Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Trees Down - Finally

Well that's mostly done!
A bit nerve wracking as you might imagine.
The trees ended up being right at 75' (23m) tall and were really close to the house as you can see in the pictures. But a length of chain, some ropes, careful cuts and eight hours of maneuvering resulted in everything being safely cut down and only the bases are left standing.

I'll get those knocked down once we get the debris cleaned up and hauled away.
No sense in making a bigger mess for myself at the moment.

Prior to doing this, I did contact three tree service companies and requested quotes to simply knock the trees down and drive away. All three came in at $2000!
 
Ridiculous - Screw them!

I rented the lift for $230 and picked up a spool of rope for $90 and did it myself.


First branch cut and hanging by some chain. Once in this position I simply went back up the lift and cut chunks from the bottom of the hanging piece up to the chain before tying off again and pulling down the next section below the chain

View from the basket

Shop view from the lift.
In this photo you can see the left over stump after cutting free the hanging mess from the previous photo.

Tree bases left up for now while we clear the debris

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Boat Bling! (and a new compressor)

Still working on some projects around the house, so no boat work for still another couple of weeks.
This coming weekend (depending on weather) we will work on cutting down the two big trees next to the house. A bit scary, but we'll try to be as safe as possible.
Last weekend we got the garage door installed along with building out the front walls of the garage to accommodate the smaller/taller door. I also got the fence rails in place for the section between the house and shop. No fence panels installed yet since the season is over and they are no longer stocked at Lowe's. Next spring we'll get that finished up.

In other news, I received my first pieces of "Boat Bling" in the form of three Chain Plate Distributor blocks from Colligo marine. They took a while to be delivered, but absolutely worth the wait! Very nice pieces of hardware.

CSS93BLK with 7/8" insert:
 - 23,500lb (10,659Kg) Safe Working Load
 - 47,000lb (21318Kg) Break Strength

And finally, I picked up a new air compressor.
In this case, I literally "picked it up"...
I was on my way to Lowe's to get some lumber for the garage door when just up the road I see an air compressor set out for trash. I stopped and asked the guy if he was getting rid of the compressor and what was wrong with it. He said the motor was getting old and it was tripping the breaker every once in a while. I told him I'd be glad to take it off his hands and he helped me load it up into the truck.

Once I was back home and done with the garage work, I took some time to go over the compressor and clean it up a bit. I plugged it in and it started up just fine. I did change the quick disconnect air line fitting and tighten up the air filter. But other than that it has worked perfectly. The motor is rated at 5HP and requires quite a bit of power at startup, so I'm thinking he may have had this unit plugged into a shared circuit which might be what the problem was.

So with a new compressor for "free", I guess I can zero out the cost of the Chain Plate Distributors?
:)