What you don't want is moisture to seep into the wall and get close to wood inside. I would first establish where the grade should be (disregarding that part of the wall is brick). Mark it out with a chalk line. Extend the bituminous waterproofing (such as what has already been applied to the concrete) to that line, including the brick that will be buried. Backfill and establish a proper grade. I wouldn't worry that a small amount of waterproofing will be above grade in the end. It will be covered by plantings. The scheme of filling a trench with rubber mulch will not work because it, too, will hold moisture which will eventually work its way into the wall. It is waterproofing DIRECTLY ON THE WALL that you need. Forget all the landscape fabric, plastic, etc. This stuff will not do the job of waterproofing. Ultimately, it will be in the way -- probably fairly early on -- and will get torn up, at which point it will become a mess.

I have to return my Sunset book to the library today, but I get to keep the others until the 21st. I went through it real quick and scanned pics of the flowers I liked the looks of so that I could remember what they are later. I will look up all the ones that were reccomended here later and see if I like the looks of them. But after looking through the Sunset book here are some of what I like: Penstemon Cransebill Daylily Lily-of-the-Nile Sage Santa Barbara Daisy Gazania Ice Plants Rosemary Trailing African Daisy Verbena Blue Star Creeper Any opinions of the plants that I like? I'm having a coworker of a friend come out this week to give me a bid of leveling out the right side of the hill and putting a retaining wall in so that one day I could put a hot tub up there. I may also find out how much it would cost to terrace the other side as well. I doubt I can afford to do both, and frankly the hot tub will have priority. :-) After my visit to the nursery I've been thinking about plant placement and whatnot. The man told me I should make everything symmetrical. That makes sense, but if I put the space for the hot tub on the right, then my lemon tree is no longer in the middle, and the big tree on the left hand side gives shade so the plants under there would have different needs than the plants on the other side. Also, what should I plant under the tree? The leaves fall and will need to get picked up, so it needs to be able to either withstand the leaves on top of it or with stand raking or me trampling on it with my blower/vacuum. Any ideas??? As for my wall and the drainage. I noticed in the middle of the wall at the level of my patio there is a small cut out about the size of a thumb or so. Could this be for drainage? There is another one over at the BBQ. Thanks again for all the help.

Passed inspection. The flood test is awesome. Has not budged off it's mark. The pressure test however on the water lines was harder. This was my first time testing Worsebo Pipe and the pipe kept slacking off the 200PSI mark. 6:00 AM I cranked it up. 6:30 checked and the pressure dropped to 140 PSI 6:30 AM I cranked it up again - back to 200 PSI 7:00 AM down to 160 PSI Tighten the hose connection at the pump. Cranked back up to 200 PSI at 7:00 AM checked at 8:00 and it was down to 180 PSI. Checked the hose connection at the body jet location and re cranked it up to 200 PSI. Checked at 9:00 and the PSI reading was 195 PSI. So I cranked it up to 205 PSI and it dropped to 200 PSI. It held this pressure from 9:30 AM till 3:30 PM when the inspector showed up. Thank God. I told the inspector the issue and he mentioned that that pipe can be difficult to get the pressure to hold just right. These new Stainless Steel Flood Test testing Rings of mine make marking a flood test so much easier. See the water crossing the ring? There are scratches in the ring right where the water passes so precise measurements can be had. The ring is heavier guage and Marine grade for a life time of service. Had to get creative on this install. The top clamping ring shown did not have weep channels under the top collar so I made them. The brown/black waterproofing is Ardex 8+9 - it should not be used with a clamping drain. The inspector did not ask me about this yesterday only felt the product. What you can not see in this picture is how I used one large sheet of Laticrete Hydro Ban Sheet membrane to cover the entire shower base and up the walls and curb. That by itself would be fine - IF - laticrete allowed the use of it's membrane with a clamping drain. So below that I used a NobleFlex Flashing. A lot of trouble - next time I will just use on piece of NobleSeal CIS like I normally do. But this job I had none and wanted to use up some left over materials. I have lots of Laticrete Hydro ban sheet membrane left over from the steam shower I just built so you will see more of this coming up.

By IRC, the ceiling height may be reduced to 60" "where people cannot walk" which means the back of the sink or the back of the toilet, or a shower area taken up by a bench (as long as the 30" hoop/80"is met in the shower) , so right now it appears that the toilet is in a spot that would no longer be permitted. You definitely have the room to get a legal powder room in this space (by international code/your local codes my be more stringent), ceiling height and all. Maybe just not with this toilet location or position. If you could move the toilet it may help, but moving a toilet is not cheap. The other thing is since you have a hole in the roof already, you may be able to enlarge it and pop up a dormer. Again, not so cheap. In my location, if the toilet was not relocated and was 12" on center instead of 15" (the old requirement), it would be grandfathered. Actually, that would be allowable in some circumstances now even if the bathroom were completely reconfigured (such as it being the sole bathroom in the house and only having limited room). A toilet in that position may have met a local code at the time it was permitted, or at least passed in your jurisdiction at one time, but currently it could really only be in this general position if it were turned 90 degrees and the Tank was against the knee wall. Could you draw this in a plan and indicate the various ceiling heights throughout?