Keep It Coming Up

Was that an old KC and the Sunshine Band song or someone else? Am I really showing my age here? Oh well, that song actually came on the radio while I was working and I've always liked it for just goofy, danceabililty stuff. This weekend I started on the rock wall that will enclose the underside of the house. Winter will be here before you know it and I have got to protect those water lines. Plus, I still have not collected enough paychecks yet to buy material for the interior of the house. These rocks are free. For now, I am just going to concentrate on closing up the "basement" and will do the stone planter beds that go in front of the concrete block at a later date after I move in. Got to get the essentials first.
I am sort of dry stacking the stones and trying to fit them as tight as possible. I am using a little mortar now towards the back of the stones so that it will not show on the face. I will go back later and put a parge coat of mortar on the interior side, filling in any voids with scrap rock. This is just a close up so that you can see that I am using anything from large stones down to very small. I really like the contrast of the sizes. I plan to repeat an occasional, very large stone throughout the height of the wall, not just on the bottom like in the first photo, so that the wall looks balanced.
Later on Sunday I mixed up 3 bags of Sackrete that we have had sitting around for a while and filled some of the block with it. I only need to fill the block in front of the columns where those metal ties are, so that's not so bad. Yes, I know, I needed to have had gloves on. Concrete can be very bad on the skin.
Allen spent the weekend filling in the water line trench. Not very exciting but another thing that must be done before cold weather. I have come to the conclusion also, that my filtration system is not working well enough. I am going to have to work on that some more and probably end up buying yet another filter. So far, I just have a spiral-down sediment filter (no cartridge, you just purge it) and one 6-stage filter for chemicals, organisms etc. but the sediment is still getting through. I don't understand it really. I think that the severe drought may be affecting things too.
I will try to post more. Work is pretty rough right now and I didn't do much last week after getting home. The heat just drains you so; I have pretty much let my garden go too. Stay cool!