a friend who was working with me for a bit the other day caused me to realize why i've never seen a house built on a french drain/rubble trench foundation hybrid. the plastic pipe is not exactly... stout.
and THEN he pointed out that instead of backfilling my secondary drain ditch with a couple tons of gravel by hand, i could've used a nice galvanized, corrugated steel conduit, nearly uncrushable, and a bonus to the strength and lifespan of my back-up drains. but he mentioned it just a couple days too late.
so i added a quaternary, that's a FOURTH backup drain at tire level.
i was stressed for a couple days, thinking about subsidence and flooding, but finally remembered today -
i'm using bags that will fill to 19 inches wide. they wont fucking fall.
and if this house floods, it'll already have to be the end of the world.
yeah, the house will be a little overbuilt, but that's because this is my first time, and because my cultural affiliation is "slacker," so i allowed for at LEAST a bit of a screw-up, by making the fucker ginormous.
which i'll never do again. no more earthbag for me, unless i'm building into an even bigger berm, like a root cellar or something. i live in the american rainforest - wood is the way to go.
not that i regret a thing. now i'll have a nice cozy tornado-proof(ish), earthquake-proof (mostly), virtually gamma-ray-proof house. which is what i've always wanted.
oh yeah, and zombie-proof. that was really a big design consideration.
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