Our hilly street doesn't have sidewalks or "hellstrips" and the land slopes up on our side and down across the street. The city, however, owns the first 16 feet of our property in case they ever wanted to add sidewalks. That's why we planted it with Geranium macrorrhizum and Hostas. If you enlarge the photo you can see that there is a gravel path behind the Geraniums that curves toward the street. You can also just see the edge of the water hydrant. You'll see more images of those locations.
After living here 29 years, they're replacing the storm and sanitary sewer systems that were put in when the houses were built in the 1950s as well as new water and gas mains. They're also getting rid of the on-street parking lanes and using that space to create a shared bike/pedestrian lane as the city bases transportation on the safety of those two groups rather than cars.
This project began in April and runs until early November. Our lack of rain has been a boon to this project as weather has not affected their schedule.
Every morning just before 7 a.m. the water truck comes down the street shooting water out of spigots on the front and back of the truck to help keep down the dust.
The street is a mess and barely deserves the name "dirt road," though there is plenty of dirt. The view from our house east with the green pipe on our neighbor's lawn. The orange fence is a safety measure as it marks a deep hole where the crew is working. The orange signs in the far distance mark the end of the block where the cross street is located.
Looking west. The Oak tree with the yellow ribbon around it is at the end of our driveway. The ribbon indicates this is an important tree and the crews need to preserve it. We actually had one of the city foresters here the day they were digging near it to keep an eye on things.
The roadway and lawns are a constantly changing landscape of colorful spray paint marks indicating underground pipes.
We'd been watching the crew putting in the sanitary sewer pipes in the roadway. Now they were getting to our house to put in the new connecting pipes. They cleared their work area of greenery before we even realized it had happened.
Next morning before the workmen got to our house Mark and I dug out all the Hostas and a bunch of the Hakonechloa grass to save. I realized all my special white daffs were now half gone and so I grabbed as many of those as I could as well.
We cleared this area out and luckily the workmen were not going to have to remove our rocks that line this area of the path which will make it easier to know what goes where when we replant in the fall.
We filled our largest wheelbarrow full of plants . . .
along with 9 buckets of shrub size. It seemed easier to take everything and make decisions later about what will actually get replanted.
Then the big guys came to our house.
Getting ready to dig. The water hydrant is on the west lot line.
I'm not sure how many scoops of dirt they removed to make the hole the depth they needed. When the installed the manhole in front of our hose near the Oak tree, they went down 22 feet!
This worker is removing a section of the old stainless steel gas line that was abandoned when the new plastic one was installed earlier this spring.
These pairs of linked street plates make a box that gets set into the hole to keep the dirt walls from collapsing on the workmen down there. For deep excavations like the one in front of out house they are stacked two high.
It is amazing to watch this work and realize that despite the big machines a lot of it is done by hand as the guys maneuvering the box show.
I've learned that despite guys standing around they are not just shooting the breeze. They are always waiting for the next machine or pile of gravel or whatever to arrive.
The hole is dug and ready for the pipe to be inserted.
It's all marked off with safety fencing.
Job done until the next stage of the project. I did notice that years of letting the Geraniums die back in place and putting down leaf mulch had created some pretty nice soil in this area of the garden which has been replaced with some pretty sorry looking 'fill.' Trying not to think about that . . .
Mark has taken around 5000 of photos so far. He knows the members of the crew, the dump truck and equipment drivers, engineers and more. Putting that personal face on this project has made it facinating to watch and much easier to deal with than probably would be the case otherwise. I have been so impressed with the skill and agility of these workers, that it has completely changed my ideas about what happens on big city projects like this.
I should point out that though I used the term "workmen," I've seen female dump truck drivers, flag-persons, concrete installers, and more than one city engineer supervising the work.
