In tonight’s radio program, I’m talking about soaring high in the sky, and yet for the past three to four weeks or so, I’ve been firmly entrenched on the ground….
We’re doing our driveway over. It’s been in need of a make-over for years but there has always been other more pressing needs. This year, we couldn’t ignore it any longer. And so we decided to do it once, do it right, and then not have to worry about it again. We’ve decided on cement…
We had a local paving company come in and rip up the existing asphalt and asked that they take away a little more. If you know anything about a cement driveway, then you know it’s about six inches deep. The paving company only removed a few inches and I was stuck having to dig out the other four inches of limestone and rock. I figure I’ve hauled at least a hundred wheelbarrows filled with limestone and rocks, weighing on average about a hundred pounds each. My wife has created a winding path through our backyard and a lot of what was under the driveway has come in handy to help in that landscaping project. But I’m still left with a few big mounds at the far end of the property. We’ll eventually get most of it distributed around the property as we bolster patio stones and fill in some gaps. To say that I am exhausted is an understatement, but fortunately yesterday, Canada Day, we employed a neighbor on the street to help get it finally down to six inches in depth. We’re just now waiting for the cement to be poured. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to seeing this major job completed.
Our water shut-off valve is in the middle of the driveway, so when the asphalt was ripped up and taken away, I thought it prudent to contact the water department to come and check the condition of the valve and pipe. If it needed to be repaired then now was the time to do it, with the driveway gone. The work crew confirmed my suspicions that the old pipe needed replacing. This morning, the new one was installed. The crew brought this huge vacuum truck with them. You’ve probably seen these machines. When a storm drain needs to be cleaned out in the fall after the leaves have come down, it’s a truck like this that usually does the job. Today, it was needed to create a huge hole to get the old pipe out and the new one put in. I watched as this industrial-strength vacuum machine created a hole that would have taken me days to dig. I told one of the workmen that I wished I had had that machine to take my driveway down to the required depth for concrete. The job would have been done in about twenty minutes, with no debris to cart away in a wheelbarrow. It would have been cost-prohibitive to have rented this truck, but it would have saved a lot of wear and tear on my poor aching back….
I’ll let you know how it turns out. I might even post a few before and after photos in this blog…
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Don Jackson
