The Slow Motion Retirement Plan

[dhagood]

the winter hiatus is over and i have been busy preparing the building pad for our upcoming barn construction. it's been a learning experience, and my tractor has been working for its living for the past several weeks. not done yet, but i'm getting close. barn construction should start around the end of the month.

 

[dhagood]

oh noes, the dreaded double post!

 

[dhagood]

the power company was out in force yesterday putting in our underground power lines. they had all manner of interesting equipment: a drill they used for the boring of a tunnel underneath the county road, a giant vacuum cleaner mounted on a 25' trailer to remove the spoils from the drill, and a couple of things i didn't understand. the crew of 8 or so people were busy performing the dance of industrial progress so i thought i would stay out of their way until things calmed down a bit, and then i would move in and get interesting and informative pictures of things that you don't get to see very often.

instead, i got busy working on some of my tasks and when i looked up, they were all driving out of my gate, done for the day. and they took all their cool machinery with them

i did get some pictures however.

this power transformer will be upgraded such that it will provide power for my property and one of my neighbors. the tunnel is in, the conduit is emplaced, and the power lines have been run.

on my side of the road, the trench has been dug, the conduit and power line have been run, and the trench backfilled. look! a backhoe!

at least i can show everybody a flat spot. well, mostly flat. and it's almost wide enough.

 

[vtsnowedin]

Did the drilling operation look something like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2M4GFfkG8E

 

[dhagood]

the vacuum used at our property was something like 8 feet wide, 10 feet tall, and 25 feet long, so it was much bigger. i never saw the drill (it was hidden behind the vacuum trailer), and i've never seen this kind of horizontal drilling operation. i've been pushing hard to make sure that i had the barn building site ready for construction to begin on the 27th. today i find out it has been pushed back to the 10th of april because of cleary has some scheduling problems.

if i'd known i had another two weeks, i would have hung around the power guys and watched what was going on.

 

[newbury]

But your retired, right?
So your flexible.
Now if they had come 2 weeks early you would have been in a bind.

 

[vtsnowedin]

Those directional drills come in several sizes and so do the vacuums and service trucks that go with them. I've been on jobs where they drilled 1000 ft at a go and pulled back four or eight inch plastic waterline. Very saving of the streets and lawns they placed the water main under and if the drilling is good (no boulders) a lot cheaper then opening trench and then restoring the road surface. The key part is how they steer the bit. It has a radio transmitter in it and a receiving unit carried above locates the bit at the end of each length of drill pipe and they redirect it up, down left or right as needed. The service truck mixes up bentonite clay slurry which is pumped down the drill pipe and out holes in the bit to keep the hole filled and lubricated. The vac truck sucks up the slurry as the pipe being pulled in pushes out the excess.

 

[dhagood]

thanks for the description vtsnowedin. i would have liked to see the drilling operation in person.

newbury, yes i'm retired and pretty flexible schedule wise. perhaps i need to learn to take a few minutes and smell the roses.

 

[cycle_gator]

This thread reminds me of my "slow motion" retirement plan. In fact, I like that title so much I use it all the time. Eventually I will start my own thread on this topic, so I will not try to hijack yours. I do want to say I am on a very parallel path about four years behind you. I am really enjoying your progress. Keep up the great work and the very enlightening thread. Your great progress and adventure are a source of on-going encouragement for me and I really appreciate that.

Best of all in your retirement and progress.

 

[rjwassink67]

Thanks for the thread. This is what we want to do in about 10 years. Unfortunately we know what area we want to settle down in, but we have not been there yet. So there is nothing we can start to do until we know for sure that area will work out. I love seeing threads like this.