Last week I got Gino, who has a small business as an earth moving contractor, to do some work around the yard in preparation for the wicking beds.

Preparing the site for the wicking beds

There were some old foundations and an old Hills Hoist that I wanted removed. The site for the bed also needed levelling and a skidsteer was going to make life a little easier moving the compost to fill the bed.

Wicking bed area

Yard area before levelling for wicking bed construction

Fortunately Gino has an excavator and a skidsteer and he brings them both when he comes to a job. The old footings were more robust than I thought they would be. They were set a metre into the ground and the skidsteer had no chance of getting them out.

Remove footings before building wicking bed

The excavator was needed to dig out the old footings

After the old footings were removed, Gino used the skidsteer to transfer a lot of compost closer to where I was building the beds. He then levelled out the building area with some crushed concrete fines I had purchased a while ago getting ready for this part of the project.

Levelling the site for the wicking beds

The skidsteer levels the site with crushed concrete fines

Best laid plans of mice and men

As you can see from the photos, it was a perfect Autumn day in Brisbane when this work was done. Little did I know that 4 days later we would undergo one of the biggest rain events in 10 years. We had 250 mm (10 inches of rain) from Friday am through to Saturday am. The back yard was 100 mm underwater at one stage. At times I saw my thongs floating away and compost disappearing to the front yard.

The next post about wicking beds will be the construction of the frame using the cypress sleepers and fitting the plastic liner.

I took a couple of videos of the work Gino did and Gino even says hullo. When I work out how to edit them I will have a link. If you are in the north of Brisbane area and need a good skidsteer and excavator contractor you can ring Gino on 0414 867 754. He is based in Chermside.

UA-41520813-1