I made some significant progress on the patio today:
I hired a day laborer to dig out the dirt and shovel in the paver base, and man did he ever work hard. After the paver base was in place, I poured some sand and started placing the blocks. I got about 20% done, but didn’t take a picture of the blocks. I still need some edging material to keep the outer bricks from moving.
Lots of fun. Any advice?
UPDATE: Here are some pics of the patio-fied portion, which as I said is about 20% done:
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Just out of curiosity, where did you find the day-laborer?
This is cool..I’ve been keeping an eye on your project because I have to put in something similar here at the house - and I am not looking forward to it.
Anyways, is that a mortar shell you dug up in the first picture?
Virgil-
It’s actually an old water or sewer pipe. There was another house on this lot before our house was built in 2004, and I guess they got a little lazy on the landscaping (as the mulch/clay yard would indicate).
Andy-
At Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse. There are about 5 or 10 guys waiting there for work at all times. He’s been very hardworking and reliable. There’s something I like about supporting an individual rather than working with a company - I guess it’s that the money goes to the person doing the work, rather than overhead for the company.
Make sure you pack that earth/sand down well. Otherwise, your pavers will settle unevenly. Lowe’s and other hw stores rent out heavy rollers (not sure that’s the technical term) for this purpose, but if you’re short on money you can be creative and have a rave in there. Either that or cinder blocks, etc. Your call.
Good advice - I’m using a special paver stone sand.
Fire pits have a carbon footprint. Wood is the most carbon-rich fuel you can use. What you need is a fire pit that burns PURE HYDROGEN!
Virusdoc-
I’ll see if I can talk Amy into that one :).
Actually, wood is carbon-neutral, since the tree that you’re burning was formed from carbon that it took out of the air. I asked TerraPass if they were going to make a TerraPass for campfires, but they said no since there is no net carbon impact (just like with biodiesel).
Of course, burning wood does put a variety of particulates in the air, since wood doesn’t burn very cleanly. Sometimes the city restricts burning, but we generally have pretty clean air in Seattle. Either way, though, there’s no net carbon impact from burning wood or charcoal.
Not true, actually. Although the wood did pull CO2 out of the air during growth, it is an effective carbon sink while unburned. By burning it, you release that carbon back into the atmosphere in gaseous form.
Using your (and Terrapass’s) logic, burning petroleum has no net carbon impact either, since it is derived from largely plant biomass that pulled the carbon out of the atmosphere during growth. Since there is no longer any net carbon genesis on the planet, the key issue is how much of that carbon is tied up in solid sinks (organic and inorganic) and how much exists in gaseous form at any one time.
Please correct me if I’m wrong!
Final update on the day laborer - I did not anticipate the problem of having four enormous piles of dirt in the yard, so I had the day laborer (James) come back for two more days at about the same rate to move it. He also moved the excess paver base (gravel) to the back driveway, and filled in some low spots in the alley that leads up to the driveway.
Doc-
I guess you’re right about petroleum also being ultimately carbon neutral. I hadn’t thought about that.
The difference between fossil fuels and wood is that wood is a renewable resource, whereas petroleum, while theoretically renewable in that more can be made, is being used at a vastly more rapid pace than it’s being created. Therefore, the total global carbon sink it provides is decreasing. Wood, in comparison, is sustainable as long as we replant what we cut down.
That brings me to a new conclusion, though - that deforestation is as bad as burning fossil fuels, and probably worse. Since the wood cut down from cleared rainforest land is almost always burned, it both removes an active carbon sequestration agent and puts a huge amount of carbon into the atmosphere.