Phone Tag, an Old Well and Woke Up the Dozer

Monday February 8, 2016 Guerneville CA.

More phone tag

I decided to stay home today. I needed to play some more phone tag with the VA. I started out the day with a call into them and left a message to contact me.

Measuring the old well

The next thing I wanted to do was measure the depth of the old family ranch well across the street. I pulled an old pump out of it not too long ago, so I measured how deep that well pipe was by measuring the pipe length. Forty nine feet to the bottom of the submergible pump.

I then dropped a weight down the well with a string and pulled it up and measured that. Fifty three feet to the bottom of the well,  four more feet than the pump depth. So  a new pump at fifty feet should work out ok. We need to get a new pump with all the hardware and get it all hooked up. I spent some time checking out how to hook a new pump up to the old electrical system and just laying out what I needed to do to get the job done. This pump would supply my brothers garden with some much needed water to grow vegetables.

Back to the VA

By now it was after lunch so I called the VA again and had some success as I got the person I needed, finally. She said the Doc had my application in and they had to process it which usually takes about seven days, so I needed to wait for my application to get approved and if I haven’t heard from them by the sixteenth, call back.

Good, I finally got that going which should get me an allergy appointment with a local doctor,  I hope. :O)

I puttered around in my yard for an hour or so checking out what I need to do for spring as it’s seems to be here.

Waking up the bulldozer

Then I got five gallons of diesel in a can and got the quad runner going and headed up into the woods to put some fuel in the dozer and get it started to charge up the battery.

I fueled it up ok, but when I tried to start it, it acted like the battery was weak, but then I heard a spark noise at the battery, so opened up the compartment and messed with the battery cables and clamps to make a connection where I heard the spark. Lucky I had put an adjustable wrench in my back pocket just before leaving. I tried the key again and it started right up. I let it run to warm up while I greased it.

Here’s the dozer where I fueled it up.

Once the dozer warmed up, I headed on down the road about a mile to a spot my brother wants to cut some firewood going through here.

Using the dozer to help cut firewood may be a little over kill, but it makes things much easier and much safer too as the dozer can handle big trees safely better than we can.

I cruised on down this road, once in awhile moving a dead tree off the road.

I pulled the dozer into the area my brother wants to cut firewood and parked it. I hope I ran it long enough to charge up the battery.

Now, I had to walk back on the road to get my quad runner. That means walking along and throwing sticks and rocks off the road which is actually a lot of work.

I got to this spot and over heated causing my hives to activate, meaning I was itching a lot, so I sat down to cool off on the right there by my shirt.

While I was sitting there cooling off, I was checking out this big redwood stump. It’s about six feet in diameter at the trunk and you can see some of it’s roots which are massive.

Once I had cooled down enough I continued on up the road walking.

At this spot, I could see my quad up there ahead, the little red spot.

I hopped on the quad runner and headed on home and that was about it for the day.