So, this was my first foray into my rogue mulching project... if you remember, my wife had want ed me to turn the heavy clay soil, seed with gypsum and dynamic lifter, cardboard and mulch the top area. Well, I figured that that top area wasn't really attracting that much in the way of weeds anyway... and those that were coming were easily spotted and removed. Plus... I didn't find turning the heavy clay and fishing out large rocks was quite as fun as it sounded...

.. and so, I suggested a different plan for the mulching. Namely, to complete the perimeter on the lower levels nearer to the verge and road. This would give us a bit of a buffer against the weeds and grass that were growing rampant down there... plus, it was easier soil to turn as well! My wife was a bit little bit less enthused about the idea... but she isn't the one digging the earth up! So... I figured that I would start out this part of the project on this day, and would return back to the upper levels when I had the desire to crush my arms again.

... and it would give me a first try at uprooting a small tree stump... we have several (more than several) of varying sizes all around the block as we have taken out smaller trees and shrubs... and they are mostly still in the ground. I want to ask a guy with a small excavator to remove them... but my wife wants to wait for the tree guy... but that could take months or years, and the guys with the excavator would be much much sooner!

Anyway, if I could do them by hand... that would be ideal... but much much slower! I know that tree stumps are a real pain in the arse to dig up... but I wanted to get a feeling for exactly what that would involve.

... but before any of mulching and uprooting could happen... grasses and weeds needed to be removed first! I'm starting to get pretty decent at the weeding... but it is going to be a game of whack-a-mole that I will always be losing until I get the rest of the mulching done.

Meanwhile, the uprooting... well, that is a great deal more difficult that I had thought. I probably need to go quite a bit deeper... but at some point, I am just going to ask a guy with a machine who would be able to do it in a few short minutes!

The soil in this area is much better than the soil up on the upper level. The problem with the upper level was the trenching from the stormwater excavation which brought up a lot of the clay soil from deep down and mixed the topsoil into the rest of the earth. So, apart from removing the weeds and grass and the rocks, there wasn't any need to do anything else like turning the earth... so straight to the cardboarding and dropping the mulch on top.

.. and done! However, after this little bit was finished, I was instructed to go back to the turning and mulching the upper level. So, my grand plan is at an end... but I was always going to be foiled by tree stumps that I couldn't get out easily. Probably better to mulch the area AFTER the stumps were removed.

I tried to replace the tile, but it appears that this was a row that had been nailed down... so, after a while of trying to remove it... I gave up and figured that I would have to just try to seal the gap instead.

... and that brings me to the tiling part! Whilst in the roof cavity after our ducted gas was swapped out for a reverse cycle heat pump system, I noticed a crack of light in the tiling. On closer inspection, I saw that one of the tiles was cracked so that they didn't overlap quite fully.... only a millimetre or so of light, but enough if it was raining hard. I will have to inspect the rest of the roof tiles to see if this was the case anywhere else.

So, I got to play around with one of my new toys! I have done a little bit of caulking in the past.. but with the manual caulking tool, I'm terrible as my hands are too weak. But when I saw this battery powered caulking machine, I knew that I had to get it so that I would be marginally less incompetent around the house!

So, sealed up... it will do for now, but I'm not really sure that it will be a permanent solution. Still, good enough for now!

Anyway, I spend the rest of the morning crawling around the roof looking for more cracks to repair. There was a tiler around earlier to do a quote and he said that we were still good for a few more years. Still, I need to find any tiny little leaks... the rains have been crazily heavy in Australia and even small cracks will be overwhelmed in those few minutes when it comes down hard.

I can also be found cross-posting at:
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Publish0x

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