Day Two on Site

On Thursday I worked on our property for about four or five hours.  My Contractor Scott was there with his track hoe.  He was pushing down trees, pulling stumps and clearing away debris.  I was working with my chainsaw cutting the limbs off the downed trees, and cutting the trunks to length.

On Friday we continued with more of the same.  We spent about 7 or 8 hours working on Friday.  By the end of the day Scott had hauled away five tandem dump truck loads of debris.  The County operates a burn pit near the subdivision.  Locals are allows to dump wood waste there without charge, and the County burns it every winter.  I'm sure it will see lots of activity this year with all the construction taking place.

All of the trees that need to be removed were down by the end of the day.  Unfortunately I had to take down a few more than I really would have liked.  But, we need space for the guest cottage, a septic tank, and a fire break around the site.  We also had to take down a couple of large spruce that could have fallen on the building site in a wind storm.  We will plant some new trees around the perimeter this year to develop some privacy and a windbreak for the future.

At some point during the work one of the hydraulic cylinders on Scotts' track hoe became bent.  This was the ram that operates the thumb on the bucket.  As we continued to work, that cylinder became more and more bent, eventually to almost 90 degrees, and then it broke right off.  I was shocked to see that a solid, hardened steel rod, two inches in diameter, could bend like that.  Neither of us noticed any particular strain or torque on it, as it was just used in normal operation.

Scott had a neighbor bring out a new hydraulic cylinder that afternoon.  I gave him a hand in the evening to pull the damaged one off and install the new.  Cylinders are not overly expensive... only around 300 dollars, but hopefully this doesn't happen again.

It has been quite some time since I have done that much physical work.  My back and my legs were extremely sore by the end of the day.  I felt much older than my years.  Fortunately when I got up the next day, most of the pain was gone and I was ready to carry on.  On Saturday I did a little more work with the chainsaw but only for an hour or so.  Scott did not work on the weekend so the track hoe remained idle.  We will get back to some serious site work again on Monday.