Happy 4th

Today is the 4th of July, 2011. It is the 9th anniversary of marriage to my wife. Melinda. Happy anniversary Woman.

Today she gave me a gift. A gift of alone time.  I worked on a patio I am building for her today. Today was the 4th session of excavation.  During the 1st session I removed the existing gravel and flat stone.  I used that material and made this:




Then there were two more session of additional soil removal.  Today was the fourth and final. I have move a total of approximately 17 yards of gravel, rocks, and till and now have a perfect hole to backfill with stone, sand and and the concrete patio blocks.  The following pic is the end of the 4th excavation session/. 7 hours today. 22 hours total. 10 tractor hours.

 This hole is level to 24 inches depth (+_3inches) from the pavement on the left, all the way to the right.  The bottom is hand tamped (compacted).  It is about 200 sqft. 2 feet deep.    There was a lot of hand shovel digging.  Hard, but I got my man hands back.
This fucking shit will not frost heave when I am done.  Effort in equals favorable results out.

Excuse my derivation from good formatting, I am too damn tired to care. It is beer O'clock


Oh yeah right. i haven't posted in a while...I got a tractor. Its frigging aWEsoMMMMe.

Day 5

Last day of diggin'

Shortly after this the 20 year old CASE excavator blew a valve so the guys had to go get the other one. It slowed things down a little bit, but we managed to finish the excavation and even put a good dent in the backfilling before the end of the day Friday.

The only thing to do after this was drive the 3 hours home.

Digging. Day 4.

And the hole grows.

This picture was take from about the same angle as the picture from Day 1. Part deux except now I am looking down on the excavation instead of up at it. There was a nice yellowish silty layer that can be seen on the right side of the excavation wall. The impacted soil is that grayish stuff on the left.

Lots and lots of fill was used when this property was built up in the early 1920's. Loads of shalely fill (right side about silt), large concrete blocks and junk...it all made for some very unpredictable hydrogeology and really helped the petroluem move all around and get the soil and water good and dirty.