One seemingly small but necessary step to completing the wall rebuild was creating proper drainage. We doubt this was done when the old wall was put in fifty years ago, and while it seemed a simple enough idea, it required quite a bit of work.
First we dug a small trench westward of the north end of the wall (first pic) with the excavator; this was pretty straightforward. We then laid a run of pipe south to north behind the footer with several vertical pipes joining it, turning it to run out along the trench. As you can see in pic 2, it lay atop drainage cloth installed along the entire bottom and back (west) side of the trench.
The most difficult part of this work was the section shown in pic 3. It had to be excavated by hand, as that grey pipe running in front of the white drainage pipe is actually the conduit carrying the wires to the solar array sitting off the corner of the wall. Thankfully the people who did the solar install for the POs were very helpful when I called them for assistance locating the conduit. They sent me all their original installation documents, including pictures and drawings, so we knew exactly where the conduit lay and were able to expose it without any issues.
Then there was a matter of making a drain basin (pic 4). It was filled with large (four inch) river rocks, and after inspection by our geotechnical engineer, it was all filled in with soil (pic 5) so the last stages of the project could begin.
