Hi all! Good news! The excavator chain installation was completed late Thursday night! I got chased around a little bit by some rain which made the final 16 trackpad installation a bit muddy and annoying. However, I got it done and now the excavator is back up and running! I was too anxious to get out of the ditch, so even though it was dark and a little muddy, I drove the excavator out of the ditch that night.  I put it in front of the shed and turned the lights on in the excavator and in the shed for a picture to prove I was out of the ditch 🙂 For an extra bonus I am including a picture of my breaker bar after the job was done. See anything wrong with it? 🙂  

Friday brought the beginning of my deepwall leach field trenching exercise.  I needed to dig 150′ of 7′ deep trench. I had an area for 100′ of trench already prepped and ready to go but still needed to prep a second area a little lower down from the first trench/bench. I got that second area ready and then started trenching. It went really well! And best yet, the excavator ran well without issues. At the end of the day Friday I had 106′ done.  I had my septic guy show up to make sure I wasn’t messing it all up. He said I was a little deep in my main trench but other than that it all looked good. Saturday morning I got up early and got after it and finished the other 50′. So my trenches are ready to go. We will have the trenches inspected early this week and then we will fill the first 6′ of the trenches with gravel.  After that the pipe system is installed and that is followed by some fabric and then 6″ of soil on top. And then my leach field will be done. We will probably have to wait till next year to set the tanks.  When the trenches were finished I did spend some time getting my house pre excavation smoothed out and level so the gravel trucks will be able to come dump the gravel where I need (see pics 7-12)

Looking ahead at the next couple weeks I have a young mens overnighter this weekend so I am going to schedule all the gravel to be delivered on Tuesday of the following week. I don’t want to leave the trenches open too long.  I really dislike driving up and down the trenches with the tracks on either side of the trench.  Makes me a tad nervous. On the bright side, you’ll get a break from a newsletter next week which I am sure you all will enjoy!  Making progress though! Slowly but surely.

On a side note, I have a lot of administrative work that needs to happen between now and the build. Getting the building permit will not be easy.  I have submitted my plans to a drafter and should have an official set of building plans in early November. After that I will need an engineer to stamp the drawings. Anyhow, lots to happen in this area I’ll keep you posted as I start working through some of that. 

Until next time!

Mark