I've been working on my straw bale house lately, right now the trenches for the footings are all dug. I had all the rocks thrown to the outside of the excavation and all the dirt thrown into the center of the excavation.
I had the rocks put to the outside because they don't make good fill unless they're crushed and there's lots of different sizes. The dirt that was dug out will later be used as fill to bring the level up so that the floors can be poured with concrete.
Since my property is really rocky, a lot of rocks came out of the excavation. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with all of them. The rocks were freshly dug up so there's a lot of dirt stuck on them - you could call them dirty rocks.
Dirty rocks don't do well in concrete and since they are rocks that have moved around in their long history they look a lot like river rocks with rounded edges and no sharp corners too. River rocks are not good for concrete either, the concrete doesn't grip them very well and the preference is to use rocks that have been crushed and have sharp edges so the concrete can really grip them good.
I'm into rock gardens, but these aren't the rocks for that type of project, so I needed to find something else to do with them.
If you've been reading about my projects you know that one of the biggest problems I have over here is water. Water is super hard to come by and when it does come it's in torrents and there's not time for the water to soak into the ground before it runs over top of the surface and into the stream beds.
I need to slow that running water down a bit and give the ground some time to soak up whatever it'll take.
After some careful studying of the layout of my land, I figured I'd move the rocks to make a bit of a dam way down in the back of my property. That area is lower and it has a stream that runs through it when it rains so there's going to be lots of water to slow down.
I know rocks don't make great dam material but I think eventually the holes between the rocks will fill up with enough material that it'll become more effective over time. It doesn't matter much to me if the area actually floods with a few feet of water either, as I'll be happy to have the water around to pump out of the flooded area and into my plants.
I have a lot more rocks to move to make the dam something of decent size but with a bit of luck this project might help keep the soil near the rock dam moist for a longer period of time. I have to move the rocks anyways - so it's worth a shot trying to do a little xeriscaping with them.
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