We're going to have a fence installed at the perimeter of the yard where the raised beds are located - we lost too many plants to predators last year to ignore them any longer. I say "have" a fence installed, because I don't feel like doing it myself!
Before we can install the fence, we have to figure out exactly where we want to put it. We planned ahead and called those fire-starting, ill-prepared very nice folks at PG&E, and they came by and marked the location of the gas line. This was fortunate, because the gas pipe runs very close to where we were thinking of putting the fence.
After the gas line, the next biggest obstacle was the brick patio in front of the house. Eventually the whole patio is going to do one, but for now we just need to get rid of the two (2) feet furthest from the porch.
It was pretty obvious that the bricks had been installed on top of a concrete pad - it wasn't exactly clear how deep the concrete was, or whether it was solid - I was hoping it might just be a concrete perimeter...
We started chipping away at the brickwork...it soon became apparent that the concrete was a thick slab all the way through....this means more effort to break it up and more broken concrete to get rid of.
This is after about 45 minutes of breaking off bricks and, mostly, pieces of bricks, with the spike attachment on the jackhammer. It might look sunny in these photos, but it was less than 50F/10C and there was a strong wind.
After cleanup phase #1 and a quick raid attack on the thinnest corner of the slab, I was relieved to discover there was essentially no rebar in the concrete.
Breaking up the thicker side of the slab required quite a bit more effort so I handed the jackhammer over to Amy Sheep.
All done! Well sort of....we've removed about two (2) feet of the patio. There's at least another fifteen feet to go, but I have a feeling we won't be doing any more of it ourselves. The fence can now go in between the remaining section of the patio and the gas line which is marked with the yellow flag in the photo below.
In addition to all the debris strewn around in the above photo, we filled ten five-gallon buckets with broken up masonry.
After lunch we carted all the debris over to the driveway. Then we filled in the hole and smoothed out the dirt between the remaining patio and the raised beds.
That just left a tree stump to get rid of...it looked pretty small at first...
Looking quite a bit bigger after a hour or so alternating between the spade, the trowel, the jackhammer and the circular saw...
Finished it off with the chain saw and my sledge hammer. Now we just need to put the fence up.
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