Bringing Power In

[EddieWalker]

Martin,

At first I wasn't very happy with the soil I have. It's all red clay with a few spots of iron ore and as of now, one area with a some sand.

The more I work with it, the better I like it. It holds water really well, both for ponds and moisture content for plants. It builds great. Roads, pads and landscaping. And of course, as you noticed, it digs real nice.

In another post, I'm bringing water in . When it gets too hot to function, I sometimes jump on the backhoe and dig on my water line trench. Maybe 50 or 60 feet at a time. It's 4 feet deep and about 600 feet long now. In the month that it's been open, I haven't had a single instance of any cave ins along it's length.

As for a completion date, I'm shooting for next summer. I have short term goals. Get the home finished in August. My lease expires Sep 1, so that's a priority.

Then I want the trees cleared by the end of the year and the lake done early next year. Once those basics are finished, I'll proceed with the financing of the RV Park.

I've had two banks aprove construction loans on it with a previous partner, who kept creating reasons not to go forward. He's no longer a partner.

When I go back to the bank for the loan, I'll have the high labor items done, and an enormous amount of equity into the land, which is paid for, and be ready to move quickly on the development.

Thanks for the interest,
Eddie

 

[BB_TX]

Eddie - A little off your main subject, but did you install the vinyl fence yourself?

 

[EddieWalker]

Bill,

Yes, but only parts by myself. Other sections my girlfriend helped, and parts my Dad helped. Anybody that comes to visit is fair game for help. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I've got some pics of us doing it in a thread called, creating an entrance here in the Porjects forum. I'm not sure how far back you'd have to look, maybe somebody can give you a link.

Eddie

 

[HuckBB62]

Eddie, do they not run the phone lines on the power lines where you're at allowing pole sharing?

 

[BillCroasmun]

This should get you there... Creating an entrance

Bill

 

[HuckBB62]

</font><font color="blueclass=small">( Eddie you are a lucky man. What a nice clean trench that is. It's not posible to trench like that any where around here. We end up with major side excursions because of these (download).
Our trench looks like a string of bomb craters, not nice and clean and straight sided like yours.
Do you have a target completion date or do you just keep your own pace?

All the best,
Martin
)</font>

Martin, I know what you mean about obstacles! Luckily, and believe it or not, we didn't hit one rock despite boulders being all around. You don't need a licensed electrician, you just have to pass inspection here.

 

[EddieWalker]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Eddie, do they not run the phone lines on the power lines where you're at allowing pole sharing?

)</font>

From what I understand, all the phone company lines coming into an property are trenched.

Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

I formed up the pad and added some left over rebar from my workshop project. For chairs, I just used some pieces of concrete from the workshop also.

Quikcrete.com has a calculator on how many sacks it will take to do an area. I put my measurements in and they said 17 sacks. The bottom was flat, I used chunks of concrete for chairs, and I have seven large pipes sticking through the pour. 20 sacks should be plenty.

As you can tell, I'm getting lots of use out of that trailer I found New Years Day. Generator is on it, so I just fired it up and start mixing.

 

[EddieWalker]

A few hours later, and I got me a pad.

For whatever reason, I always seem to get my mix a little wet with sacks of mix. I'm ok with mortor, stucco and mixing myself, but readi mix just gives me issues.

It didn't take long for the surface water to evaporate, and I got a decent finish on it.

The 3inch grey pipe will be exposed for about a foot before it enteres the meter box. This will be my high voltage in line.

The six 2 inch lines will each contain a single 200 amp line. The conduit will get cut off flush, or maybe with a small lip. The disconnect box will rest on the pad with the pipes coming in from the bottom.

 

[EddieWalker]

Turns out 20 sacks is about one sack short.

As I was getting closere to finishing, I kept thinkig I didn't have enough. As I worried about this, I left the area that will be covered by the disconnect box alone. If I had enought it wouldn't matter, but if I came up short, I wanted to be able to hide the patch.