YShahar
Enthusiastic duct-tape engineer
So here's an update on adventures in blog building:
I paid a contractor friend to help me put up some cinderblock retaining walls, only to find that we'd built the wall a bit higher than needed, so I took off some of the top blocks. The interior of the blog will be roughly 3 meters long by 2 meters wide.
Meanwhile, I began digging out the central trench for the plumbing, plus the hole at one end for the clean-out stack. I bought a huge old olive barrel to use as a clean-out stack, but I’m now thinking that it might be too big for the purpose.
And that's when things got interesting: I dug out a few really nice big rocks, and then hit a big one. So I dug. And I dug... And I dug some more. The thing just didn't seem to have a bottom! Hmm... Sound familiar? Well, I decided that if I could detect any movement at all, I wasn't letting this one get away. Besides, it was right in the middle of where I wanted the trench to go.
Long story short, after a couple of days of digging out all the rocks surrounding the thing, I finally did get a bit of movement when I put the spike of my pickax under it and stepped on the other end. So I dug out enough to get it exposed on all sides. But now I had a problem: it was deep in a hole that I'd dug around it, and there was no easy way that I could get it out of there.
And then I had a visit from the Bezeq (the national telephone company). I heard shoveling and cussing coming from out front, and opened the door to find two guys from Bezeq trying to dig into our stony ground. Turns out that they were there to set up the infrastructure for a fibre optic internet connection (eventually the whole country will be served by fibre optic internet plus municipal wifi). So of course, I invited the guys to take a break and have coffee by the pond. One thing led to another and I gave them the grand tour, which included the bog-in-progress with its stuck rock.
And so, as expected, the younger of the two guys just had to try his hand at getting the rock unstuck. At which point, the older guy had to get in there as well, so as not to be shown up dontcha know…. And in the end, the two of them heaved the thing over and out of its hole. It was still in the depths of the bog, but at least now I could get a sling around it! I quickly grabbed a shovel and filled in the hole it had been in, so that it wouldn’t slip back down.
Things were looking up!
And then Friday dawned clear and cold, and I decided it was time to try to pull the thing out of the bog. I rigged up my trusty come-along to a sturdy tree, ran a long rope through my favorite snatch block, and tied the other end to another sturdy tree, then called His Honor the Chef out to man the winch while I got in the hole to maneuver the rock.
We have a house guest named Henry staying with us, who also come out to help. “I think I see how you’re going to pull the rock up to the inner wall,” Henry said. “But what then? How are you going to get it up and over the wall?”
To which I replied. “I’ve got no idea. Let’s see how it goes.”
And so we did. We worked to create a sort of ramp for the rock to climb and then pickaxed the sides of the trench to allow the rock free passage.
Because the winch cable was doubled back on itself to give more pull, there was only about a meter’s worth of cable for each run of the winch, and this was halved again by the use of the snatch block. So the rock could move only about 50 cm before we had to stop, untie the rope, run out the cable again and retie. And each time this happened, the rock had to be balanced such that it wouldn’t fall back down.
Eventually we got it to the inner wall. That’s when the fun began! His Honor the Chef worked the winch, and as the rock rose Henry and I grabbed whatever was to hand and piled it underneath. Every 10 cm or so, I’d call out for a pause, and grab another brick or log or whatever to shove under the rock. Another few cm and we’d prop it up, loosen the rope, run out the cable, and retie it. Then man the winch again.
So by the end of it we had propped it up on logs, bricks, and prayers.
Lots and lots of prayers...
And then there was the problem of how to actually get it over the lip of the wall. Because once it got up to the wall, the come-along was pulling it into the wall, rather than up it. After I explained the problem in terms of vectors, HHTC suggested using a nearby log to change the direction of pull, which turned out to be exactly what was needed.
All in all, it took about 20 cycles of winch, prop up and retie, and winch again, but at last the rock was up and resting on the edge of the bog wall.
The next day, I man-handled it onto my sack truck and carefully wheeled it over to the other side of the pond and dug it into place.
And so ends the saga of the big rock that didn't get away!
I paid a contractor friend to help me put up some cinderblock retaining walls, only to find that we'd built the wall a bit higher than needed, so I took off some of the top blocks. The interior of the blog will be roughly 3 meters long by 2 meters wide.
Meanwhile, I began digging out the central trench for the plumbing, plus the hole at one end for the clean-out stack. I bought a huge old olive barrel to use as a clean-out stack, but I’m now thinking that it might be too big for the purpose.
And that's when things got interesting: I dug out a few really nice big rocks, and then hit a big one. So I dug. And I dug... And I dug some more. The thing just didn't seem to have a bottom! Hmm... Sound familiar? Well, I decided that if I could detect any movement at all, I wasn't letting this one get away. Besides, it was right in the middle of where I wanted the trench to go.
Long story short, after a couple of days of digging out all the rocks surrounding the thing, I finally did get a bit of movement when I put the spike of my pickax under it and stepped on the other end. So I dug out enough to get it exposed on all sides. But now I had a problem: it was deep in a hole that I'd dug around it, and there was no easy way that I could get it out of there.
And then I had a visit from the Bezeq (the national telephone company). I heard shoveling and cussing coming from out front, and opened the door to find two guys from Bezeq trying to dig into our stony ground. Turns out that they were there to set up the infrastructure for a fibre optic internet connection (eventually the whole country will be served by fibre optic internet plus municipal wifi). So of course, I invited the guys to take a break and have coffee by the pond. One thing led to another and I gave them the grand tour, which included the bog-in-progress with its stuck rock.
And so, as expected, the younger of the two guys just had to try his hand at getting the rock unstuck. At which point, the older guy had to get in there as well, so as not to be shown up dontcha know…. And in the end, the two of them heaved the thing over and out of its hole. It was still in the depths of the bog, but at least now I could get a sling around it! I quickly grabbed a shovel and filled in the hole it had been in, so that it wouldn’t slip back down.
Things were looking up!
And then Friday dawned clear and cold, and I decided it was time to try to pull the thing out of the bog. I rigged up my trusty come-along to a sturdy tree, ran a long rope through my favorite snatch block, and tied the other end to another sturdy tree, then called His Honor the Chef out to man the winch while I got in the hole to maneuver the rock.
We have a house guest named Henry staying with us, who also come out to help. “I think I see how you’re going to pull the rock up to the inner wall,” Henry said. “But what then? How are you going to get it up and over the wall?”
To which I replied. “I’ve got no idea. Let’s see how it goes.”
And so we did. We worked to create a sort of ramp for the rock to climb and then pickaxed the sides of the trench to allow the rock free passage.
Because the winch cable was doubled back on itself to give more pull, there was only about a meter’s worth of cable for each run of the winch, and this was halved again by the use of the snatch block. So the rock could move only about 50 cm before we had to stop, untie the rope, run out the cable again and retie. And each time this happened, the rock had to be balanced such that it wouldn’t fall back down.
Eventually we got it to the inner wall. That’s when the fun began! His Honor the Chef worked the winch, and as the rock rose Henry and I grabbed whatever was to hand and piled it underneath. Every 10 cm or so, I’d call out for a pause, and grab another brick or log or whatever to shove under the rock. Another few cm and we’d prop it up, loosen the rope, run out the cable, and retie it. Then man the winch again.
So by the end of it we had propped it up on logs, bricks, and prayers.
Lots and lots of prayers...
And then there was the problem of how to actually get it over the lip of the wall. Because once it got up to the wall, the come-along was pulling it into the wall, rather than up it. After I explained the problem in terms of vectors, HHTC suggested using a nearby log to change the direction of pull, which turned out to be exactly what was needed.
All in all, it took about 20 cycles of winch, prop up and retie, and winch again, but at last the rock was up and resting on the edge of the bog wall.
The next day, I man-handled it onto my sack truck and carefully wheeled it over to the other side of the pond and dug it into place.
And so ends the saga of the big rock that didn't get away!
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