My friend Michael died this morning. Which got me thinking about water. Pretty much anything can get me thinking about water, but Michael, a brilliant craftsman with an eye for restoring old homes and the patience to do it right, was the rare soul who “got it” and could also design and build it. And, unlike any other contractor I’d ever met, Michael shared my quirky sensibilities when it came to water.
I’d known him for a few years before being invited to the home he shared with his woman-friend, the half of the couple that was my introduction to him. The house was of a style typical of cities and first-ring suburbs of the upper Midwest built in the early third of the 1900’s. Like most of the houses in its city, it had a modest yard, which is another way of saying that neighbors were close by.
Knowing that I could be trusted with contraband information, on that first visit Michael invited me upstairs to a small balcony off the back of the house, probably intended as an “airing porch” back in the day. Despite the proximity of potentially prying eyes from next door, Michael had managed to create a private, outdoor shower, up on the second level where it had access to summer breezes – this was a summer-only shower – and views of the setting sun. Despite its nonconformity – to code as well as to convention - I was insanely covetous and for the next two years let my wheels turn on how my husband and I could build something similar.
I still haven’t figured out how to build an outdoor shower at my city house, but shortly after we moved to Minneapolis – almost eight years ago – we implemented a different Michael-inspired project.
When it comes to rain, beyond what can be captured in rain barrels, the goal should be to slow it down and get it to soak into the ground. “Infiltrate” as we water folks are prone to saying. Otherwise, it causes all manner of havoc. Unable to follow its natural course, rain runs off roofs, turf, and roads into storm sewers. It picks up trash and lawn chemicals on its way, and, as it gathers steam, eventually erodes stream banks and pollutes lakes, to say nothing of the eyesore created from floating straws and bottlecaps it carries with it. If the water can instead make its way into the soil, wonderful things happen.
As rain, now “stormwater” because it’s hit the ground, moves slowly through soil particles, the underground microbial community cleans it of most contaminants. Aquifers are replenished, providing a hidden reservoir to sustain plants through dry times and maintain stream flow between rain events. Plus – something that trout anglers know well – it cools the water. Imagine the summer temperature difference between a basement or a cave and the roadway outdoors, and you’ll be able to picture why water that makes it into the ground is cooler once it emerges than water that journeyed across pavement.
Within a year of moving to the Twin Cities, we got to work retrofitting our urban lot to be as rain-friendly as we could manage. Four rain barrels, two raingardens, and the replacement of lawn with native perennials and vegetable beds got us much of the way there. But I still had the problem of the driveway. The concrete slab gradually sloped away from the house out to the sidewalk and, a few feet beyond, connected to the road. We aren’t far from one of Minneapolis’ famed lakes, so it’s pretty much a straight shot from our driveway to the storm sewer to the lake. But I had seen what Michael and Susan had done with their driveway back in Wisconsin, and I wanted the same for ours.
The idea is quite simple though the installation requires muscle and equipment. Basically, I wanted to install a modified French drain at the base of the driveway to divert precipitation into the ground and/or a rain garden before it could hit the street. Our muscley son rented a concrete saw – I was impressed that he knew how to use one – and sliced two parallel cuts about six inches apart across the width of our driveway. We then employed a landscape crew – the ones who were helping us with the raingardens – to pry out the strip of concrete and excavate a trench about eight inches deep. In this they laid a single layer of landscape cloth, and atop that went four-inch black perforated drainage tubing, and finally a layer of small stones.
That would have been sufficient to capture gentle, garden-variety rains which could soak into the soil at the base of the trench, but for gully-washers we needed something more. The crew extended the trench and piping another two feet on one side of the driveway and directed the outflow into the front-yard raingarden.
For the last seven years, this simple system has been keeping our driveway runoff from draining to the street. In the photo below you can see that sand and sediment have filled in the spaces around the stones, but this doesn’t seem to have impeded the absorptive capacity. I clean it out every two years or so, but it’s mostly because I like the look of the bare stones.
We took the easy route by asking other people to implement my vision – Michael’s vision – but most DYI types would find this to be a cake-walk project. For me, it has the added benefit that, in addition to playing its part in keeping the lake clean and the groundwater replenished, it keeps Michael in my life, each and every day. He may be gone, but he’ll never be forgotten.
