Friday April 18, 2025 Guerneville CA.
Leaky hose fittings
I discovered a leaky hose fitting, at the quick disconnect fitting, the other day while using Skiddy. I tightened up the fitting but didn’t really have a large enough wrench to get the part good and tight, but I did get it tight enough to stop the leak.
Today, I brought up a larger wrench so I could get the part tightened up properly. I checked the other hose next to the one that was leaking and that fitting was also loose, so I tightened that up too.
Hauling rock
Once that was done, I started up Skiddy to warm it up and got to work hauling more rock down the old dirt road to improve sections of the road that would benefit from having some rock on it, especially during the wet winter.
Digging up the old rusty culvert
After about ten loads of rock, I got tired of hauling rock so worked on removing this old plugged up rusty culvert, or at least what was left of it, shown in the picture below.
I took the culvert out and dug a shallow ditch across the road for the water to drain across and off the road. I put a couple loads of rock on it for now. It will need more rock.
No budget
I don’t have a budget for this job, no money, so I do things that don’t cost a lot of money and use the materials I have in the forest to get the job done. I also don’t like culverts because they are expensive and can take a lot of maintenance and when they do plug up and wash out, they can do a lot of erosion damage, causing big washouts.
They work well especially for lower volumes of water.
I can put a ditch in for water to cross the road for very little money which have almost no maintenance if done right. Mostly they only need a bit of rock in the crossing to prevent soft spots. Because it’s a ditch and not a pipe they rarely have plug up problems.
Most of the water crossings on this road are from springs during winter rain storms, so only run during that time period. Some of the springs run all year long, but are not a lot of water when it’s not raining.
Anyway, that’s what I did today.
Nice day.
