Found a claw

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Apr 162019
 

After roughly 10 tries last week, we found an excavator with a claw (the grabber thing above the bucket in the picture). It got the crossing cleaned out! Since then, the creek has been happy, and we’re moving forward… Notice the large rocks in the picture of the crossing. Some of them are too big for 2 men to lift! Hopefully, the creek will go around them now and will stay off the far edges of the concrete. We will eventually need to modify the intake pipes so less debris will be caught in them, and more will flow over the top. In the meantime, you-know-who (aka, the builder – aka, not the builder’s wife) will be getting down in the creek and cleaning out debris by hand so as to avoid renting another Bobcat.

Highlift, meet dead oak

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Apr 062019
 

A friend recently asked me, “What’s a highlift?” Behold…

Our driveway, it turns out, needed to go right through a place where this huge, dead oak tree was standing. We got a bid of $800 to drop it, but then Drew, our UBuildIt guru, said one of his operators could just push it over. So — that’s what happened! Note the size of the trunk. Wish I had been there at the time, because it must have been quite a show.

Highlifts can do some amazing things…

We Need a Claw!

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Mar 212019
 

…with a backhoe attached to it. That’s because the creek keeps cutting the ends of our crossing out every time the water gets high, and before we can fix it we need the culverts cleared of debris. See? We think a claw on a backhoe for an hour or so will get all the logs & stumps picked up and dumped on the other side, where the creek itself will wash them away. Here are the stumps and things that need to be moved.  Know anyone with a claw on the end of a backhoe? If so, leave a comment on this post… thanks!

Dig ready? – not – yet…

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Mar 152019
 

Weather (wet) and paperwork (govt.) have combined, and we have missed our goal… but we’ll keep at it. In the meantime, here’s our site plan. Notice the shaded area around the creek at the upper part of the diagram – it’s a big floodplain. That means the Army Corp of Engineers is very interested in what happens there. I had a friend tell me he built a dam across the same creek (further upstream) and the ACOE apparently saw it on an aerial map and paid him a visit. It worked out, but … we don’t really own that land – the Army Corp. does. But we pay the taxes. Sigh…

After 35 years of dreaming…

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Feb 262019
 

…here we go! As one might note from previous posts, our progress since 2007 has been somewhat uncertain. The 2008 financial meltdown, family and business issues and the general rush of life have meant that now, finally, we’re on the way! Won’t you join us? Please subscribe (send a note to Help@ChenowethEast.com), or just check back periodically to see the progress. Our next goal is coming right up — to be “dig ready” (foundation) by March 15th.