Dirto Finito... For now...

This is what 120 truckloads of dirt looks like...

Let me first say that we have been really getting hammered with moisture this fall.  We could have been doing this little project back in August when we were all dry, but my own stupidity for getting the budget together coupled with the bank being pretty slow to approve things put us right in the wettest time we have seen in more than a year... 

I'm not going to say bad things about the bank...  Personally, I wouldn't lend money to myself (pretty much a bumbling idiot) at the rates they are getting for money.  But trust me when I say they left no stone unturned in terms of checking on things before we were approved.  Then, after we were approved, they fiddled around some more.  We are glad that that part is behind us, but there sure is a lot of paperwork dealing with draws and such...  I would say so far contracts and draws (and writing checks) will probably be the worst part of this whole process. 

OK, back to the dirt...  Rained this Monday all day.  Mist, fog, and crap all day.  Tuesday morning the pad was disgusting.  This fill dirt turns into really nasty stuff when it gets wet.  Slippery to walk on, and then you can't get it off of you.  Just nasty...  By Wednesday, though, things were looking decent, so a judgement call to attempt a finish on Thursday. 

This morning, bright and early, the guys showed up and started pushing things around again.  When the first loaded truck came into the driveway, it was not good, he sunk in, slipped around... but being a brave soul, kept coming in and made it to the pad.  So, we dumped a couple of more truckloads of fill in the driveway and they worked the drive back out, and surprisingly, by the end of the day, the driveway was pretty good. 

The pad, on the other hand, was excellent.  Tony, the dozer driver, did an amazing job of working things around.  When they put these things in, they normally go about 6 to 8 inches per "lift", and then work that around and pack it down.  Tony, on the other hand, pushes dirt out from the dump site in tiny little increments, and blades back and forth on it breaking everything up and packing it down.  This packs things much better and they have great control over what they are doing.  In addition, the dump trucks are asked to roll back and forth on the whole thing while they are loaded.  Here is a pic of what that looks like after they "roll" it...

As you can see..  The trucks are not sinking in much at all, and this pad is as hard as concrete.  Each mound of dirt you see is 1 truckload, which is about 12 cubic yards.  This dirt is compacted to about 2/3 of that volume.

By the end of the day, 120 loads of dirt total, 1000's of passes with the dozer, and they had a lazer flat pad.  They check everything with a lazer level and I am amazed they are not more than 1/2 inch off anywhere. 

Time also to finally "set" the culvert...  This they claim was easy, but it actually took a while.  First, they dug a trench out of the temporary driveway, then shot some grade lines, and then worked things around.  A load of "stabilized sand" comes in, and the tube actually sits in this sand.  Then, more stabilized sand, topped with clay fill and then finally topped with 4 loads of rock. 

This picture is taken as they are just digging things out.  As you can tell, things are a complete mess. 

This is the new driveway... I had them crown it up quite a bit to keep it from holding water.  I really need this to dry out and firm up a lot, as the next big task is to get the concrete over this thing.  The orange dirt you see is actually a little stabilized sand left over that didn't find it's way over the tube. 

BTW, stabilized sand (near as I can tell) is non-uniform in size, so it packs better, and it is mixed with a couple of bags of cement.  So it actually sets up hard as concrete.  Surrounding the tube, which in turn protects the tube from heavy objects up top... Tomorrow I plan on driving some 2x4 stakes in there to keep people from driving over the end of the tube. 

What appeared to be a pretty long tube somehow disappeared down in there.

OH, the engineers showed up way after dark and did some compaction "studies" to make sure all is well... Minimum compaction is 95%, and ours tested at 104%. 

We are GO for forms...  Scheduled for Tuesday, but supposed to rain for the next 2 days... For now, I am SUPER elated to have the pad in place.