Preparing the Site

   OK, so clearing away the site is not the most interesting of jobs.  But just for a sense of completeness, I am going to tell you anyway.

  The site contained two very large bushes, but unfortunately I forgot to take a photograph.  The bushes were easy enough to cut down with an electric chainsaw.  The stumps on the other hand gave me my first taste of working in the dirt which would last for the next several weekends. 

   I am sure there are better ways to remove a stump, but I decided to use my muscles rather than my brain.  To get started, a sort of moat was dug around each stump to gain access to the root structure.  When a root was encountered, it has to be cut with lopping shears, a bow saw, or the electric chain saw.  None of these techniques worked very well and I ruined not one, but two, chainsaw blades in the process.  Did you know that roots can grow to encapsulate rocks?

    Anyway, eventually the stumps were removed leaving large holes like the one shown in this picture.

Out of that hole came a stump.

The stump and all the remains of the bushes made for a large pile of debris.

All the debris needed to be hauled to the compost center (yes it will get reused by local gardeners).  So what vehicle does the eco-conscious home improvement guy take?  Why the Prius of course.

Although, given that it took me four trips to the compost center with the Prius, it would probably have been "greener" to take my neighbors pickup truck.  However, you have to love a hatchback for its flexibility.

   After all was said and done, a clean piece of dirt was available for me to build on.

   Well it was not quite ready yet.  As I have mentioned before, the concrete piers that support the solar panels will interfere with the concrete walkway.  Some of the walkway also needed to come out.  The eight pound sledge hammer got pressed into service.

   For my day job, I work at a desk.  The heaviest thing that I lift is a 20 ounce Diet Coke.  So while I can swing a sledge hammer well enough, I cannot do it for more than about 10 times before I need a break.  The only thing saving my ego was that my 6'3" 180 lb, 16 year old son couldn't do any better.  Also, my 19 year old daughter swings like a girl and her use of the sledge hammer was completely ineffective.

As can be seen in the picture, steel wire mesh was embedded in the concrete.  This is the so-called six-six-ten-ten mesh.  These are six inch squares of ten gauge steel, and it is very effective at keeping the concrete together.  Even once the concrete was cracked all the way through, the walkway was difficult to breakup because the wire mesh held it together.  After a day's struggle, one section of walkway was cleared.

    One of the more frustrating aspects of using a sledge hammer is that most of the energy is absorbed by the dirt underneath the concrete slab and wasted.  If the concrete slab could be lifted off the ground, it would be much easier to break up.  Eventually, I figured out how to create a lever out of a 2x4, lifted a section of concrete off the ground by a few inches, and supported it by pieces of 2x4s.  Now with the slab supported like a beam in bending, the impact with the sledge hammer was much more effective at breaking up the concrete and the rate of progress increased by about four times.

    Only a segment of the walkway was to be taken out and it would be nice to have a clean break at the end.  Using a Bosch hammer drill (with drill motion turned off), I created a set of cracks in the expansion joint to force a clean break. 

 This technique worked very well and the edges of the work area looked clean.

  Now with the work area prepared, it was time to mark out the locations for the "sono-tubes" or cardboard concrete pier forms.