Day 1688: We all need a spur to lean on

Before I get down to business with the patio in front of the cabin there is one thing that I need to attend to first .. a wobbly post.  It's basic biology .. wood left in the ground will decompose over time. Fence posts are treated and covered to delay this but it will eventually happen nonetheless. 

I noticed when prepping for the patio to go in that the fencing between us and our neighbours was a bit wobbly .. definitely a sign of what was happening down below the surface. Figured it was best to take care of this before it becomes a bigger problem down the road. 

Digging a bit below ground the rot became obvious. This poor fence post would need some support. Enter the concrete spur which was designed for this purpose. There is a great video on YouTube that explains this entire process here - but my half ass explanation, please continue reading. 

I first needed to do a bit of digging and put the support in place. The spur was 1.2m so I was targeting 60cm below ground and 60 above. 

Taking on board the lessons learnt from earlier (read here) on overzealous use of concrete in the garden, I wasted no time in putting a call out to Scott to borrow the breaker again. I really should buy one of these one day. 

And on went the chiselling, digging, chiselling, digging, chiselling, digging .. etc. for hours on end until finally the end of the concrete came in site. Finally. 

And while many of my fellow countrymen were finding treasures in their gardens over the coronavirus lockdown period (see here), this hole once again came up empty. I'm beginning to think the dinosaurs, Romans, Vikings and just about everything else notable in history somehow avoided just avoided Surbiton. 

Half a day and 40cm done and still another 20cm to go  .. 

Finally, after some long gruelling hours of work I managed to get down to 60cm. I'm so happy the other posts look to be pretty solid as I couldn't imagine trying to do this for an entire fence. 

The posts would be held in place with square washers (because they looked nice) and 10mm coach screws. Having again learnt from previous mistakes of not having the tools for the job, these impact sockets were pre-ordered from Amazon to make short work of driving in the screws. 

The next step was to get everything level before pouring the concrete in place.. I chopped some scrap bits of wood to use as supports for this.

Looks pretty good. 

Next comes the postcrete. Amazing stuff. Fill the hole 1/3 with water, empty the bag in and stir away. The mix sets in a few hours time - but best to leave it overnight before removing any supports. 

And there you go, the finished product. You can't tell from looking at it how much work this involved. However, the fence is no longer wobbly and hopefully will give us many more years of use before we ever need to think about it again.

 

Day 578: A little garden de-construction

So what do these first 2 pictures have in common  ???

1. Both were built from stone (or concrete)
2. Both were made to last for several thousand years
3. And we have no clue what either were built for

The weather was nice this long weekend so I decided to tackle the obelisk in our garden. And by obelisk, I mean some random pole just sticking out of the ground 

I had previously given this a whack with the sledgehammer and a good boot with my steel toes and absolutely nothing so I knew that this wasn't a challenge for the faint of heart.

Today's tools were my trusty angle grinder with the masonry blade, my club hammer, my chisel, a little shovel and lots of TLC (Thumping - Lifting - Cursing)

So the first step was to clear the concrete away from the base of the pole. I later found that this was actually the easy part. I did this until I found dirt all around.

Then I kept digging, and digging, and digging, ...... and unfortunately, still no dinosaur bones

And finally I felt the pole wiggle. And with a little more digging and lots of TLC (mostly the C part by this point), the column finally gave way ..

And as you can see, there was good reason why it wasn't budging earlier on. I'm sure there are columns on the Parthenon that didn't have foundations this deep. What on earth were they trying to build?!!!

As you can see, the post gave way before the base. 

In the end, I had to rock the base back and forth and pile stones underneath to eventually work the structure out of the hole. Lot's more of the "C" here ...

But finally it was out and I was able to fill the hole with the leftover dirt. 

And now there is one big difference to Stonehenge .. our pole is no longer standing ...