As part of each of the sleeper walls I have been building there are some steps also made from sleepers. I’ve used a kind a brickwork pattern to link them into the main wall.
To give each set of steps extra strength they’ve been packed first with hardcore. What’s not shown here is the concrete that has also been added between stairs to really lock everything together.
Posts Tagged: garden
19
Mar 09
Sleeper steps
9
Mar 09
Another wall, another level
Having finished the back level in the garden the next stage was to do the next level down. Eventually this will have a shed and some vegetable beds. For now I just want to get it flat and get the wall up. The wall retaining this level is the same as for the back and upper level – made from sleepers.
First step is to dig another trench 
Then dig some pits for uprights. The sleepers you can see are already buried in the ground for a third of their length. I’ve also added some metal straps for extra support.
Next bolt more sleepers to front until you have a wall:
“No daddy, you’re doing it all wrong”
“Let me show you how to do it properly”
1
Mar 09
How to remove a tree stump – the hard way!!
Another day, another stump. For reasons previously explained no machinery here – all hard graft and digging. This time though I did take regular breaks which enabled me to snap a few pics as I was going.
First dig a trench all around said stump:
Then attach rope and winch. Try to winch out. Realise that it isn’t going to move just yet 
More digging. Then use digging spike to cut all the roots from underneath the stump.
. . . .sometime later, after more digging and winching. The stump is out.
As if digging a stump out wasn’t hard enough, there was this huge field stone underneath the stump as well. I’ll be off to the chiropractor tomorrow!
12
Feb 09
Back up top
I completed the electrics under the ground here a couple of weeks ago. This meant I could carry on and complete the covering with membrane and many, many, many wheelbarrows full of gravel. If you want to lose weight quickly I can recommend the wheelbarrow diet – it’s simple just take 50 barrows a day up a steep slope!! 
Every project like this needs a site manager 
18
Jan 09
Summer House electrics
So here’s the back level of the garden finally levelled out:
Next job is to cover this with membrane and then a lot of gravel (not looking forward to borrowing all that up the hill!!). Eventually there will be a Summer House/Workshop type building on this space. However before I can cover the ground I need to run the electrics in. So that involves some work in this corner:
In order to comply with current building regs garden electrics need to be buried quite deep in the ground. Hence this trench:
Having lined the bottom of the trench with pea shingle to help drainage it’s then time to run the conduit and armoured cables in the trench:
More pea shingle secures and protects the electrics:
Extra protection is provided by old paving slabs on top of the shingle:
Finally some warning tape goes on top of the slabs to warn any future diggers:
I now need to fill in the final trench with some earth and some more warning tape just below the surface. It’s a lot of work these days running garden cables!!
10
Jan 09
Totally stumped!
This is the first of a couple of stumps which need removing. Due to location it’s next to impossible to get any machinery near to drill them out.
Here’s a pic of the beginnings of a trench round the offending stump.
I had to dig this trench much deeper and then hack away the roots from below with a matock and digging spike. Finally it was winched out.
I was far to knackered after to take any pics. I’ll take some work in progress shot on the next stump
7
Jan 09
Sleeper wall part 2
New year, new wall.
If you read the earlier post on the back sleeper wall you’ll get the general idea. Dig some (deep 
) pis to take some upright sleepers, buried a 3rd of their length. Concrete sleepers into those and then bolt other sleepers onto the front. Simples! Not nice carrying all these up the garden slope though
Pic of part completed wall
Another angle. Here you can see a recess for steps – more pics of that to follow.
View to the back wall. Still some filling/levelling to do but getting there.
3
Jun 08
Making something . . . at last
It’s taken a while but finally instead of smashing, breaking, stripping and generally demolishing we’ve actually started to build something!!
Having dug out the bank at the back of the garden we could now move onto building a retaining wall along the back. I decided to make these walls out of railway sleepers. I got a very good price from one of our local timber merchants (perhaps they couldn’t believe how many we needed!!). It’s also much easier for me to build with wood than bricks. Whatever I decided to use the job of hauling the materials up the sloping garden was going to be a pain in the a***, and so it proved.
Anyhow I carried enough sleepers up the garden to make a start. Having marked out I used some sleepers as giant fence posts, burying a 3rd of their length in the ground. This mean digging holes almost a meter deep in the ground. The first foot was easy digging through clay soil. Then came the more difficult ’shaley’ slate. This had to be broken up with a heavy duty digging spike before it could be lifted out. As if that wasn’t enough at the bottom of several holes were large granite field stones (you can see some of them on the right of the 2nd picture). These stones only revealed themselves after I had dug down most of the way – too late to shift the post to another location. More digging . .. . . .
Finally holes were dug and posts concreted into place. Postcrete is great for this – pour a couple of bags into the hole, add water on top and tamp down. Job done. . . .. . .well except for levelling, not easy with posts this size.
I did eventually get all the posts up and you can see I’ve started fixing other sleepers to the front with coach bolts. I’ve also got some metal straps in their for extra support, 300mm screws are also added at ’strategic’ points.
15
Feb 08
Extreme diggering!
So this week, we got the help of my brother. A good time to get on with the digging in the back garden – and there is a lot of it =:0
With mini digger hired we didn’t foresee the issues with getting it up the garden. On several occasions we so nearly tipped it – left us running for cover and hoping for the best!
Getting up the hill:
Stopping to refuel:
Leaning on a spade You also get a little idea of the bank that needed to be dug out:
With a digger in the garden it was inevitable that someone would want a ride:
Muck piling up down the slope:
8
Nov 07
Let the trenches begin
Having cleared the garden we’re now onto the first of several trenches. These trenches are needed for a couple of reasons. We’re going to create a set of terraces down the garden to remove the current slope (good for skiing but no so good to walk up). Each terrace will have a timber sleeper wall at the front. We’ll therefore have to dig some (a lot!!) ground out from the back of each level and build up the front of each. The trenches go down to what will be the new level for each terrace. They’ll also need to be pits to hold the sleeper footings that will hold these walls up.
Here’s the start of the first trench which stretches the entire way across the back of the garden (about 7 meters, or 20ish feet in old money). By the time it’s finished I’m up to my waist!
On one side of the garden the tranch has to be dug through this old paved area:
Whilst digging the trench we got rather more help than needed from the new site foreman
.
When the trench is done we will get some sleepers in & make a start on building the walls – first time making something rather than knocking down at this house!!