Owning a house, or any real estate, for that matter, means you can plan on a constant stream of maintenance expenses and projects. Things simply wear out, and the manufacturers are masterfully designing obsolescence into products - your fifteen year water heater, or your 20-year roof shingles, for example. That's the source of most projects; then you have your deferred maintenance, your neglected properties, and finally your nice to haves. The Hawksbill Cabin features an eclectic mix of all of the above.
Since the neighbors began using the unpaved "private road" up the hill to access their driveway, we've noticed an increasing amount of run-off coming into our lot, especially with the summer rains we had this year and the wet weekend last week. A culvert had been laid into the yard and was doing a good job of diverting the drainage, but with this change to the road, there is another source of water, and it is eroding the driveway.
We've checked with the feds and the county, and it seems we are on our own here - very little legal recourse on this one either. So we've been checking into alternatives, and one we favor is building a small culvert across the drive like the one shown here. We'll angle it so it catches the water and directs it into the existing culvert. It will reduce the area we have to park up there but at least we'll save what's left of the driveway.
This particular one is installed on Stonyman Trail...one of thousands of culverts the Park has installed on the hiking trails up there. Our neighbor Dan reminded us of these recently, when he told us about loading data about these "improvements" into the GIS files of the Park.
1 comment:
You can find culverts even in my suburban neighborhood here. The creek behind my house eventually finds its way to Pax river and into the bay. There is a small group of environmentalist trying to get people to catch their gutter run off into rainbarrels or small ponds. They also divert water run off using an asphalt speed bump like thing going across their drive way leading to a small manmade pond. The pond is planted with native type swamp friendly plants. I'm working on the rainbarrels- they are expensive! but the driveway has a natural culvert where the water ends up in a puddle between a flower bed and the yard. Nancy
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