Hi all!

Sorry for dropping off the map since February!  Truth be told there has not been a lot to report on. Since February we have been working with a new drafter to get the dream home plans as well as plans for phase one (the plan where we build out the basement first) of the dream home done. Those plans got sent to the engineer this week! It’s moving along, but slowly. I was hoping to have it all done by the beginning of June but that didn’t happen.  With that being the case we definitely are not building this year. 

So….. 
As most of you know Utah got hit with a TON of snow this year.  I was pretty worried about my 240 feet of 2 foot diameter culverts I had put in. If that got washed out, I’d be in all sorts of trouble. I visited once in April to check it out and it was using maybe 5% of the capacity. 

I didn’t visit during the absolute peak but I don’t think it ever made it past 15% capacity. So I suppose the engineers that sized it actually knew what they were doing 🙂  But with all the extra snow, we actually had water flowing down our ditches this year (clear until mid June before drying up!). The ditch on the back side of the property had a lot of water and mud to play in. That was a lot of fun for the kids.

 The other thing the snow had worried me about was my driveway. Fortunately, it came through really well! And it even dried out really fast. I did spend a little time sloping the driveway and making a ditch on the side to channel the water even more.

I hope to get more gravel put down before winter to make it a little more of a legit driveway.  After working on the driveway I had some unfinished business to take care of!  Down in the ditch with the culverts, I never had a chance to flatten that area out since that is where the chain broke last year. So I FINALLY got back down in the ditch and got that all flattened out. 

Which finally brings me to this weekend. I got some work done on the septic yesterday!  I only ever put the leach field in last year but I never connected the two trenches. So first thing first, I needed to get a 20′ pipe up to the land with my Nissan. Not sure if most of you are aware, but 20′ is a bit longer than my Nissan. It was a little ghetto, but we made it work.

 Then with the help of Andrew and my septic contractor, I got the upper and lower trenches connected together.

After that I made a big pile of dirt by digging a huge hole! I need two 2000 gallon septic tanks (one is an actual septic tank and the other is a treatment tank).  They are 6′ x 13′ x 6’H.  Turns out that is a lot of volume and makes for a big hole! 

I’ll order the two tanks tomorrow and hopefully we can get them installed soon. I am fairly nervous about swinging them into place!  The delivery truck has a crane but if it doesn’t have a big enough reach I may have to do the final placement with my excavator.  It is big enough and strong enough but that still makes me nervous! 

Anyhow, that’s about it for now. The best news about this summer so far is that my excavator is still running! And seems to be doing fairly well this year! Happy day 🙂

Until next time!

Mark