JustGary
Silver Member
Warning: This is long-winded, but hopefully entertaining enough you won't mind.
Maybe I should title this one "Mother is the necessity of invention," but the Pit of Despair is an ongoing project at my house. It all started out when...
About 20 years ago I got a few bamboo starts from a friend. He cautioned me that it was a giant timber variety, and a runner. Of course it won't run at my house like it did at his, because I won't let it. Well, over about two years I planted about five varieties in a small area at the end of the house where our air conditioner dumps its water (a water exchange heat pump is fairly efficient when you have lots of water right underground and very hot air that you would otherwise exchange heat with). Since we live in sand, the area stays moist but never gets swampy.
As the bamboo grew, it created a wonderful 20' to 25' tall screen that was impenetrable by sight or movement through it, and was an exceptional wind block during hurricanes. The clumping varieties are great, since the clump just gets larger and larger, mostly in control. The clump-and-run type is a little harder, but the running types are truly amazing.
One day the neighbor rented a backhoe to do some sewer work in his yard and had some hours left on the meter, so he asked me if I needed any ditching done. I grabbed the vinyl seawall material and made a wall around the bamboo. Well, mostly. I couldn't get to the very back corner of the stand, and never finished it by hand.
More years went by. Bamboo started coming up in the yard. In the woods. In the neighbor's yard... It turns out that I didn't get the seawall material deep enough (I now recommend at least six feet deep), plus the fact that I didn't make sure I removed all of the runners from outside the wall when I put it in.
Finally, the mother of my children "suggested" that we remove the bamboo. I finally relented, cranked the 25" chainsaw, and used it like a sithe to cut my way through the stand so we could begin the project. We decided that the only way to know that we have removed it for good is to dig it all up and put clean dirt back.
Oh boy, seat time!
We rented a long dumpster to put all the cut off damboo into, and decided that we would remove and discard the top layer of dirt also. The dumpster people were OK with that, but we suggested that they are crazy for letting us do it. I had to use the tiller to break the clumps enough to get the loader bucket to penetrate anywhere inside the area.
After the third dumpster we figured out that this would be expensive, so we changed the plan to sifting the roots from the dirt and putting the dirt back. Hence the invention part. I had read here on TBN a few years ago that somebody in the northeast had built a rock screen so separate rocks from dirt. Same thing, I figured. A quick trip to the store, and we had everything we needed to sift our pit clean. Kind of.
A test dump proved fairly quickly that the sand won't just fall through like it did in the dream. To convince it to move rapidly it wants to get moved around. I dug around in the back of the shop and pulled out a small motor. An iron bar and a few short hours later we had our first shaker ready. It was a small 12VDC motor from a scooter that the kid down the street had junked when the battery went bad (he didn't know he could just buy a new one). The problem was that it was round motor with no good way to attach it. It worked great! For about 45 seconds, when the motor twisted around in the straps I had mounted it in, the bar hit the edge of the screen frame, the motor stalled, and began producing a LOT of smoke in the few seconds before I could turn it off. Strike one.
Back to the shop. This time, a motor from the old garage door opener, and it's even mounted on a plate for convenience! This one ran just about as long as the first, and then the motor mount bolts sheared clean off. Strike two, and time for a little more meat.
Back to the shop. Hey! That 40-year-old edger that dad had has a decent motor on it, and the blade is ready for me to bolt on a counterweight! Only a few more hours of fabrication, and we had a fine motor vibrating the screen and we were on our way to success! For a few minutes, when the bearing on the motor started getting a little sloppy. It would run for a few minutes, start getting a little hot, stall itself, and need a rest. Oil the shaft liberally, and you could go another few minutes. This was more like a foul ball, since we made a little progress. Still strike two.
In telling the neighbor about our trials, he suggested that the only thing that would save the motor bearings is a belt drive. As luck would have it, I had to go out of town soon, and I had a chance to visit a surplus shop in a bigger city. A decent 1.5 HP motor for $20? With a double drive pulley on it? Sold! Lucky for me, I had equipment to ship back home anyway...
I bought some 1" ball bearing pillow blocks, several different pulleys, and a 100" drive belt to absorb the shock of the spinning weight, and went back into the shop. Only a few hours later, our newest shaker motor was ready! And what a beast! Plug it in, trickle the dirt onto the shaker, and watch the cloud of sand fall through below. Excellent, except...
Now the thing shears off the screws and lag bolts that hold the whole deal together. Amazing. Do a few buckets of dirt, stop, get off the tractor, replace a few broken screws, get back on, start again. But did I mention progress? This thing runs best just before something major breaks, since it is the loosest then and the shaking energy can do its job. I hate to beef it up too much because it doesn't work as well. So for now, we're tolerating the stop and fix issues. We also modified the front of the screen to direct the damboo roots into a bucket instead of just dropping them on the ground in front of the screen. This improved progress a lot, since we no longer have to rake the ground after every bucket load.
I estimate that we'll have to move a little over 100 yards of dirt to complete the job, and so far we have either thrown out or sifted about one third of it. One of the tricks (aside from keeping the shaker running) is figuring out how to keep a ramp into the pit to drive the tractor in and get more dirt.
Pictures to follow.
Regards,
- Just Gary
Maybe I should title this one "Mother is the necessity of invention," but the Pit of Despair is an ongoing project at my house. It all started out when...
About 20 years ago I got a few bamboo starts from a friend. He cautioned me that it was a giant timber variety, and a runner. Of course it won't run at my house like it did at his, because I won't let it. Well, over about two years I planted about five varieties in a small area at the end of the house where our air conditioner dumps its water (a water exchange heat pump is fairly efficient when you have lots of water right underground and very hot air that you would otherwise exchange heat with). Since we live in sand, the area stays moist but never gets swampy.
As the bamboo grew, it created a wonderful 20' to 25' tall screen that was impenetrable by sight or movement through it, and was an exceptional wind block during hurricanes. The clumping varieties are great, since the clump just gets larger and larger, mostly in control. The clump-and-run type is a little harder, but the running types are truly amazing.
One day the neighbor rented a backhoe to do some sewer work in his yard and had some hours left on the meter, so he asked me if I needed any ditching done. I grabbed the vinyl seawall material and made a wall around the bamboo. Well, mostly. I couldn't get to the very back corner of the stand, and never finished it by hand.
More years went by. Bamboo started coming up in the yard. In the woods. In the neighbor's yard... It turns out that I didn't get the seawall material deep enough (I now recommend at least six feet deep), plus the fact that I didn't make sure I removed all of the runners from outside the wall when I put it in.
Finally, the mother of my children "suggested" that we remove the bamboo. I finally relented, cranked the 25" chainsaw, and used it like a sithe to cut my way through the stand so we could begin the project. We decided that the only way to know that we have removed it for good is to dig it all up and put clean dirt back.
Oh boy, seat time!
We rented a long dumpster to put all the cut off damboo into, and decided that we would remove and discard the top layer of dirt also. The dumpster people were OK with that, but we suggested that they are crazy for letting us do it. I had to use the tiller to break the clumps enough to get the loader bucket to penetrate anywhere inside the area.
After the third dumpster we figured out that this would be expensive, so we changed the plan to sifting the roots from the dirt and putting the dirt back. Hence the invention part. I had read here on TBN a few years ago that somebody in the northeast had built a rock screen so separate rocks from dirt. Same thing, I figured. A quick trip to the store, and we had everything we needed to sift our pit clean. Kind of.
A test dump proved fairly quickly that the sand won't just fall through like it did in the dream. To convince it to move rapidly it wants to get moved around. I dug around in the back of the shop and pulled out a small motor. An iron bar and a few short hours later we had our first shaker ready. It was a small 12VDC motor from a scooter that the kid down the street had junked when the battery went bad (he didn't know he could just buy a new one). The problem was that it was round motor with no good way to attach it. It worked great! For about 45 seconds, when the motor twisted around in the straps I had mounted it in, the bar hit the edge of the screen frame, the motor stalled, and began producing a LOT of smoke in the few seconds before I could turn it off. Strike one.
Back to the shop. This time, a motor from the old garage door opener, and it's even mounted on a plate for convenience! This one ran just about as long as the first, and then the motor mount bolts sheared clean off. Strike two, and time for a little more meat.
Back to the shop. Hey! That 40-year-old edger that dad had has a decent motor on it, and the blade is ready for me to bolt on a counterweight! Only a few more hours of fabrication, and we had a fine motor vibrating the screen and we were on our way to success! For a few minutes, when the bearing on the motor started getting a little sloppy. It would run for a few minutes, start getting a little hot, stall itself, and need a rest. Oil the shaft liberally, and you could go another few minutes. This was more like a foul ball, since we made a little progress. Still strike two.
In telling the neighbor about our trials, he suggested that the only thing that would save the motor bearings is a belt drive. As luck would have it, I had to go out of town soon, and I had a chance to visit a surplus shop in a bigger city. A decent 1.5 HP motor for $20? With a double drive pulley on it? Sold! Lucky for me, I had equipment to ship back home anyway...
I bought some 1" ball bearing pillow blocks, several different pulleys, and a 100" drive belt to absorb the shock of the spinning weight, and went back into the shop. Only a few hours later, our newest shaker motor was ready! And what a beast! Plug it in, trickle the dirt onto the shaker, and watch the cloud of sand fall through below. Excellent, except...
Now the thing shears off the screws and lag bolts that hold the whole deal together. Amazing. Do a few buckets of dirt, stop, get off the tractor, replace a few broken screws, get back on, start again. But did I mention progress? This thing runs best just before something major breaks, since it is the loosest then and the shaking energy can do its job. I hate to beef it up too much because it doesn't work as well. So for now, we're tolerating the stop and fix issues. We also modified the front of the screen to direct the damboo roots into a bucket instead of just dropping them on the ground in front of the screen. This improved progress a lot, since we no longer have to rake the ground after every bucket load.
I estimate that we'll have to move a little over 100 yards of dirt to complete the job, and so far we have either thrown out or sifted about one third of it. One of the tricks (aside from keeping the shaker running) is figuring out how to keep a ramp into the pit to drive the tractor in and get more dirt.
Pictures to follow.
Regards,
- Just Gary
