"Phil & 'Pat"

Our building inspector, Don, came by to check out the hole & we found out that we had 2 options to make it ready for the footings & forms. We could build the footings & forms to fit the landscape of an angled hole (we had to dig down much further in the front than in the back because of the wonderful top soil) or we could fill in the lower part & rent a compactor.

The boys decided to rent the compactor. So, all the money we saved by having the 'medium' excavator come in for a few short hours was spent on renting the smaller excavator & the compactor for 2 days of filling back in the hole.

Phil's joke was: 'I'm 'patting' the material & Pat (the excavator operator) is 'filling' the material. We should switch machines & find a guy names "Doug"'. Well, it was funny when Phil said it.....

On July 12Th, Phil got his first delivery on the Lady Rose of material needed for the footings. We borrowed a decrepit truck from a friend (the brakes are unreliable & it over heats in a matter of a few minutes).


On July 15th, Phil had a compactor arrive on the Lady Rose & brought in the small excavator to fill back in our lovely hole. While Pat worked in the excavator, Phil manned the compactor.

It was difficult going at first - the compactor works most effectively on level ground (hmmm), so it wasn't until Phil & Pat came up with an excellent idea to tie the compactor to the excavator shovel & move it up & down the slope that the work moved forward. Unfortunately, I was at work while this happened so I didn't get to see it, nor take photos.

It took about 2 days to bring our hole to this level of being level & compacted enough for the forms. It was quite funny to come home to see 2 excavators on site & then have people driving down asking for the excavtors to be moved to their places as they needed work done too. I guess there is quite a bit more work going on than we had thought - but with this being the fishing season, the operators are sometimes unavailable at the exact moment they are wanted.