Our house has this area in the front that has become known as "The Moat". It's an 8' wide by 35' long section that is between the front of the house and some sort of retaining wall. Our front porch is like a little bridge that goes over the moat. Each spring the moat fills with weeds and other crap that makes it look like hell. This spring we are doing something about it!
Last fall, Jess put down tarps to cover the ground in the moat to kill whatever may be growing in there. Our goal was to cover the ground with weed paper and then cover that with stones figuring it would look a lot better than weeds and other ugly plants. Today we decided to take on the "filling in the moat" phase of the project.
This morning we got outside early and took our measurements to figure out how much stone we needed to get. Figuring we would buy it like mulch, we converted all of our calculations to cubic yards. We figured that we would need 1.5 cubic yards of stone.
Side note: my calculations showed that we could only get at most .5 cubic yards of anything in the back of my truck. After getting the measurements we headed down the road to a landscpaing supply place in Freetown. We had no idea what kind of place this would be but it ended up being an enormous plot of land with any type of landscaping supply you would ever need. After talking with the people inside we found out that they sell by the ton (apparently 1 ton = 1 cubic yard in the world of crushed stone) so we then drove onto the scale and they took the empty weight of my truck. We then headed down into the quarry to get a load of 1.5" crushed stone. It was at this point that things got interesting. My truck has one of those hard covers on the back that opens to about a 45 degree angle. I knew this was probably going to be an issue but was hoping they would load my truck using a small backhoe. The guy drove over in this abso-friggin-lutely HUGE front-end loader and proceeded to tell us that we gotta do something about that cover. The 3 of us (me, Jess, front-end loader guy) then tried to figure out how to release the cover from the truck. We were able to undo the hydraulic rams that kept it at a 45 degree angle but that was about it. The front-end loader guy did his best to load the stone in the back while the two of us held the cover up at about a 80 degree angle. We had some of it in the bed and some of it on the tailgate. He told us to get rid of the cover when we come back. We got our load, drove up to the scale again, and Jess went inside to pay. The total for this load....$4. All of that work for $4 worth of stone. As we left the parking lot, we sprayed probably $.50 worth of that stone all over the street as the tailgate was down.
When we got home we finished taking the cover off and unloaded our really sissy looking pile of stone. We headed right back to get a second load (this time with no cover). This time the front-end loader guy got 1/3 of a ton in the back costing us $8. We unloaded that back at home and started to work. After we got working, I headed back for more stone and Jess got the weed paper layed out. The next load was also 1/3 of a ton for $8. Our pile in the driveway was getting bigger at this point but we still needed more. On the last trip, the guy was able to get 1/2 of a ton in the truck for $12. This was a real joy to unload. In the end we got $32 worth of stone and $24 worth of weed paper.
At this point we had a gigantic pile of stone in the driveway. For the next few hours I filled the wheelbarrow with stone and dumped it into the moat while Jess spread it out. It was really shitty work and I complained the entire time (not a big surprise to anyone) but in the end it looked really, really good. Our calculations were perfect as we filled in the moat and had nothing but a pile of dust left in the driveway.
To see pictures of the stone filled "Moat" please click
here.