Technically, this is what it looked like after many hours of digging. It started out shallower on the right side, which is where we decided we wanted our burn area to be. So, in this picture I have already started digging the hole on the right side, using the dirt to help fill in the left side. We knew before we even started that we would need to buy dirt to fill in the old hole, and we were right. It ended up taking 5 pickup truckloads of dirt and we probably should have used 6.
I'm cheap, and patio bricks are expensive, so I spent a long time thinking about what to line my new burn pit with. When I thought up the answer, I felt like an idiot for not thinking of it sooner. Broken concrete! I've seen it listed free on Craigslist a lot (usually as fill) and always wondered why anyone would voluntarily put a big pile of concrete in their yard, even if they did need to fill in a hole. I still would never use it as fill, but for wall-building, I'm in. I looked through the free ads and did a search for "broken concrete". I got a few results, but they were all about an hour and a half away. I decided to wait for something closer.
After about a month of waiting and religiously checking Craigslist, I gave in. Not only had there been no ads posted closer to me, there had been no ads posted, period. I e-mailed a guy that had posted an ad for broken concrete a month earlier, fully expecting it to be gone. It wasn't, and he seemed relieved that someone finally wanted the pile of rubble that had become a permanent addition to his front yard. He said that it had been put there with a loader and we would need to bring a sledgehammer to break up some of the bigger pieces. Perfect. I had been worried that all of the concrete would be broken too small to use as bricks, since apparently the only known use for broken concrete is filling in holes. We took the truck and utility trailer and loaded up all the concrete he had. I wasn't sure it was going to be enough, but it ended up being EXACTLY what I needed with nothing left over.
After I dug out the new hole, I used a 3 foot level and a garden rake to make the whole circle even and level. Then I put my shovel in the middle of the circle and used a stick on a string to mark out a circle. Once I placed the first layer of concrete, the circle looked like this:
I added dirt to the outside of the circle after every layer and sometimes had to pack it in under the outside of the concrete pieces to keep them from leaning or wobbling. I saved the biggest pieces for the top layer to help stabilize the wall and because I think it looks better that way. Once I finished the wall, it suddenly became clear how uneven the rest of the yard was. In some places the wall stopped a foot and a half below the level of the grass, in others it was 6 inches higher than the ground around it. My husband tilled all of the ground within 3-4 feet of the wall, and I used a shovel and garden rake to smooth it as much as I could. I tried to keep the top of the concrete level with the ground around it so that mowing would be simple. Now we just need to plant some grass!
Final cost breakdown for this project: $60 for dirt, about $150 for gas to go get it and the concrete, ? for the grass seed.
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