Day: October 30, 2026

I didn’t manage to get back out into the garden before today because other things came up. However, today I vowed to cut down the ground level at the back of what will be the concrete base of my planned workshop and I did manage to make good progress.

First I ran the excavator along its left-hand side next to the excavator’s garage and then along its back end and I was then able to trim the ground level down and dump the earth removed into the hole. That was the state of play as shown in the first and second images below.

Then it was time to drive the excavator down into the hole and transfer that earth and some more as well into my dumper for use in the front of the house. When the builder dug out the trench from the front of the house to the road to take the ‘gaines’ (the coloured plastic tubes that hold the electricity and other cables) and the water supply they made a very poor job of filling it back in again. Not only was it low along most of its run giving a dip in the ground but they also left a large number of stones that had been dug up on the surface.

And not only that, when they installed the water meter the top of the plastic box in which it’s contained was a centimetre or more above the level of the ground. So my idea was to use the earth I removed today to rectify some of those problems. The job is by no means finished as I’ve had to bring the ground level up the height of the water meter box and there is still a low area around a blue stop-cock cover in the grass. There are also some other low areas to be filled in but at least I have now made a good start.

The whole idea is to get the grass area to the right of the house (or left when viewed from the road) to a state in which it can be mowed by my Isward robot. Even when I’ve got the levels right there will still be a lot of work to do as there are lots of stones and other potential obstacles all over the ground which will have to be moved and the whole area cleaned up.