Friday, March 28, 2008

Digging the trench, Part 5

60 feet today - I made it almost all the way to the underbrush. At this point the sharp end of the trench is much closer to the trailer than to the well. It really only looks like two more days of digging to get to the level of the trailer, which is pretty cool (if true).

However, the ground leading up to the trailer is a lot rockier - the dirt I was digging in today was mostly just dirt - it looked like a field ready to be tilled. In fact, I'm tempted to propose planting stuff there once the trench is covered up. I worked for 2.9 hours, which included some time re-burying a test trench I dug a while back, which turned out to be in the wrong place.

If you're wondering why I'm writing about this progress, there are two reasons. The first is that I need to remember how much work this was a year from now or five years from now when I consider doing a similar project. I mean exactly how much work it was, not "I seem to remember that that was a lot of work." Blogging faithfully when I do this sort of work is a great way to make sure that that happens (assuming Google doesn't go under and take my blog with it).

The second reason is that I had no idea at all how long this project was going to take when I started it. I imagine that there are probably other people out there who don't know how long it would take to dig a trench with a Kubota like the one I'm using, and need to know so that they can budget for renting one. I can't promise that you'll go as fast (or as slow) as I've been going, but at least this gives you a ballpark idea of how hard it is.

I made it to the next ten-hour maintenance window, so I got to grease the Kubota again after today's work. Man, that's a dirty job. Especially when you have to do it outdoors, without any real facilities.

If I forget and brush the tip of the grease gun against the ground, I have to stop and carefully clean it. I frequently have to clean out the nipples to which the grease gun attaches, because they're covered in dirt and grit, and I don't have any appropriate tools, so I've been using a piece of 10 gauge electrical wire.

And we're really short on rags, and I have no idea how to dispose of the used grease containers. Hopefully guidance will materialize soon.

Not much else that's exciting (!) to report, other than that I could really use a nap.

4 Comments:

Blogger Will Shetterly said...

I think it's always good to post about doing unusual things. Heck, maybe usual things, too. The web is such an amazing document of what humanity is! (Yes, *lots* of porn. But lots more, too.)

Friday, March 28, 2008 6:21:00 AM  
Blogger Ted Lemon said...

Well, a big part of what humanity is about is food and sex, so it's not too surprising that there's a lot of porn on the internet. What's surprising is how little food there is. Although I guess there's a lot of talk about food, which isn't that different.

Friday, March 28, 2008 7:21:00 AM  
Blogger Will Shetterly said...

Y'know, I bet if you searched by all the sex terms and all the food terms, food would win.

Friday, March 28, 2008 8:48:00 AM  
Blogger Ted Lemon said...

Well, it's certainly true that image search technology is way behind text search, but you've got to cut them some slack - it's a much more difficult technical problem...

;')

Friday, March 28, 2008 9:14:00 AM  

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