Pulp Deck

Pulp Deck

Last weekend’s task at hand? Moving a rock! Okay, let’s call it a very large stone and in this case, the landing step coming out of the door in adjacent pic.

Why, you ask? The answer being it is go time for the new backyard deck/outdoor kitchen which includes a boardwalk walkway from this door to the main body of deck itself (that main body of deck area being in the 2nd adjacent pic, which also shows the new location of the “large stone”). Speaking of deck, we are working with our friends from AK General Services (they helped out on multiple tasks at the 1800 Project), one of their specialties being deck construction. In short, we are basically just in a hurry to get this installed so we can move on with getting that outdoor kitchen up and running, thus the help, (and there is so much more to the “deck”, which we’ll cover in a later update), so suffice to say, it will be a destination location for sure, and we want to get it done now!

Back to the “large stone” and the relocation of it. Initial thoughts being we need to get it up and off the ground to do anything at all (yes, if we did have a large back hoe tractor, perhaps we could just nudge it along, flip it, do many things, however, we do not have one and I wanted to try an go the “leverage” route). So the imagination kicked in and I thought I had recalled use of rollers for the large stones needed to build the pyramids. Again, once stone is elevated, you set it on a series of “rollers” and then push or drag it, rotating the rollers from back to front each time you’ve moved on to a clean one. Estimating the stone to weigh in the 500 pound arena (and that was just a guess), what would we use as the rollers? Decided to go with some 3” schedule 40 PVC pipe in 4 foot lengths (Lowe’s sells them pre-cut that way). Figured 4 total would allow for there always being 3 underneath and the rotation process could happen.

Gettin the stone elevated? As you can see the top was flat but then it sort of angles in toward the base. We dug a hole at one end and placed a pump jack on top of a flat stone underneath and then began the process of slowing lifting it up. Raise a bit, support from underneath, elevate jack and keep repeating the process on both ends till the stone was clear of the hole it was sitting in and able to be placed on the 3” PVC pipes. With a very large crowbar, a come-a-long winch, some chain and the John Deere mower, we were able to twist it out and onto those pipes. The rest…..well, lots of 1, 2, 3 PUSH (while leveraging with the very large crowbar. Mission accomplished!

Progress pics adjacent and below. See you next week!