mud, mud, glorious mud

The north east corner of the plot is on schists and has some clay underneath. It is very wet and yet this is where we are building our shed. The shed needs to go up very soon as it also includes the hardstanding and parking area. There is a culvert which runs water right on to the wet bit and this has a drain to take this away round the edge of the plot. The drain was too shallow as the mini digger could not dig into the schists though there was a decent fall. We also need to level off for the footings for the big shed. Today, after digging out for the duct for our mains water pipe and phone line across the track about 100m away on the croft boundary, I thought I'd have a go with the JCB. Now trenching across the track was wet enough. After backfilling it was somewhat wobbly. So, in the full knowledge that even in 4WD the machine would probably struggle I managed to get the JCB on to the wet bit. Two hours later and it looks like a mudbath and definitely a brilliant spot for some mud wrestling for those who indulge this particular passion. I managed to get stuck on several occasions though the new channel is finally dug into the bedrock about 300mm deeper than it was. The footings are not dug as before this can be done the drains need fixing and the waste backfilling. We are going to use 200mm old fish farm pipe which has an internal diameter which allows conventional 160mm pipe to sleeve it for joining bits up. Have also fettled two rodding chambers ready for installation. Just in case we are also putting in a line of wavy coil - seen in the foreground. I was going to make it into a full french drain but now its deep enough we'll pipe the flow from the culvert runoff and the parallel run of wavy coil field drain will handle any other seepage so we'll just backfill with what's there.

Problem is now that we won't be able to get the JCB on to this area until it really dries out so we'll see what its like after the next few days which should be drying weather. Chances are we'll need to use a tracked mini-digger to backfill and excavate and level the footing runs so I can get on with concreting those and do the blockwork for the shed.

After that the problem will be solved as we will level out the large pile of crusher run in this pic to give is a solid working surface for the drive and hardstanding. After the very dry but cold winter there always was the chance of a very wet Spring and that is what we have had.