Working With Neighbours - Fixing the Drive

Just before Christmas my neighbour (and good friend) rang me up to say about a soft spot on our shared drive. He suggested that we sort it out, saves getting anyone in and saves a load of money. There's 4 pipes down there so it was a role of the dice as to who it was. 

He got a few fittings in but we decided to leave it until after the Christmas holidays were over so if we needed anything specialist we could buy it easily. We set a date for the 4th of January to get it sorted. 

My neighbour is now 79 so to help with the digging he got his son Paul to come and help. He is a fencer by trade and as so an excellent digger! Once we unearthed the pipes (with lots of bailing of water) I then managed to start the digger (easy start) and dig us a larger patch so we could get down to work on it. 

As I was the youngest of the three and still had good knees it was decided that I should go down the hole to make the connection! I can tell you I was soaked and frozen by then end, even though the water was off the hole was still pretty damp! 

With the pipe repaired we back filled the hole (10mm gravel around the pipes then mot on top) and will let it settle for a while before adding a bit more stone on top. 

Although not the nicest job it was fun to work with some other people for a change and we laughed and joked through the whole thing. 

Good neighbours make such a difference to where you live and I'm so lucky to have mine, for these last nine years he's been a friend and a mentor.