SB: Re: Rodents in your rubble trench?

["Robert W. Tom" <ArchiLogic@yahoo.ca>]

5/26/02 12:00:23 PM, "Chuck & Linda" <clearned@bminet.com> wrote:

> I am trying to figure out if rodents "gophers and woodchucks"
>  could work their way through a rubble trench.

Chuck;

If the stone in the RT is well graded so that there are no continuous voids 
through the rubble and if the stone is properly compacted, (ie at each 12" lift) 
it would be almost impossible to get a steel shovel into the material, let alone 
a groundhog or gopher with only claws and a snout to work with.

Typically, I like to lay up larger boulders at the sides of the trench (as one 
might lay up a dry-laid stone wall (but not as fussy about appearance of course) 
and then fill in between with the "turtles" and "footballs" and other less-
stackable stones, packing the interstices with 5/8" to 2" crushed stone and 
lining the earthen sidewalls of the trench with only a salvaged-from-the-
lumberyard lumber tarp  to keep dirt and fines out of the stone.

If you are especially paranoid about rodents or if you happen to have mutant 
rodents fitted with jack-hammer heads & tool steel claws/teeth, then it might be 
worth looking into the galvanised wire baskets that are used for gabions, with 
which to encase your rubble.

As to the three inch thick concrete rodent barrier on the outside of the rubble:
that amount of concrete could be configured to be the entire loadbearing stem 
wall for the greenhouse structure... ie no need for an RTF. One or the other, 
not both.

--- * ---
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
(remove the "chaff" from my edress if you hit "reply")

Please visit http://www.theHungerSite.com daily



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