Sunday December 22, 2024 Guerneville CA.
Forest road check
I rode on up into the park to check on the road I’ve been working on to make sure the water is draining off it properly.
Going up through the redwood park.
And through the pipe gate where the road is I’ve been working on.
Ditches
I stopped to clean the crossings out to make sure the water is draining properly. These ditches are newly rocked and cars tend to mess them up a bit when new and with all the rains, I haven’t been able to fix these crossing properly yet.
Most of the road was in real good shape. A bit foggy today, between the rains as it’s stopped for a few hours today.
Jim’s place
I rode over to a neighbor’s place to talk with Jim about the road but only the horse was there.
Gate up
I stopped here to put the gate back up. I’d put it on the ground the other day to drop Skiddy’s blade on it to straighten it out as it was bent a bit. I was going to get Jim to help me put it back up as it was rather heavy to move by myself.
With some effort, I got it back up, but not on the hinges as I’ll need some help with that.
Foggy
Once I was ok with the road, I went for a little ride around in the fog.
Moving the barrel
Back home, I took a nap and then went out to see about moving this barrel of diesel that weighs 400 pounds. I need to get it closer to my house fuel supply for heating as I use red diesel to heat my house mostly. I do use wood sometimes.
I tried rolling the barrel on it’s bottom rim over to the new spot, about sixty feet, but it was digging into the soft ground so I used some steel metal to help me along.
With a few breaks, I got the barrel over to the fuel tank and pumped the diesel into the larger tank for the house stove.
That was enough hard work for one day. I just sat around the yard enjoying the day after that.
Nice day.
Hi Bob-with the amount of heavy machinery you have,perhaps a local fuel company would be interested in providing a large bulk diesel tank .On our farm we had a good sized tank on a raised pedestal we built-we drove alongside and gravity filled up.
Wondered if the plastic weeping tile could be used for the ditches you work so hard to maintain =I suppose they’d have to be fairly deep to avoid being crushed.Anyway enjoy the blog & wish you all the best of the Christmas season.
Hi James,
I don’t really usually do all this work, but I volenteered to fix this park road free to fix it up right. So, I likely wouldn’t use enough diesel to keep it fresh.
I did learn something last time we had a forest fire around here. Don’t use plastic stuff in the woods. Plastic pipes on the ground got burned up or overheated to make them unsafe to use. I saw many truck loads of plastic pipe going out to the fire areas, after the fire and I heard lots of plastic culverts burned up too.
I’m only in the prep stages of the road work, trying to recover it from being real messed up by past people working on it and making it mostly a creek with big ditchs going down the road. As I progress to improve this road, I’ll be making sweeping dips wth rock to make the ditches that cross the road, so almost no maintenance then and easy to cross with a car or truck. The main difference betweene the old road and what I plan is they did in-sloped roads with ditches that where creating much sediment in the park below. I do out-sloped roads with no culverts to plug up and almost no ditches, very short if one is needed. The key to a good road is don’t collect water or things will plug up and get washed out and do lots of damage. The key is to always dissapate water. It’s also a much cheaper and much lower maintenance way to go.
Since I’m doing this road for free, I also don’t want to spend any more of my money then is neccessary. Of course, that’s why I can do it for free anyway. :O)
It’s actually quite a chalange to change this road over while it’s being used by neighbors. I’m doing it during the winter as I need the dirt wet to fill in the ditches, three feet or so deep, the deepest being 8 feet. The ditch I just filled was more like a creek going down the road when it rains hard which it does and lot in this area.
Bob