They recently put in a coffee hut across the street from my work, which made more curbing section discards where they cut in a couple of driveways. (There are massive trackhoes up the nearby hillside, bills bobbing and dipping. Bringing up rocks the size of volkswagens. Very cool stuff, and my 2-year-old really enjoys watching it. [So do I!] The blasting is some of the most fun.) Anyway, I talked to the owner of the coffee hut, and he told me to take what I wanted, it would save him the effort of carting it away. There were sections of curbing, sections of combined curb/gutter, and irregular chunks of sidewalk. The curbing makes nice steps, and the gutter sections make nice benches to sit upon. (The curbing pieces are just right for the legs.) I couldn't think of a good use for the sidewalk bits, so I left those. Sorry, guy!
I was able to get enough curbing to make another flight of stairs, down the hill on the other side of the house. I also picked up four benches' worth of guttering. Two of the longest pieces of gutter made a nice footbridge over our small creek. Much better than the pallets I'd thrown over it in past years. (These rot every couple of years, and have to be replaced. Plus, the gaps don't make for the best footing.)
The benches and footbridge are in, as they're just creative exercises in unloading. The steps are more work. Much more. Maybe later!
I actually got the Mog stuck in a hole, as the ground was a bit damp and the Mog was heavily loaded, and the tires are old. It was the same insignificant-looking hole in which I broke out a headlight six months ago. (Whiplash from a 3" tree.) This time I was pointed the other way. Even with differentials locked it wouldn't go forward, and the creek wasn't far back. So I threw the winch cable around a tree and yanked myself out. My first time. Probably not my last.
I need to get out the chainsaw and open it up a little down there.
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After a long hiatus, we finally started working on the other set of steps. I was unemployed, so we had the time. (Not that we rushed into this job mind you, it's hard work!) We'd had a lot of rain at the end of September, which softened up the ground pretty well. Also, it was nice and cool outside, great for heavy work like this, and the bugs are gone. With the ground wet, it's not even dusty. There aren't better conditions for this kind of work.
The most interesting bit of the day's work was breaking one of the longer curbing sections in half. I chipped a gouge out of the middle of one side using the pick, and propped one end of the section up on a big rock, with the gouge down. I then drove the Mog up onto the section, and after a few seconds there the section snapped in half. Sweet!
It looks like it'll take at least twelve steps to do the job, perhaps more. One-third done?
Most of the curbing sections have 'lips' at the bottom where concrete spilled out under the forms. I've been knocking these off with a big two-handed sledgehammer. Heavy work, but a lot easier than using a too-small hammer! I've got at least one section where the lip is 4" or so thick, too thick to knock off easily with the sledge. I'll leave that section 'til last, perhaps I won't need it. One needs to be careful that flying concrete chips don't hit anything important, they've got quite a range.
It still looks like twelve to fourteen steps will do the job. Two-thirds done?
With my wife's help, we put in the last three steps after breakfast, for a total of twelve. (We have difficulty communicating on such a job, but it still goes a lot faster with her help. She dug out the holes while I prepped the next step, then she backfilled dirt while I tamped. There was very little waiting that way, so we got nearly a 2× speed improvement.) The reduction in gradient at the top of the slope means these steps are farther apart than the lower ones, but that's far more tolerable to me than shaping the whole slope for a perfect flight of steps (that's a lot of work!) or having the rise of each step be variable. The top three steps are 4–6 feet in length, with the top step being the widest. That makes a nice inviting sweep into the main body of the steps.
The reach of the crane wasn't quite enough for the penultimate step, so I moved the Mog a foot or so closer to the bottom step, which solved that problem. The last step, however, was still a bit out of reach, even with tipping the body of the mog a bit towards the work site using the stabilizing jacks. As my wife was there, we ended up just manhandling it into place over the last foot. However we did take a bit more care in prepping the bed for that one, since one such trip was all we were good for! (As a tool, we used an old 27" bicycle tire. Looped under the end of the curb, it made a nice handle that I and my wife could grab onto and lift. Heavy, but manageable.)
We have exactly enough concrete left to put in two benches, assuming I can break the one remaining 6-foot curbing section in half. I plan to put in one bench on this project, the other will wait in reserve. Preferably out of sight!
... After lunch I went back out by myself, and put in the one bench. That's really tedious work, because you have to make two trenches for the legs, but nothing is square, or even the same size. And the bottom of the bench itself is not flat. That makes for a whole lot of trial fitting. On the other hand, it's not that critical either. Because the leg pieces were longer than the depth of the bench itself, I had to cut into the bank a lot for those so they didn't stick out the front. (There wasn't enough loose dirt around to make a very big landing in front of the bench, so it needed to sit back against the bank itself. I placed big rocks on top of the legs where they jut out the back, and this hides the excess to a large degree. I left the last bench top and the remaining 6-foot curb section (its legs, if I can break it in half) where they lay. I was tired, and didn't feel like moving them elsewhere.
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