The contractor discovered that there is only about 12 to 18 inches of soil then it is solid rock under the entire GarageDominium building site. An excavator with a hydraulic hammer is needed to break up the rock. Unfortunately, the excavator wasn’t readily available. They continued some grading work but couldn’t do much until the excavator arrived on February 15. With the excavator they chipped away at rock until March 3. What was supposed to take a few days took over 3 weeks. We felt bad for the neighbors that had to listen to the constant pounding.
As I mentioned before, the back of the property has a lot of trees. Actually, it was an overgrown thicket with trees, brush, and fallen branches. This was also the case along the side property lines. We’ve been wanting to clean this up since buying the lot but hadn’t had the opportunity or gumption. We decided to take advantage of cool February weather to take on this project. While the contractor worked on clearing and grading, we started clearing the brush along the sides and at the back. We used a battery powered chain saw along with pruners to clear low brush and cedar trees.
We were very careful not to cut or damage the oak trees. Oak wilt is a problem in the area so oak pruning should only be done in the winter months and the cuts must be painted. The site work contractor had already made a large brush pile while clearing the building site. We added to that pile then started creating another pile closer to our work. We worked on this project a few hours a day for 7 days. Our brush pile was huge, but the contractor mulched it and hauled it away. We are definitely too old for this and created many achy muscles. The wooded area is much nicer now. You can walk through without getting tangled in brambles or whacked in the head with branches. It’s a nice shady, peaceful area. Late this year we will do some pruning on the oaks to improve it further.
