This was another great work day - lots of progress and we feel blessed to be getting this much done when things were covered in snow and mud just a week ago! Plus, they were calling for a little rain last night but we didn't get any, for which we were grateful.
Then he went back to work cleaning up the trenches.
Always some hand shoveling involved. I even took a turn shoveling some while Jim was working on the tank area.
In order to start working on the tank area, he had to move the excavator over the trench so that he could work from the other side.
Straddling the trench...just a bit scary!
Pushing off with the bucket on the other side of the trench...
Whew...all safely across and digging. Again, if you remember, it was just a couple weeks ago that I posted a picture of the tank area with 2 feet of water in it from melting snow. It's amazing that it's now able to be dug out with no mud in sight!
Our beautifully manicured hole caved in quite a bit so Jim has some work to do.
Takes a ladder to get down in the hole now...
...so he can do more hand shoveling!
We took measurements to see how far Jim had to dig and to make sure everything stays flat. It's hard to tell from pictures, but the left side of ground is probably a foot higher than the right side because of the slope of the property. So when you just look at it, the perspective makes the bottom of the hole seem not level when it really is. Thank goodness for laser levels!
After he dug as much as he could from that point, he had to move the excavator back across the trench and set up again on the other side.
It wouldn't be right to dig a hole without finding a giant rock. This one was right on the verge of being okay where it was and possible interfering with the tank placement, so Jim decided to take it out. Of course, from where he is in the machine, he can't see the rock, so you can see in this picture that he is operating the controls while standing up!
After the hole was dug out, it was time to clean up all the dirt that was removed.
I sorted out more rocks so that we can more easily use the dirt again for covering the trenches without having to pull rocks out.
Jim wanted to compact the dirt in the tank area before he put the required 6" of gravel on top. If you recall, Jim rebuilt part of the compactor this winter but this is the first time he tried to use it since then. It started up and ran like a charm!
Thank goodness for the excavator to lower the compactor down into the hole.
Busy compacting the soil...
All done and time for the compactor to come back out!
It looks great - nice and flat and compact!
As I said, the septic plans call for 6" of gravel base. In order to figure that out easily, Jim pounded in a stake at the edge, then used the laser level again to have the top of the stake at the right level for 6" more than the dirt.
Then it was time for gravel!
And even more gravel!
And of course some hand shoveling of gravel.
Getting it all compacted - Jim said it feels like concrete now to walk on!
By this point in the day, it's getting late. Jim has to allow at least 30 minutes for clean up so that has to be factored in. Jim is probably going to need a bit more gravel and will just hand shovel it down from the Bobcat. But that will be on tomorrow's agenda. He got out the big level just to see how flat everything is and it looks great!
On my way home, I passed a big field and it was just full of wild turkeys! We see turkeys on our property quite a bit too.
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