Apart from the endless back and forth conversations and emails that my sister had to endure with the local engineer and surveyor to make sure that we were covered logistically, the physical labor was taxing... that word doesn't even sum it up. As for costs, the power company was going to supply poles to get to our land, and all of the wire we needed to make the 800'+ run underground to our transformers. As for the conduit ($1600.00) and digging, we were on our own.
Once logistics were solved, it was time to start the hard stuff. We could have hired someone to dig the 52" deep trench, but it would have cost us close to $2k to have it done and we would still have to assemble the conduit. So we chose to rent the equipment and put in the "sweat" equity, emphasis on sweat! Keep in mind, this is early September in south Alabama. Since my schedule was the most flexible, I chose to spearhead the work to get it done as fast as possible, well sort of. In my first partial day on the Terramite T7, I was able to do only about 30-40 feet in 3 hours. I was praying that I could make this go faster as I got more comfortable on the backhoe, because at this pace it was going to take forever.
This was taken mid-way through day 2.
Day 3 is when I really found my groove, and destroyed over 200' despite having to fight a lot of roots and 3 stumps. But by this point, my butt was so sore from sitting on the backhoe for most of the day with very few breaks.
poles and wire finally going in.
That was about 3 hours in.
the next day was much better, and I was able to knock out about 150' that day.
It's hard to see, but I started way down just before it turns, and kept moving until sundown.
Day 4 was Saturday, which meant soccer had priority over work. By the time I got out there it was already 12:30. But, brother-in-law came out shortly after me and took over digging. I took this opportunity get some conduit put together. Of course, that was so easy. I was able to assemble 53 runs of 3"x10' conduit in about an hour, but had to stop because I was waiting for us to finish the ditch.
Take this lesson from me, schedule 40 conduit filled with nothing but air is very buoyant. If there is water in your trench, you have a few options; put something heavy on the conduit and throw enough dirt on it to hold it down, strap on the waders or mud boots and stand on it while dragging dirt in the trench with you, or get a sump pump to move the water out. Not having any of the above, my stupid self left it to deal with later, praying it would dry up, yeah right! Another note, when you put conduit in a trench, be ready to fill it back in IMMEDIATELY. I left it open until the end, and I'm sorry I did. Not only did the rain compact and harden the piles of clay, but on the day I was pushing everything back in, it rained so hard that the conduit was floating less than 2' deep when it was supposed to be 48" deep. For those who would think, "just push the dirt in on top of it, it will sink." you probably slept through high school science and physics. I'll let someone else explain it to you. The other issue with the rain, was that this backhoe was not equipped with tracks, man could have used one with tracks.
Back on track to day 5. After church I headed out to the land. My brother-in-law calls me over and points to the right rigger and says "watch". Now, I know hydraulic systems are usually a little leaky, but this was like a small geyser spraying out of one of the knuckles. Did we stop, NO! We had work to do. So he went and got hydro oil and I babied the riggers as long as I could. Until it went dry... We dumped 2 gallons into it and I kept on trucking. Still taking it easy on the rigger, it made digging a little harder. The next day, I got her returned to to good folks at Blue Rents and they had it fixed in a few days and back to me to finish up.
That day it rained was such a setback, I had cave-ins and conduit floating in several places. I devoted hours to re-digging areas, pinning down conduit with the bucket and dumping dirt in by hand, and fixing separated pipes. Let's talk about re-digging areas on a trench. Take it from me, you do not want to park the heavy end of a 4,000 machine on the edge of a 4 foot deep hole. It's not a fun feeling.
In the end, 3 temporary power poles were up, inspected, and a week later, the power company was out there putting their poles up and running wires!
Why I needed tracks.
Temporary power pole.
A transformer! We finally have transformers!
No comments:
Post a Comment