It seems obvious that the solar power system is done, running, and everyone is happy with it.
So it looks like we are done here and should be packing up and heading home today.
But wait, you are now asking yourself what was up with that excavator we hauled up a week or so ago?
Well, I’m glad you asked!
You did ask, didn’t you?😄
You may recall earlier that I posted a picture of the side of the building we’ve been working on and I mentioned there were some issues visible that sharp eyes might catch.
It looks like this.
{
“lightbox_close”: “Close”,
“lightbox_next”: “Next”,
“lightbox_previous”: “Previous”,
“lightbox_error”: “The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.”,
“lightbox_start_slideshow”: “Start slideshow”,
“lightbox_stop_slideshow”: “Stop slideshow”,
“lightbox_full_screen”: “Full screen”,
“lightbox_thumbnails”: “Thumbnails”,
“lightbox_download”: “Download”,
“lightbox_share”: “Share”,
“lightbox_zoom”: “Zoom”,
“lightbox_new_window”: “New window”,
“lightbox_toggle_sidebar”: “Toggle sidebar”
}
The most obvious issue here is whoever did the dirt work for this building didn’t leave any room around the slab, and didn’t build any drainage, and perhaps worst of all, didn’t slope off the dirt, so it eroded and is piling up on the side of the steel building. It’s a recipe for a ruined building.
There’s other issues with the building in the picture too that anyone with steel building experience will spot…😬😬
Anyway-what does any of this have to do with off grid solar? Well, not much, but it does have a lot to do with us.
We had some equipment on site already, got to talking to the powers that be, and struck a deal to fix their fucked up dirt.
Now, we’re no excavation contractor, but we’ve done a lot of this kinda stuff before. And getting people to just show up at these remote locations is half the battle.
We’re here.
A customer needs some dirt work that nobody else wants to mess with-or it’s cost prohibitive to get someone else out there-and often enough, our equipment is already on site.
And so it happens that we often end up doing quite a bit of extra work for our customers.
And that’s what happened here.
First thing in the morning, I benched the excavator on the top of the cut, and started making room, moving dirt, and burning diesel.
Denise strapped into our skiddy, and started shuttling the material I was breaking loose to the other end of the structure where there were huge holes that needed filling.
It was a bit tricky digging out the dirt. I had to be real careful not to give the building a love tap, and most of the material was fragmented basalt, so it was no easy dig by any means. And I had to be careful as I worked my way up the slope to not pull myself over the edge.
At one point, I hit a patch of the dreaded blue basalt. When you see this blue/gray stuff, you know your day just got long. It’s hard, strong, and just nasty.
Here’s some pictures of the day in the dirt.
At one point the sky dumped.
Thank god for enclosed machines!
And here’s how it looked at the end of the day.
We moved a lot of dirt!
