously stopped by to assess the damage and explain the basics of fibreglass work. Then one fine Saturday morning Mark and Bill came in to get the job done.



They built up three layers of glass fibre and resin to level out the break.





... and then topped it off with two layers a large patch over the whole area.









... and we were ready to go again.