Crushed Stone, Crushed Stone, More Crushed Stone and........... Eureka! We got it done!

We got well into Phase 4 of draining the swamp in the bathroom basement today.  In fact, we got so well into Phase 4 that we finished the job!!!

Yup, we got the sump pump installed and working, excess clay hauled out of the basement, trenches 18"- 24" deep dug around the perimeter, drain tile installed, and all backfilled with crushed stone - all completed today.

The three most difficult things to shovel are asphalt, concrete (before it's set), and crushed stone - in that order.  I've shoveled two of the three.  If you don't do it right, your forearms are aching after 45 minutes, every bone in your hands are screaming, and you're ready to throw in the towel...... er...... shovel.  Fortunately, I had an old construction labourer give me a couple of lessons on how to shovel crushed stone (you don't) which I still use to this day.

Step #1 - Don't use a pointed shovel - use a flat shovel (problem is we only have round shovels).
Step #2 - Don't try to ram the shovel into the pile.  Start at the bottom and bring your shovel up into the stone.  Your shovel will start to fill up, stone-by-stone.
Step #3 - Don't try to "overfill" the shovel.  It won't happen.  Take what's on your shovel and dump it into the plastic pail.

And a couple more tips and tricks that I just happen to do automatically without thinking. So, using my lessons-learned from a few decades ago, I tried to show the lads how to do it.  Some of them learned and some of them didn't.  But there definitely is a big difference in the way everyone's been working from when we first started on Thursday, June 30th - only 6 weeks ago. 

Now, if you don't believe that there's a right way and a wrong way to use a shovel, come and join us for the next phase of draining the swamp - the baggage room basement.

In the meantime, we managed to get 8 lorry-loads of crushed stone from our pile at the North End back to the station, down the stairs, through the basements and dumped into the trenches.  That may not seem like much until you do some calculations. 

We had 12 plastic buckets - 6 perched on each side of the lorry, filled almost to the brim with 1" clear, septic bed crushed stone.  Each bucket had to weigh at least 50 lbs.  Some quick calculations reveals that we hauled back 12 x 50 lbs = 600 lbs of crushed stone with each trip.  As you can see from the grimacing on Mike's face, those buckets do indeed weigh at least 50 lbs. 

We made 8 trips from the North End down to the station with 12 buckets of stone, each bucket weighing at least 50 lbs for a total of 600 lbs on each trip.  The 8 trips with 600 lbs of stone meant that we hauled back 4,800 lbs of stone from the North End today.  Almost 2 1/2 tons of crushed stone!!!

We now get to the difficult part of the job - hauling the buckets down the stairs, through the basements and into the bathroom basement.  Here's how we do it. 

We made 6 trips from the North End last week so that was an extra 3,600 lbs of crushed stone.  Which, if we add in the 4,800 lbs of crushed stone, gives us a total movement in crushed stone of 8,400 lbs of crushed stone - over 4 tons in all!!!

But we got the job done!!!

Once we get the bathroom basement done, we'll be tackling the baggage room basement and giving it the same kind of treatment - sink a 45-gallon steel barrel 4' into the ground to create a sump pit for the sump pump.  Glue some 2" rigid ABS plastic pipe together, bend it around, under and over some duct work, holes between basements, and around some wires.  Connect it into the rest of the drains so that we can pump the water out of the basement.  Then start digging some trenches around the perimeter of the basement, at the same time, busting up some of the old concrete columns that were pushed over when the floors were rebuilt, in addition to moving a whole pile of junk out of the basement.

In the meantime, if you see any of these lads, tell them they did one heck of a terrific job!!

Stay tuned for next week's continuing adventure of "The Swamp Chronicles!"