Blog #5 6/5/21

 Mourad Zeynalov

Tue, June 5

Hawken Project Blog


At the end of our first week of construction, we have made considerable progress. After weeks spent designing and prototyping and presenting, the actual creation of the project was a lot easier than expected. By Tuesday we had used a special machine called an edge cutter to remove all of the grass and dirt in a 26.5 ft. diameter circle in less than 3 hours. We revised the radius from the approved 12 ft. to 13.5 ft. in order to ensure the borders of the circle were as smooth as possible. After clearing the dirt we spent the remainder of the week designing and building the base of the pit. After consulting with the Hawken groundskeepers, Mr. Bleminschid, and Mrs. Zelinski, we decided on using weed barrier tarp as the base to prevent undergrowth from growing through the pick and also to allow water to drain. We also elected garden edging as the side material. We also went to Sidley's Sand and Gravel on Thursday in order to place an order for sand. With the revised radius the total volume of sand is now 160 cubic feet or 8 tons. On Friday we finished installing the weed barrier and edging, although there were issues with the garden edging not unrolling properly to make a smooth circle. We anticipate that the sand will rectify this problem and smooth out the barrier edges. 







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