Happy Father’s Day!!

We have had a few things happen out on the land this week.

First .. Let’s get the painful out of the way. I am having more excavator woes.. but at this point .. that is to be expected 🙂 I had a mechanic come out on Tuesday to try and troubleshoot it. It is still functioning but it seems to have lost a lot of its umph and is pretty weak. The first thing the mechanic did was cut up the hydraulic fuel filters to see if there were any metal shavings in the filters (which would indicate a catastrophic failure). Luckily though, we didn’t find any significant metal shavings in the filters/hydraulic oil. After that he did a bunch of pressure measuring and I am down about 2000 psi. In all of the functions; boom, tracks, everything. Which most likely means………… my hydraulic pump is going out. Which could be another 6-10k repair…. .. At what point do I cut my losses with this machine? Somehow we will find a way to make it work out. I will probably repair it one more time.. there can’t be any other major system failure right? 🙂 🙂 🙂

Second. We had some more geotechnical work done on the land this Friday. We decided to change the location of where we want to build the Cottage (formally known as the “Auxiliary Dwelling Unit” but we were getting really sick of that mouthful) . With the location change we totally changed the design of the Cottage. And it is WAY cooler! (check out my CAD renderings…...

Feel free to tell me if you like the old or new better!)   BUT.. we are nervous about the results of the Geotech study. Basically a soil engineer came and I dug two holes that were 15ish feet deep and he took soil samples at different depths. He will take the samples back to the lab and run some tests and then decide if the soil can support a house.  Digging the holes was a bit painful with a weak machine. Took forever but we got done what we needed to and I am very grateful for that.  He didn’t seem too optimistic about the soils though. He never said no, but I’m not sure I ever got him to say “maybe” either when pressing him if he thought the soil might work.. At this point, I would be really heart broken if it doesn’t work out. This new plan uses the land sooo much better and is overall, really neat. 

Lastly…. I am still waiting on my well! What a nightmare. My neighbor was actually able to get his well done though. He had to drill 220 feet but hit some really good water. My wellhead will be about 250 feet away from his so hopefully we can hit the same water. I am presently calling the well company once or twice a week to get updates on timing. Sounds like I’m third on his list now and that roughly around July 11 they will come out to our land.

So, a decent amount of anxiety for us waiting on the well, the excavator and the geotech results 🙂 All part of the challenge. Feel free to send good joo-joo our way with positive thoughts! We will take any help we can get!  We have a very busy month in front of us so I am not anticipating any updates for a bit.

Until next time!

Mark