Some of these are taken from the roof, where my videocam spent the day,
some from a still camera. Click any one for a larger image.
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| It even took our parking place. ALL of our parking places. In the the rightmost pic above it had grunted its way back up to the midpoint to offload sand from the dumptruck into the hopper from which sandbags are loaded. We wondered with some concern whether this monster would go around the house corner into the north yard. We needn't have worried; the operator had it dialed. He used the bucket as a bracing foot (even though it was carrying a load) and used it to hold up the fronts of the treads... |
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| ... while he turned the cab. Then he eased down while he compressed the arm. This guy has thousands of hours operating this thing. He is VERY GOOD. |
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| Still, the question of getting around the corner of the house was nip and tuck. It annoyed him to run the treads over the filter fabric and have to back up and gather it up. |
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| Once it's at work you see that this thing is truly mighty. Nothing stands before it. The opposable thumb is what makes it unstoppable. It tears out trees easily. It IS Godzilla. |
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| They plan to reinforce the driveway with steel plates to spread the load of the loaded dumptruck, but the plates didn't arrive today, so they had to dump the sand for the sandbags (for the cofferdam) at the driveway midpoint and carry loaded bags down in a tractor. Then the excavator lumbered over to the bottom of the stairway slope and took the bags to the dam site. The dam needs 600 bags. |
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By the end of the day, the slope was cleared of vegetation and the dam was about half built. You can see the dam at the top of the last picture as a white curve. This picture also shows the silt barrier, made of the fabric the excavator carried down the slope. It's on the near side of the stream. Tomorrow: finish the dam; put the stream in a pipe; start digging the workbench from which the excavator will work to dig the toe trench. Stay tuned. |
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