Terrible Trivium

It seems completely backwards that we would spend over ten thousand dollars to remove dirt from our lot, only to turn around a few months later and pay thousands more to backfill the gaps we dug out behind our stem walls. I understand the reasons that this is necessary – namely to allow space to build the forms and to add drainage pipes around the house– but it still seems like such a waste.

The drainage system we installed involved placing PVC pipes with holes in them around the perimeter of the house, wrapped inside a geotextile fabric that allows water to pass but not dirt. We covered the pipes with gravel and wrapped them up like tacos before filling the rest of the space with dirt and gravel.

The side drainage system, prior to being covered in gravel and ‘taco-ed’

In order to place the dirt and gravel behind the walls, we rented a skid steer (of a legitimate size this time). Since we were – yet again – plagued by endless rain, half of the battle involved maneuvering the machine up the muddy slopes. In order to drive it up to the top level, we had to spread gravel evenly along the entire slope, lay mesh over the top, and build up momentum. It still slid like crazy and tore up much of the mesh. Thankfully, John was quite adept with the machine, and there were no catastrophes.

John operating the skid steer.

Since we had the rental for only a limited period of time before we headed out of town, we were scrambling to finish work at the last minute. In an effort to ensure that we had enough gravel to make a five inch layer below where we would pour the slab, we frantically piled gravel within the limits of the foundation and returned the machine.

In the end, we had moved WAY too much. This meant that after spreading the gravel across the foundation – by hand, using shovels – we then needed to get rid of the remaining gravel. We ending up having to laboriously carry gravel, one shovelful at a time, across the foundation to make a pile on the driveway.

If anyone has ever read The Phantom Tollbooth, there’s a scene where the main character, Milo, meets a man named the Terrible Trivium, a demon who represents wasting time on useless tasks. The demon instructs Milo to move a pile of sand one grain at a time, using a pair of tweezers. Since the gentleman/demon seemed so nice, Milo accepted his task and began working. Soon hours had gone by with no end in sight.

This scene kept playing through my head as I spent day after day shoveling gravel, feeling like no end was in sight. According to my phone (which I didn’t even have on me all the time), I walked over 20 miles back and forth over the course of two days of gravel moving. And that was only a fraction of the time spent on it!

A top view of the gravel pile we painstakingly built one shovelful at a time. This doesn’t even begin to show the scale or height of the pile, but you can see a shovel next to it for reference.

John building up the forms for the slab (pay no attention to all the OSHA violations). You can also see the gravel pile of my nightmares off to the right.