We encountered this traffic jam on our way in to the job one morning. I vastly prefer these traffic jams to the ones that happen in the city-they are not frustrating and even kinda fun!
Trenching day started by climbing up this little dirt wall.
Unfortunately for the customer, but not surprisingly, our nasty rock bucket came out early on.
The need for the rock bucket was pretty much expected. Not only is it pretty typical around here, we could literally see the evidence of the hard caliche all around the surrounding geology of the property. This progressive dig rock bucket allows our excavator to dig through material that would normally require a larger machine to overcome. We dug through a couple hundred feet of caliche with some broken basalt here and there.
I wish pictures did justice to the absolute mayhem these spoils piles of rock created. I tried sorting the spoils into sections of material that was remotely suitable to go back in the ditch from the big nasty rocks that really couldn’t go back into the trenches for fear of damaging the underground utilities.
Here’s an overhead shot of what everything looked like once we were done and had our stuff in the ground. We had to bring in about 50 yards of sand to shade the trenches because the native material was just too nasty. This is just before backfilling. I should note that the waterline trench going from the house to the water tank, and the gas line trench going from the house to the propane tank location were done, along with the lines in them-by somebody else. All I can say about those two ditches is I don’t know how either the ditches of what was in them passed inspection.
We brought the skiddy out to move all the sand. Denise mostly runs that while I do clean up work in the excavator. We take turns getting out of the machines to manage the shovel, caution tape, conduits, and whatever else needs attended to. We keep in constant contact with each other with our headsets, which makes the job go smoother, easier, safer and faster. It also has the unfortunate side affect that I often sing to Denise while we are working. My singing is beyond terrible, and I usually make up ridiculous songs about whatever we are doing or my songs are, ummm…Well, lets just say it’s good there is no HR department.
In addition to installing the electrical conduits, we often install the gas lines for the backup generator. We order custom lines for the job from our friends at A&B Propane in Lake Havasu. They build the lines and pressure test them for us. Once we have them in the ground, we run a timed pressure test on them again before and after backfill to insure they haven’t been damaged. A licensed plumber or the propane company handles all the actual gas line connections once the time comes for that.
All the stubups get strapped to temporary strut bolted to temporary uprights to make sure everything stays exactly where we want it during the backfilling process. Denise knows I’m #1.❤️
Here’s what the place looked like when we were done with the underground. This ended up disturbing way more native vegetation than we wanted, but it was unavoidable with ground that hard and so much going on. You can see we used 2 and a half truck loads of that sand to back fill our trenches. The rest was left for the other contractor to backfill their trenches and for the property owner to use as needed.
What happened to all that nasty rock pile that came out of the trenches? After we shaded and backfilled the bottom 12-18″ of our trenches with that sand (our trenches were 24-30″ deep), we used the best of the native material we could to cap off the trenches. The rest we used to widen and improve the area that is south of the array, which will become access and parking for a shipping container that will go there. While we were at it, we also improved the ramp going up to the shipping container pad by changing its angle, widening it, and smoothing it out. we also build a small level pad for the propane tank, and a second one for the backup generator. Our customers often remark that their property looks better after we are done than it did before we show up for a reason.
With the underground done, next up will be putting up the array…