Installing a Drainage Grate
Mon, Sep 3, 2018This is going to sound strange, but the lake is gone!
Actually, remember it’s a reservoir? Whomever manages the dam is preparing to do maintenance on it, and is aggressively draining the lake as quickly as possible. So for at least the remainder of this year, we got a nice view of a sand pit.
All we’re doing today is pouring a drain cover for our driveway. Right where the driveway turns, there is a large culvert pipe that sticks straight up. This is so water can drain down, travel through a pipe under the driveway to the downhill side, and drain away from the driveway. When we were here in the spring, this drain was getting a lot of action.
The fact that it sticks up keeps causing concern for the delivery guys. It makes the driveway look about 4’ narrower than it really is. We’re going to cut the pipe down to grade, pour a concrete platform around it, and set an iron drainage grate on top.
I built the drainage grate form at home. All we need to do is mix some concrete, lay the rebar, and pour.
I cut holes in the side of the plastic pipe, just below the concrete form, and slipped some 4” PVC into them. This way, water can drain under the concrete pad and freely flow into this drain system. With those in place, the form system was set and we started mixing concrete.
I have a cheapo Harbor Freight cement mixer which has turned out to be a great buy. I’ve gotten a lot more use out of it than I expected, and it always makes mixing concrete easy. The only hard part in today’s operation is the electricity is a little over 100 feet away from where I need to pour (I forgot an extension cord). So we will wheelbarrowing buckets of concrete from the mixer, to the pour.
The whole thing turned out nicely, and my son got to stick his hands in some concrete.
Later, we will backfill gravel to just above the drain so everything is flush. I put a small layer of native rock above the drain grate, just to even everything out, and mark where it is. The rock won’t cause any issues with drainage.
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