Legit could use that mini-excavator - their name for it, I just call it a track hoe - for a few weeks and get everything done. Okay, a couple of days anyway.
2 days ago, I went to the rental place and got that machine. Spent the afternoon in the blazing sun and heat digging trenches. But I noticed the efficiency of the thing dragging the blade along the dirt and pulling up weeds.
So, yesterday, before attempting to complete the trenching project, I went ahead and dragged the entire doggy park, a pic of it on Facebook.
Oh, prefacing that. The machine wouldn't start yesterday morning. This is an older machine and doesn't have all kinds of "weird" "stuff" you have to do to start it up. An orange triangle with an exclamation point kept coming up on the screen. Note that I was out there at the crack of dawn, ready to get my money's worth out of it, they allow 8 hours of usage per 24 hour period.
The shop had to send someone over to fix it. They already knew what was wrong before they even showed up: loose starter cable. I mean, I got my time back for free, yes, but I got out there early for a reason: it's still hot and no one will tell me anything different, even if it is the first day of Fall today. Yes, it's nice and cool in the mornings but it's still going to be in the 90's today.
Well, I didn't finish the drainage pipe project. No worries, the trenches are dug, I need to get the pipes on a slight downhill grade all the way the length of them. I was well off on my projection of how much pipe I would need. 30 feet per trench? Try 40. How I could have been so far off, I don't know, but I had "extra" pipe and ended up 1, 20 foot stick short. I'm going to hook up the trailer after this and go get another stick, also taking 2 or 3 sticks of sewer pipe from our yard over there.
Anyway, I still need to rent a Bobcat for a day and I'm going to have to work the trenches into that day. It'll be next week, I'm not going to spend another day baking in the hot sun out there, it leaves me without energy and having heat headaches no matter how much water or sugar free gatorade I drink. I did a little better yesterday, tho, by dumping cool water over my head.
A dozer would take care of all of these weeds in a day's time, all 7 acres of it. Well, not even that much now, around 4-1/2 acres of weeds. Nothing I'm doing right now, the weeds will just grow right back up. With no rain in the forecast, it would be a waste of money. I want to immediately spread rye-grass seed over the entire area after getting the weeds plowed up and try to get something other than weeds growing in there.
The dozer would also smooth the dirt out and get rid of the little hilly stuff that seems to be everywhere in those weeds. The goal is to have grass, not weeds. Of course, that opens up a whole new can of worms of having to mow the grass. But, you either have ugly weeds or beautiful grass. Grass mowing can be sectioned into different days, it doesn't have to be "let's cut all of this grass in one day" type of thing. No, to start with, I won't be paying someone to cut all of that. They want far too much money. Money is a precious commodity right now and I am not even going to schedule the gravel install until I'm much closer to starting day.
I don't need to be in a situation where I"m running low on cash and have nothing but to go back to work to get it back up. This "free time" I have now is working my @$$ off out there attempting to get some semblance of a nice place going. If I could have only afforded double the spots I have now, I wouldn't have to go back to that horrid trucking lifestyle.
It makes me wonder if I could just find some other kind of work that may not pay near as much but with the park income, it wouldn't matter. I'm pretty handy with forklifts, all kinds and sizes, a bit rusty but it would come back quickly.
BTW, that machine? Yeah, that took a minute to figure out. It's been 20 years or so since I've operated a backhoe - which is pretty similar to operating a track hoe - and I really struggled with it for the first hour or so. Plus, the controls are really touchy, barely touch them and the thing is jerking around.
Oh, and waiting on gravel install? That could change, much has many other factors of this project has gone. I'm weighing getting it done so I can finish the lots up versus keeping the cash until very near the end. It may well be, ,tho, that the equipment they use to install the gravel will trash any grass I might have planted if they go off the pads to work on them. It may only take a day or two for them to do the gravel, but growing grass? Well, Rye grass grows quickly, for sure, but it's a couple of weeks anyway before you start getting anything substantial.
I also wonder about spending the time fixing the grass areas. By fixing, I mean smoothing all of it out and getting the rest of the weeds out. If they use a dozer to spread the gravel and that dozer goes into what-would-be my freshly fixed up grass areas, I would not be a happy camper.
It's all about the money and the dwindling supply of it.
BTW, I am going to have a glamping tent setup, but I'm not paying a company twice the money it costs to install it plus 20% of revenues. My interaction with building the bridge and re-learning how to work with wood convinces me that I could build the platform that most of them use to put the glamping tents on. It's a very large deck. It not only has the tent but it has a BBQ, outdoor chairs and/or outdoor couches.
Still, it's just a deck. And right now? The cost of wood is so high, a deck worth of wood would probably in the thousand dollar range. Folks, there is a YouTube video for just about everything, including how to build decks, lol. Deck - around $1,300, tent around $1,500 and then you dress it all up. It has to have power as well. It's basically a hotel room in a very large tent. The point? You get a lot more money off of those things for nightly rental and you quickly recover the money spent on them.
I don't know if they heat them - cooler temps coming. I'll have to check into that. It's on the "closer to the top" of the list type of thing. The cheapest nightly rate I was informed of in this area is $60 going up to in the high $100 range. Of course, there is a problem with them. You have to be available or find someone to clean it up nicely after each guest leaves.
I also want it in the mid section of the property - there is a nice stand of pines and a couple of open areas where I could put the setup. But - that would mean running water and electricity over the pipe easement and I dunno how they feel about that.
It'll be something I'm thinking about how to work it while I'm doing everything else. This would be an AirBnB type of listing. The income if it worked would be substantial enough to make it a higher priority than tent camping sites. I've still got some figuring and work to do for those. Even with the road I am going to have in there, there is still a parking issue which I didn't even think about - no place to park - and access to the group campground isn't possible - yet. It will take the use of a dozer back there to level off some large dirt mounds that are in the way of otherwise having a driveway straight to it.
If/when I eventually get to renting a dozer, I have to have all of this stuff figured out so I can go straight to work with it and get everything done. Not, sit there and think about how I should work and then get to work. With delivery, it's almost a grand a day for the use of one. I think it's 10 hours allotted usage time. I can get a lot done in 10 hours. The RV and the entire front take priority over tent camping sites tho. Those weeds are ugly. I'll take pics of them today when I've over there to give an idea of what I am talking about, but it's acres worth of - weeds. This is not the first impression you want an RV'er to see when they are pulling into your driveway? Yea, I don't think so.
G'day.
