Productive, but not productive enough. Popped the excavator.

Saturday morning I went to pick up a freebie inflatable kayak off Craigslist.  I woke up early though, so I went out and measured how much wire I would need.  There is absolutely no chance a 50ft spool would cut it.  It looks like I would need a 75ft spool at least (this measured 78 feet), and that is just to get it to the deck, not the location of the hot tub.  I think at this point I will put off running the wire for next year though.  Honestly, given the cost of just the wire, it might be worth getting a quote to upgrade the house to 200A service, then I only need to run a new circuit from the house which would be 20 feet or so.  Either that or just run a 20A circuit for the deck, and stick with the inflatable hot tub for the foreseeable future (which runs off a 110V 15A circuit, instead of the typical 50A 240V built in hot tubs use).  

The kayak.  It is bigger than I expected.  It has a leak in the right tube.  I might (should?) be able to fix it, but otherwise it will only cost me a couple of bucks to chuck it if I can't.

I got my property tax bill in the mail Saturday and got a pleasant surprise.  With the reassessed values, my taxes went down.  The second bill is frequently smaller than the first, but the difference is not normally large.  I guess the other people in the town got hosed worse than me with the reassessment.

After all that though, it was time to get back to work on the excavator.  I ran it out of gas again, and since my can was full this time (it was mostly empty last time which is why it didn't get completely filled) I made a huge mess trying to fill it.  I used to have a large gas funnel, but couldn't find it.  I had a long one that I use to drain oil, but that had a lot of junk in it which I really didn't want to put in the excavator's fuel tank (I am pretty sure it does not have a fuel filter).  

So I made a trip to Harbor Freight.  While I was there I picked up a new worklight too.  It isn't as bright as the monster ones I got a couple years ago (I have one in the shed and one in the carport), but it is better than nothing.  The hope is that while I don't think it is bright enough for excavator work, it should be bright enough for hand shovel work. 

I also went and picked up the rolling cabinet from work that I am bringing down.  I am headed to KY this weekend.

Sunday was mostly an excavator day.  I got most of the digging done, but not all (more on that in a second).  I did have a short heart palpitation when I first sat this branch, since it is the exact same size that conduit would have been and at this point I was digging right on top of my water lines.  It was a major pain to remove too, it was too slick for the excavator to bite and was a real pain to dig out since it was two feet into the dirt.

I got all the inline digging done.  The last bit you have dig from the side.  Turns out this is a lot slower and more difficult since you actually have to dig, you can't just rip through the earth like you can inline.  

I apparently didn't get a picture of the back yard and progress.  My bad.

I got just under half of the sideways digging done when bad things happened.  It started spraying hydraulic fluid.

The piston doesn't look difficult to change, but I have no idea where I would even look to find one.  I might poke around (and maybe ask Barry, the only other person I know with an excavator).  This is where it is leaking.

A couple of other notes, I turned off my water pump when I was digging over the water lines (for obvious reasons), but I apparently forgot to turn it back on before I ran the dishwasher that evening.  It looks like everything worked okay though, so I apparently have a large pressure tank.  It did completely drain it though.  I have never actually seen the pressure tank that was installed (it is installed underneath the house).  I am sure it was terrible for the water heater though, since it probably was running near empty for an hour or two.  Oops.

Surprisingly everything in the dishwasher came out clean though, no soap spots or anything that I could see that would indicate that most of the cycle was run without water.  

I also removed all the remaining lumber out of my truck and cleaned out the back to prepare for the trip.

Unfortunately this puts a large damper on my ability to finish this before I head to KY.  I am seriously debating just JB welding and gorilla taping the crap out of it (I am aware that Gorilla tape can't take the PSI hydraulics run at), and just letting it leak until I finish the trench, I am that close.  I don't really want to try to dig it by hand, but that is also an option, but it is in the area that got compacted when they put the house in, so it would be rough digging.  And at this point, it wouldn't happen before I get back.  I also need to keep a really close eye on the temperatures too; water lines don't freeze because they are buried well below the frost line, but right now there is I would guess ~18" of dirt removed from on top of them, so they may not be below the frost line at the moment until that material is restored, and it will be December before I get back from Thanksgiving.  Ugh.  And I still haven't put the snowblower on the back of the tractor or anything yet.  It might be time to dust off the white flag and punt the drainage until next year, even despite the fact that it was absolutely gorgeous outside this weekend.  

Before Winter:

• Back yard drainage.
• Close up tiny home.  Seal up plumbing.
• Clean off driveway at top.
• Smooth driveway enough to not catch the snowblower.
• Winterize equipment

Unlikely to happen at this point until next year:

• Build shelving for second room
• Insulate the water lines
• Take scrap metal to Buffum.  Clean up trash.
• Storm doors
• Gravel the driveway
• Side yard drainage
• Eliminate cap.

Winter Projects:

• Design deck
• Install whole house filter.
• Access panel upgrades in master closet
• Cut trails, or at least mark paths.