Everything’s coming together!

By Tony Heath, Project Engineer

This post covers Thursday, August 29th.

Today was a busy day at the rain garden. Josh and Stephanie continued work to prepare for the decomposed granite installation while Eric Knisley and his concrete finishers were on-site in the afternoon to pour the sidewalk between the north and south cells of the garden.

When I arrived this morning, Stephanie, Josh, and another laborer, Justin, had begun excavating the north cell in order to lay the stone base for the granite edging. While they worked on this, I went out into the south cell to touch up the grading in the areas we’d disturbed for the culvert installation and to spread the mulch back out on top.

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Then, we moved over to the low point at the pipe outlet to finish shaping that basin before the sidewalk was installed. We encountered a fair amount of root mass within the top few inches of soil so we excavated a smaller area than originally planned, doing just enough to taper existing grade to the pipe elevation.

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After lunch, the concrete finishers were on-site to frame and pour the sidewalk. Watching the concrete finishers work is like watching a band play with everyone knowing their part and working in time. It didn’t take them long at all to get the concrete poured, leveled, and finished off with a broom finish. Tomorrow they’ll begin framing along the north sidewalk for the 4′ expansion.

“Watching the concrete finishers work is like watching a band play with everyone knowing their part and working in time.”

I also coordinated with Stacey DeLorenzo and the Landscape Recycling Center staff to have the decomposed granite be delivered to the grounds facility on Lincoln Ave. tomorrow morning. We’ll have 11 Allen Hall parking spaces blocked off so we can install the granite without driving machinery underneath the red oak tree (as always, to minimize damage to it).

Everything’s coming together!

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