Time for a quarterly update I guess
So many things have happened, but most are just "must do chores". We've had our annual rain season so there was not much work done to the pond. Instead, there was a little project I got done, and that was to build a little Chainsaw Wagon that carries all my stuff. Below are a couple pictures of it, but I have a thread posted about the building of it here: My Special Chainsaw Cart
During that time, I was also asked to make some billet aluminum collars for Cyril's mower.
We also have a new addition to the family.
We got a new little (10 week old) Golden retriever mix puppy named Daisy! She will be Coco's little pal up here and Coco is very protective of her already. Daisy is very cute and has one brown eye and one blue eye.
Thanks guys and sorry for not posting much lately...
We've really been busy around the ranch the last couple months. One of the projects was to get irrigation into the ground on the South lawn. You remember all the valves I ran around the decking last year? Well, Loretta and I finally used up the South corner front set for this project. Last year we used the North set for the North lawn.
Anyway, we used the Jinma to rip trenches for all the PVC lines.
I used the home-made subsoiler and spade, so I still had to hand dig them out to make a clean, smooth bottom. Only snapped it off one time! The South lawn not only had irrigation lines for the lawn itself, but also 10 sprinklers for the berm where Loretta wants to plant more flowers. In addition to that, we also got catch basins to route all the rain gutter run-off down towards the pond. We buried a 3" corrugated drain pipe and attached all the catch basins to it. So there were multi-trenches and lines to lay for tis project.
Here are a couple photos of the trenches and PVC lines going in.
Rob-
Of interest is some PVC pipe bending we did.
Instead of using 90 or 45 degree elbows, I used a heat gun to put bends in the PVC lines. I talked to a landscaper and he told me there is a lot less restriction when you make a gradual bend instead of using a fitting. So I tried it and it works pretty good. Below are some photos where I used the technique . It worked also when I had several lines that needed to get out of each other's way or over the concrete foundation posts too. This guy also told me to use poly pipe when connecting the pop-up sprinklers to the main PVC line. That way they can move freely without breaking when you drive over them with the tractor or whatever.
Rob-
With the ground being much softer after the rains, it went pretty fast.
But nevertheless, there was a lot of shoveling and raking so it beat me up pretty good. We got all the lines in, backfilled the trenches, and tested the sprinkler system. They all worked...and enough pressure and flow to run them all at the same time. That is, enough pressure and flow to run all the lawns including the back yard slope! Loretta started planting some of the flowers onto the bank after we were done. The drainage line is all buried too, going down to the pond. That will help greatly to re-route the rain water run-off. It should keep the house foundation much drier now.
Rob-
After we got the irrigation done, we started another project.
Our chicks are grown up and we decided to get several more. With that in mind, it was time to build a permanent, much larger chicken coop. We are keeping the convertible, mobile coop. We're going to lend it to the neighbor who wants to raise a few chickens too.
BTW, in the Spring it sure is beautiful and green around the home. Here are a couple photos of the valley below and the remains of the pond project. We haven't done anything with the pond project for quite a while.
Rob-
Nice work Rob and Loretta. That's a lot more sprinklers than I thought that you'd be able to run at one time! Nice pics as well. I really like the last one.:thumbsup:
The place we decided to build the new chicken coop had plenty of challenges.
It is behind our garage where the land slopes off a lot, and there is also a small rock out cropping that will be inside the coop. We figured the chickens would like a little diversity inside their coop. It turned out to be very hard to build there. There was a lot of climbing around to get from one place to another, and worst of all, we could not get the tractors in there to move dirt or dig the footings. So we had to do it all by hand. Below are some photos which show the back of the garage area. We started out by making our own concrete beam supports using Folgers coffee cans. You can read the Folgers writing on the concrete supports. We also put in two of the same 3" drainage lines in the lower corners of the coop. In some of the photos you can see the proximity to the home.
Rob-