The Hole: A Pond Story -Part 3

The continuing tale of the project I started way too late last summer. Part one starts here.

October 24th, 2011

That's a Big Hole!.

The project persists despite the caw caw caw of the stupid bird that is driving me to madness with his non-stop caw caw cawing the second I go out to work. If I had a slingshot....

Leaves coming down hard.  Time is running out!

  I have been working on this thing every single day. The plumbing for the pump pit is now about half done. I did it all myself if you don't count the dozen threads I started elsewhere asking questions about the minutiae of PVC. I've learned that gluing the PVC is the easy part, getting it all the right height, not so much. In pond building, apparently if you go down with the pipe and then go up YOU MUST NOT GO BACK DOWN AGAIN OR ELSE!!! This repeated mantra on the ponding forums had me so paranoid I went out and got a super long level, which worked great until I left it on the driveway and ran over with my car later that day.

The concrete collar seemingly went in without a hitch. Unfortunately now that the forms are removed, turns out the hitch was absent but the holes were not. Holes, lots of them. They say they are going to fix them by grinding down the rough edges and filling the holes. I am predicting a lot of mess in that process.

The rough spots in the collar are very apparent at the back of the picture.

So anyway, I started digging the hole and OMG it was hard. The first six inches or so was easy. I gleefully dug predicting completion by the end of the day. I was fantasizing about writing a post on the pond forums telling them all what big whiners they were. Then I hit IT. The initial foot of clay wasn't so bad. Really heavy but you could get a shovel into it.  Still I had to sort of get up close to the shovel head with both hands to try and lift it up.  It was really heavy and it got worse fast.  After the clay layer became pretty much like rock. The only way to get it broken was with a pick axe. I gave it everything I had but between the rock hard clay and the increasing difficulty of lifting it higher and higher to get it out of the hole it quickly apparent that I would be digging my grave if I tried to do the whole thing myself. Never mind the whole issue with trying to find places to stash the dirt.   I like my spine intact so I pursued hiring out the rest of the dig.

That involved a lot of waiting.  Waiting and waiting. But today they finally came! My site was nice and neat before they arrived. Now, not so much. Oh well, pace has picked up so that's good because I need to get the pace picked up!  The leaves are starting to fall hard now.

The area is now a completely horrible place for the dog.  He love climbing the dirt mound and he loves hanging in the hole.  I knew he had some varmit genes in him. Purebred my heiny.

Oh look!  Post in the wall not so cleverly hidden after all!

Will the workers come back soon? Will the dog fall in the pit? Will the pile collapse? Will my spouse kill me for creating this disaster zone weeks before the snow flies and the holiday season starts? Stay tuned!