Retaining Walls, One Block at a Time

We made some progress on the walls during the week. The last course on the first wall was completed up to the sidewalk. Here the Micah and Jackson finished backfilling behind the wall.
As the other two worked on the wall on the other side of the sidewalk steps, Steve and I start the base course for the flower bed on the opposite side of the house. In this picture I use a rubber mallet to level the block, while Steve is in the ready position with the level.
Here's the finished product of Micah and Jackson's handy work. These walls will not have caps, but instead will be covered with mulch to the front lip.
This foursome had a quite productive day. It was good working weather, and we were able to finish both walls adjacent to the driveway and sidewalk. We finished one course for the flower bed on the opposite side, with five more courses to go.
To celebrate, we got the band back together. With this lineup, the hits just kept on coming...Everlong by Foo Fighters, Jessie's girl by Rick Springfield and Mr. Brightside by Killers, to name a few. To avoid upsetting Farley again, we kept Micah away from the microphone...well, at least away from the Bon Jovi songs. Look for the band, "MBJ Armada +1" on tour this summer.

Block Party / Retaining Wall Construction

The blocks and stone arrived Thursday, and the reality of having to build these retaining walls sets in. They arrived on two separate trucks, with the first bringing the stone.

The second truck brought four pallets of Allan Block retaining wall blocks. The truck had this nifty "piggy back" fork lift that attached to the back of the truck. Using the lift mechanism, it could easily lower itself to the ground, and lift it self back up after the delivery was complete.

The work crew arrived Friday night to enjoy the PS3 and get a good nights rest before a full day of work Saturday. The band, "MBJ Rock Armada", melted faces all across America.
It was a wet start on Saturday. After waking the troops at 8am for breakfast, we were immediately welcomed with a downpour as we surveyed the work site. The gold star goes to Micah for suggesting we erect a tarp over the work area. We finally got to work around 11am, after a return trip to the Depot for the jumbo tarp.
Micah and Bill discuss the excavation.
How many men does it take to start a plate compactor? I rented it from Home Depot since the block manufacturer recommended using it to compact the stone base.
Not only was it difficult to control, it really wasn't worth the $80 investment. A hand tamper seemed to do a sufficient job without the hassle of lugging around a heavy piece of equipment. The plate compactor seemed to be more suited for a larger patio project. Here Jackson helps rescue Micah from a runaway plate compactor.
The first block is placed!
Jackson backfills the blocks with stone and rakes it smooth. The first course of block is buried and has 6" of compacted stone for its footing.
In order to place the stones on a radius, the back "wings" are knocked off easily with a hammer and chisel.
Jenna lends a hand with the tamper.
As the workday came to a close, we were greeted with a rainbow. Although the camera couldn't actually capture the rainbow for some reason, this is an accurate artist's re-enactment.
Yes, they are holding it level! Thanks to Micah, Jackson, Brian, Jenna, and of course my wife Cendy for all their hard work.
The work crew was treated to a barbeque Meat-fest for their hard day's work. The menu included baby back ribs, marinated flank steak, salmon with habanero-lime butter, Asian grilled chicken, corn on the cob and zucchini - all cooked on the grill. I'm a big fan of Allrecipes.com, and the reviews were favorable for most of the menu. Two thumbs up for the ribs and steak. Those recipes are keepers.

The following day, sore backs and all, we continued work on the walls. For the third course, I decided to dowel-in the wall into the concrete foundation. A two-foot #4 rebar rests comfortably in some notches I created in the first two blocks. Some construction adhesive holds the bar in place. The landscape fabric is used to prevent silt from seeping through the seam between the house and first block.
The block joints need to be staggered from course to course, so this creates odd-length blocks at the start of the wall. I couldn't find a suitable saw blade, so instead I drilled some perforations with a masonry bit and hammer drill. With a few whacks of the hammer and chisel, the block splits relatively easily. However, after doing this twice, both blocks fractured. To fix this problem, we switched to synchronized hammering. I would use a hammer and chisel on the front face, while Cendy would strike the back face simultaneously. By splitting both faces at the same time, it reduces the stress on the block side walls. As expected, the piece split using the simultaneous splitting technique and did not break after being handled or placed.

I use a hoe to backfill behind the fourth course. The wall curve takes shape! It definitely was a tricky turn, but Cendy and I figured it out.Here's the progress at the end of Sunday. One more course, and this section of wall is complete.

Retaining Wall Construction Begins!

Now that sidewalk construction is complete, we can get started on the retaining walls. The areas were marked in white as part of the "One Call" system for notifying utilities of your plans to dig. The utilities have 3 business days to label their utilities on your property. There were about ten that were notified for our project, so after the call we crossed our fingers that there wasn't a conflict.


Sure enough, this high pressure petroleum line runs right next to our project. I had to go back to the drawing board to revise the dimensions for the wall on the far side of the house in the above picture.

He is the area in conflict. If you look carefully, you can see the yellow dot next to the gutter downspout. It is inside where our flower bed was going to be located. This dot represents a distance of 15' from the petroleum line which runs almost parallel to the side of the house.

Steve was nice enough to offer his services for a day full of digging. Here he is obviously proud of our digging accomplishment thus far.

Here's the trench by the sidewalk for the two-course wall that will serve as edging for this flower bed. The pile of stone base is left over from the concrete side patio which was removed.

We wondered how the WWII soldiers were so proficient at digging trenches. It took us all day to dig these 2' wide x 16" deep trenches. We dug about 60' linear feet of trench with a full day's work.

Job well done...note all the piles of excavated dirt in the flower beds. It was about to downpour right after this picture, so I'm glad we were able to fit it in.

Dub C 4 Miler Results

The weather was perfect for a 4 mile run Friday evening. Over 500 runners participated in the race, which is a rather large number for a short race. It was pretty congested for the first half mile. I finished in 37:33. I could've done better, had I not overdone it with my not-so-secret pre-race drink: Red Bull & Gatorade. All the splish-splashing in my stomach for the first 2 miles was not comfortable. I had a strong finish, but almost ate pavement as I crossed the finish line. I left it all on the road, so that's all one can ask for.

This race had some pretty good giveaways considering it was only a 4 mile race. We received a very nice (and bright!) tech shirt and also a Dub C pint glass. Although Cendy pre-registered for the race, she decided not to run since her friend from Brazil paid a surprise visit to nearby NYC. Don't worry, blog readers. I'll make sure Cendy runs 4 miles to rightfully earn her shirt and pint glass.

Blue Hen Football News

As the summer months go by, there's very little happening in the world of UD Football except the anticipation of the upcoming season. The players are working in the weight room, and it'll be a couple months until August practice begins. But there were a few stories recently that were tied to UD football.

Dave Shinskie was KC Keeler's prize recruit in 2003. He verballed to play football and baseball at UD, but instead snubbed the Hens and decided to play pro ball. After recently being cut by the Toronto Blue Jays farm system, the 25 year old has switched back to football and plans to play at Boston College as reported by ESPN. Wilmington News Journal sportswriter Kevin Tresolini blogs about the story and details Shinskie's history with UD.

Also in the news is Joe Flacco's younger brother, aspiring professional baseball player Mike Flacco. Mike is Joe's roommate in Maryland and was recently drafted by the Baltimore Orioles. Here's to hoping that Mike can make the Orioles fans, like the Ravens fans, "Wacco for Flacco".

In bizzarro UD Football news, a player was stabbed during an altercation in Newark. The story gets interesting because the player was uncooperative with police during the investigation. The player wasn't named, and it'll be interesting how this story develops.

Sidewalk Complete!

Cendy's was surprised to be woken up on her day off by the Camocrete crew on Monday. I'm glad she was home, because she was able to take some good pictures to document the last day of work. I came home from work at lunch time to watch the finishing touches. Here are some pictures.

Jesus holds the guide board steady as Rich sawcuts a control joint in the sidewalk.Rich power washes the patio to remove the excess form release powder.
Rich uses some Tide and elbow grease to remove some more of the colored release powder that is embedded into the concrete. A little of the brown/black color is good, but not too much.
Jesus uses a blower to dry the concrete in preparation for sealing.
Rich uses a foam brush to apply concrete stain to the compass.
Rich applies concrete sealer with a roller. We chose the matte finish, as opposed to a high gloss. It looks shiny upon application, but dries to a nice low gloss finish.
Cendy inspects as Rich applies a second coat. A foam paintbrush is used to apply sealer to the edges. Rich also would go back and apply sealer to the patio side in the foreground.

Final picture coming soon once it's stops raining!

Winners never cheat, and cheaters never win

The Races2Run website has posted our Blue Hen 5K finishing times and pictures. After running lots of 5k's, I finally had my picture taken for the website! I finished in 28:37 - not my best effort, but not bad considering the lack of sleep. Thanks to Katie for this picture in front of the Independence dorms. We were very impressed by the new dorms - quite an upgrade from Pencader!

One of the blogs I like to follow is written by Wayne Kursh - the race director who manages most of the 5K's that I run in the Wilmington area. He had a very interesting post about how he catches those who cheat a marathon course by taking shortcuts. After reading some of the comments, it's apparent that there are some who are ready to tar and feather these cheaters.

My next race is the Dub C 4 miler. For those not in the know, "Dub C" is the nickname for West Chester... "Dub" as in double-u (W) and C for Chester. I'm looking forward to the nice flat course and post-race gathering on Gay Street.

Sidewalk Construction - Day 4

Yesterday was a big milestone for our sidewalk project - concrete was poured! We raced back after the Blue Hen 5K so we could witness the pour. Kudos to Rich Camaroto of Camocrete for rescheduling the concrete truck so we could watch after our race.

Immediately I noticed the color of the concrete. After seeing my share of concrete at work, it was a little bizarre to see brown concrete. Actually, the color is "sandstone", which is the tint we chose for our project. Rich and Jesus worked hard throughout the day to place, finish and stamp the concrete. Here are a few pictures.

Rich rakes the concrete into place.
Jesus runs a wheelbarrow full of concrete to the new patio.
Rich "vibrates" the concrete into place.
Rich and Jesus screed the patio concrete.
Rich finishes the sidewalk concrete as Jesus works to place more concrete ahead of him.
Jesus uses an edger to finish the patio concrete.
Jesus uses a steel trowel to finish the steps.
Here are their stamping tools. The "skins" are used to add extra texture. The ashlar slate stamps are underneath the skins. Also note the bucket of stamp release powder (dark brown with charcoal color), joint chisel, roll tool for joints and paint roller (for smoothing joints).
Rich throws the colored release powder on top of the finished concrete.
After about an hour, it's time to stamp. The compass is the first stamp to be placed. Rich did his best to center it on the patio.
The slate stamps are placed around the compass.
Rich tamps the stamp pattern into the concrete. The concrete hardened quicker than expected, so it was a race against time!
Rich uses a fiberglass trowel to finish the concrete steps before stamping.
After the steps were stamped, it's time to put up the caution tape. Rich told me a story about how he learned the hard way that you should put caution tape around the entire project. He learned his lesson when a UPS guys walked all over the fresh concrete on a previous project. Rich had put caution tape only near the sidewalk entrance, but not all around the project. Needless to say, it was a painful job to fix.
Here is the pride of our project - the compass! I kid Cendy that she needs all the help she can get with her sense of direction...so now she can have a daily reminder!
After a few days of concrete curing time, Rich will saw cut control joints into the concrete. Control joints are necessary to control the location of cracks in the concrete. During the next sunny day, they'll remove forms, powerwash the concrete to remove the extra release powder, stain the compass to add contrasting color and then finally add a coat of clear concrete sealant.