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Do you have a summer-time outdoor project this year? I almost always have one in the works. This year it’s building a retaining wall at the base of a slope down to the creek. We have clay soil here which is really considered to almost be a “very slow moving plastic.” No matter what, clay soil constantly creeps and there is nothing you can do about that. After 28 years living here, I have to build a retaining wall to hold it back...for a while. I expect it will do the trick for 30 years or so.
The creek goes right by our home and is about 30 feet down from the deck off our bedroom. To build it, I’m starting with 7,200 pounds of dry cement (ninety 80-pound sacks) and 120 cinder blocks. A cinder block is 16 inches long by 8 inches high and 8 inches deep. I’m going to put rebar down through the cinder blocks and cement at 2-foot increments as I build it.
I bought it all at Lowe’s and had it delivered. The driver decided to back the truck up across our road so the back end of the truck was near the spot I wanted the stuff placed. I told him maybe he could just leave the truck on the road and use the Moffett forklift that was hitched up and tucked into the back end of the truck to bring all of it to where I wanted it. Unfortunately, the guy didn’t quite fully take into account the terrain and, you know, being a truck driver, he knew what he was doing. What he hadn’t taken into consideration was how the truck would be oriented in that space after dropping a foot off the road onto dry clay soil.
He took my stuff off after he’d backed up across the road and was then unable to get the truck to move. It was stuck. He then unloaded all the other stuff from the truck to make it lighter. That didn’t work. The truck was far too big and heavy. He was not able to back the truck up to get a running start as it was about 5 feet from the creek. Had he backed up, the truck would have gone down about 20 feet into the creek...back end first. So he put it in low and gunned it. It was not a four-wheel drive vehicle. Actually, the back end of the truck had eight wheels. The wheels that had no traction in the dry clay soil spun and spun and dug down.
The guy got pissed and kept gunning the engine trying to muscle the thing out. The back wheels dug deep down into the dirt until the axels were almost down to the ground. Great. The road was totally blocked and the truck was completely stuck. I got a shovel and started digging into the dirt under the stuck tires so that I could put rocks and boards under the wheels to hopefully get some traction. I wasn’t too confident that would work as deep as those wheels were, but I had to try something. Guess what? That didn’t work because the truck was too heavy. The guy gunned it and gunned it until the boards under the tires caught fire from the friction. The tires then caught fire too. They must have been so hot that once the boards caught fire, that’s all they needed to ignite. Burning tires are quite smoky and stinky. I quickly put dirt on the fire. Below is a picture of the boards that were in flames.
He was now super pissed. I asked him if that Moffett forklift could possibly pull the truck out from the front end. He said he’d never thought of that and had no idea. We took off the 4-inch woven straps the truck has to keep junk on the flatbed and tied them to the front bumper of the truck then to the forklift. Here’s what a Moffett forklift looks like:
I needed to drive the truck while he pulled it with the forklift. I released the airbrakes and put it in low gear. So we tried...several times. It didn’t work. The reason why is because he kept trying to pull the truck straight out in alignment with the truck’s orientation in which it was stuck. I knew that wouldn’t work after a couple goes. He was starting to feel defeated and thought he was going to have to call a giant tow truck to help which would have taken forever and he’d be in trouble from work. I told him it I thought it might work better if he pulled the front of the truck kinda sideways vs. straight out (i.e. putting torque into it).
It worked. When he pulled the front of the truck sideways with the forklift, it twisted the truck in that direction enough that the back wheels of the truck could get out of the deep ruts they were stuck in. While I gunned the sucker he yanked the front of the truck towards the left-sideways. We got it free.
I didn’t say this to him but it would have been simpler and easier to have the truck on the street and then remove my stuff with the forklift and place it where I wanted it. Oh well.
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In the creek itself, I’ve had to dig out two huge and lovely ferns. There was no way to avoid that. I’ve placed big rocks from the creek itself at the edge. A few of these rocks took some time to move because they are big and super heavy being igneous rock. I use a shovel and a heavy duty tamping rod to inch by inch moved them into place. A little bit of cursing is involved in moving them. Stuff like, “Don’t you roll back on me you SOB.” Behind this wall of rocks is where I’m going to build the retaining wall.
It’s all about the prep which is 80% of any project. There is a spring that runs some water from the hillside into the creek which I’m going to have to drain through the retaining wall. I plan on using some 4-inch diameter drain pipes for that. Under that dirt is pure lava cap on which I’ll be building the retaining wall itself. From the vantage point of the picture, which is about 30 feet above the creek, you really can’t get a good perspective of how big some of those rocks are.
What do you want to talk about today?
Netroots Nation 2018
RSVPS
1. Neeta Lind, organizer (kosmail her to connect)
2. Bill in Portland Maine
3. Common Sense Mainer
4. Meteor Blades
5. vicki
6. markm667
7. belinda ridgewood
8. paradise50
9. smileycreek
10. side pocket
11. Mrs. side pocket
12. annrose
13. Spedwybabs
14. ericlewis0
15. shanikka
16. Crashing Vor
17. cv lurking gf
18. brillig
19. mik,
20. K1 (aka thatkid)
21. K2
22. loggersbrat
23. Richard Cranium
24. Jeff Singer
25. BeninSC
26. KathyinSC
27. mommyof3
28. Chris Reeves
29. DrLori
30. Will Johnson
31. Carolyn Fiddler
32. Irna Landrum
33. Drew Linzer
34. Jen Hayden
35. peregrine kate
36. Michael Langenmayr
37. Paul Hogarth
38. Rachel Colyer
39. Wagatwe Wanjuki
40. Kelly Macias
41. ramara
42. Will Rockafellow
43. Jessica Sutherland
44. Rory Morris
45. Laura Clawson
46. Arjun Jaikumar
47. Rachel Sinderbrand
48. Wes Williamson
49. Kimm Lett
50. Huiying Chan
51. Joan McCarter
52. Candelaria Vargas
53. Stephen Wolf
54. Gabe Ortiz
55. Steven Howard
56. Jonaya Leek
57. Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza
58. chigh
59. chigh2
60. Mark E. Anderson
61. Marian Piekarczyk
62. gmats
63. Vic Uzumeri aka grapes
64. Joanne Savard
65. DrLori
66. texasmom
67. texasdad
68. Mike Johnson
69. Maya Gold
70. Jon Sitzman
71. watercarrier4diogenes
72. Wee Mama
73. Tall Papa
74. David Nir
75. Kaili Joy Gray
76. Daniel Donner
77. Lulu
78. Susan Grigsby
79. 714day
80. True Blue Majority
81. dopper0189
82. Adel Reid
83. Dartagnan
84. Mr. Clawson
85. Mrs. Clawson
86. SemDem
87. Mrs. SemDem
88. Leslie Salzillo
89. Alona Sistrunk
90. Chitown Kev
91. DebtorsPrison
92.
MAYBEES :
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