Trench Warfare
My sweetie has property out in the boonies that he’s in the process of building a house on. Helping him out on this is where a lot of my summer is going.
The existing electrical line from the well to the pump house didn’t pass inspection.
Possibly because it was merely an insulated wire buried 29” down.
No conduit. No pipe around it. Bare wire.
Bare wire next to water pipe
Yeah-I don’t know either.
So for the last two weekends, my sweetie and I have been digging a trench out on his property, from the pump house to the well. 70’ long and between 18-22” deep.
The first weekend of Trench Warfare involved using a trenching machine. It looked a lot like this:
One of the lovely things about his property, and I do mean that in the most sarcastic tone possible, is all the rocks.
My sweetie would dig a short bit with the machine, then I’d use a 7’ long digging pole to wrestle out the boulders so the machine could keep going.
Typical size of boulders pulled out of the ground
There are parts of the area that I swear are just rocks with a small bit of dirt wedged between them.
When I came back up to the area after taking a break, I swear it looked like we’d been doing battle with the rocks.
The battlefiel
This past weekend we dug. Two days. The first day, just got the full trench completed. The second day, dug down, so it was deep enough.
Trench from well to pumphouse
From pump house to well
And again, we both used the digging bar a lot. Only way to get some of those rocks loose.
Then there was the huge boulder that we just left. I’m not strong enough to help my sweetie get it out. He needs to get a couple of hefty guys to help him.
Trying to give some perspective. It came up to my mid-calf. Roughly 2′ per side.
Today I’m a bit sore. I’ve got some blisters and some bruises. But I keep looking at those pictures and repeating the words of my sweetie:
I won.
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