Extending the patio - Part One

Just some quick notes on this weekend's project of extending the brick patio out back.

Dude! This is a lot of work! I'm extending the bricks that were here when we bought the place another 32 square feet into a planter bed. This planter bed is hopelessly shaded from the sun and relatively cool. Probably a great place for mushrooms and maybe some ferns, but nothing else. Nothing has ever grown there except some spider plants and they didn't do so well either. The soil is very damp too.

That makes me wonder about the plumbing ... Nah, there's no standing water. When I have seen what they call "slab leaks" there is water pushing up right below the slab level. I've dug down a foot below that and no water is pushing up. So we should be OK.

Soil is a misnomer. It's clay and some dirt. Our street is sitting on top of at least 20 feet of fill I think. They put in a retaining wall and leveled our complex with Main Street. We are at the back of the complex which was the natural low spot back in 1979. It's not anymore.

Anyway here's basically what's happened so far.

The first stop of the day was my cleaners and then OSH. Picked up some heavy duty plastic bags, a square garden spade, and some big plastic bags normally used for storing chairs and such to line the back of the truck with. ('97 Toyota 4-Runner). Headed home. By now it's like 7:30 or eight so I can start with the quiet work. I'm in a condo with neighbors on both sides. So, keeping the peace is an issue at 6:00 a.m.

Then the crap in the planter was loaded out in the 42 gallon 3 mil plastic bags I just got at OSH. Anything less than three mil tears. These are sold under the label "contractor's clean up bags" very often. The brand I get at OSH is Tuffies. I used bags so I could get the stuff through the house to the truck with a minimum of mess.

A lot of people use five gallon plastic buckets too. These are great of you have a dumpster or an open truck. With the 4-Runner I like to keep the mess to a minimum, so having it all individually bagged is a plus. I know, not especially "green" on this one, but you have to compromise I guess. I'm a little surprised however that I have not seen these bags made of recycled polyethylene. They could be any mish mash of colors around. Who cares?

Each bag held 5 - 6 bricks and or 5 - 7 scoops of dirt. About 40 pounds. I then hauled them out to the Toyota 4-Runner. I blew through 24 bags in about an hour. Did some math, figured that was all the truck should handle and went to the dump. The dump weighed the load at about 900 pounds. $20.00 and I'm off for load #2.

Back at the ranch, there is now a soldier course border and a two course (layer of brick) high stub wall between the patio and my hole, which is not totally cleared out yet. I can see under the soldier course there is a small footing. Armed with my 2 pound Estwing sledge or "single jack" I go at it.

Soldier course, by the way is a term for a row of brick set next to each other in the same direction. Thus they look sorta like soldiers all lined up for a parade or something else. (Bring them home damn it.)

OK then ... First thing was to score the brick stub wall with my Makita 4 inch grinder and a diamond blade. I've had this blade for years. I don't use it often, but when I need it, it's great. I scored it where I wanted the demolition to stop. The scoring was marginally effective however. This is concrete brick and does not break as cleanly as clay brick.

Oh, make no mistake, this brick is tough. This is not cinder block or cement brick. This is concrete brick. I think this stuff is tougher than any clay brick by a mile. I'll get a picture of it up soon. It's not as good looking as clay, but it's OK.

So after beating on the stub wall for ten minutes I determined I need a 10 pound sledge and a face shield. My glasses are not adequate eye protection for this one. Off to OSH. They have a nice one with a plastic handle. Presumably there's some fiberglass in it too. I went for that one. It's a Jackson. And it appears to be US made.

Wood handles break too easily. One miss, wood hits brick, handle shatters right at the base of the head and the 10 pound of steel go flying. Bad. They also get loose. I will use this once every two years. When I go to use it, I don't want to have to do handle maintenance.

Metal handles are too jarring and add mass where you don't really get any benefit from it.

As far as the "green" aspect, I think it's a wash. I saved part of a tree. But I created demand for an oil product. The handle will last longer thus diminishing demand for another part of a tree down the road. It'll also diminish demand for another manufactured good and all the resources that go with that.

The fiberglass handles are really the best bet.

So after I get some more Tuffies, an American Optical face shield, very nice, and a couple of other impulse buys I couldn't resist it's back to the bricks.

The face shield assembled easily and was pretty easy to adjust. But could have been better. But the plastic is thick. With that on and my gloves back on I start swinging were I had been beating on it before. It was like the bricks were not even there. The amount of velocity you can get at the end of a long handle combined with 5X the mass made a huge difference.

After about twenty minutes the wall was in pieces and the footing was in one to 18 inch chunks. Ready for the bagging again. So another 20 ish bags later, I'm done with this part and the hole is cleaned out and ready for the sand underlayment.

Another half a ton of garbage to the dump and $20.00 later it's over to Home Depot to get 20 bags of sand and a bag of premix mortar. I got that loaded into the truck and called it quits. I was pretty sore by then. It was 3:00 and I had been running hard since about 6:00 a.m.

So today will begin with loading the sand into the back and leveling that. Then I will go to Home Depot to get more brick and with any luck get this done today.

I need to do a post on how to use a sledge hammer and bust up concrete at some point. There are a couple of fine points I learned the hard way that make life a ton easier. There's also some thought that needs to be given to when the sledge is too small and it's time to go rent some power tools.

Pictures to be added to this post later.