Apr10 Written by:Tom Farin
4/10/2008 4:03 PM
Human Infrastructure Construction
Ok, so you are probably wondering, "Aside from the trees you planted Farin, what have you actually done?"
Actually, quite a bit. I didn't take a photo before I started this summer but here's a really early photo of the construction of the train viewing platform and walkway.
I thought it was important to first build the infrastructure to handle the utilities and the 1:1 humans that would be visiting the NPC. Rather than increase the size of the deck, I decided to add a 12x16 foot paver patio. It was built on a grade and a great opportunity to practice some terracing. I chose the landscape timber as they at least suggest logging and railroads. And the red brick colored pavers bring another color often found around railroads into the scheme.
There's a new lady in my life who's as excited about this project as I. She's been a lot of help and is a great cook. So when I built the patio I included a bed for an herb garden close to the kitchen door. Some of those herbs are prototypical enough that they may migrate when I start planting around towns.
The walkway serves a number of purposes.
1. It provides a series of steps down a rather steep and when wet slippery hill.
2. The utilities are buried along the side of the bed, reducing the likelyhood of a water line being pierced or an electrical line being breached.
3. I needed some place to put the sod I was stripping off the hill. The sod is the foundation dirt for the walkways, covered with additional dirt, then landscape fabric, then pea gravel and pavers.
4. Because of its design the walkway will also provide seating for those that want to watch action down part way down the hill.
Materials used in the patio and walkway were about 100 8-foot landscape timbers, 135 16"x16" pavers, about 2 ton of pea gravel, and about 600 square feet of landscape fabric.
My 61 year old back can attest that I did almost all of the work on this project myself and it has taken about two months of evenings and weekends. And the heaviest nastiest part of the whole project is done. Now I can start building the scale portion of the railroad!!
I mentioned utilities. This will be a radio controlled battery powered railroad. Lighting of the patio and walkway will be by low voltage electrical lighting I had purchased at closeout and tucked away a number of years ago. I'll share a photo when I get them installed. Low voltage electrical lines are already in place. Off the staircase, I plan to use solar to light structures and to provide path lighting around the pond.
But I'm running 4 20A 120 V circuits down the stairs anyway. Why? First, I've already talked about the water feature that will have a holding pond near the lower tunnel opening. I'll need a lift pump in that area to make the stream 'stream'. I also plan to have streams that drain into the large lower pond in at least two locations. And a small cottage structure by the pond is in planning stages. It will, of course, be modeled to look like a NPC station.
In addition, there will eventually be hundreds of plants. I'll be installing a drip irrigation system controlled by a sprinkler system controller. The controller scored on eBay arrived today. And I have the valves, filter, and pressure reducers for the first four irrigation districts. PVC lines will carry water to my irrigation districts. And the large pond leaks and needs to be topped off periodically. I'm tired of dragging a hose down the hill so a water line will allow me to top off the water features.
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