Lake retaining wall

Here was the scene at the lake this past summer as unseasonably high water and wind last spring "washed out" our landscape between the pool facility and the dock.  Exposed irrigation pipe like this is not good.  PVC pipe of this type (all type that is white) degrades very quickly when exposed to direct sunlight.  Degraded plastic pipe is very brittle and should not be under pressure.   That is why all summer we had this area pressurized only briefly so as to irrigate the area, and then the valve was shut so that we didn't have to worry about this pipe breaking and causing a catastrophic "wash out".  Access to the lake with any type of machinery is difficult, and up until the last few months of the summer, this area was still under water.  That is why we are just now able to resolve the situation.  Soon, the rains will come and the lake level will rise making it very difficult to fix this problem.  So yesterday during the Police Fireman Tourney, most of the staff went into action on the shore of the lake.  This picture below shows them constructing a retaining wall of large crushed rock that wont be washed away by the inevitable high water we will see this upcoming winter.

Also, this picture shows that we sleeved the irrigation pipe with a large 6 inch pipe so that the rocks wont rub against the pressurized pipe.  So inside the sleeve is new irrigation pipe since the old stuff was ruined by exposure to sunlight.  You can see in this next picture that there really isn't that much dry land to work on and currently the lake is at it's lowest point of the year.

But lack of dry land is really not the most challenging aspect of this project.  The toughest part of the whole thing is navigating the steep access road from the back lawn to the lake shore.  This road is so steep that very few vehicles in our fleet have the traction ability to climb back up it.  In this case we needed to haul large heavy loads of rock down the hill and then climb back out.  The only vehicles that we could do this work with are the two all-wheel drive Toro Workmans.  Here you can see Kevin descending on the road with a heavy load.

Well it took most of the crew all day but they got'r done.  GREAT JOB GUYS!!  Below is a couple of pics of the finished wall.  Will it hold up against Mother Nature this winter?...............Confidence is high.