My driveway culvert was delivered this morning. County specified a 40', 15" diameter, mitered ends. Over the weekend, I used my automatic level and set the elevations, used the box blade to prepare a really nice bed for it. When the truck and semi-flat bed trailer arrived this morning, we just rolled it off the side of the trailer, and it rolled nicely down the swale, and even ended up with the miters facing up!
Boy, I just knew this was going to go very well.
In this county, the road department wants to inspect the pipe before it's covered, so I called them, and there was a road dept. employee only a block away. He came over, gave me a compliment for how well it was positioned, and passed it.
I had made a prior arrangement with a dump truck service, so as soon as I had the official OK, I chirped them (Nextel is great!), and they had the first load of shell rock on the way within minutes.
This was looking better and better!
When the truck arrived, the driver (a really nice lady named Theresa) told me that when she dumped, it might move the pipe a little. I thought, how much could it move? "Go ahead", I said, "I'll watch it."
Well, watch it, I did. I watched it move out of the bottom of the swale about a foot, raise up, get crooked, and roll around so the miter was cockeyed. I watched it as 18 yards of wet shell rock (about 22 tons) landed on top of it, so it couldn't be shoved back into position.
About 4 hours later, as I was still moving shell rock out of the way so I could finish digging it by hand, to get back to the groove where I had it earlier, a neighbor stopped to chat. "Same thing almost happened to me when I put in my culvert," he said, "but I figured it would move, so I put my bucket against it on the other side when they dumped." "Thanks a lot," I said, "where the heck were you about 4 hours ago?"
My son-in-law got home about then, and we kindly popped the whole dang 40' pipe out of the swale, ran the tractor in as much as we could to clean out the bottom. It has been raining a lot, the swale had water in it, and I really pumped it into soup with the tractor tires. We ended up having to put some shell in the bottom to stabilize it, and still had some hand digging to do to get it right.
It was nearly dark when we finally rolled the pipe back into place. It looks pretty good, it looks like one end is a little lower than the other, but tomorrow I'll use the level again to make sure before I start to cover it. I surely don't want to have to dig it out again! When Theresa came back with the second load, I had her dump it a safe distance from the pipe, even though it has to be moved further. Instead of moving 36 yards, I'll be moving 54 - because I already moved the first 18 and have to move it again.
I didn't feel like taking any pictures, and besides, it was dark. Down in another forum section, Henro said that people with white hair got that way because they use their brains more. I sure proved him wrong today. One tiny little burst of inspiration - would that have been too much to ask? Nope, I had to go and get over confident. By the way, digging out all that shell rock on a fairly steep swale wasn't the safest thing I ever did with the tractor, either. Fortunately, I took it real slow and don't have any other stupidity to report... /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif
PS - for you Notherners who don't know what shell rock is, it's small chunks of limestone and limestone dust with liberal amounts of sea shells in it. Seems many eons ago, all of Florida except the central ridge was covered by the ocean, and the shells - a lot of them! - are still there, in the limestone sediment. The pit where we get the shell rock is about 60' deep to get to it. When it's compacted and dries, it's almost as hard as concrete.
Boy, I just knew this was going to go very well.
In this county, the road department wants to inspect the pipe before it's covered, so I called them, and there was a road dept. employee only a block away. He came over, gave me a compliment for how well it was positioned, and passed it.
I had made a prior arrangement with a dump truck service, so as soon as I had the official OK, I chirped them (Nextel is great!), and they had the first load of shell rock on the way within minutes.
This was looking better and better!
When the truck arrived, the driver (a really nice lady named Theresa) told me that when she dumped, it might move the pipe a little. I thought, how much could it move? "Go ahead", I said, "I'll watch it."
Well, watch it, I did. I watched it move out of the bottom of the swale about a foot, raise up, get crooked, and roll around so the miter was cockeyed. I watched it as 18 yards of wet shell rock (about 22 tons) landed on top of it, so it couldn't be shoved back into position.
About 4 hours later, as I was still moving shell rock out of the way so I could finish digging it by hand, to get back to the groove where I had it earlier, a neighbor stopped to chat. "Same thing almost happened to me when I put in my culvert," he said, "but I figured it would move, so I put my bucket against it on the other side when they dumped." "Thanks a lot," I said, "where the heck were you about 4 hours ago?"
My son-in-law got home about then, and we kindly popped the whole dang 40' pipe out of the swale, ran the tractor in as much as we could to clean out the bottom. It has been raining a lot, the swale had water in it, and I really pumped it into soup with the tractor tires. We ended up having to put some shell in the bottom to stabilize it, and still had some hand digging to do to get it right.
It was nearly dark when we finally rolled the pipe back into place. It looks pretty good, it looks like one end is a little lower than the other, but tomorrow I'll use the level again to make sure before I start to cover it. I surely don't want to have to dig it out again! When Theresa came back with the second load, I had her dump it a safe distance from the pipe, even though it has to be moved further. Instead of moving 36 yards, I'll be moving 54 - because I already moved the first 18 and have to move it again.
I didn't feel like taking any pictures, and besides, it was dark. Down in another forum section, Henro said that people with white hair got that way because they use their brains more. I sure proved him wrong today. One tiny little burst of inspiration - would that have been too much to ask? Nope, I had to go and get over confident. By the way, digging out all that shell rock on a fairly steep swale wasn't the safest thing I ever did with the tractor, either. Fortunately, I took it real slow and don't have any other stupidity to report... /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif
PS - for you Notherners who don't know what shell rock is, it's small chunks of limestone and limestone dust with liberal amounts of sea shells in it. Seems many eons ago, all of Florida except the central ridge was covered by the ocean, and the shells - a lot of them! - are still there, in the limestone sediment. The pit where we get the shell rock is about 60' deep to get to it. When it's compacted and dries, it's almost as hard as concrete.
