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Borrowed a bucket truck/crane to use at rent house...

Dargo

Like a bad penny...
GOLD Site Supporter
Hot dang it if it didn't seem like that truck would raise me a heck of a lot higher than I expected! :eek: I didn't think to hand my phone to someone to take pictures until I had the tallest limbs down, but according to the range finder, the tree topped out at 96' tall. Didn't look all that bad from the ground. Once I was dodging the power lines and the wind started blowing while I was 100' off the ground hanging out of the basket, I started getting nervous. :sad:

Anyway, I can't sleep now because I'm too sore and I still have the entire tree to get cut up into manageable pieces and get off the ground! Worse, we have a winter storm warning for about 8" of blowing and drifting snow for tonight. C'mon, surely someone wants to come down and help cut up this tree and help me haul it off....don't ya? Since one of my business ventures is selling grease, by the quarter barrel or tube, I can lube ya up really nice for the help. I gave the guy $700 worth of grease for using the bucket truck and having him get his giggles by showing me how high it would lift me. :unsure:

This is the same house that I paid our own WorkingWoman to paint on the inside and fix the crack I put in a ceiling and wall when I used my 20 ton jack and oak timbers to jack the back bedroom back up from where it settled. It's also the same house she showed up and found me crawling around inside the septic tank cleaning it out and cutting all the roots out of. That tree that I took down had one heck of a food source with the septic tank about 10 yards away from. The best I can tell, nobody had ever dug it up before and removed the lids to do a thorough cleaning.

I should have gotten my phone out of the truck to take pictures of that deal. Roots had literally raised the 4" thick concrete lids (yeah, I know, they are only 2" lids now) up by almost 2" and had formed a solid mat of thousands of small roots all inter-weaved and was about a foot thick. And, the foot thick mat of roots wasn't holding a foot of mud in their grasp either! You know what they had all tied up in them!! :doh: After cutting a hole in the mat big enough to have a truck pump out all it could, I spent 2 days cutting the mat out and clearing the tank. I was shocked to find that it was a bricked tank that really wasn't in bad shape at all once I got the mats out. Heck, even the baffle was still in place and in good shape. All the black mastic tar was still visible inside the tank on the bricks. Still, I used my excavator to put in a new field bed system and did a little tuck point repairs to the top bricks to allow the lids to fit back on correctly. To make sure mud didn't seep in the old tank, I covered all the lid joints with old 3 tab shingles before using good ole back power and a spade to re-cover the tank. It all works great now but, literally, it was one shitty job!

Ah, the love and joy of being a landlord... At least the renters never complained any. They saw that I was doing all I could do, including changing out both toilets inside the home and cleaning up the mess that was made when it backed up through the basement floor drain. I mean, it wasn't their fault. I try to do the right thing. I have a family of 3 living there now whereas there was only one little old lady living there by herself for the last 26 years. I doubt she did more than 2 loads of laundry a month, took more than a couple of dumps a month and was only able to take 'spit baths' for the last few years. Oh well, I'm getting in better shape now anyway. Next I get to clean the 2nd floor gutters. They are plugged from that damn tree I just took down. It may have to wait a bit....unless our WorkingWoman wants to....oh, never mind.

Sorry for the poor picture quality. They were taken by my phone and it ended up being completely dark, and working by flashlights by the time we got the base of the tree dropped.
 

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bczoom

Super Moderator
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
Sounds like you've been having a great time!!!! NOT.

If you have a backpack leaf blower, it does a nice job of cleaning gutters.
 

Dargo

Like a bad penny...
GOLD Site Supporter
Oh, damn, I forgot. I bet this thread would really piss 'treefriend' off!! :biggrin:
 

XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Master of Distraction
Staff member
SUPER Site Supporter
Geez Dargo, crawling inside the septic tank. That's a job I'd gladly hire out. I've done a fair amount of my own septic work but getting inside the tank - that's what you make lots of money to pay other people to do. ;)
 

Dargo

Like a bad penny...
GOLD Site Supporter
Geez Dargo, crawling inside the septic tank. That's a job I'd gladly hire out. I've done a fair amount of my own septic work but getting inside the tank - that's what you make lots of money to pay other people to do. ;)

Yeah, I think that little job is what gave me the 'green apple trots' for 3 or 4 days. :sad: I think the worse part was when a 1'X2' section of that mat, weighing about 100 pounds, fell at my feet and splattered all the nice goo in my face, up my nose, in my eyes, in my ears and in my mouth. Literally, that was some nasty shit!
 

XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Master of Distraction
Staff member
SUPER Site Supporter
Yeah. A "smart" person would get someone else to clean it and then go in and inspect it. You didn't consult with your wife before tackling that job did you?

:whistle:
 

Dargo

Like a bad penny...
GOLD Site Supporter
Yeah. A "smart" person would get someone else to clean it and then go in and inspect it. You didn't consult with your wife before tackling that job did you?

:whistle:

Uh, she sent me to do it. Is that bad? :sad:

Besides, I bought one of those 100' long power augers to clear pipes and those damn roots grabbed the thing and absolutely refused to let it go. I wasn't about to lose my brand new shit digger! It took about 10 minutes with a box cutter to get it cut loose so I could back it back out.

Did I mention that my rubber boots leak? I think it's time to spend $30 at Rural King again to buy another pair.
 

muleman

Gone But Not Forgotten
GOLD Site Supporter
Working with old tanks sucks. I excavated and pumped 83 of them one winter for a sewer upgrade in a local town. Not a fun job and not for those with a weak stomach. After pumping you had to rip the lid off and fill them with stone and then hook the house onto public sewer. Not a good smell!
 

EastTexFrank

Well-known member
GOLD Site Supporter
:sad: I think the worse part was when a 1'X2' section of that mat, weighing about 100 pounds, fell at my feet and splattered all the nice goo in my face, up my nose, in my eyes, in my ears and in my mouth. Literally, that was some nasty shit!

Man, that's just 'way more information than I need before lunch. :puke1:
 

Dargo

Like a bad penny...
GOLD Site Supporter
Working with old tanks sucks. I excavated and pumped 83 of them one winter for a sewer upgrade in a local town. Not a fun job and not for those with a weak stomach. After pumping you had to rip the lid off and fill them with stone and then hook the house onto public sewer. Not a good smell!

I'm supposed to be able to tap into a new city sewer line that is 'scheduled' to be installed this coming summer. If I really believed them, I wouldn't have gone through as much trouble to do things right. I should be good for another 25 years anyway now. If city sewers do come in, I probably will go ahead and pay the tap in fee and do that anyway. The good thing is that there is about 70 homes or so on the street that need to tap in. I have the perfect sized compact excavator to do the work, and the homeowner is responsible to get the line from the home to the city line. I'd love to pay for my excavator in one summer!
 

BigAl

Gone But Not Forgotten
SUPER Site Supporter
I purchased a man lift earlier this year . Wow ! Those things are handy . Mine only goes to 33 'and can lift 500 pounds ,but that is more than hi enough for me . I can't even imagine 100' :unsure:
 

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DaveNay

Klaatu barada nikto
SUPER Site Supporter
Yeah, I think that little job is what gave me the 'green apple trots' for 3 or 4 days. :sad: I think the worse part was when a 1'X2' section of that mat, weighing about 100 pounds, fell at my feet and splattered all the nice goo in my face, up my nose, in my eyes, in my ears and in my mouth. Literally, that was some nasty shit!

That's the type of thing that stupid people do to get themselves nominated for the Darwin Awards.

Sorry Brent, but climbing inside a septic tank without proper safety gear has to be the stupidest thing I have ever heard you say you did. (At least you didn't mention if you had an air supply with you).
 

Dargo

Like a bad penny...
GOLD Site Supporter
That's the type of thing that stupid people do to get themselves nominated for the Darwin Awards.

Sorry Brent, but climbing inside a septic tank without proper safety gear has to be the stupidest thing I have ever heard you say you did. (At least you didn't mention if you had an air supply with you).

Bock, bock, bock. You chicken! Hell, back in college I was laying down across the lid of my parent's looking in with a flashlight to see if the outlet was plugged when the lid broke, sending me in a full tank head first with the lid halves whacking me on the head. The funniest thing about that was me popping out of the tank and chasing people around tackling them and rubbing shit on them. It didn't kill me then, but that lid sure left a nice lump on my head!

If you think that's bad, you ought to go into the KFC and Grandy's grease tank to scrape the thickened grease off the sides. Oh man, that stuff makes the shit in a septic tank smell like Old Spice! Yeah, I'd do most anything legal for money. The hardest or nastiest the job, the better it paid. Sometime ask me about jumping off the Ohio River bridge. :shifty: It can be done and it doesn't kill you!
 

grizzer

New member
Now this post is exciting... agree being IN a tank without positive respiration is very lucky.

Then I hope the power lines were off. Live wires, wind, estimated weights, again very lucky. Here if the power was accidentally cut without prior notification to anyone along that line who is dependent on electrical life support eq. might be considered criminal.

I had a similar tree problem on a city property. Way cheaper to hire it done making sure the contractors liability policy extended to the property address. I did the cleanup after it was down & that kicked my but taking 3 afternoons.

Dargo leads a charmed life.
 

norscaner

Active member
Dargo leads a charmed life. .....
My thought exactly grizzer.
I have worked the past 30 years on telecom plant and have seen more than my share of confined space work.
Dargo I need you to buy me a lotto ticket my friend. Anyone else try something like this would have been killed for sure .


An old saying in our trade " there are old lineman and careless lineman but there are no old careless lineman"
 

Dargo

Like a bad penny...
GOLD Site Supporter
Dargo leads a charmed life. .....
My thought exactly grizzer.
I have worked the past 30 years on telecom plant and have seen more than my share of confined space work.
Dargo I need you to buy me a lotto ticket my friend. Anyone else try something like this would have been killed for sure .


An old saying in our trade " there are old lineman and careless lineman but there are no old careless lineman"

Oh, but I made it a point to not take the big ass 48" chain saw to any power lines. The light show may have been really cool, but I get the feeling I wouldn't be feeling so great the next day. I did have all the out riggers spread as far as they'd go with heavy pads under them and I made sure to not exceed the 60% range on that old truck. I've gone 70% on some newer and bigger trucks, but not on that one.

I suppose it's a good thing I couldn't find a good bungee cord for bungee jumping, huh? :yum:
 
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