Start your design by documenting and assessing water flow. You will want your design to address three things: a normal rain for your area, the once-in-a-lifetime 100 year storm, and the retention of water to decrease irrigation cost. Unless they have lived through it, few people understand the impact of 9 inches of rain over 90 minutes. Depending on the grading and elevations for the proposed deck and patio, it's possible a have water level close to or above your floor elevation. The windows under you kitchen won't hold the pressure. When they blow out your basement will flood. In my area water runs about $2 / 1000 gal. Over a year the total rainfall has a value of $1,500.00. Common runoff rates are 2/3. Design can reduce runoff to one 1/3 and result in a actual yearly saving of $300.00 or more. Pay close attention to the thread on rain gardens. In the graphic below I show water flow as I understand it from your photos. Some of the flow is shown with in light blue, some as a bold blue arrows. Bold indicates areas of concern. If there is water comimg onto your lot from the uphill side, you need to know how big of an area follows this path. Is it a 200 sq ft part of your neighbor's back yard or the roof water and drainage of several back yards. The blue "?" is an area, because it faces the uphill side of the lot, that will be prone to a drainage problem. Pay particular attention to the design here to assure positive dainange. The drainage from the kitchen area must be maintained. You can pipe the flow from a normal rain from this area but you can't pipe the flows from a 100 yr storm event. A design that carries large surface flows out and around the proposed patio won't look right. To route the flow between the deck and patio you will need to keep the grade there low and wide enough to carry the 100 yr storm. You might want to start thinking of dry stream beds or water features such as a small pond for this area. To do a good job with the design above and the next step below, you need an acturate map of the existing grades and the relative elevation of the house, sidewalk and street. To gather the data to complete the base map you will need an auto level or lazer level. Can you borrow one, or rent one from a local store? In the graphic below I show a basic location for the deck and patio. The dashed line through the patio is where you will want to do a profile perpendicular to the sidewalk. The profile might look something like the graphic below. On grid paper, plot the existing ground line down across the sidewalk into the street. Plot the house floor elevation for reference. Select a trial elevation for the patio that is lower than the floor, best if this level is at some multiple of standard step height from the deck elevation. Plot a point 5.5 ft above the sidewalk that will represent the eye height of a moderatly tall person. Now you can play with the design of a retaining wall. Plan on a wall with a 2.5 to 3 ft solid sight barrier above the patio grade, such as a low fence, hedge, or an extention of the wall. Move the wall right to left to create the situation shown. When seated near the edge you should see over the low obstruction for a full view of the street area, but back from the edge you get the feel of privacy. Why a wall? Because a dirt slope from the edge of the patio will be too steep to mow with ease. The above exercise will determine the wall location and patio grade.

My 10x12 twinwall polycarbonate greenhouse has the north wall parallel to, and about 4 feet away, from the south facing exterior wall of our house. We insulated the north wall completely with foil-faced foam insulation and I haven't felt like there was a significant loss of light. It's true that side of my GH is a bit less bright than the sunny south wall, but that helps me because I have a range of plants, and some want more light than others. Those who don't want very bright sun go on the north side bench. I have read here (from more experienced folks) that most heat in a greenhouse is lost through the roof. This leads me to guess that being able to insulate low knee walls on the east and west ends wouldn't make a significant difference in heat loss. It may be a matter of cost, though. Twinwall polycarbonate panels can be expensive, and if I already had windows to use at a lesser cost, that would be a tough decision for me (I'm pretty frugal.) I do note that in the winter I have plants stacked from high (on shelves) to low (on the ground) and I'd hate to lose that sunlight coming in on the bottom 2 to 3 feet of my east and west walls...but that's mainly because I pack so many patio plants in, to get through the winter. Hopefully others will chime in with more GH building experience, ours was a kit.

Bob- If you still do concrete, please contact me.. I'm building a backyard patio. Thanks, RON Pearland (832)335-4914

Thanks to all of you for your ideas and your help! david52, we're planning on an uneven number--if five is enough that's good news. We do have a nice view out the front over the plains and to Pikes Peak, but the best view is out the back, and we thought in the front we'd like looking into a woodland. "Woods", as we say in the Midwest. We were just on vacation in Iowa and Minnesota and saw beautiful purple trees; the leaves look like a maple to me -- not Japanese maple, but a big broad maple leaf. Haven't been able to find out what they are yet. The weed barrier idea sounds good. I'm not sure we can keep mulch on the ground, the wind here is so extremely strong. Speaking of which, ix-nay on the omes-gnay! We'd have flying gnomes all over the block when the wind comes up. skybird, we grew up in Iowa and Ohio, but it had been 22 years since we were home. Just got back from there and fell in love all over again with the trees, although not the humidity or the tornadoes. We're at about 5500 feet here, I think, and aspens do all right. I like the suggestion of birches, though. We're not going to replace the rock, DH can't stand to tear up all that, so we'll end up with the rock in the front, an informal border of irises and peonies behind that, and then the "woods". I'm wondering if the rock part will look okay with the woods, though, since it will be sort of a desert look and then flowers and then trees. Do you have a thought about whether that will all blend? The gargoyle you suggest at least has wings so when the wind tosses it 150 yards down the road it will look more realistic as it's flying! I think it makes the gmomes look good by comparison. jclepine, I too love wisteria. It would look great on the garage but nobody around here has it, so I think it must not grow well here. We've actually put four supports on the existing trees -- wind gets up to 100 mph here occasionally we're told, although we haven't seen it over 75 yet. Thanks again to everyone. I really appreciate your help.