Next step was to get the retaining walls behind the shed and house installed. This has a couple of benefits:
- I have a nice well-defined edge for the sand pads.
- I can run all my services in the cavity behind the walls, before backfilling.
Had a crack at digging the trench alongside the shed myself, with the help of a friend and a jackhammer. In 6 hours we exhausted ourselves and got….10 of the 40-odd meters of trench dug. 🙁 Back to the experts….
Called in my friendly earthworks guys, who rocked in with a bigger excavator and got most of the rest of the shed trench dug in about 2 hours. The only bit left was a couple of hard bits:
Which I thought would just be harder rock. They came back with a rock breaker and had a hard time with what turned out to be a big lump of solid granite. 🙁 Oh well, it’s done now.
Other bonus happening was that I recalled my neighbour (who bought the house next door that was originally owned by the same people as my block) was looking to do some landscaping, and I thought he might possibly want some fill. I, as previously noted, have a mountain of fill big enough to have its own climate. Happily he was in favour of taking it, so I’ve avoided a lot of dumping fees in favour of my earthworks guys dumping most of it in his backyard.
looking great, can’t believe you hit a big lump of granite – any pic
Yeah, the granite didn’t make me happy – the big lump (and what’s left of it afterwards) is in the first & second pics, the colour is so close to the general hard stuff that it’s hard to get a good picture of it.