Patio Remodel: Episode 7 The patio remodel is moving along! Originally delayed by COVID-induced slowdowns, then material issues, I’d received the Alumawood kit. designed and provided by Patio Kits Direct. The delivery driver and I lugged it to the backyard and stacked it neatly. I didn’t worry about protecting it from the elements, since the components are for an outdoor structure anyway.

It’s sitting there, amongst the dried weeds, patiently waiting for me to get the footings built.

Greedo’s last bounty

Although it seems I’d just replaced the old Ridgeline with Greedo, the Gator Green Gladiator, I’ve already traded him in, because we did a thing. Before that, however, I took him for a last big ride

It was actually three big rides. Three big heavy rides.

In one of my more stupid moves, I took multiple trips to haul a massive stack of cement from the store. We stacked them on a cart, then into the truck, then into the side yard, before the final leg to the back.

WHY didn’t I just pay Lowes to deliver?

Stupid.

Back to the Big, Big Footings

When last we met here on the patio, I’d cut, busted, and chipped through the old patio and the pool deck to make room for twin, 31-inch cubes of concrete to support the new patio cover. These massive blocks (footings) would allow me to remove four of the 6 original support columns.

The most exciting thing about a two-and-a-half-foot cube of concrete is that I’d need a place to put them. The least exciting thing was that it had to be a hole, and I’d have to dig it.

I hosed myself down with sunblock, slipped on a wide-brim sun hat, and chopped out the basic shape with a short-handled spade.

I switched to the big, rust headed spade that the pool remodelers had left behind and plunged it…

Who am I kidding? Despite my best chopping, I barely scratched the dry, rock-hard packed soil. There was no way I could dig that deep without a pick-ax. Regrettably, in this instance, a pick-ax is one of those tools I don’t exactly have leaning up in the corner of in the workshop.

What I did have that seemed worth trying, was a chisel bit for my SDS plus hammer drill. This beast has a selector switch that sets it to hammer-only mode, keeping it from spinning

I fired it up and started stabbing it merrily into the dirt. The dirt busted into bits.

It was super easy to scoop the loose dirt out of the hole and fling it.

Fast forward a ferociously hot period of time and I had it licked. I flung the last bit out of the hole and called it a day, a sweaty, filthy day.

I’d built myself one Grade-A, regulation, thirty-one inch by thirty-one inch by thirty-one inch, standard-issue, hole.

It was pretty close to the right size anyway. I’d have to clean it up a little, by breaking out the old concrete from the original post hole. I’d build a wooden form to bring the backside up to the patio level.

The next day, I dusted off my soil dusted sun hat, set up my fan, and faced the other location.

I’d nearly perfected my hammer-drilling square-holesmanship process. It got challenging trying to shovel the dirt out once it got about twelve inches deep or so. The smaller opening I’d cut in the pool deck made it difficult to wield a shovel.

I’d seen the utility companies excavating a hole on the side of the road with a massive vacuum truck. That made sense.

I didn’t need the truck.

The chisel, dig, chop, vac, dump routine was a winner.

I had to shift to tunnel-rat mode and go sideways for a bit. I still needed that thirty-one-inch cube space.

In a couple of spots, I opened up even more than needed, due to hunks of old concrete breaking free from the walls of the hole.

Done and done!

It’s getting a bit long here so I’ll break it off to continue in a part 3 for the footings.

Yep, I’ve written a blog post about digging holes. This has been riveting, edge-of-your-seat stuff, my friends, sure to dominate the search engines and bring untold levels of traffic to this site.

Come back and watch me fill ‘em in!