Digging was tough. I wanted to dig as deep as the water depth on the canal side of the seawall. But I found that I could only get to within a foot of that depth and then no further due to the sand filling it back in. Did I mention I was digging in waist deep water? The water was soothing and kept me cool during some very hot days but it was a muddy smelly mess and I couldn't help to think about all the bacteria and what not that was in the water. In fact in the past I shined a light out over the water at night and it is amazing to see hundreds little sea creatures appear. For that reason I decided to never swim in the river. And yet here I was waist deep in water. Not only that brown algae was present at the time in the lagoon making the visibility less than 6".
Here is a picture of the trench I was digging. Notice the dead man tie bars that hold the seawall up.
As I was digging in the watery trench, I noticed a few flounder floating in the canal. I had never seen flounder in the canal yet alone realized they even existed in the canal. But it didn't dawn on me till later that there was a reason the flounder were floating on top of the water and not the bottom like they usually do. They were having trouble breathing and were coming to surface for air.
A day later there was a massive fish kill in the Indian river lagoon. What had happened was the brown algae had grown so prolifically in the lagoon that it had used up all the oxygen in the water and it killed the thousands of fish. Check out this link and this link for more info on the fish kill.
The lagoon is filled with water that is not circulated or exchanged with fresh water very much. There is a port to the north about 20 miles (port Canaveral) where ocean water comes in but that is under lock control. The port to the south (Sebastian) where ocean water is free flowing but it is 40 miles away. Because of this the canal water is not tidal and only goes up and down when it rains.
Being immersed in this brown algae water and with all these fish dying made me wonder if the brown algae was toxic to humans but after some internet browsing I came across some articles that said it wasn't
During this period I came home one day after work and it smelled like hydrogen sulfide gas or rotten eggs. It was so bad that I drove away from the neighborhood and contemplated staying in a hotel. But I came back and turned on the air freshener in the house and stuck it out. In fact one of my neighbors called the fire department that day and reported a gas leak but when they came out they found no leaks and explained to him that it was the rotting fish that was causing the smell.
With the fish kill and the terrible state of the water, I understood now why I was required to go through all this effort to build a swail. The swail was to help protect the lagoon from pollutants such as oils, tars, fertilizers and other pollutants that would normally be carried by rain water run off into canal. It would cause the runoff to be filtered by the sandy soil before entry into the water. It is well known that the brown algae really likes the lawn fertilizers and that is what killed the fish and made the lagoon look so terrible.
Digging was going slow and I was really worried that the water level which was low would rise to above the dock as it had last year making my job even worse. One of the reasons why it was so slow was the filter cloth which was buried in the soil. This stuff was buried deep and hard to get out especially when there was tree roots involved. I resorted to attaching the end of the cloth to a 1500 lb harbor freight electric winch. The winch worked somewhat but I had to do a lot of digging to assist it. Because of these issues I decided to get day laborers to help me.
I had always wanted to see what it would be like to hire somebody to help me. There is really only one legal way to get someone to help you on your house if your going to pay them. They must have workers comp insurance. A licensed contractor will have this insurance, however since I didn't want to pay $16800 to hire him and since I don't own a construction business that has insurance for employees, I hired day laborers with insurance through the company they worked for.
The rate for a trench digger is $17 an hour part of which is to pay for that insurance. Every day I wanted a trench digger I got someone different and I ended up with five different people helping me out. I think the one important thing I discovered was I could dig the trench twice as fast as they could. However, with the day laborers I did end up with another point of view on what I was doing. Every time some one came out they would say something like why are you not using a back hoe. It was a funny comment. Using a back hoe would put them out of their trench digging job. Nobody really wants to dig trenches! haha. I would explain that the property was sloped and I was afraid the back hoe would end up in the water. Also I thought I could get the trench dug by hand for cheaper than the back hoe rental.
One laborer with another perspective recommended I use a bigger winch or come along to get the filter cloth out. This hadn't occurred to me actually since I had relied on the harbor freight winch for all my construction work. It was a golden nugget of an idea. And luckily the winch broke as it usually does so I returned it and I picked up a come along for 30 dollars at harbor freight.
The come along was amazing. For 30 dollars I could apply 8000 lbs of force to the filter cloth all without electricity. The filter cloth came out much easier with it. In fact I was able to get all the filter cloth out except where it was pinned down with concrete. Remember in the earlier blog I mentioned unloading bags of cement in holes to plug them? The filter cloth not coming out in two spots was the result of that. With the 8000 lbs of force applied to the filter cloth pinned down by concrete the filter cloth started to rip. In the end I just cut the filter cloth off at the bottom of the trench and moved my digging operation down the line.
Here is picture of the come along in action.
There were a couple of other things I found when digging the trench. In one case I had found some old seawall sheet material. Apparently in the past the seawall had been repaired and the old sheet material had just been left there. This repair was not successful as the seawall in that spot had a five foot long horizontal break in it. I didn't try to hard to get the sheet out, I just figured I couldn't. The decision was made to leave it be and cover it with cement when the time came.
The other thing I found was my tape measure. I was very happy to have found it. Yep. I had lost it in the watery trench about 6 months ago. It actually worked for about a day. Then it froze up. But that's not the end of the story. It was a Kobalt tape measure which means it has a lifetime warranty so I got a new one at Lowes no charge. Based on my experience with tape measures and how they always break, I highly recommend either a Kobalt or Husky (Home Depot) tape measure due to their lifetime warranties.
In addition to the trench I also dug the new dead men and tie bar holes. A dead man is required to be a concrete pad 3' by 2' by 1' buried 2' deep. The tie bars are 5/8" galvanized rebar about 10' to 12' long with a hook at one end that is buried in the pad and a plate at the other end which is placed in the wall. There is supposed to be a dead man every 10' along the wall. However, all these code requirements are for building a seawall. I was actually building a retaining wall for landscaping purposes and not altering the existing seawall. But just in case I put them in. Since the old dead men were still good and went through the new wall, I ended up with 18 dead men along the 80' of wall. That wall is going nowhere.
Below is picture of a new dead man tie bar hole set up. The galvanized rod is in the picture but I had not bent it yet so that there is no hook visible. Also in the picture are some white sprinkler pipes.
I used the trench diggers for the first 36 feet. They cost me $487 dollars. Together without a good winch we spent 52 hours of trench digging. For the second half I dug 44' of trench myself with the aid of the come along and it took me 24 hours. For the second half the learning curve for the job was over at this point I had become a hell of a digging machine. It showed in my callousey hands and bigger muscles.
After the trench was done on the first half, I took to building the forms. Luckily dad was able to help me 2000 miles away.
To be continued
Happy Building!
The Dr
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