Sunday 28th (Week 4)

 Weekend 27th March (Sunday)

Had Joe helping today and we had a go at breaking down the wall. It was a bit tricky and the neighbours complained about the noise (It was only 6pm), so we stopped and did some digging and separating of the top-soil. We were using the green crate to move the dirt from the bottom to the top of the garden and that needed 2 of us doing it and it was a bit awkward as the tray when full of heavy clay is damn heavy. 

Monday 28th March - 

A lot or progress today. Last night I spent a lot of time weighing up the idea of using the Micro digger and did some research and it seems that by the time you've factored in the cost of the digger being delivered and then got it insured you're probably looking at £160 - £180. That combined with the fact that as the digger digs the dirt out and piles it up, it'll increasingly be more difficult to get the digger back out of the garden because of the size of it. There's also the fact that I'm not convinced that the reach will be sufficient and whether that easy to use. 

Plan. With Joe getting involved, the plan was to see how much we could get done digging the dirt out manually and see how big the pile would be at the end of the day and generally get a sense of how feasible the whole thing would be. 

Start of the day Monday...

So as we dig the clay out we're putting it in builders buckets having tried the green tray. The green tray is too big and heavy and requires 2 of us to move it and we found a bucket at a time is sufficient.

All of the top soil is scraped off and sieved and that's being put in the big yellow bag and stored under the ramp (See in picture below). 

There's lots of stones and rocks and these are being taken out where possible and these are kept aside for use later on for the base that the Gabion will need to be placed on.  

The main issue at the moment is whether the Muck away truck will be able to operate over the wall. By my estimations it'll easily do it if the reach is 7 metres, but I feel I need to get this confirmed as I know my neighbor did the same thing with the expectation of the truck being able to go over his hedge and it turned out that it couldn't and he then had to move all the dirt out of his garden into a skip, So I'd rather not keep unloading into the garden if we'll need to move it again. 

Bought some stuff today - a spade and some gloves x 3 pairs £32.00. Overall spend now £44.00. Total hours spent now 25.5 hrs.

The images below show how it looks by the end of the day.