Just saying HI

Hi, I am new to this so I would like to just say hi and let everyone know a little about myself. I have been running equipment most of my life and also have done carpentry for about 10 years. Doing the carpentry messed up my back and now my spine is held together with titanium and cadaber bone. I work for an irrigation company that has been here in southwest Colorado since about 1875 or so() I think. My father was operating engineers local 12 most of his life as well and had me on a massey skip loader @ age 6. I fell in love with machinery then and that hasn't changed!! I have worked for a couple of paving outfits out in California and we did little stuff and a few roads but then I moved up here and worked for some bigger outfits and made foreman with both of these companies and did State and Federal highways. I even have ran a cedar rapids wash plant that I fed with a 966cat and then after some modifications to the feeder they got me a newer 744hJohn Deere and I really liked it. After messing up my back in the carpentry I got this job that I have now(after about a year off work in a removable body cast) and really like it. We just purchased a 2007 240D trackhoe from John Deere and I got elected to run this machine and boy is it great!! We also have a 490 trackhoe, 310 backhoe, 590A blade and other equipment and I keep on them as much as possible. My boss is great and I get to go into the office for about 2 days a week and do work on a laptop, he says I can do this to keep from doing too much manual labor and it helps him with excel projects and I learned how to do excel with video proffessor. They are about $75.00 for the 3 lessons but worth it if you need to learn a program like excel(spreadsheets) or word, at least I learned to do it pretty fast. Well, this is plenty long enough and just want to let you all know I have been reading this forum for a while now and have learned alot. You people know your stuff and I will have questions about different subject and just want you all to know that the commeradry you all have and the willingness to help out others in need is just fantastic and I hope I can be a part of something as good as what you all have done here with this forum. Thanks, 812harleys

Welcome aboard 812harleys

Thannks a bunch wrenchbender.

Welcome to Heavy Equipment Forums!!:drinkup

Thanks for joining us!

welcome to the HEF:notworthy .

Canal repairs?

Hi again, I have a little time on my lunch so here goes..
I tried to put this under general questions but can't access it yet. We have a bank that is leaking and trenched it with a 490, 2" bucket and was putting bentonite in to help seal it but the operator let too much water in so it couldn't get compacted good. Does anyone know a solution for a leaking bank? I fixed one just as the water was being put in and took the 240 and trenched down and recompacted it with a padfoot roller and that really did great but this job didn't get the attention it needed. I didn't get to do this one and I would of only taken out enough dirt to replace immediatly with dirt mixed with bentonite and not let the whole ditch fill with water. That way I could have compacted as I went. I hate saying this on a forum but letting the water fill the trench was my supervisors idea and it didn't work. Does anyone know of something that will work to stop the leakage? The main boss has it in the budget to line that part this winter but it would be nice to get more of the leakage stopped. If we could find where the holes are we could use PAM but there are holes everywhere for about 800 feet. Ant suggestions would be great. Thanks

Welcome to HEF 812harleys! :drinkup

Some pictures of the project would allow us to give more definate advice. :thumbsup

I'll try and get some, I have been taking pictures of almost all the jobs now for the general manager and they are more helpful than you would think. We are basically rained out and today it even snowed. It was just getting real warm too! At least the moisture will help all the farmers we supply but it messed up most of what we were doing on that job at least. I pressed together the water pump on the JD 570A today and with any luck I will be blading the rest of the week. I will still try and get pics though. Here's a mental image though; My superviser dug down to a depth of about 8' which is about 1' below the bottom of the canal. The canal is a good 12' across and we trenched app 6' from the canal edge and this whole area has only about a 12' bank to drive on, to check headgates and do repairs, so it isn't very wide. After trenching the holes would start dumping water from both the canal side and from the farmers field side which is lower than the canal bottom. This whole strech is perferated with these holes which some are crawdad, muskrat, and prariedog. We get these alot and sometimes it only takes a crawdad hole alongside the headgate pipe and there it goes. Anyway I was hoping that we could get some bentonite in there and compact it to make a compacted wall down the middle of the road but he let the water just fill up the trench and made soup of the trench:beatsme :beatsme No way to compact that?? All I got to do on this job was pack sacks of the pond sealer. I guess I shouldn't be worried about it and was hoping someone knew a quick fix. My hands are tied because the guy that did that is my supervisor. The excavator is still out there because he wanted to see if it stopped the leaking, which was at least 20 shares of water, quite a bit of water!! In the meantime I am going to suggest that after it does dry out some( which it will after it finds the pathway to the same old holes) that he just dig down to the canal water level and the start hammering with the curved part of the bucket and get it compacted. On a better note the main boss has sent me down to look at some more work that I get to do with the new JD240D, and that is one sweet machine! Thanks for your interest CountryBoy and when I get a little more familiar with how to use this forum I will get some better stuff to talk about instead of whining about something out of my control. Thanks again, 812harleys

hi

hi just sighned on myself and would like to say hello from scotland cheers keily .

hello

hello hi back @ ya