Bruce999
September 18th, 2006, 09:53 AM
Project is done! Now I need to wait 3 weeks for the grass to grow......
This project turned out to be much more work than I had anticipated, but it was a labour-intensive unskilled job which suited my skills perfectly :-). We bought this house because it had a good sized lot for right in the middle of Ottawa (42*155). The driveway ran over 100 feet along the side of the house and then blossomed into a 3-lane behemoth before terminating at my massive 720 sq ft garage (24*30). There were ashphalt paths running off the driveway to the most decrepid garbage-can shed you have ever seen, and another path winding to a covered patio. The grass in my backyard was literally limited to a single strip, 21 feet by 5, which was not even big enough for the baby to play on when he started to walk. He would constantly wander onto the driveway with his pushtoy and then do a faceplant (poor guy).
We decided the covered patio had to go. Like everything where this house is concerned, it was huge. 112 patio stones, all covered by an open-air roof made out of 2 by 8's and fiberglass roofing. The whole was supported by old TV-antenna posts, cemented into the ground 4 feet down.
The first part was easy, since the patio roof had been built in 1972, it was thoroughly bug-eaten, rotten, and in generally rough shape. There was no need to try to keep any of the wood, nor the fibreglass roof. I ripped off the fibreglass with a wrecking bar, which went very quickly since I didn't care if it came off in pieces or in perfect strips. I chainsawed the joists until we had just the TV-antenna frame left. I then pulled up all but 28 of the patio stones, leaving just a little patio for the picnic table off the back of the house. My neighbour wanted them all and he was welcome to them. The old garbage shed went even faster, it was so rotted the chainsaw went through it with almost no resistance.
The posts of the covered patio, we found out, were sunk 4 feet into the ground, and then cemented in place <sigh>. I dug down through 3 feet of sand and root-filled soil so that we could start to wiggle the posts, but they would just not come out of the hole. My neighbour wanted them for an unknown reason (equally unknown to him) but he was fine with cutting them off as deep as we could dig. At this point, I should not have cheaped out. If I ever have to do this again, I will buy a Reciprocating Saw along with a metal blade. Instead, I tried to do it with a hacksaw. It worked, but I had to first make the holes big enough to get the hacksaw down plus have room to saw, and then I had to make 8 cuts per pole. Each pole had diagonal bars as well as verticals, all welded together. Each cut took about 10-15 minutes at extremely awkward angles, meaning it took about 6-8 hours of cutting AFTER I had dug down to 3 feet all around the pillars <gotta love that 70's construction>. All told, it took 2 solid days of work to get those 4 blasted poles out.
That was definitely the worst part of the job. Once the poles were out and carted off to my neighbours, the real backbreaking work began. I used a pickaxe to remove every path in the backyard (roughly 100 sq ft of ashphalt), then tore up approximately 120 sq ft of driveway to reduce it to a single lane in the backyard. After posting on this site and finding out that you can't sod over gravel (I am a novice :-), I dug up approximately 330 cubic feet of gravel (220 sq feet down 18 inches) and lugged it to the back corner of the backyard behind the garage. I then removed approximately 375 cubic feet of sand from under the patio stones (16 by 24 by 1) and dumped that in the very back as well.
Next I removed a large rock garden (hey, it was the 70's after all) and turned over all the ground behind the patio (roughly 420 sq feet). That took awhile, I had no idea how many rocks the previous owners had added, and some were over 100 pounds. It was meant to look hilly, with various levels and what have you, but it was put down more than 30 years ago so I kept finding more rocks under the ones I could see. I also found 272 bricks buried at various spots. Most were under the old garbage shed I tore down, but at least 100 were just scattered about, I kept finding them when I was digging. I also found 2 ancient umbrellas, a completely decomposed canvas bag, rusted metal poles, 3 car lighters, cans, and a large cement pad buried under 18 inches of sand for an unknown reason.
Finally I took delivery of 14 cubic yards of topsoil, filled in all my holes, and leveled it all out. It is now seeded with a 3-type mix, and in 3 weeks I should have a 1200 sq foot lawn!! Can't wait, all I have to do now is keep the kids off of it to give it a chance to grow.......... <that may be my biggest challenge yet>.
I guesstimate that I moved :
37,500 pounds of sand (375 cubic feet * 100 pounds)
34,650 pounds of gravel (330 cubic feet * 105 pounds)
33,600 pounds of topsoil (378 cubic feet * 88.88 pounds)
4,000 pounds of rocks (40 wheelbarrow full loads - wild guess that each was at least 100 pounds)
1360 pounds of bricks (272 bricks * 5 pounds)
= 111,110 pounds or 55.555 tons one shovelfull at a time.
Thanks for all the replies,
Bruce
This project turned out to be much more work than I had anticipated, but it was a labour-intensive unskilled job which suited my skills perfectly :-). We bought this house because it had a good sized lot for right in the middle of Ottawa (42*155). The driveway ran over 100 feet along the side of the house and then blossomed into a 3-lane behemoth before terminating at my massive 720 sq ft garage (24*30). There were ashphalt paths running off the driveway to the most decrepid garbage-can shed you have ever seen, and another path winding to a covered patio. The grass in my backyard was literally limited to a single strip, 21 feet by 5, which was not even big enough for the baby to play on when he started to walk. He would constantly wander onto the driveway with his pushtoy and then do a faceplant (poor guy).
We decided the covered patio had to go. Like everything where this house is concerned, it was huge. 112 patio stones, all covered by an open-air roof made out of 2 by 8's and fiberglass roofing. The whole was supported by old TV-antenna posts, cemented into the ground 4 feet down.
The first part was easy, since the patio roof had been built in 1972, it was thoroughly bug-eaten, rotten, and in generally rough shape. There was no need to try to keep any of the wood, nor the fibreglass roof. I ripped off the fibreglass with a wrecking bar, which went very quickly since I didn't care if it came off in pieces or in perfect strips. I chainsawed the joists until we had just the TV-antenna frame left. I then pulled up all but 28 of the patio stones, leaving just a little patio for the picnic table off the back of the house. My neighbour wanted them all and he was welcome to them. The old garbage shed went even faster, it was so rotted the chainsaw went through it with almost no resistance.
The posts of the covered patio, we found out, were sunk 4 feet into the ground, and then cemented in place <sigh>. I dug down through 3 feet of sand and root-filled soil so that we could start to wiggle the posts, but they would just not come out of the hole. My neighbour wanted them for an unknown reason (equally unknown to him) but he was fine with cutting them off as deep as we could dig. At this point, I should not have cheaped out. If I ever have to do this again, I will buy a Reciprocating Saw along with a metal blade. Instead, I tried to do it with a hacksaw. It worked, but I had to first make the holes big enough to get the hacksaw down plus have room to saw, and then I had to make 8 cuts per pole. Each pole had diagonal bars as well as verticals, all welded together. Each cut took about 10-15 minutes at extremely awkward angles, meaning it took about 6-8 hours of cutting AFTER I had dug down to 3 feet all around the pillars <gotta love that 70's construction>. All told, it took 2 solid days of work to get those 4 blasted poles out.
That was definitely the worst part of the job. Once the poles were out and carted off to my neighbours, the real backbreaking work began. I used a pickaxe to remove every path in the backyard (roughly 100 sq ft of ashphalt), then tore up approximately 120 sq ft of driveway to reduce it to a single lane in the backyard. After posting on this site and finding out that you can't sod over gravel (I am a novice :-), I dug up approximately 330 cubic feet of gravel (220 sq feet down 18 inches) and lugged it to the back corner of the backyard behind the garage. I then removed approximately 375 cubic feet of sand from under the patio stones (16 by 24 by 1) and dumped that in the very back as well.
Next I removed a large rock garden (hey, it was the 70's after all) and turned over all the ground behind the patio (roughly 420 sq feet). That took awhile, I had no idea how many rocks the previous owners had added, and some were over 100 pounds. It was meant to look hilly, with various levels and what have you, but it was put down more than 30 years ago so I kept finding more rocks under the ones I could see. I also found 272 bricks buried at various spots. Most were under the old garbage shed I tore down, but at least 100 were just scattered about, I kept finding them when I was digging. I also found 2 ancient umbrellas, a completely decomposed canvas bag, rusted metal poles, 3 car lighters, cans, and a large cement pad buried under 18 inches of sand for an unknown reason.
Finally I took delivery of 14 cubic yards of topsoil, filled in all my holes, and leveled it all out. It is now seeded with a 3-type mix, and in 3 weeks I should have a 1200 sq foot lawn!! Can't wait, all I have to do now is keep the kids off of it to give it a chance to grow.......... <that may be my biggest challenge yet>.
I guesstimate that I moved :
37,500 pounds of sand (375 cubic feet * 100 pounds)
34,650 pounds of gravel (330 cubic feet * 105 pounds)
33,600 pounds of topsoil (378 cubic feet * 88.88 pounds)
4,000 pounds of rocks (40 wheelbarrow full loads - wild guess that each was at least 100 pounds)
1360 pounds of bricks (272 bricks * 5 pounds)
= 111,110 pounds or 55.555 tons one shovelfull at a time.
Thanks for all the replies,
Bruce
