The Slow Motion Retirement Plan

[dhagood]

Im guessing the previous owner of the SxS was a rancher?

yep, he runs about 20 head of cattle and a hay operation just west of the denver metro area. he's selling some of his rolling stock to get a down payment for a ranch he wants to buy in texas.

Do you see the windfarm from your place?

i can see two windfarms, actually. if i'm up by the county road i can see the lights for the windfarm over by limon as well as the windfarm over by calhan. thanks for the offer of help, i may take you up on that some time :thumbsup:

and vtsnowedin, i'm having the deep mud now. here in colorado the average daytime temperature in winter is almost 50 (and about 15 at night) so my road is a mess in spots. drainage is general is going to be the operative word in next years projects.

 

[vtsnowedin]

and vtsnowedin, i'm having the deep mud now. here in colorado the average daytime temperature in winter is almost 50 (and about 15 at night) so my road is a mess in spots. drainage is general is going to be the operative word in next years projects.

Freeze and thaws cycles are a pain in the arrse. An old road contractor once told me he could build a road out of horse feathers if he could just keep them dry. When you get to draining and improving your roads I'll have a suggestion or two. No hurry thou. This was to be a slow motion retirement after all.

 

[R_Walter]

That's a nice looking place, but, as you know, bone cold in the winter.

 

[dhagood]

happy new year to one and all!

work has slowed down dramatically given the winter weather. i also seem to have caught some kind of bug or something...

one minute i was feeling fine and all of a sudden it seems like i had a list to port for some reason. the gator had a simple puncture and the tire was fixed in about 20 minutes. the tire is light, the gator is light, and removing and reinstalling the tire was a snap.

the tractor was a very different story. my wife is working on finishing some work we've been doing on a condo we own, so i am on the property by myself. there are neighbors around, and if i yelled for help somebody might hear me. then again, they might not. i thought through each move pretty carefully, took my time, and made sure i knew where to jump/fall/roll if something went awry. the tire is a loaded 13.6 r1 and weighs something like 500 pounds. with no air in the tire it was really difficult for me to maneuver the tire onto the front end loader, but i got it done and raised the bucket, backed up my truck, and let the tire fall into the bed.

the tractor tire was split for about 2.5 inches from a previous gash. the tractor was previously owned by a landscape company and they evidently drove over all kinds of things given the various cuts and gouges in the rear tires. i ended up having my local john deere dealership work on the tire since nobody else knew what to do with a loaded tractor tire (why would you put fluid in yer tires?). it took them 5 business days to get around to working on it (which doesn't count the new years holiday), but they unloaded the tire, put a tube in it, and pumped their magic beet juice back in.

john deere loaded the tire back into my truck on a pallet, so i was able to thread a chain through the center of the tire (and the pallet) and pick the whole mess up using the front end loader. with the tire was fixed it was much easier to roll around. everything went pretty well and i had all of the eight wheel mounting bolts in when i noticed i had installed the tire backwards. it wasn't too big of a deal to take the tire back off, turn it around, and put it back on. i'm glad that's over with, and things look a lot better now.

 

[cycle_gator]

Dave:

Happy New Year to you, as well.
Your adventures with your loaded tire are pretty reminiscent of my adventures with one of the R-4's on my Case. It is not a loaded tire but still weighs well over 200 pounds. Getting it off and into the truck was really fun.

Anyway, hope you are feeling better. I have a whole bunch of shots of my current project I need to get into a thread but the project has also been slowed by healing from a near miss accident, the holidays, and about 2 feet of snow with continuous freezing weather. Delays in setting up the thread? Just sloth, or other projects, like my reloading bench, etc.

Looking forward to more posts and take care.

 

[vtsnowedin]

(why would you put fluid in yer tires?).

It helps balance out loads in the loader bucket so you don't have to put something on the three point hitch every time you need to pick something. Helps with traction too if your pulling a ground implement behind. Once you get past what you can lift your going to use a machine to lift it anyway so exactly how much it weighs doesn't matter. Take care doing those jobs alone.

 

[dhagood]

so the power company in my area installed power on my property in march. the barn went in the middle of april, and i had my well drilled the middle of august. when i was talking to the well drilling outfit about what i needed, i asked if they would wire the electrical stuff (pump, pressure switch, etc) up. sure, they said, all their stuff would be wired up and good to go. so one fine day in september i went out there and the well stuff looked to be complete. the well outfit had installed a well pit and filled the pit with all manner of well related goodness. i strolled over to the hydrant, pulled up on the water control lever, and..... nothing happened. hmmm, i said, and called up the well outfit.

those nice folks said that sure, all their stuff was wired up and ready to go, and as soon as somebody connected some power to it why the whole thing would work most efficaciously. i stood there for a second with my mouth open, and just barely managed to not stutter "but but but you said...". clever fellow that i am, i completely misunderstood what i had been told. well, no harm done i thought, i just need to get me an electrician.

i already have described my struggles with the trenching which took an embarrassingly long time to complete. eventually, i had the trenching done and inspected, and i waited for my electrical contractor to show up. that took most of december, but right before christmas two guys showed up and got busy.

these guys were worth the wait. polite, hard-working, knowledgeable, and they asked what i wanted, where i wanted it, made a couple of good suggestions, and then proceeded to quickly do what i wanted done. out came the inspector who did his thing and commented that gary's guys did good work and signed off on the job. which was all well and good, but the power company didn't come out and hang the meter, which meant i had no power, which meant i had no water. bah.

in colorado, electrical inspections are controlled by the state and power companies don't do anything until the state says it's ok. for some reason, the results of my successful inspection didn't get passed on to the power company until the end of the first week of january. one day i came in, flipped on the light switch in disgust, and the lights came on!

i had a bad moment when i noticed that my power outlets weren't providing power until i remembered that they are on a gfci controlled circuit. i reset the gfci breaker and all was well.

the problem now was a cold snap. i didn't want to power up the well pump for the first time in zero degree weather, so i waited until it warmed up a bit, and

quite a lengthy journey, but we now have water.

 

[vtsnowedin]

I've just had a long hard couple of days dealing with government officials that don't understand that the money they are making my clients waste is a drain on the whole economy and that their existence and employment is a net loss to society. Glad to see you got through the bureaucratic morass without blowing a gasket.

 

[dhagood]

so my wife and i are entering the stretch run to getting our house on the market. once the current house sells, we'll have the money to build the new house. but in order to have somewhere to live while the new house is being built, we need to get ready to build the new house. so, we have our house designer turning our floor plan into an engineered house. to get the foundation designed, we had some soil testing done. these guys showed up on time and knocked out the testing in double quick time. the two guys have a nicely choreographed dance worked out between them as they operate the drilling rig to provide the soil core samples the foundation guy will need. it was pretty neat to watch.

to get the septic system designed, we needed additional soil testing performed. colorado no longer does percolation tests, you now have to have testing done to support an Onsite Waste Treatment System (OWTS). so, i rented a mini-excavator.

i dug two 8 foot deep trenches just long enough to get to the proper depth. this was the first time i operated an excavator/backhoe of any kind, so i was pretty slow. but i got down to where i needed to be, didn't break anything, and didn't hurt anybody. i'm happy with that. i also used the mini-ex to cut a water channel for a culvert i will be installing this year.

the results of all this will be a package of plans that will get us our building permit. when we move out of the house to enable the final part of the pre-market renovation, we'll move into our 5th wheel mobile home out on our property. we're still moving in slow motion, but the pace is starting to pick up.

 

[Green Power]

Any updates?