We're dealing with a lot of tough acreage out there in West Virginia. Throw in the rainiest Spring in years and our mountain dream is a soupy mess. All of our beautiful gravel roads are quicksand. It is a bit frustrating to be planning wells, septic, electric, foundation and cabin and all you see are drainage problems.
Have no fear, Bobcat his here.
That's right, when you buy a Bobcat you do everything with your Bobcat. You dig holes. You grade the driveway. You carry firewood. Hell, I've tried to scratch my back with it so applying that honking 46 HP hottie to a drainage problem was a no-brainer. The only issue was that our Bobcat came equipped with a front end loader: not good for digging a drainage ditch.
What we needed was a backhoe attachment.
Backhoe attachments.
Bobcats are designed to take dozens, if not hundreds of accessory attachments such as augers, grapples, rakes, and backhoes. We needed the backhoe. Big problemo though. Bobcat backhoes cost about 10 grand shiny and new, 5 grand rusty and unreliable, both way too costly. Answer: buy from an online supplier.
Yes, such a thing exists. You can buy an 800 pound steel backhoe attachment through the internet. They'll deliver it to your townhouse if you want. I decided to do some checking first. I asked skidsteersolutions.com to give me a few references. I called three or four. In no less than one hour of Bobcat war stories, Jeb from NC convinced me that a skidsteersolutions.com backhoe attachment was the way to go. He also convinced me that baked beans were best served from an empty oil can.
Our drainage problem.
My geologist wife is not surprised by the magnitude of flooding on our land, but when I dig a three foot hole I don't expect a tsunami. And that's exactly what happened; a spewing tidal wave. I've come to learn that our land is riddled with something called seep springs. Basically, somewhere up the mountain us rainwater falls from the sky and drains through a few feet of soil and then it hits an impermeable later of sandstone and flows horizontally until some unwitting dimwit digs a hole or builds a road and then suddenly all that water comes squirting out. For the dimwit (me), a day of rain equal five days of running water. Five days of running water equals stuck Bobcat.
The answer, of course, is improved drainage. And drainage is all about the French. I'm not talking about those French with twirly mustaches and BO; I'm talking about the French drain popularized by the American Henry French, which is basically a porous pipe buried in a gravel. The science is solid. What you do is dig a ditch, bury a pipe and cover it in gravel. Oh, you need an assistant (the Diplomat) to do the hard labor because the Bobcat cannot carry the pipe or rake the gravel. Before you know it we had three French drains and the drainage problems had seriously improved. Then I ventured to the fourth wet spot, the one with the really deep quicksand, and soon the Bobcat was bogged down to amidships. Two hours after that we were sweaty and digging with shovels. Four hours later we had the 5-ton chain hoist at work. Six hours later and we were trying to figure out how to restart a diesel engine because the damn thing was out of gas. By dark and miracle and backbreaking work we were somehow out of trouble and back on dry land.
Two serious dig-outs in less than a month. Next purchase is my next blog entry: Bobcat upgrade: steel tank tracks.
So it seems that the French are not the only ones with smelly armpits.
Posted by: Mom | 05 June 2011 at 06:18 AM
I remember Mr. French, he was the kindly Gentleman's Gentleman on "Family Affair." Who knew he had time to develop drains after caring for Buffy, Jody and big sister Cissy all day! Of course, his boss, Mr. Davis, was an architect, so perhaps, Mr. French was really the brains behind the operation and perhaps there was more to that relationship than met the eye!
Posted by: mark from nrc | 07 June 2011 at 06:49 AM