Yes, after much discussion over the pros and cons of sinkhole repair techniques, and how the estimates given to us could vary so widely (from $1000 to $7000) for something so simple (?) as making a hole bigger then smaller, we elected to go for the cheap guy. I confess, I did call him up and ask him why he was so much cheaper than the other guys (I didn't discuss specific dollar figures); he responded much as I do when confronted by that very question on my own job, "Ummm, I dunno," then put forth some theories about operation costs and low overhead, blah, blah, blah. I finally realized there was no logical way for me to make a decision amongst them, so I went with "cheap." I'll spare you the suspense and tell you up front he did a fine job, at least as far as we can tell at this point in time.
I did start to worry a bit when the clock struck noon and he still hadn't shown up yet. There had, admittedly, been a bit of foreshadowing the week before when I asked the guy when they might start on the job and he replied, "Oh, you know, first thing in the morning. Well, maybe we'll do some things first, then start around 11 or noon."
It should be stated for clarity's sake that I am a Morning Person.
I put that in capital letters because if you aren't a Morning Person, you don't really ever truly understand how "11am" is as far away from "first thing in the morning" as the sun is from Pluto (or whatever the last current planet in our solar system is... I can never keep track). First thing in the morning is, mmmm, about 6am. It might even be 5am. But 7am is pushing it. And after 8am, well, forget it -- the day's half-wasted.
So. It's noon. I've already taken the dogs for a run, so they are less belligerent about the afternoon's House Arrest. And I went to the bank. And I went to Costco. And then I rushed home. To sit in my living room. Until about 1pm. -- Nothing "morning" about 1pm!
Nevertheless, the guy impressively drives up with a big dump truck attached to a flat-bed trailer, on which is sitting some kind of construction machine. It's yellow and it has a shovel thing in the back and a bucket thing in the front. When I worked at a wildlife park some years ago, we used a similar bucket thing to bring the neighbor's dead cow over for our wolves to eat. Boy, when they bit into that belly, the gas about knocked us all out!
But I digress. It was yellow (the machine, not the cow -- although...). So far, so good. My husband goes out and talks to the guy about the sinkhole (this is the owner's son, so he hasn't seen it yet). As you can see, it was a very manly chat:
My husband then came in the house and said the guy was gonna park his machine (I think it's called a backhoe, but don't hold me to that), and go have some lunch. I'm not kidding. The guys been on the job for 10 minutes, and he needs a break.
So, OK, I mean, everybody's gotta eat, and I haven't walked a mile in his moccasins, so let's cut the guy some slack. Now, keep in mind, one of the other guys who put in a bid on our project said it would take about six hours. -- Did I mention I'm a morning person? By 7pm, the day is over. Like, OVER over. Shower, dinner, TV, ... bed. At the very least, there should not still be active project-doing occurring after 6pm!
Fortunately, we thought this was a great photo-op, since the guy had left his backhoe unattended. It practically screamed, "Play with me!":
There were even a few cheesecakes pix, but you have to pay extra to see those. Let's just say they didn't look as good as this:
nor as bad as this:
(C'mon, is that sexy to someone?
But, really now, after about 15 minutes, we're bored. How Kate Moss makes a career out this sort of thing is beyond me.
Still no guy. So we wait. And wait. And I start wondering if this is how this guy eats lunch:
I mean, that's a long way to climb up! And then back down, and drive back to our house -- OK, I can see it.
More waiting. And then I think, well, I know how I feel after lunch, so maybe he looks like this right now:
As I'm waiting, and watching out the living room window, I have time to contemplate random things like, "What makes this window corner so deadly, and is the live mosquito that's still flying around bothered by all the dead bodies of his buddies?"
My husband takes this opportunity to remind me that I expect too much of people. And also that we are paying them by the job, not by the hour. Good point. Finally, I hear his truck:
To his credit, the guy got right to work, and within about an hour, the deed was (mostly) done. I watched from the relative safety of my garage roof as he caved in the heretofore septic chamber (aka, Chamber of Doom, or Chad's Septic Cellar). Occasionally the backhoe made alarming screeching sounds as it wrenched at telephone pole-sized timbers, only to punch them back down into the earth and churn the dirt and rocks around to fill it up.
You can even see a little piece of septic pipe on the near edge of the hole. Yuck.
Eventually, it was about half-full (cuz I'm that kinda gal!):
so he went out to his dump truck and hauled in a bunch of fill dirt. (Boring, I know. I also expected more drama. Turns out construction work is pretty tedious. Who knew?)
Chad tried to help by washing the dirt around to help it settle into corners and crevices and such (This portion of today's program is for you DIY Sinkhole-Repairmen at home!).
Still, however, we needed more fill. Fortunately, my husband had other creative ideas about how to take advantage of a backhoe in our very own backyard by digging out the previous fill dirt which had been packed down behind and beside our garage after our kitchen remodel (four years ago), and cottonwood tree demolition and removal (last year). Ladies, the moral of this story is: If the construction company offers to remove the dirt pile and/or stump shreddings for a nominal fee but your husband offers to do it instead, to save money, you should run (not walk) to the ATM and have the debris hauled away as soon as possible, because left to the workings of Time, it will settle in, pack down, and become yet another fun future Project!
In any case, there are now these two other projects, which got lumped in with the sinkhole because of the backhoe. (Did I mention we also had to move our greenhouse and dismantle the chain link fence to get the backhoe back there? Yeah, we don't exactly have "acreage" at our humble little abode.) Those spaces now look like this:
& this:
Fortunately, the sinkhole looks (beautifully) like this:
(Oh, ignore the pile of tree roots that we had to chop out as we went along. That's what Advil is for!)
So whereas I started the day expecting:
while I luxuriously paid someone to do my hard labor, instead I got:
And for the record, THIS guy was nowhere to be seen:
Slacker.
So that all brings us around to the title of today's blog, "The Hydra." If you recall your grade-school mythology, as our poor beleaguered Jason and his beloved Argonauts fought the seven-headed Hydra, his curse was that cutting off one of the Hydra's head only caused two more to grow in its place.
And so it is with my beloved Sinkhole. I have lopped off its head in the course of one short afternoon (Six hours? The guy was done in three!), only to create the new projects of:
- Reseeding the lawn
- Digging out the part of the side-yard the backhoe couldn't reach
- Building a woodshed in the (now flat) side-yard
- Restacking the firewood
- Re-placing the greenhouse
- Replacing the chain link fence and gate
And all these things have to be done without letting three innovative and easily bored pooches escape out the meager temporary fencing currently in place.
So I bid you all a fond farewell, at least for this saga. Thanks for reading along, & may all your backyards remain Sinkhole-Free!
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