One of the advantages of owning your equipment rather than renting it is that you don't have to pay for it on a daily basis. This is especially economical if you plan to keep the equipment forever. One of the disadvantages is that you are financially responsible for all the maintenance of the machines both routine and breakdowns. We bought our excavation equipment used and we knew the units were not in perfect shape. But we got a really good price on them and we knew we would still be money ahead even after some of the existing problems were fixed. For example, our Kubota B21 tractor with the front end loader had a leaky hydraulic cylinder when we bought it. This is the kind of problem that will only get worse and sooner or later we knew we would have to replace the cylinder. A couple of weeks ago that day came. I was moving some dirt when I noticed that the slight leak in the bucket cylinder had become a steady stream. I was out of commission until I could fix it. I pulled the cylinder off the machine and took it to Winchester Equipment Co to see if they could repair it. Usually, this kind of problem is straightforward, they just dismantle the cylinder and replace the hydraulic seals at a cost of about $100. Unfortunately, two days later when they took apart the cylinder they could not get the correct seals to make the repair. (There was some confusion as to what the correct seal diameter was for this old machine.) They could send the cylinder to a company which specialized in repairing hydraulic cylinders but it would take two weeks. I had them do this but meanwhile I didn't have a tractor and that was going to slow me down considerably. Now I did have another tractor. It's an older Honda mini-tractor I bought about 16 years ago. It's smaller and lighter than the B21 but I could use it in a pinch if I had to. Unfortunately, it had broken down the previous week. I didn't really care at the time since I had the B21 to work with and I figured I would fix the Honda when I had a bit of spare time and desire. So now I had two dead tractors. Sometimes you have to throw money at something to fix it. I could buy a new cylinder for the B21 from Kubota. I could get it in two or three days but it would cost me $665. I decided to go for it. Meanwhile, since I reluctantly had some time on my hands I looked into fixing the Honda. Fortuitously, after a couple of hours with wrench and pliers in hand I ascertained the cause of the problem. There is a coupler connecting the splined shaft of the Power Take-Off unit on the Honda to the 5/8 inch keyed shaft on the hydraulic pump which ran the loader. The coupler had worked loose and the 3/16 inch shaft key had been lost. Basically, no power was being transmitted to the hydraulics so nothing was happening. A trip to Strohmeyer's Hardware in Winchester and the massive expenditure of 60 cents was all it took to get the Honda back in action. Two days later the new cylinder came in from Georgia for the B21 and at that point I had two working tractors.
My old Honda mini-tractor after I repaired it.
Honda hasn't been in the tractor market in North America since 1995 so parts are generally hard to come by. This tractor is getting more and more jerry-rigged as time goes on but I still get a lot of good use out of it.
The Kubota B21 sporting its nice new bucket cylinder. It's the one on the left with none of its paint scraped off yet.
A close-up of the new cylinder showing nice fresh moly grease.
The only natural forms of energy that come to our land are sunlight and wind and we do not yet have practical ways of harnessing these forms of energy yet. We have plans and dreams to utilize these sustainable forms of energy in the future but for now we need basic electrical service. We are in communication with Allegheny Power Company but the nearest active service pole is over 1500 feet from our land so it will be some months before we can get electrical service to our build site. In the meantime, we have to make our own electricity. We purchased a 3000 watt generator some time ago to serve as an emergency power source in case we lost power at our house in northern Virginia. Out here in the wild every day is a power outage day. The generator is fairly efficient and reasonably quiet so until the power company can bring a service drop to our land it is our only source of electrical energy.
With this handy device we can make coffee and run lights but we still don't have internet or cell phone service.
Perhaps it's just a tradition or perhaps it's a state law but almost everyone in the countryside of West Virginia seems to have at least one disused vehicle on their property. We are no exception.
I bought this Toyota pick-up new in 1990. I drove it for years. Nick drove it for more years.
It doesn't "go" at the moment but does serve a a handy dry storage shed for some of the messier tools we use.
At first glance, our land in West Virginia seems rather barren of animal life. There are a few large animals such as deer and wild turkey which you can occasionally see but these are wary animals which avoid people. I once caught a glimpse of a coyote and the locals claim to see bear now and then. I am surprised that squirrels are very rare. Most of the trees are oaks and there are acorns on the ground everywhere so you would think that it would be a sort of squirrel paradise. I can only figure that the locals have hunted the squirrels to near extinction. There are smaller animals, however, which fall into the categories of reptiles, amphibians, and arthropods which presumably are not palatable to the local hunters. So if you look closely, you can find toads, turtles, snakes, frogs, salamanders, crayfish, spiders, beetles, etc. I photograph these creatures when I can and will add to the collection below when I do. I have also included some photos of some of the local plant and fungus life. I am in the process of identifying these species and any input you would like to offer in that direction would be appreciated.
Toads are common but can be hard to see since they are the color of the forest floor.
They come in sizes ranging from about a cm. to about 10 cm.
This one is one of the larger ones I've seen.
Eastern box turtles like this one are very shy.
This caterpillar probably was hoping to find a branch as it reached out.
These tired dogs are not native. They are my daughter's dogs which Nick was watching while she was on vacation.
I don't know what this is the larvae of but the false eye spots are incredible.
Don't eat this one.
Many of the surface rocks are covered with lichen.
These bracket fungi growing on a cut oak log are faintly bioluminescent.
I could not get a photo of their nocturnal light with the equipment I have so you'll have to take my word on it.
The mushrooms are primarily a springtime phenomenon when it is wet enough.
Some of the locals collect and eat the wild mushrooms.
We have to remove a number of trees on the land in order to make room for both the buildings and the roads leading up to them. Near the entrance to the property were two fairly large oak trees (~12" diameter) which had to come out in order for the entry way to be wide enough to provide access for trucks and other equipment. Cutting down the trees was one thing but in this case we also had to remove the stumps in order to have a smooth even road. One way to get rid of an unwanted stump, and the way that I have generally employed in town, is to hire a guy with a stump grinder to reduce the stump to a pile of wood chips and soil. I did not want to use that option here for two reasons. I did not want to spend the money and the rocky soil we have here on our West Virginia hillside would be very hard on even a large and robust stump grinder. The other way to get rid of a stump is to dig it out. We have our Kubota KX91-2 excavator so this is the technique we pursued. It is still a bit of a job with the rocky soil but in a few hours Nick was able to dig the stumps out. One disadvantage of this technique is that at the end of the process you have a very large, unsightly ball of dirt, rock, and wood which can weigh as much as 3000 lbs. which you have to do something with. For now we just pushed them off to the side of the road. In the future we will figure out a way of disposing of them.
First, the periphery of the stump must be dug out. This can be quite difficult in rocky soil.
Eventually, the bottom of the stump can be dislodged from the earth.
Once it's free, the stump can be pulled out of the hole.
The excavator is tough enough to push it out of the way.
The stump can join the collection at the road edge. The front two were added today, the rearmost has been there two years.
Here are videos of the excavator at work removing a stump.
Near the Western edge of our build site was a large oak tree that had to be removed. Old oak trees have a tendency to rot on the inside and the center often becomes a convenient location for large black carpenter ants to make a nest. You can generally tell which trees are rotted and hollow by the way in which the diameter of the tree widens more than normal at the base. As the center of the tree becomes weak, the tree will grow more wood at the base to compensate. Also, the trees tend not to be vertical but often lean quite a bit. The lean makes it tricky to cut these guys down. The easiest thing to do is to just let them fall in the direction of the lean. However, due to the rotted center, the trunks are relatively weak and tend to split and crack before the trunk is completely severed. Consequently, these trees can be rather dangerous to fell so you must be careful. I had cut the front notch about 1/4 of the way through the trunk when I noticed the tree was already starting to lean into the cut. This is unusual. You can generally cut a healthy tree well past the halfway point before any displacement can be noticed. I realized at this point that I had to start the back cut and just let the tree crack and split. I was only about an inch into the back cut when the tree broke its trunk and came crashing to the ground with a large thump. Immediately, thousands of 1 centimeter long carpenter ants came streaming out of both the severed trunk and the remaining stump. I guess I messed with their life style a bit that day.
Here I am starting the front cut.
This is the severed trunk after the tree was down.
You can see the rotted wood in the center and the splitting at the left.
Disrupted carpenter ants scurry to get their exposed eggs to safety.
We knew we would need some earth moving equipment to develop this rugged land. Basically, you have three options - rent, buy new, or buy used. Buying new stuff is always fun but of course expensive. We didn't want to blow our budget before we even had a building, so this option was right out. Renting has a strong appeal; you don't have to worry about maintenance and you can get a variety of different devices. It's not too expensive if you need it for only a short time. If your need is over a long period of time and for an intermittent time frame, then this can raise the overall cost of your project. Buying used can be a good deal. If you find something older but in good condition and at a good price, it can be the cheaper option over renting. This is what we decided to do for a few of the larger pieces of gear. We searched around the internet for a small excavator, a moderate sized front-end loader, and a truck capable of hauling a few tons of stuff. We found a nice Kubota B21 tractor with a front-end loader attachment at Coleman Equipment in southern Ohio. Nick went out one day in April to look at it and was pleased. It was about 15 years old and had obviously done a lot of work but was worth the money and clearly had a lot of work yet in it. There are always small faults on any piece of used equipment. If you need perfect, buy new. If you can fix things, you can save a lot of dough buying used gear. While at Coleman's Nick spotted a used Kubota KX91 excavator (also called a track-hoe). We got a good deal on the two of them and bought them on the spot. Now we just had to get them to West Virginia, 400 miles away. We didn't have the capability of transporting them ourselves, so we hired a guy with a big super duty pickup with a fifth wheel trailer (again, arranged over the internet - man, I love the internet). Later, in May, we found a great truck for sale in Fredricksburg. It is a Ford F450 with a 7.3 liter Diesel and a six speed transmission. It is a real beast. We got a great deal on it because it had an electrical fault which caused the battery to go dead overnight. (Actually, like many Diesels it has two big truck sized batteries which means that it can get quite expensive to replace) Confident that we could repair any mere electrical fault we bought it. For the short term we kept the battery from discharging by disconnecting the lead to the battery every time we shut it down. A few weeks later Nick indeed did find the source of the electrical fault and repaired it. I figure we saved a few thousand bucks on the purchase price because of that problem. It is good to know how to fix things.
The Kubota B21 at Colman Power Equipment in Ohio
The KX91 excavator (aka "Mary Anne")
The two Kubotas loaded and ready to ride to West Virginia
