Basketball Goal Saga: Hole and Base

As noted a couple of days ago in a blog post, when I decided I was going to make installation of the new basketball goal a do-it-yourself project, I didn't anticipate running into huge slabs of buried granite. The one that was most in my way was a stubborn challenge, but yesterday the words my father loved to use kept running through my head: "When you don't have education, you have to use your common sense."

Or maybe I didn't use my common sense. But I did use some rope, some boards, and my Toyota Tundra. So removing that huge piece of granite ended up being a solo job after all.

Couldn't leave it in the driveway, though, so I set up some 2 x 4 boards as skids and, with pickaxe in hand, pulled it bit by bit back up against the rear retaining wall.

With that out of the way, I could now dig the hole for the concrete base down to the recommended depth. (I went a little further, almost 40 inches deep.)

Then it was off to Lowe's to get 20 bags of Quikrete:

Starting mid-afternoon and working straight through until almost dark, I mixed (by hand, in my wheelbarrow) eighteen 80-lb bags of concrete, one by painstaking one, in order to fill the hole and set the base.

When the job was finished, it was dark enough I had to use the flash to capture the base plate set in the mortar.

Update: Here's the next-day shot with the concrete well on its way to drying. The base needs to cure for about five days, and so by Sunday or Monday I hope to assemble the goal and then mount it.