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Post by biggkidd on Aug 27, 2022 5:35:56 GMT -6
Yeah I'm using an 8 inch bit as it's what I have. Which is fine.
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Post by biggkidd on Aug 27, 2022 18:03:33 GMT -6
No work got done today. However I did get my daughter to run the grade rod around so I could get a better idea of where the banks will end up when the pond is full. Trying to see where I want to do what to get the most water storage. My thoughts like always are the deeper and larger the better. Deeper because the water stays cooler and doesn't evaporate as fast. Larger because more surface area equals more water. I think my island idea may go by the wayside in favor of more surface area increasing the volume. Basically I would be taking the dam another 4-6 feet higher which will put those trees under the surface. Providing the pond fills of course. lol While this will not greatly increase the surface area it will greatly increase the volume held.
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Post by papaof2 on Aug 27, 2022 18:51:20 GMT -6
You may yet get the Niagara Falls Power Station of the South ;-)
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Post by biggkidd on Aug 28, 2022 18:45:48 GMT -6
Made some decent progress tonight hand digging through that spot for the drain pipe. Another 4 to 6 days like today and I'll be through it. lol Lets face it I'm not much count for work this hard anymore. Beating through rock & hardpan with drills, chisels, digging bars, and hammers is a younger mans game.
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Post by papaof2 on Aug 28, 2022 21:00:09 GMT -6
I no longer approach any type of yard work unless armed with a powered tool. Riding mower for most of it (2 year old 42" Craftsman), self-propelled walk-behind (Honda electric start - maybe 4 years old) for the edges and small areas, battery string trimmer (40 volt Ryobi, works better than the gas Troy-Bilt trimmer, have 2 batteries so always enough "fuel" to finish the job). I have a battery-powered 4 inch chainsaw for trimming those small branches I did with loppers a year or two ago. Even my wife likes tha 18 volt hand-held blower for clearing leaves, flowers and squirrel dust (when they dig in the planters on the front porch) - I finally convinced her to try the blower instead of sweeping the porch and now she uses it regularly.
I just need to get my body back up to speed. Scheduled for an insurance-required x-ray and a doctor-ordered CT tomorrow. CT with contrast and the person handing out the contrast solution said "It tastes bad. Mix it with Crystal Light or something - not plain water." I'm guessing that's good advice ;-)
If the CT shows no problem, I'll probably be scheduled for a "minimally invasive" spinal fusion (sacrum to iliac) in the next week or two. Not looking forward to even out-patient surgery but I am hoping for the 80% pain reduction most people get from the procedure. If it's that successful, I'll again be able to sleep on my back or right side, sit in a regular chair at the table for an entire meal without pain, drive a vehicle, get back to yard work (instead of paying someone $60 every two weeks) and the long list of other To-Do items I've made over the past 9 months. I also will hope to be free of mind-clouding Rx painkiller and back to writing again. Wonder of wonder, I got a new chapter (in the wee hours of today) on one of the stories that's been stalled for months. The 2-3 lines of outline finally came to fruition after 2AM this morning. I'm spending a lot of time on the sofa in the family room if I'm in pain after the better half is in bed because I know my constant movement while searching for a comfortable position would wake her, even with the decent isolation a SleepNumber mattress gives.
I expect there will be some level of PT after surgery but hopefully after the staples are out (10 days or so). I'll probably be doing my own PT (treadmill time) because I've been unable to stand/walk much for so long. I need to be able to walk at a steady pace for at least 20 minutes - and I once did an hour on the treadmill :-( I hate being OLD.
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Post by biggkidd on Aug 28, 2022 21:58:55 GMT -6
Best of luck Papa.
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Post by biggkidd on Aug 31, 2022 18:30:22 GMT -6
There for awhile I was working in fairly soft to medium hard rock and hardpan. Today I hit a vein of HARD rock so hard it's smoking a diamond tipped rock bit. It's drilling SLOWLY and breaking chunks out is even harder now! This is gonna take awhile.
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Post by papaof2 on Aug 31, 2022 19:39:40 GMT -6
Rock that hard is what gunpowder and later explosives handle best - but from a distance. If you've seen video from some of the implosions that did not go well, you'll see debris falling in the crowd. If you opt for explosive demolition, be sure you're a safe distance away when things go BOOM!
Could you borrow a skidsteer with a jackhammer? That also works well on hard surfaces and is probably faster than the drill with a diamond tip. Or borrow a husky young buck with an electric or pneumatic jackhammer? Maybe offer to buy him a steak dinner or a six-pack of something?
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Post by biggkidd on Aug 31, 2022 20:32:13 GMT -6
Nope it's a contest now and I'm going to win! lol Even if it does kill me! Under 10 feet by 1 foot to go. I will win or die trying.......
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Post by papaof2 on Aug 31, 2022 21:05:01 GMT -6
Nope it's a contest now and I'm going to win! lol Even if it does kill me! Under 10 feet by 1 foot to go. I will win or die trying....... And they bury you under that slab of rock with your words painted on it?
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Post by biggkidd on Aug 31, 2022 23:12:11 GMT -6
Works for me! But up on the hill under the edge of the trees would be preferred.
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Post by biggkidd on Sept 1, 2022 21:16:26 GMT -6
Made another pretty good dent today. Another day or two and I think the end will be in sight. Whatever I am breaking out pieces of now is way hard and has to come off in much smaller bites which in turn means a lot more holes have to be drilled and much smaller pieces of rock busted / pried apart. I'm using a 3/4 or 1 inch bar and it's bending much like a damp noodle.
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Post by papaof2 on Sept 1, 2022 22:22:06 GMT -6
Sounds like jackhammer time ;-)
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Post by biggkidd on Sept 2, 2022 0:01:17 GMT -6
Sounds like jackhammer time ;-) Nope arm strong time I will win. Yep hardheaded and stubborn as all. Gotta remember I had to learn to walk, talk and write twice in this lifetime already. Determination is one thing I have plenty of! I do actually have another option here on hand in the form of air hammers, but I am going to win the way I'm going just for the sheer pleasure of doing it... I could have switched up from day one but sometimes I just gotta do it the hard way to see if I still can. I have to admit I did hope to have better success with the other option we talked about.
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Post by biggkidd on Sept 2, 2022 22:03:44 GMT -6
Made an amazing amount of progress today. Only worked on it about an hour and did at least twice as much as I expected to get done in twice the amount of time. Maybe just maybe I am starting to get the hang of breaking rock this way.
Just wanted to mention some of the reasons I was trying not to use air tools. First and foremost breaking rock makes a ton of dust which reeks havoc on air tools and compressors. Second I would have to lug a minimum of a 30 gallon compressor within 100 feet of the work area. You need at least that much to get any kind of run time with a fair size air hammer. Even at that you could still only run the hammer about a minute or two at a time until you have to let the compressor catch up. After 30 or so minutes of that you need to let the compressor cool off for a bit, an air hammer draws a WHOLE lot of air volume FAST. Third that much compressor requires a lot of juice to run so that also means lugging a minimum of a 5,000 watt generator down there too. Yes I could have done all that and probably already be done but then there is the fact that I wanted to know if I was still able to complete this hard of a job. Granted I can only work on something like this or work this hard for about 2 hours in a day. Today I was only up for one hour after yesterday's two hours kicked my tail.
Anyway I think two more days of work will see me through and putting the pipe in.
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Post by papaof2 on Sept 2, 2022 23:38:06 GMT -6
There are also electric jackhammers that only require getting the generator up where you're working - but you still have to move something. If it works for you, have at it.
I once told my primary care physician that I thought my problem at the time might be from overdoing. He told me that you have to overdo occasionally to know what you can reasonably do. I still live by that and often find that I've tried to do "too much" so I drop the effort down a bit and continue with what I can do.
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Post by biggkidd on Sept 4, 2022 8:32:52 GMT -6
Took yesterday off. Got back at it for an hour again this morning. Let me tell you the method you use makes all the difference in the world. Drilling about 9 to 12 holes over roughly 16 inches square and then breaking it up and out as a section sure seems to go faster than trying to take a cut 3 or 4 inches across that 16 inches by drilling 3 or 4 holes in that one row and breaking it away. Provided I can move enough to work late this afternoon I might just finish today.
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Post by biggkidd on Sept 4, 2022 18:49:31 GMT -6
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Post by papaof2 on Sept 4, 2022 19:10:55 GMT -6
What you have will work for an open waterwheel but needs a filter on the input of the pipe if you plan to power a Pelton wheel or some other type turbine that uses a nozzle. These guys in NZ drilled holes in a right-angled piece of pipe on the storage side of their dam and wrapped in what looks like groundcloth so that leaves and small trash could not get into the pipe: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVoeaKCEd2o (about 45 minutes - I may have posted the link before. Their power is more-or-less permanent because the water source is a year-round stream. This is part 1 - there are (I think) 3 more parts.)
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Post by biggkidd on Sept 4, 2022 20:08:08 GMT -6
Yes it will need a strainer down the road. At the moment it will keep the water out of one side and once the two sides are connected it will keep all of it from getting any deeper than the level of the pipe. Once the pond is finished and before we stop it up we will put something on there to take care of straining it. The pipe there is 6 maybe 8 feet above the deepest point. But it was the best I could do at the point I was at when I had the idea and with what I had to work with.
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Post by biggkidd on Sept 5, 2022 9:59:42 GMT -6
Put some new pics over there at the other site where I can post them if anyone wants to see.
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Post by biggkidd on Sept 5, 2022 17:03:14 GMT -6
Got the drain in today and then spent several hours moving dirt with the dozer. The dam rose another few inches. It had been raining lightly for an hour or more when I decided to quit because the dozer had gotten HOT. I hadn't really realized just how hard I was pushing it all afternoon.
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Post by biggkidd on Sept 15, 2022 11:37:58 GMT -6
Been fighting super hard ground lately just picking at the edges and barely scraping the surface with the D4.
Believe it or not my little Chinese tractor did what the D4 couldn't. I put my homemade ripper on and it was able to break up ground the D4 couldn't. Now I can push a layer off with the D4 then break it again and repeat until I hit solid rock or get where I want to be. I can only go down 4-8 inches at a time but that's dang good progress considering!
I'll try and get pics to post over where I can next time I go up.
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Post by biggkidd on Sept 16, 2022 14:26:20 GMT -6
Tractor was doing great breaking up the ground UNTIL I was already straining the hell out of it and hit a root or rock or something. At which point something had to give. The something was one of the old welds on the TPH lift arm, broke it clean in two AGAIN! The is the first of my welds to break on one of these arms. Both arms have been broken a few times but never where I had already welded them until now. Even considering that I got quite a lot of earth moved using the dozer. Lucky for me I was on the last pull of that round of breaking up ground when the arm broke.
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Post by papaof2 on Sept 16, 2022 23:43:43 GMT -6
You need the right tool for the job - maybe a CAT D-11 with a ripper bar? ;-)
I've not done enough welding to have anything in service that gets heavy loads. Welding was a skill I thought would be useful so I invested the $100 in a Harbor Freight 90amp flux core welder and watched some vidoes on YouTube. The shepherd's crook hanger the better half uses for two bird feeders (maybe 10lbs each when full) needed to be taller to keep the squirrels from jumping up above the plastic anti-climb disk, so I extended the (maybe 1/2") rod with cut, separate and splint - using some 3/8" x 3/8" angle.* It's been out in the weather for well over 10 years and it's still together - something else I need to put back in place after having the tree guys in.
The bright side on "putting back in place" is that yesterday I got the letter from the insurance company approving the back surgery - and the surgeon's office called to schedule the procedure. I'll be there the afternoon of 9/27. The staples will be taken out 10-11 days after surgery and I know I'll have some restrictions because there's always a page of Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not after any surgery. I'm looking forward to sleeping on my back and my right side. I've slept mostly on my right side for so long that sleeping on my left side still feels wrong after 9+ months - but sleeping on my back or right side wakes me from the pain...
Hurry up 9/27 ;-)
* The most aggressive squirrels - the ones that kept trying to find a way to the bird feeders - I used for target practice with the pellet pistol. They don't even smell if you put them in a gallon zip lock bag and seal it carefully before tossing it in the garbage can...
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