yet another pond

[OkeeDon]

<font color="blue"> Have you noticed any difference in the camera??? </font>
Yeah, it's in better shape than the one I dunked. The other one had been used extensively in my business by 4 or 5 different users and had been pretty beat up. Both of them are/were FD71's. I was tempted to upgrade to a 91; there were several listed, but they were more money, and I figured that I wouldn't miss what I never had. I was satisfied with my 71, the low resolution is perfect for the web stuff I do with it. I have rarely printed a picture, and when I have, I wasn't worried about quality. The 640x400 .jpg pictures from the camera are just the right size to publish on the web. When I take the time, I decolorize them, reduce the size and compress them further - we've gotten them down to about 8K bytes and still look good, and they load fast. The ones I'm posting here are raw, right from the camera, average about 33K, and do the job. There's a time when less is more.

 

[OkeeDon]

<font color="blue"> ...you have lots going on and it all goes together very well. Your place is gonna be beautiful... </font>
That's music to my ears, because my primary emotion when doing all this is fear. I know what I want it to look like, but I lack all the technical terms and it's hard to describe. I have a directory full of downloads and a favorites list that is chock full. I do have some stuff written down -- attached is the drawing I submitted for the septic permit. In it, the pond is in the right location but just a free-form drawing; the final pond was drawn on the ground. The cross-hatched areas are porches and/or pool deck. The free-form area between the house and barn is the oak hammock. Most of the rest of the landscaping is not on the drawing. Some things have changed already (for example, the carport is probably going on the other side, but the final determination will be this Sunday when my wife can get out to see it), but the overall concept has been firm since we saw the oak trees.

 

[OkeeDon]

Last pictures for now. This is the completed pad for the barn. The barn will be built on a monolithic slab. The long side of the barn will face the camera, with a shed roof on the other side. There will be two doors on this side, one on the other side, a large door in the left end, and a man door in the right end, facing the house.

 

[OkeeDon]

This is the area where the infamous tractor-snatching hole was. I was clearing a little to the right; the hole was just inside the graded area.

 

[OkeeDon]

This is final grading of the area where we buried the 200'-long pile of land clearing debris. Taken from the East end of the property, you can see the pond and oak hammock in the background to the left of center; also a mound of dirt the contractor left me for some touch-up work as needed.

 

[OkeeDon]

Final view of the pond, the house area and the oak hammock from the East, similar to the view from yesterday, but taken at Noon for better lighting.

The contractor presented his bill and was paid; all equipment is gone. Less than one week - amazing to me. The final bill was $6,660, which included burying the trash (in 2 locations), transporting the excavator, digging the pond, trucking the fill, building the road by bucketing the dirt in the loader, compacting (with the heavy equipment - no specialized compaction equipment), grading, and also included cleaning out the weeds and resloping the banks on my daughter's pond. This broke down to a flat rate of $900 to bury the trash, $360 to reslope my daughter's pond, and 2,160 cubic yards of dirt dug, moved and graded at $2.50 /cy. The excavator had a track come off, lost a couple of teeth, had a hydraulic line break, and had to have a pin replaced on the bucket. The contractor felt bad about the delays (which I considered minor), so he didn't charge me the $225 transportation for the excavator. His dozer operator also forgot to dress one of the banks on my daughter's pond -- it still has the teeth marks from the hoe -- so they will be back for an hour or so next week at no charge.

If anyone in the Central Florida area needs this type of work, I recommend Barnhill Hauling and Construction of Okeechobee most highly. Be prepared, however, I was informed that the cost of insurance has taken another giant leap ($5K a year for the dump truck alone), so the price per yard has gone from $2.50 to $3.50.

 

[have_blue]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( The final bill was $6,660, which included burying the trash (in 2 locations), transporting the excavator)</font>

Man, that's cheap. They wanted $1 per yard just to dig my pond, and I was stuck with most of the dirt. I would have went for it, but didn't have anywhere to put all that dirt. This is what triggered me to buy my first tractor 2 years ago and a new one a month ago.

 

[OkeeDon]

$1 to $1.50 just to dig it is pretty much what I found everywhere in my research. When I was first quoted $2.50, it was a bit of a shock. But then, when Mr. Barnhill explained that it included moving, compacting and grading, and I learned that his real expertise is land development and drainage, I started to realize it was a bargain. Now that I've seen the operation -- well, let me tell this story. The dozer crawled up on top of the piles of dirt and started to knock them down. Using his eye alone, he stopped when he thought he was close to the target grade. They shot it with a level, and he was 1" too high.

Anyone can dig a hole and anyone can move the dirt around. I paid as much for their expertise in giving me a good base to build on as I did for the physical work. Remember, I didn't even want a pond - the pond was just the cheap source of the fill I needed to build -what I needed, and what I got, was the preparation work by someone who knew what they were doing.

 

[Moon]

Interesting thread! Great Pics. Beautiful place you have down there. Sure glad no harm came to you with that tractor sucking hole!