and finally.....

to catch everyone (yeah, everyone, thats funny) up on where we are, lets backtrack

 - had a drainage issue at the shop, water was pooling up, getting inside the building.
 - Found a weeping tile system someone put in years ago, did a bad job of it.  no longer functional (if it ever was)
 - Rented a excavator and dug trenches to get started on working on a new weeping tile system,  then it rained some more.

Finally the rain stopped (although I hate wishing for rain to stop, because you dont know when it will come back)

Laid out what i needed, and of course I needed more digging, so off I go to rent a tool again.

I know, it just hurts me to type that,....

renting a tool...


 uggg


anyway


I stopped by the BORG early one morning, waiting on the tool place to open, excavator was in the parking lot, should be good to go......


uhhhh  Nope.  Guy tells me its broke, cant rent it.

i run around to a few other places, no dice.  Its Sunday, so that limits options, and no one that is open has one.

So for the next weekend, I decide to not sit on my hands and wait and have nothing, so I called Sunbelt rentals.  They are not open on the weekend at all, so setup to pick it up friday afternoon, return monday morning.  All good, everything set.

Well, apparently not.  Showed up there friday afternoon and the guy tells me they have nothing for me.  their mini excavator was broken.

No offers of other units, other offices, anything.  Just we got nothing and dont let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

yeah, fat chance my butt will ever darken their doorstep again,  not that it apparently matters to them.


so off I go to the BORG to see what they had, luckily (or not) they had one.  So I hitched up, signed my life away, and off I went.

We all got up at the buttcrack of dawn the next morning, and M and I dug with that POS most of the next day, and let me tell you, it was a POS.

it jerked and kicked like a bucking bull, and we had to stay on a lot longer than 8 seconds.  At first, I decided I was the problem, the operator was the issue.  the longer I stayed in there, the more I knew, I was not the problem.  When M had the same issues, I had final confirmation.

Luckily we got done that Saturday and were able to return that POS to the BORG.  and luckily, we got the digging done we needed to

now, I needed rock.

made some good friends at Denton Sand and gravel, and our first delivery was 2 yards of 2" drainage rock.

and they delivery,  (obviously)

yes, I know, doesnt look like a very big pile of rocks.

We got the pipe assembled, socked, and into the trench by the building, making sure it had the proper slope to it, and then proceeded to haul rock from our pile over to the trench via wheelbarrow.

yep, I said wheelbarrow.  So its shovel into wheelbarrow, carry over to building, Dump

then repeat.

That is so much fun, let me tell you


It ended up being enough to cover the trench next to the building.

we still had about 40' of trench and the dry well pit to complete.

of course during all this, since I was making sure the pipe had the proper slope to it (as I want to do this right and not have to do this again) I had to dig out a few places to take humps out, etc.

Well, and what happens when you dig,

you hit something you dont want to

Guess, what I hit.....

I hit the water line and punctured it.

yep, hit the water line going into the building.

Wanna completely ruin the LOYL's day?  Tell her she cant use the facilities because there is no water.

Yep, she was thrilled with that info.

(for get the fact that I realized I did not have a key to turn the water off at the street, I literally had to grab a stick of alunimum I had and make one so I could turn the water off,  during this time I probably sent more water into my cool new trench than the water co-op has ever seen me use.  It was confirmed later as we finally had used enough water that the bill went above the minimum charge by a whole $3.  )

Wanna make it even better?  Try 3 different times to fix it and be unable to.  Could not get the fittings to stay.  so finally I tell the LOML I am useless and in capable of doing anything correctly, so she called a professional in.

Of course the plumber we called fixed it about 3 seconds and also told the LOML exactly what I did wrong.

Which went something like, umm, your husband is a idiot.

yeah, she knew that already.

anyway, so with water running in all the places it should, and none of the places it shouldn't


we get another deliver of rock, this time 4 yards  (thanks to the LOML for making it 4 and not 3, but we will get to that in a minute)

yes, I know it looks the same as the other pile, trust me that it is much larger.

really, it is

but now that I had about 5,000 lbs of rock to move and more dirt than that, I decided I needed to rent another tool.

yep, there is that pain through my neck again....  every time I type those words....

anyway.

decided a tractor with a loader would help out.  Spent about 4 hours..

Starting at Sunrise,  no joke, was out there in the dark with the tractor unloaded waiting on it to be bright enough to see,

moving dirt from where we had dug it up over to our ditch, and moving rocks into the trench and pit.

and finally, we have a drainage system in place that hopefully will keep water out of the places water isnt supposed to get and into places water is supposed to get

there is a open drain grate to carry the downspout from the end of the building into the weeping tile, then 60 feet of the building is all weeping tile to collect the water and help it run off, converts to solid pipe at the other end of the building.  There is a box to collect the rainwater from the other downspout on that end, then it all ends up in (2) 50 gallon dry wells, in a 6' deep, 5' wide, 8' long pit filled with rock, and if that isnt enough, there is a 10 foot overflow pipe on the end  (and the 2 overflow pipes you see on the top of the drywells.

I certainly hope the next time it rains, floods, whatever, I dont have to see my shop flooded with water again.  This project has been going on for over 4 months now, I have gotten nothing accomplished for projects around the shop, and I would really like to get back to a few things if I could.

Oh, BTW, wanna know how much dirt we moved?

yep, thats a lot


Cherry Pie!

DD