At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

Yesterday I had the day off from my regular job. After returning home from the fireplace store, I cleaned out the 2 story gutter. I attached the Louisville Ladders stabilizer to my ladder without any trouble. The stabilizer made the ladder much more steady. I still didn't like climbing that high but there's not much I can do about that part of the job. I can probably put up with cleaning the gutters 2 or 3 times a year. Having the ladder stabilizer really helps.

I raked up the leaves that came out of the gutters and removed them.

 

[PAGUY]

Obed - When are you going to cut that grass as shown in pic? Your lawnmower will have a hard time and will clog up unless you raise the cutting height for the first cut and then go back and lower and do it all over again. Try and do it only once and you'll see how that mower turns into an oil eater or just burn out.

 

[Obed]

Obed - When are you going to cut that grass as shown in pic? Your lawnmower will have a hard time and will clog up unless you raise the cutting height for the first cut and then go back and lower and do it all over again. Try and do it only once and you'll see how that mower turns into an oil eater or just burn out.

PAGUY,
I don't plan cutting the grass until sometime next spring. I want to give our new grass plenty of time to get established before cutting it. Since we are in the woods, we don't have any pressure from the neighbors to cut it too soon.

My lawnmower won't have any trouble cutting it. I have cut grass 3 ft tall with it. It is a nice Kubota mower that I bought used from a friend a few years ago. It is my dad's barn. We plan on making a trip to my dad's house in a week to get some of our stuff that he stored for us while we built our house. (Yes, I said it, "WE built our house.")

Obed

 

[Tororider]

For residential grass, only cut one third the overall length at one time. If you cut more than that you will stress the grass.

 

[Obed]

Shelving Question
We are going to build some shelves in our unfinished basement over the holidays. Our basement just has stuff sitting all over the floors and needs some serious organizing. We are thinking about framing the shelves with 2x4s and using plywood for the horizontal shelves. The top of the frame would be attached to the floor trusses for lateral support.

I'm curious what you guys have done or seen that seems to work well. Pictures or links would be very welcomed.

 

[Coyote machine]

Skip building them, and go to Home Dump or someplace similar and buy 3'Wx 5'h plastic shelf units that take 10 min to assemble. They're spaced off the floor, moveable and have slats for dust to fall through to the floor. You can disassemble them and move them to another location or move them assembled if you have the head room. No expensive standard and bracket hardware, will not rust, mold mildew etc. They come in different sizes and are usually grey in color and look good and hold tons of stuff. Job done. Next!

Other points...your ladder is not really long enough to do what you're doing. I don't know how long it is but you have it to maximum safe extension and you're still not reaching the roof to clean out the gutters. Personally, I'd never climb that high and reach over to get leaves- VERY dangerous, ladder could fold on you depending on where your weight is distributed.
What class rating is that ladder?

Grass: cut it now. It is better to have it shorter for the winter months and that grass is WELL established. If you mulch the grass that's there you will have a good lawn next spring. Leaving it long over the winter does not allow it to breath and may attract rodents, or in you area alligators, etc.:thumbsup:

 

[Obed]

I spent a few hours raking leaves this weekend. It was slow work because the grass is long and the ground and leaves were wet. I still have some more raking to do. I didn't like the stress I felt that I was putting on the tender grass with my plastic rake. However, leaving the leaves in the grass was going kill it so I had little choice at this stage.

I expect that this year will be my last time going through this raking leaves rigure. At our last house, we had several large oaks. I was able to use my lawnmower to blow the leaves into rows and then load them in the ttruck bed to move to the compost pile. Next year I should be able to use my lawnmower to blow the leaves into the woods.

 

[Obed]

Skip building them, and go to Home Dump or someplace similar and buy 3'Wx 5'h plastic shelf units that take 10 min to assemble

Coyote machine, thanks for the shelving suggestion.

Other points...your ladder is not really long enough to do what you're doing. I don't know how long it is but you have it to maximum safe extension and you're still not reaching the roof to clean out the gutters. Personally, I'd never climb that high and reach over to get leaves- VERY dangerous, ladder could fold on you depending on where your weight is distributed.
What class rating is that ladder?

My 24' ladder is rated for 225 lbs; I am nowhere close to that weight. It is rated for maximum reach of 23'; that gutter is 21' above the ground.

When using a ladder stabilizer, the stabilizer has to lean against the wall which means the top of the ladder will be slightly under the eave based on the depth of our eaves. I would not want the stabilizer ends resting on the roof; doing so would be sure to damage the shingles. Thus, a longer ladder would not help. The ladder standoffs are 24" which are the longest I could find. Our eaves are 24" deep plus the gutter. You can't tell by the picture, but I was able stand straight up and look down into the gutter to clean it out. I honestly don't know how I could reasonably clean out that gutter much more safely while using a ladder. The only improvement might be a heavier fiberglass ladder but that comes with it's own issues involving the weight of a heavy fiberglass 24' ladder and the difficulty in raising, lowering, and moving it.

 

[Obed]

Do you ever just put the cut wood in the front end loader, position it so you don`t have to bend down, then put the split wood in the near by bin so you can then just lift the whole load up to wherever you store it? Tony

Tony,
I haven't tried that yet. Part of the issue is I normally have the forks on the FEL bucket while splitting wood so I can move the pallets around. I believe the forks would need to be removed from the bucket in order to do what you described.

So far, lifting the logs onto the splitter hasn't really been a problem for me for 15" and smaller logs which is most of what I've been splitting. What really makes my back tire is bending over the splitter for an extended period of time while I position the logs for splitting. The weight of the log pieces hasn't been a significant factor. If I do have several large heavy pieces, I will probably put the splitter in the vertical position.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Coyote machine, I looked online for plastic shelves from Home Depot . The shelves at the link are $50 for 36" x 24". While those shelves are certainly convenient, I think I can get much better shelves by building them myself for less money. Plus, I think it will be a fun project to build them.

Obed