Wheelbarrow

The end of the month of April brought lots of weeding, as usual, and a delivery from Sooke Soils of some alder mulch, a dark, almost black mulch that we lay an inch or two on top of our weeded areas, it has been a fun week and of course, the old wheelbarrow was dusted down again, the tire was inflated and another year of the long life was to be added.

It was today that I was moving the last of the first lot of mulch about that I felt the inner tube go, I found that out afterwards, when it happened I just thought I had hit a bump. It was another issue in the long life of the wheelbarrow, originally bought from Gibsons Building Supply, and initially I thought I would repair it again, so taking it apart I noticed that indeed, the inner tube was breached at the root of the valve, the tire and wheel seemed good except for the rusted out bearing, so it was going to be an investigation regarding options.

Usually, repairing things, and saving money, is a better approach and I like to take my time but, at the moment, we are on a timetable with the mulching and need to finish phase one (more mulch arriving soon) so I replaced the old wheel with a smaller diameter one which was sufficient but made the wheelbarrow a little more unstable and difficult to tip up over the larger rocks. In addition, overall it was in need of triage as the old bed of the barrow had previously been broken in four places so perhaps it was time to replace the whole thing, although of course, logically I would keep the old one even if it is destined to be a planter.

The research online took no time, a new inner tube would be $20, a new wheel would be $30 which included an inner tube, no contest there, and then a whole new wheelbarrow, with two pneumatic tires would be $80 and after a little thought we had a trip to Home Hardware and that new sparkling one was bought and assembled.

It is always a strange thing to move on from something so familiar, as I have said, the old wheelbarrow will not be discarded, I will bide my time and take it apart, repair the split bed, repaint the handles and brackets and keep my eye out for a full size replacement wheel or inner tube.

After all, storing stuff, that's what garden sheds are for.