500 lbs closer....
Posted August 11th, 2008 by mlhart
in
| Okay last post for the day (I think). So Saturday before our big scare Darren and our neighbor David got the old water feature set back up in its new home. Darren estimates that the basalt beast is about 500 lbs., and the landscape plan mapped a 5 foot diameter hole, so it was a big job -- says the girl who really only had to keep the 2 year old out of the way. Darren spent a lot of spare time last week figuring out what he needed and gathering supplies to get the monster in place so that Saturday he could just work. |
 First off he had to dig the hole. It was 20 inches deep in the center square and the square is about 2 feet wide. The outer circle is only 6 inches deep but is about 5 feet across. Unfortunately it rained the night before so our lovely clay soil was also not very forgiving. The nice thing was that it was a cloudy day. Because of the recent rain it was also a bit humid so after about and hour of digging Darren decided to ditch his shirt. It took him about 2 1/2 hours to dig the hole -- and haul all the wheelbarrows of dirt (about 8) to the back yard. Then he lined the hole with landscape fabric and pond liner (at which point I decided that it might make a pretty nice personal hot tub!).
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 After a quick break and a clean shirt Darren got David and they went to work devising how they were going to get the behemoth into the hole. They ended up rolling it onto the wood supports across the hole and then David acted as a counter weight as Darren lowered it into place on the concrete blocks (they had to do this very carefully because they couldn't afford to break the 1 inch pipe on the bottom of the fountain that would connect to the water pump - nor would they ever get it out of the hole once it was in). Once it was in place Darren held the rock while David shimmed it so that it was stable -- since we are pretty sure Devon will try and climb it at some point. :) Then they put in the pump, added some fill rock, some water, plugged in the pump, and tested it out.
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 Darren hooked it to a switch so it's easy to turn on/off -- even a 2 year old can do it. Devon loves it and loves playing with it. We (by which I mean Darren) still needs to add a bit more fill rock and then we'll add a few bigger stones to break up the splash a little bit and add some more interest (luckily we have quite a few large rocks laying around in our yard). Then we'll add some larger river rock so that we don't have a pool of standing water (that way I don't have to keep Devon out of it) and the feature will be done. Then a few more plants and some mulch and I think we'll have the front yard pretty well cleaned up.
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| It looks beautiful and I am very thankful to Darren who worked so hard. His entire body was sore that evening. And it turned out that we both stupidly forgot sunblock for him - his whole back is bright red just adding to his over-all pain. I think he'll be taking a bit of Ibuprofen for the next couple of days. Thanks Darren. |
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