A step forward in the backyard, but will the snow stop it cold?
I came home today to find the landscaping contractors wrapping up the first day’s work on the new paver walk, finishing up the layer of quarter stone and pea gravel.
Finally!
This project has been a long time coming. We were initially trying to pull this together all the way back in summer and fall 2012 when I ended up doing my timber retaining wall on my own. And we thought it would happen around Thanksgiving or early December, but once we missed that window, it was going to be awhile, since the contractor was heading out of the country and shutting down the business for a month in Jan-Feb during the worst of the winter.
Ha! Whoopsie! Now we’re staring down the barrel of 5-10″ of snow starting tonight into Wednesday, and he just started the work this morning.
This project is part of DC’s RiverSmart program, designed to incentivize homeowners into doing things to reduce stormwater runoff, which in DC, runs into a combined rain/sewer system that overflows into the river during heavy rainfalls. And that’s just gross.
That’s how we got our rain barrel for $25 or so. Along with that, they’ll heavily subsidize other work to reduce runoff, like providing a $1200 credit toward the removal of a driveway or large impervious surface that gets replaced with permeable surface. They’ll pay to remove the concrete or pay for new pervious surface. In this case, paver stone installation for us.
It’s a great program and though the wait can be long for approval and for contractors, if you’re patient, it’s totally worth it. We’re paying just a small amount for this project and ending up with a new permeable paver walk after all is said and done.
Once we nailed down our RiverSmart-approved contractor, we were at the mercy of his schedule and the approval from the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, which manages the program for the District Department of the Environment. Everything was approved back in the Fall and we’ve just been waiting for our contractor.
Here’s to hoping that Green Room DC works fast on Tuesday. Precipitation is supposed to start falling in the afternoon sometime, and then it just goes downhill from there.
Late update! By noon on Tuesday they had made some serious progress. Looks like they’ll get things done before the snow arrives.
