Kyle_in_Tex
Super Star Member
Soup sounds really good Terry.
An Old Goat Ranch in Texas
- Thread starter terry.dinerman
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aginn
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This entire thread held my attention from the first post to the last. It is all the interesting comments almost as much as the main storyline that makes this such a wonderful site. It was a great read Terry. My sincere thanks for taking the time and effort to keep us entertained.
I would also like to thank Bindian, EddieWalker, and others that have taken their time to educate or just entertain those of us that need a little extra push to get on with these projects for ourselves.
Have a safe, happy, and enjoyable 2014.
I would also like to thank Bindian, EddieWalker, and others that have taken their time to educate or just entertain those of us that need a little extra push to get on with these projects for ourselves.
Have a safe, happy, and enjoyable 2014.
bindian
Super Member
Gosh Aginn. Thanks. Terry does have a knack for storytellin'.
hugs, Brandi
hugs, Brandi
OP
terry.dinerman
Gold Member
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- Oct 11, 2009
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- Tractor
- 1990 - JD 870
Back at work...and the "Gnet Gnomes" seem to be having an off day...so how about a couple of photos from last go-round...
Me and Precious Bride call this one "Bedias Gothic"
Me and Precious Bride call this one "Bedias Gothic"
Last edited:
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terry.dinerman
Gold Member
- Joined
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- Messages
- 405
- Tractor
- 1990 - JD 870
OP
terry.dinerman
Gold Member
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2009
- Messages
- 405
- Tractor
- 1990 - JD 870
...and some views of the inside of the house...
EddieWalker
Epic Contributor
Good to see all the progress you are making!!!! That floor really looks great.
Eddie
Eddie
OP
terry.dinerman
Gold Member
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2009
- Messages
- 405
- Tractor
- 1990 - JD 870
It was not the most productive month at The Old Goat Ranch...
Pretty well snake-bit, compared to my usual pace if you ask me
To begin with, I lost 10 days of vacation when a colleague on a nearby rig fell ill and had to be evacuated...so with only one Medic per rig, this initiated a chess-like cascade of moves to cover the post
...a Nurse from the shore-base clinic took over operations of the rig clinic...
...My relief cut HIS vacation a week short to relieve the Nurse...
...I extended my trip for a week to cover "The Love Boat" until a new Medic could be hired and complete his Safety Indoctrination Training, and relieve my relief...
...who then transferred to his normal post where I was...well, relieved....
All this tom-foolery actually came to pass without a hitch...an unusual turn of events in itself...and utterly incredible out here on The Galactic Rim...for once, the wheels of the Universe ground in all our favor...and even the Medic who took ill is doing well...
Of course, this shortened my off-time by a week plus my usual travel time...10 days in all...sort of short considering all I had wanted to do, but I decided that if I at least got the power line laid in, I would consider the trip a success.
When I finally made it home to Texas, somebody up in Alberta, (probably my friend Tim!) left their gate open and a classic "Blue Norther" was working its way down to the Gulf and making life miserable for all in its path...lots of rain, ice and snow...
I got home and made a run for the Ranch with Charles the Builder with a couple of days to spare ahead of the weather.
Trying to make the most of the time, stopped at the local electrical supply house on the way thru Town and got my cable, then headed off to the Rental yard and picked up a trencher. Charles and I got the power line into the ground between the main pole and the house in a couple of hours...two guys can put 100 of cable in the ground in short order when you have the right tools...
With that done, I closed up the trench and returned the machine, trading it for a mini-excavator...now I have come to LOVE those little machines! ...and I still had enough daylight left to cut the trench for the main sewer line, and even got the pipe laid out before dark...
Then my luck ran out. I could feel the temperature drop as I settled in for the night.
I woke up to 2" of snow and ice....I cleared the snow off MIL and FILs deck and walks, something I have not had to do in many, many years....and had to raid their water softener for salt to clear the ice...and here, I moved south to get AWAY from this sort of thing
When I got back out to the Ranch, I couldn't move the darned excavator....the wet mud in the tracks had frozen and the little hydraulic motors for the tracks were just not enough to break it loose...about a half hour of beating the crap out of them with sledge hammers was all it took to get them loosened up, and by then things were warming up and the snow was quickly melting away and a light rain began to fall, accelerating the melt....the trench began to fill up with water....
I tried...really did...Charles and I wound up nearly boot-topping ourselves trying to clear the muck in the bottom of the trench and carry on, but it was just no use....wth the collapsing trench threatening to suck fill out from under the slab, I just gave up and began to fill the ditch back in....even that was a chore...
If there is a design flaw in mini-excavators, it is the "Mini" part....those skinny rubber tracks that give them such a light footprint are absolutely useless on wet ground....and the ripped up ground around the house was as slick as snot...I had to claw my way around with the bucket to move anywhere....got the dang thing buried so deep I had to put the boom on my tractor to get it out, then turned around and got the dang tractor stuck and pulled that out with the excavator....and then got my truck stuck loading the dang excavator on the trailer....
...it was a regular "ar-mud-geddon"...
The boys at the rental yard sort of scratched their heads about the frozen track thing.....a first time for them it seems, but with all this global warming around, they were not all that surprised....they credited me for the unused time and then some....a good bunch....
I contented myself with running the cable up to the main box, running it thru the wall then mounting and hooking up the breaker box, so next trip I can just schedule a short outage with the Power Company and finally get juice to the house....Charles kept busy stuffing sealant strips under panels and squirting sealant foam in the various nooks and crannies.
I also took care of a problem on the porch....the extra thick slabs weight settled the fill more than I expected, and when the concrete set up it nearly wiped out the pitch I had built into the forms....so water was collecting on the slab and not running off....
Another trip to the Rental yard for a concrete saw and a demo hammer, a full day of fun cutting a small gutter into the slab, and now the porch drains quite nicely, just not in the direction I originally intended....
After the dust settled I am amazed at a couple of things....the quality of the concrete, which was as hard as the back of Gods Head...and depth to which the acid stain had penetrated....almost 4mm in places....
Good stuff....I will never pour another floor without considering stain....of course, I hope I never pour another floor...
After a good cleanup and re-organization of the building materials, time pretty much ran out....so here I am, offshore again, planning and plotting what I will accomplish (or not!) on the upcoming trip home....
At least that power line is in the ground.....and I got my Too Doo lists all ready to go....I've got my wiring and plumbing plans ready, as well as the pick-lists, so a big shopping trip to Town is in order.
I want to have all the materials for the interior walls ready to go too, so should weather be a problem again, I will have plenty of inside work to keep me and Charles out of trouble
I suppose the most dangerous thing I plan to do is get Final Approval of the lighting plan from Precious Bride.....after the partitions are in, I'm going to run the main lines to each room, and then we are going to hang the boxes TOGETHER...she wants more lights than a stadium, so the only way to make Mamma happy is to do it her way...I've got 40 slots in the breaker box, so let's just see how many she can use up....
So...it' finally that Happy Time offshore....a couple of days left to tidy up, get packed and get ready to hand the post over to my relief....it's been another lovely, underutilized month out here....the cold and flu season has been relatively mild, no confirmed cases of flu at all, and just a mild cold making the rounds....only one non-evacuation this month...a poor fellow with a kidney stone...OUCH....so there was just enough business to keep people happy to have my expensive butt taking up space on their ship and nobody had to get too sick or injured to prove the point....
That's just the way I likes it....
So, Gentle Readers....Till the next installment....BE CAREFUL OUT THERE...
Terry
Pretty well snake-bit, compared to my usual pace if you ask me
To begin with, I lost 10 days of vacation when a colleague on a nearby rig fell ill and had to be evacuated...so with only one Medic per rig, this initiated a chess-like cascade of moves to cover the post
...a Nurse from the shore-base clinic took over operations of the rig clinic...
...My relief cut HIS vacation a week short to relieve the Nurse...
...I extended my trip for a week to cover "The Love Boat" until a new Medic could be hired and complete his Safety Indoctrination Training, and relieve my relief...
...who then transferred to his normal post where I was...well, relieved....
All this tom-foolery actually came to pass without a hitch...an unusual turn of events in itself...and utterly incredible out here on The Galactic Rim...for once, the wheels of the Universe ground in all our favor...and even the Medic who took ill is doing well...
Of course, this shortened my off-time by a week plus my usual travel time...10 days in all...sort of short considering all I had wanted to do, but I decided that if I at least got the power line laid in, I would consider the trip a success.
When I finally made it home to Texas, somebody up in Alberta, (probably my friend Tim!) left their gate open and a classic "Blue Norther" was working its way down to the Gulf and making life miserable for all in its path...lots of rain, ice and snow...
I got home and made a run for the Ranch with Charles the Builder with a couple of days to spare ahead of the weather.
Trying to make the most of the time, stopped at the local electrical supply house on the way thru Town and got my cable, then headed off to the Rental yard and picked up a trencher. Charles and I got the power line into the ground between the main pole and the house in a couple of hours...two guys can put 100 of cable in the ground in short order when you have the right tools...
With that done, I closed up the trench and returned the machine, trading it for a mini-excavator...now I have come to LOVE those little machines! ...and I still had enough daylight left to cut the trench for the main sewer line, and even got the pipe laid out before dark...
Then my luck ran out. I could feel the temperature drop as I settled in for the night.
I woke up to 2" of snow and ice....I cleared the snow off MIL and FILs deck and walks, something I have not had to do in many, many years....and had to raid their water softener for salt to clear the ice...and here, I moved south to get AWAY from this sort of thing
When I got back out to the Ranch, I couldn't move the darned excavator....the wet mud in the tracks had frozen and the little hydraulic motors for the tracks were just not enough to break it loose...about a half hour of beating the crap out of them with sledge hammers was all it took to get them loosened up, and by then things were warming up and the snow was quickly melting away and a light rain began to fall, accelerating the melt....the trench began to fill up with water....
I tried...really did...Charles and I wound up nearly boot-topping ourselves trying to clear the muck in the bottom of the trench and carry on, but it was just no use....wth the collapsing trench threatening to suck fill out from under the slab, I just gave up and began to fill the ditch back in....even that was a chore...
If there is a design flaw in mini-excavators, it is the "Mini" part....those skinny rubber tracks that give them such a light footprint are absolutely useless on wet ground....and the ripped up ground around the house was as slick as snot...I had to claw my way around with the bucket to move anywhere....got the dang thing buried so deep I had to put the boom on my tractor to get it out, then turned around and got the dang tractor stuck and pulled that out with the excavator....and then got my truck stuck loading the dang excavator on the trailer....
...it was a regular "ar-mud-geddon"...
The boys at the rental yard sort of scratched their heads about the frozen track thing.....a first time for them it seems, but with all this global warming around, they were not all that surprised....they credited me for the unused time and then some....a good bunch....
I contented myself with running the cable up to the main box, running it thru the wall then mounting and hooking up the breaker box, so next trip I can just schedule a short outage with the Power Company and finally get juice to the house....Charles kept busy stuffing sealant strips under panels and squirting sealant foam in the various nooks and crannies.
I also took care of a problem on the porch....the extra thick slabs weight settled the fill more than I expected, and when the concrete set up it nearly wiped out the pitch I had built into the forms....so water was collecting on the slab and not running off....
Another trip to the Rental yard for a concrete saw and a demo hammer, a full day of fun cutting a small gutter into the slab, and now the porch drains quite nicely, just not in the direction I originally intended....
After the dust settled I am amazed at a couple of things....the quality of the concrete, which was as hard as the back of Gods Head...and depth to which the acid stain had penetrated....almost 4mm in places....
Good stuff....I will never pour another floor without considering stain....of course, I hope I never pour another floor...
After a good cleanup and re-organization of the building materials, time pretty much ran out....so here I am, offshore again, planning and plotting what I will accomplish (or not!) on the upcoming trip home....
At least that power line is in the ground.....and I got my Too Doo lists all ready to go....I've got my wiring and plumbing plans ready, as well as the pick-lists, so a big shopping trip to Town is in order.
I want to have all the materials for the interior walls ready to go too, so should weather be a problem again, I will have plenty of inside work to keep me and Charles out of trouble
I suppose the most dangerous thing I plan to do is get Final Approval of the lighting plan from Precious Bride.....after the partitions are in, I'm going to run the main lines to each room, and then we are going to hang the boxes TOGETHER...she wants more lights than a stadium, so the only way to make Mamma happy is to do it her way...I've got 40 slots in the breaker box, so let's just see how many she can use up....
So...it' finally that Happy Time offshore....a couple of days left to tidy up, get packed and get ready to hand the post over to my relief....it's been another lovely, underutilized month out here....the cold and flu season has been relatively mild, no confirmed cases of flu at all, and just a mild cold making the rounds....only one non-evacuation this month...a poor fellow with a kidney stone...OUCH....so there was just enough business to keep people happy to have my expensive butt taking up space on their ship and nobody had to get too sick or injured to prove the point....
That's just the way I likes it....
So, Gentle Readers....Till the next installment....BE CAREFUL OUT THERE...
Terry
OP
terry.dinerman
Gold Member
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2009
- Messages
- 405
- Tractor
- 1990 - JD 870
...WOW...!!!! There is actually some bandwidth today!!!!! QUICK....some pictures!!!!
