OP
wroughtn_harv
Super Member
I've sold some buckets for transporting the concrete is about all. The backhoe is one of those things that folks gotta have two things for it to be important to them beyond a neat idea. First they have to have the need. Then they have to ability to pay to feed the need. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/wroughtnharv/vwp?.dir=/Iris&.src=ph&.dnm=MVC-001F.jpg&.view=t&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/bc/wroughtnharv/lst%3f%26.dir=/Iris%26.src=ph%26.view=t>This little puppy</A> is as handy as a pocket on pants. On this four thousand foot of pipe fence job I'm not even taking my wheel barrows because this little puppy is so slick.
What I do is pick up four to five pallets of Maximizer on the trailer and park it next to the mixer. I then put in ten bags of Maximizer into the mixer along with a bunch of water. When it's all mixed up I dump it into the little puppy thingy and head for the holes. That gives me four holes full of fifty five hundred psi concrete.
The other day I had the local wheels out there watching me set posts and just shaking their heads. They can't get over it that one old man can get by with a little help from his friends, his tools.
I had two six inch posts ten feet long to set. They're heavy, even for a guy like me. Plus one of the posts was going dead in the middle of a trench five feet deep and six feet away from tierra firma.
I stood there and looked around at all the guys watching me out of the corner of my eye just knowing I was gonna lean on them for some help. Then I looked at the problem like it was just a thing. The little puppy thingy got a cheap old Home Depot landscape timber tied to it from there to here. Then I tied a strap from the end of the timber and let it drop down. I drove over to the posts. Picked one up with timber and strap gin pole thingy dingy hanging off the puppy deally and set that post in that hole neater'n a pin sticking up in a chair waiting for a fat lady to sit.
Ahh, you're wanting to know how I was able to set a post in the middle of a trench. Nothing but a little southern engineering which btw will make yankee ingenuity duck it's head in shame seven days out of a week.
The whole problem was a year ago the sprinkler contractor had placed a twelve inch piece of PVC for the road crossing. He just happened to put it right where my gate post and fence line was supposed to go. And of course the day before I showed up on the job the sprinkler guys had dug up both sides of the road locating their sleeve.
So I had two problems. One, a twelve inch PVC setting dead five feet deep where I had to dig a twelve inch hole six feet deep for a gate post. Two, the whole area dug up which meant I wouldn't have good soil for supporting the post or hole.
The general on the job had already broken the electrical contrator's heart by having me go ahead and set my posts even though every hole I'd cut through his conduit. The general's position was that they should have noticed the pipe fence going in and not have placed their conduit in the fence line.
His attitude with the sprinkler contractor was they could bore another sleeve and read their prints closer next time.
Now the last thing you want to do on a construction site is make an enemy of every other contractor on the job. So we started trying to come up with a solution to keep the sprinkler contractor on schedule and not slowing me down too much too. He cut his sleeve at the road edge and did a pair of forty fives with thrust blocks around my posts. He let me have some of his twelve inch PVC to use as forms for my posts and concrete. I dug my holes three feet deeper than his trench to pick up virgin soil and put in concrete. Set my posts and filled the tubes with concrete and even backfilled his trenches for him.
I did lose some time. And I did provide the concrete for his thrust blocks. It was a pain in the butt. But, and this one is of Rosanne Barr proportions, I'm gonna be putting fence posts in some areas that are already in sod. There's no way in gawd's green earth I'm gonna miss all them sprinkler lines. So now I don't have to worry about fixing them either.
Sorta funny how it works, giving a little and getting some back in return. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif
And just a note to those who think my way is the hard way to set fence posts. You might be right. But you won't get what I got the other day.
You see I set them for height and line by eye. When I walk away from the post there's no reason to touch it until the top rail is in place and it's hot glue gun time.
Friday morning about seven I'm standing there talking to the super on the job. We're there in front of the construction trailer complex. Here comes the engineer, a nice young man about thirty I'd guess. He's the one the super goes to when there's a question from me it seems. The engineer comes up and asks me how in the heck I got those posts in line like that. He'd never seen a fence line with the posts set in such a perfectly straight line. He wanted to know what equipment I'd used to accomplish that.
I told him I'd done it all by eye. He looked confused for a minute and then wanted to know just what kind of eye I had.
I explained to him that I'd been trained by my dad. He had tought me that using your eye meant you didn't have to worry about string sag or a breeze. And even though it took a little longer on the front side setting posts for height meant that you saved a ton of time on the back side when it came to building it up. All you have to worry about is getting the post you're doing at that moment in time plumb and in line and at the right height. If you do that to every post you will find that at the end they're all that way. Sorta funny how it works I guess.
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/wroughtnharv/vwp?.dir=/Iris&.src=ph&.dnm=MVC-001F.jpg&.view=t&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/bc/wroughtnharv/lst%3f%26.dir=/Iris%26.src=ph%26.view=t>This little puppy</A> is as handy as a pocket on pants. On this four thousand foot of pipe fence job I'm not even taking my wheel barrows because this little puppy is so slick.
What I do is pick up four to five pallets of Maximizer on the trailer and park it next to the mixer. I then put in ten bags of Maximizer into the mixer along with a bunch of water. When it's all mixed up I dump it into the little puppy thingy and head for the holes. That gives me four holes full of fifty five hundred psi concrete.
The other day I had the local wheels out there watching me set posts and just shaking their heads. They can't get over it that one old man can get by with a little help from his friends, his tools.
I had two six inch posts ten feet long to set. They're heavy, even for a guy like me. Plus one of the posts was going dead in the middle of a trench five feet deep and six feet away from tierra firma.
I stood there and looked around at all the guys watching me out of the corner of my eye just knowing I was gonna lean on them for some help. Then I looked at the problem like it was just a thing. The little puppy thingy got a cheap old Home Depot landscape timber tied to it from there to here. Then I tied a strap from the end of the timber and let it drop down. I drove over to the posts. Picked one up with timber and strap gin pole thingy dingy hanging off the puppy deally and set that post in that hole neater'n a pin sticking up in a chair waiting for a fat lady to sit.
Ahh, you're wanting to know how I was able to set a post in the middle of a trench. Nothing but a little southern engineering which btw will make yankee ingenuity duck it's head in shame seven days out of a week.
The whole problem was a year ago the sprinkler contractor had placed a twelve inch piece of PVC for the road crossing. He just happened to put it right where my gate post and fence line was supposed to go. And of course the day before I showed up on the job the sprinkler guys had dug up both sides of the road locating their sleeve.
So I had two problems. One, a twelve inch PVC setting dead five feet deep where I had to dig a twelve inch hole six feet deep for a gate post. Two, the whole area dug up which meant I wouldn't have good soil for supporting the post or hole.
The general on the job had already broken the electrical contrator's heart by having me go ahead and set my posts even though every hole I'd cut through his conduit. The general's position was that they should have noticed the pipe fence going in and not have placed their conduit in the fence line.
His attitude with the sprinkler contractor was they could bore another sleeve and read their prints closer next time.
Now the last thing you want to do on a construction site is make an enemy of every other contractor on the job. So we started trying to come up with a solution to keep the sprinkler contractor on schedule and not slowing me down too much too. He cut his sleeve at the road edge and did a pair of forty fives with thrust blocks around my posts. He let me have some of his twelve inch PVC to use as forms for my posts and concrete. I dug my holes three feet deeper than his trench to pick up virgin soil and put in concrete. Set my posts and filled the tubes with concrete and even backfilled his trenches for him.
I did lose some time. And I did provide the concrete for his thrust blocks. It was a pain in the butt. But, and this one is of Rosanne Barr proportions, I'm gonna be putting fence posts in some areas that are already in sod. There's no way in gawd's green earth I'm gonna miss all them sprinkler lines. So now I don't have to worry about fixing them either.
Sorta funny how it works, giving a little and getting some back in return. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif
And just a note to those who think my way is the hard way to set fence posts. You might be right. But you won't get what I got the other day.
You see I set them for height and line by eye. When I walk away from the post there's no reason to touch it until the top rail is in place and it's hot glue gun time.
Friday morning about seven I'm standing there talking to the super on the job. We're there in front of the construction trailer complex. Here comes the engineer, a nice young man about thirty I'd guess. He's the one the super goes to when there's a question from me it seems. The engineer comes up and asks me how in the heck I got those posts in line like that. He'd never seen a fence line with the posts set in such a perfectly straight line. He wanted to know what equipment I'd used to accomplish that.
I told him I'd done it all by eye. He looked confused for a minute and then wanted to know just what kind of eye I had.
I explained to him that I'd been trained by my dad. He had tought me that using your eye meant you didn't have to worry about string sag or a breeze. And even though it took a little longer on the front side setting posts for height meant that you saved a ton of time on the back side when it came to building it up. All you have to worry about is getting the post you're doing at that moment in time plumb and in line and at the right height. If you do that to every post you will find that at the end they're all that way. Sorta funny how it works I guess.