One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Ok, maybe it's not that bad, but sometimes that's how it feels! Wednesday our septic tank was delivered. My son (wahoo, he's home) and I went up an hour or so before delivery and made sure the area under the tank was perfectly level. Then I showed him how to play with--I mean operate--the excavator. He only got to use it for a few minutes because the truck with the tank showed up.

For those of you who have never seen a septic tank--it is big, huge, gigantic!

And so is the truck. Well, we've been digging up on top and, wouldn't you know it, the truck couldn't get to where it needed to go. So I had to fill in about 15 feet of ditch (small sob). What makes it worse is that this is the second time I've had to fill that section in! Still, that's what needed done, so it got done. The truck got in position (taking out several large limbs in the process) and he lowered the tank into the hole.

Now I gotta say, the driver was amazing. Very professional. He wasn't willing to wing it and park in an ok position, which is very good. Like I said, the tank was huge, and the tank needed to get into a spot about 20 feet below where the truck was parked.

The tank was lowered--between two trees and then the driver "walked" the tank down the side of the hill, using the dirt piled up to keep the thing from spinning. But, just before he did the final lower he knocked a chunk of dirt into the hole. He set the thing down and we all looked at it--fail! Even I could tell it wasn't level. We grabbed a level and I had him raise the tank a few feet. I cleared out the extra dirt from the corner and I told him to set the tank back down. He looked at me like, "Yeah right, that made a difference." But he humored me. The tank set down...and was perfectly level. Believe me, it was nice to see that the whole leveling workout was worthwhile!!!

So we have the tank set now and the rocks (from hell) have been delivered. Today, my whole family is going up to the lot to work for a few hours after fellowship. Can you say family time?

Silly, Silly Neophytes

Sometimes I just amaze myself by just how naive I can be! The weekend before last my husband and I planned on getting the septic done. He had Friday off, so we were going to knock it out in a weekend!

WAHAHAHAHA! Oh, no no no!

To start with, we ended up visiting the engineers Friday morning. (I had picked up the plans on Thursday--didn't even look at  them--and trotted up to the county building department. After dropping off a couple of sets for them to ok, I went home and looked at the plans--and almost had a heart attack.) So my husband and I figured we'd better talk to the engineers and find out what the heck they were thinking! Turns out they wern't completely crazy--there were changes made because Nevada is in an earthquake zone. They went through the plans page by page with us and showed us what everything means (oh, and they also added a few pages of "stuff" that we don't need!). Anyhow, we didn't get up to the lot until the afternoon. That kinda set the pace for the weekend.

Well, the good thing is I got to use an excavator. OOOOhhhh--fun!!! Yeah, that's right guys, I now know your secret. Heavy equipment is great fun!

So, I been diggin holes!

Yep, dat's right.

But done in one weekend--so, so clueless!