More Work

My brother asked if I would join him today on an earth moving job at his son in-law’s house. His son in-law had two retaining walls built out of railroad ties that were not constructed properly and eventually began to collapse and needed to be replaced. A retaining wall contractor was called and a decision was made to share the work. We would remove the old ties and some soil and the contractor would rebuild the walls out of retaining wall blocks.

Over the Fourth of July weekend the ties were removed and a small amount of soil. Today, July 26, 2010, my brother and I drive over to help remove more soil. My brother lives on our family farm and has a tractor with a backhoe on it, shown in the following picture.

Several feet of soil need to be removed from the bank behind the tractor to make room for the placement of the new wall. The soil is to be taken down the driveway and stored in a pile for now. My brother started by removing some topsoil with the backhoe and then I used the bucket on the front to remove the soil from the front of the bank.

The two banks were held back by old railroad ties, which are all in this big pile now. To the right of the ties is a small pile of soil. I will greatly increase the size of the pile by the end of the day.

They are actually working! They are thinking about what to do next while I shoot their picture where the second retaining wall goes.

I went to work on the front bank and moved a bunch of soil down the driveway to the storage pile. I will have to come back someday for a picture of the wall after it is built.

When removing soil from the back we ran into an old tree stump that we had to dig out. Tomorrow morning the contractor will come to check our work and see if we need to remove any more soil.

As you can see from the next picture, I did add soil to the pile.

As I write this I am waiting for a call to see if I need to go back and remove anymore soil; if not I will then join my nephew and work on his house. Don’t worry; I won’t be sitting around thinking I am on vacation.

My brother just called and told me I would have to go back and remove more soil from each bank. After several hours of work the front bank now looks a little different.

After a short while we had the back bank cut back some.

The pile of soil sure got larger.

My brother and I stopped at a very popular diner for lunch. I spent the afternoon working with David on his house. See the next blog entry for that report.