The Dingo and the Vibratory Compactor

On my way to the equipment rental place in Jim's truck, Jason's brother called me (not sure why Jason didn't) to say that the gravel guys now said they could come on Monday. Too little, too late.

Here is a picture of dad operating the Dingo. He seemed to really enjoy it. He moved many, many buckets full of gravel to the spare gravel pile at the back corner of the garage, then dug out the extra dirt the excavation guys put in the porch area where the ramp should go, then did quite a bit of work grading the driveway area and filling in the front. The gravel part took longer than the first four hours of the rental, which meant we could keep it until 9:30 tomorrow morning. Even in the area where we could dig with the Dingo because of pipes, it was still very useful as a power wheelbarrow.

When we did finally get enough gravel moved out, and the remainder mostly leveled back out, I started laying out the insulation panels. I found that because I had raked the gravel to level it out, that left the surface very jagged, which made a lot of air space below the insulation. I walked on a couple pieces, and heard gravel popping through the foil on the other side with every step.

During our dinner break we decided to rent a vibratory compactor to squish the gravel. Jim came over after work to help out, and seemed to also have a lot of fun running the compactor. It made an amazing difference, as you can see in the picture the contrast between the rough, uncompacted areas and the areas he had already covered. By dark we laid out all of the whole pieces of insulation we could. Tomorrow we'll return the rental equipment, fit the rest of the insulation, and start laying out the tubing.