Last year I skirted most of the cabin with sandbags, laboriously shoved under the frame. It worked pretty damned well for cutting the wind that sometimes whistles under the floor, but those bags have settled somewhat. Now there’s a gap between the bags and the floor with no good way to fill it. So I figured I’d go around with a second layer outside the frame. Figured I’d start on the uphill side, where sometimes water comes down off the ridge so fast it hits the bags.
Nice day for it, but it turned out I was only good for about twenty bags filled and laid before the old man was really wanting to sit down for a while.
You’d have laughed to see with what superstitious trepidation I brought Ian’s tractor out to the wash to dig up the sand. It’s running like a top, but has some intermittent problem that can change that in a minute. It stranded me in the wash last Monsoon and scared me to death, and I’ve been reluctant to approach the place ever since. But it’s so much easier to fill sandbags from a pile of sand than it is to dig the hole with a shovel, y’know? And the big backhoe can produce a respectable pile of sand very quickly. If that thing had hiccuped even once I’d have been out of there as soon as I could raise the outriggers. But it ran just fine.
Think I may be borrowing Ian’s shower again this evening. 😛
Sounds like work to me – ick! For filling sandbags, the small military pattern entrenching tool is good for this job. The Cold Steel Spetnatz shovel is short enough to handle one handed (the other holding the bag mouth open), its small blade able to dump contents inside bag (rather than outside) – it works great!
Hope the job is nearly complete.
No, you’ve got to be kidding. Entrenching tools are fine when you have to pack in the tools, but I live right next to a dry wash filled with megatons of sand. I use a sandbag stand and a proper shovel.
And no, the job isn’t more than respectably started. Though the way I feel this morning I’m going to have to give my back a couple of days.