December 10 2012

Well I thought I would be calling the inspector today to review my handy work. Instead I had to call the tire shop...I blew the rear tire on the backhoe...very loud bang..thought I had run over a land mine or gas pocket. Looks like I will be having some fun in the pit replacing the 21l24 size tire. The upside is that the last corner is almost done...maybe 3 hrs left and that will truly be it...

 The last corner (N.E.)

November 25th 2012

I had a self inflicted hyatis after blowing a hydraulic line on the bulldozer, so it's been a while since my last post. The line has been replaced and I cleaned up the pit over the Thanksgiving holiday. Not very thrilling but I only have one corner left to do. The bottom is now nice and flat.

November 4 2012

Checked bottom with a little help today. Just for scale the grade rod length is 25 ft. The pit is as deep as it needs to be...just have to even out and clean up. Hopefully there won't be too many more pictures of the giant hole in the ground!

November 3 2012

I got an early start today and put a good dent into cleaning out the pit. I won't promise but it should be fully dug by this time next week. I will do a bottom elevation check again tomorrow. I will be ordering the piping for the bottom grid in the coming week. Sunrise was quite spectacular.

October 28th 2012

I had my crew come in to check the bottom depth of the pit. It seems to be right on the money. The squid boats are out in force.

October 27th 2012

Today was a "red flag" fire danger day so my work was limited. I cleaned out the pit and got things ready for checking the depth of the excavation. The weather was very dry and there was a slight ocean breeze, temps of 75 degrees. I repaired the bad tire on the backhoe, found out that the air was leaking from a porous rim rather than from the tire so I painted the suspect area with a good epoxy paint.

October 22 2012

I started cleaning out the pit . I moved rocks and tried to leave the fines behind. The new ramp is not too steep. Nice and cool in the 60's.

October 21 2012

The new and improved ramp went in today. I used the bulldozer to flatten out the bottom, tough going with lots of rock. Now I have to remove the scrapings and even out the rest of the pit. I'm at 10 ft on the piping as you can see from the joint in the pvc. I'll clean up the pit and then use my theodolite to check bottom which needs to be 1430ft.