Some of my jobs...

[245dlc]

I don't know but I think the farmer would have rather had the bales catch fire than the tractor burn to the ground.

Yes but coming from the standpoint of an experienced Volunteer Firefighter the tractor is easier to extinguish than a whole bunch of bales on the side of a very busy highway. The tractor driver said he had noticed an oil leak maybe from the transmission so that might have been the cause or had something to do with it.

 

[245dlc]

This ditching job was about 3 miles long and drained a very large area of farm land for many miles it had a number of drop structures to prevent erosion consisting of sheet piling and 12"-18" rip rap. It had also been the site of a large substation construction project a little less than 10 years ago where about a million cubic metres of earth was moved to build up a pad for it to be built on. It's immediately adjacent to the Red River Floodway that prevents the Red River from flooding out the City of Winnipeg by diverting water down a huge channel from the south side of Winnipeg to the North Side of the city near the town of Lockport. This ditch drained through a drop structure in to the floodway and during the construction of the substation the earthmoving contractor had to cross this ditch and never did clean up their crossings properly and had also re-graded the ditch far too high leaving a lot of standing water in it.

 

[245dlc]

It was a bit of a sh!t show as I couldn't see the bottom at all and had to grade by feel but often what I do and the other guys do is check with the laser receiver on your standard rod that you've got everything set up correctly but it was very difficult to get close enough to the bottom without falling in and even when I cut a step in to the back to stand on the clay was so greasy I still had to put the bucket nearby so I could hang on to something. lol For the first while I smeared out the mud along the sides of the ditch but it was slowing down progress quite a bit so I had to bail it up on to the bank as far as I could reach.

 

[AzIron]

That looks like a bunch of cussing

I rarely see mud and when I do I hate it i couldn't imagine working mud for a living has to be a pain but you sure make it look good

 

[245dlc]

That looks like a bunch of cussing

I rarely see mud and when I do I hate it i couldn't imagine working mud for a living has to be a pain but you sure make it look good

It's all we have for the most part here crawling out of the ditch was a bit of a f!$%k fest I still can't believe I didn't get stuck on this particular job with all the greasy clay.

 

[kshansen]

I don't know but I think the farmer would have rather had the bales catch fire than the tractor burn to the ground.

Way off topic but those pictures made me wonder how a certain short time poster on this site is doing with the Cat skid-steer he bought that was involved in a fire. Maybe he would be interested in purchasing a "good used tractor"!

Just hope the guy driving that tractor got out and is safe and hope he had insurance to cover the loss!

 

[terex herder]

plastic fuel tanks for ya

That is a benefit. No getting screwed by an insurance company who want to rebuild it.

 

[petepilot]

It's all we have for the most part here crawling out of the ditch was a bit of a f!$%k fest I still can't believe I didn't get stuck on this particular job with all the greasy clay.

got to hand it to you `don`t see any signs of a sunk mach.

 

[245dlc]

Way off topic but those pictures made me wonder how a certain short time poster on this site is doing with the Cat skid-steer he bought that was involved in a fire. Maybe he would be interested in purchasing a "good used tractor"!

Just hope the guy driving that tractor got out and is safe and hope he had insurance to cover the loss!

Yeah he got out didn't seem like the brightest light bulb in the drawer I had to get him to back the efff up in case a tire blew up or anything else for that matter but he said he lost his phone in the fire.

 

[245dlc]

got to hand it to you `don`t see any signs of a sunk mach.

Yeah the clay bottom was solid just a lot of water and loon $hite on top of it up to the tops of the tracks most of the time. It was a big job to clean the track out after lots of shovelling and even grabbing hand fulls of vegetation.

 

[245dlc]

Cleaning out these little branches from other ditches that join in to this one was fun once I got up to the culvert I had to climb out and finish cleaning out from the side it would of been nice to have a little dozer blade to act as an anchor as I had to sit on the slope and try not to slide back in.

 

[petepilot]

Yeah the clay bottom was solid just a lot of water and loon $hite on top of it up to the tops of the tracks most of the time. It was a big job to clean the track out after lots of shovelling and even grabbing hand fulls of vegetation.

cleaning tracks would have to have been the worst part of the job loons

 

[245dlc]

cleaning tracks would have to have been the worst part of the job loons

Yeah I've used pressure washers before and its a slow boat to China, I think a 1" or 1.5" high pressure fire hose around 80-90psi would work better and a guy could stand back a little further and maybe wear less of it. lol These pictures are of the drop structure that dumps water in to the floodway the water has to go over the sheet piling and down the culverts on to a concrete spillway....I wanted to get a torch and cut down the sheet piling a little bit to drain down some of the water. lol

 

[Shimmy1]

All I have on this is nice work, and how in the f*** do you cut the ditch so straight?? I can't trench waterline that straight. Apparently I have much to learn, lol

 

[245dlc]

The province has some laws about driving on the Floodway or something but it didn't stop me. lol And I was in the middle of nowhere so there were no taddle tales around. And not the best pic but you can see one of the large culverts where the water runs down to the bottom of the channel.

 

[245dlc]

All I have on this is nice work, and how in the f*** do you cut the ditch so straight?? I can't trench waterline that straight. Apparently I have much to learn, lol

Hah if only it was as straight as it seems this one wasn't that bad for keeping straight I just followed the old ditch line and I guess one of my tricks is just pulling the bucket in as centered to my tracks as possible. The work is by the hour so you take your time check and double check especially when it comes to the grade that is the most important.
I had a few Muskrats living in there kinda confused by the lack of cattails all of the sudden and there was a River Otter at the beginning that I'm pretty sure flipped me the 'bird'. lol The next problem I had was the weather decided to warm up considerably to the point I was in a t-shirt which also meant that it was crazy windy and all the cattails were 'fluffing' out and my rad was getting plugged. During the summer and the warmer part of the fall I had my home made firefighting skid in the truck with 55 gallons of water on board and a 1" 2.5h.p. pump in the back of my truck behind the slip tank so on a couple of brushing jobs I used it wash out the radiator and that was nice because I wouldn't end up with that fluff flying around in the air. But now because we were starting to get freezing temperatures off and on I had dismounted it and we had also had a fair bit of rain in September and October so I didn't really need it anymore or so I thought. So a call to the boss and he suggested using his leaf blower and it worked alright for the most part at this point the day was done and the wind wasn't dying down so screw it I went home.

 

[Shimmy1]

Frickin cattails are a PITA. My Case has a window screen in between the charge-air/condenser and the radiator that catches most of it, but I still need to clean it every day.

 

[245dlc]

The towers at the substation give you a bit of an idea on how big that station is, its largely for exporting electricity to the state of Minnesota, kinda high security with out the the guns and that stuff, but they do have camera's and rent-a-cops but they never talked to me the whole time I was working there I didn't even see a security patrol funny enough.

 

[245dlc]

At this point I still had maybe a mile and a half left to go and dug through the biggest dams left behind from the dirt crews building the substation draining a substantial amount of water but still a huge quantity of loon $hit that had built up over the years, I would swing around and push down the cattails in to the mud and water trying to keep them from going poof! As well to flatten things out so I can get a better idea of what I'm dredging. Shortly after the boss got a call from the utility company we regularly work for saying they had a month or two of work and maybe more and the rental 180 Deere finished up its project so I was moved out to the utility job and Terry with the 180 finished up cleaning up my slop job.

 

[245dlc]

Frickin cattails are a PITA. My Case has a window screen in between the charge-air/condenser and the radiator that catches most of it, but I still need to clean it every day.

Yeah and during the growing season they are full of pollen which is terrible for my allergies I personally dislike ditching or at least clean outs like this but what can you do?