Well, a lot has happened since my last update, and none of it has been good. I don't have any pictures today, but I'll try to take some tomorrow and post them.
I finally got the retaining wall down, and I have to say that was probably the most under-estimated task I've ever taken on. The amount of back-fill I had to move was unexpected, and consequently the amount of time it took ballooned dramatically. I also found that over the entire length of the wall, there was at least one and in some places two blocks below ground level. Those were tough to get out.
In all, I moved 288 wall blocks at about 90 lbs each, and probably 50 or so cap blocks (I didn't count the caps). I weighed one of the wall blocks just to make sure I wasn't mistaken on how much they weigh, and the one I put on the scale was 95lbs. Two caps stacked are the same height and width as one wall block, but two caps weigh more than 90 lbs because they have no holes in them. Total weight.....over 28,000 lbs of blocks. Makes my back and shoulders hurt just thinking about it.
Today I started the day by breaking the steering arm on one of the front spindles on my tractor. When I took the spindle off, it was apparent that the welds holding the arm and spindle together had broken, so I took it to a local welding shop and had them fix it for me. Much cheaper than a new spindle from JD. One of the welds obviously had poor penetration, so it wasn't surprising it broke. It only took 13 years with me at the wheel to break it, though!
Today the excavator started digging the trench for the new electrical feed to my house. My house has a septic tank, and one thing I never knew was where the field lines were. I knew where the tank was, because I had to have it pumped about 10 years ago, but there has never been any evidence on the surface where the fields lines were. I know where they are now, because the trench we were digging went right through three of them. Because of how they were all converging to a single point, it was also apparent that we were very close to the distribution box. When we uncovered the D-box, the concrete started crumbling, so now I need a new D-box and field lines. As they say, stuff happens.
I've got a honey wagon coming tomorrow morning to pump the septic tank out, and in the meantime we're using the camper for all our waste water needs. The gray water can go via a long garden hose out into the woods, and the black tank hopefully will last until the septic tank is fixed.
I had a feeling this phase of the project was going to be tough.
:):)
