Well, I started on the wall, but it is proving to be resistant to my efforts. My grandfather made it far more resilient than necessary by including 1/8 inch wire spread throughout; he obviously had a 35 year plan to frustrate me. The problem for me is that the concrete wants to stick to the wire, so the walls are not breaking into chunks like I had hoped. I keep having to sledge the chunks even smaller to knock them from the wire. Quite often, I have to complete break them down into small rubble and even dust. Why is this necessary? Because the wire is intertwined in such a way that one chunk might have two or three wires through it and in turn those wires have more chunks stuck to them. Picking up one chunk with wire would pull another wire with chunks and so on.
Some rebar, middle right of the picture below, helped support the outward lean of that wall.
The bridge is providing support to the wall. It has to go before I can take out more wall.
I always wondered how my grandfather made the bridge so strong. After thirty years, it never even developed a crack.
Even with that much material gone, it can support me. And I can tell that I'm not standing gingerly. It is still very SOLID.
Again, not coming apart as I hoped.
In the channel I had to dig directly outside of the wall. It allows the wall to crack during impact. Without that gap, the earth would absorb the impact. Notice the depth.
Suburban Hermit of Fayetteville, signing off.
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