Pond cleaning fiasco

[greybeard]

That's true but once at 22 years old working as a driller on a drilling rig we stopped for lunch about 2:00 am (working morning tour, i e night shift) and my tool pusher walked by and said "there ain't no lunch hour in the oilfield, take 2 bites and chew real fast". My derrickman, a quiet person, without raising his head and still munching on his sandwich, said "if a man didn't have to eat he wouldn't have to work".
hehehe

I rattled that iron on rigs in S Louisiana and Texas/Miss/Oklahoma for over a decade. No actual lunch break on a rig unless you're WOC. Derrick hand sticks a burrito or a samich in his coverall pocket and gobbles it down between stands going up or back in the hole. That was in the days when you got to the monkey board by riding the elevators up and floorhands still knew how to throw a spinning chain. Rain/shine/heat/hail/snow or whatever. No Christmas or Thanksgiving break either unless the company man said so.
I've seen whole day crew fired as soon as they rolled up because they were an hour late and the mid tour had to work over. (Pusher that fired 'em had to get on the brake since he ran the driller off too)
Drive up in a howling storm, just as the morning tour was setting the kelly back to pull a plugged bit on 12,000 ft of wet string of oil base mud pipe...now we're workin... Not quite back as far as wooden derricks and iron men but not far removed from it.
Daylight doubles were a little different than a 24/7 triple. They'd shut down at the drop of a hat.

I watched a sly derrick hand one cold night, take a little jar of crunchy peanut butter up with him, about 3 hrs later holler down he had to come down to poop and of course, the driller naturally just ignored him and kept sending stands up. Twice more the derrick hand hollered he had to come down, to no avail and the elevators kept making their trip up and down.. Meanwhile Derrick hand rolled out some peanut butter turds and dropped his coveralls, and hung his bare hairy ass out over the monkey board and dropped those peanut butter turds down between his legs onto the rotary table below. The floor hands scattered after the 1st one hit the floor. SPLAT!!
Those were the good days..

 

[Brute 23]

I rattled that iron on rigs in S Louisiana and Texas/Miss/Oklahoma for over a decade. No actual lunch break on a rig unless you're WOC. Derrick hand sticks a burrito or a samich in his coverall pocket and gobbles it down between stands going up or back in the hole. That was in the days when you got to the monkey board by riding the elevators up and floorhands still knew how to throw a spinning chain. Rain/shine/heat/hail/snow or whatever. No Christmas or Thanksgiving break either unless the company man said so.
I've seen whole day crew fired as soon as they rolled up because they were an hour late and the mid tour had to work over. (Pusher that fired 'em had to get on the brake since he ran the driller off too)
Drive up in a howling storm, just as the morning tour was setting the kelly back to pull a plugged bit on 12,000 ft of wet string of oil base mud pipe...now we're workin... Not quite back as far as wooden derricks and iron men but not far removed from it.
Daylight doubles were a little different than a 24/7 triple. They'd shut down at the drop of a hat.

I watched a sly derrick hand one cold night, take a little jar of crunchy peanut butter up with him, about 3 hrs later holler down he had to come down to poop and of course, the driller naturally just ignored him and kept sending stands up. Twice more the derrick hand hollered he had to come down, to no avail and the elevators kept making their trip up and down.. Meanwhile Derrick hand rolled out some peanut butter turds and dropped his coveralls, and hung his bare hairy ass out over the monkey board and dropped those peanut butter turds down between his legs onto the rotary table below. The floor hands scattered after the 1st one hit the floor. SPLAT!!
Those were the good days..

 

[Rafter S]

Fence, I couldn't figure out how to cut your post down to quote just one part but...

Use your cursor (or select the text on your phone) that you want to remove.



Then hit the delete button if you're on a computer, or use the backspace key if you're on a phone.

I saw one or two comments above about how wood fences wouldn't hold up, or look good for very long. I beg to differ. I have some that are well over 10 years old, and have held up well and still look good. The secret is to not skimp on material and use good construction practices.

1. Instead of buying 14' or 16' boards and putting one post in the middle buy 16' boards and space your posts at 64" (5'-4").
2. Build it with five boards. Four on the face of the posts spaced with 5" - 6" between them and one on top, sticking out past the top board about 1/4". The board on top keeps the rain from soaking into the top of the posts, which makes them last much longer, and it also helps keep the fence straighter. When you're picking out the boards, save the straightest ones for the cap board.
3. When you're putting the boards up, stagger the splices. Try not to have more than two splices on a single post, and make sure there's always at least one board running through between any two splices. Above all don't have the cap board and top board spliced on the same post.

 

[Brute 23]

I've done enough construction in different areas to see the humor in it. Some are definitely justified and I'm a firm belive in using locals for that reason.

One of my favorites is with red gravel, like you use on a road. Areas that have red grave pits love it for roads and it works great. If you are in that area you can call most any blade operator and they will shape up road for you, no problem.

Go where I live and people still use the red gravel but have other materials, also. You have work to find a blade operator to mess with red gravel. A lot are scared of the rocks in it. They don't want to disturb the road and roll them up.

Go to wtx where there is a lot rock and they don't bat an eye at rocks. We would build pads and roads with very little trucked in material. They just shape up the rock already there. There might be rocks #5 or #10.

That is one that always cracked me up even though I greatly appreciate the one group knowing their limits and not tearing up my roads.

 

[callmefence]

I've done enough construction in different areas to see the humor in it. Some are definitely justified and I'm a firm belive in using locals for that reason.

One of my favorites is with red gravel, like you use on a road. Areas that have red grave pits love it for roads and it works great. If you are in that area you can call most any blade operator and they will shape up road for you, no problem.

Go where I live and people still use the red gravel but have other materials, also. You have work to find a blade operator to mess with red gravel. A lot are scared of the rocks in it. They don't want to disturb the road and roll them up.

Go to wtx where there is a lot rock and they don't bat an eye at rocks. We would build pads and roads with very little trucked in material. They just shape up the rock already there. There might be rocks #5 or #10.

That is one that always cracked me up even though I greatly appreciate the one group knowing their limits and not tearing up my roads.

People new here ask what we charge extra for building fence in rock. When I say it's the same price they look at me like I have two heads. He// I'd rather it be solid rock.

 

[Ky hills]

Well they finished the pond and culvert, or at least all they intended to do. For $24,000 I was hoping to be a more confident in the job. They did not get all of the mud out, and pushed more dirt from the pond bank out in the pond.
Water is pooling before the culvert, and I'm hoping that it holds up, but afraid it will wash back out quickly. It had held up fairly well for over 20 years before completely washing out this spring.
When we asked them, what if this washed right back out? The guy says I guess we'll come back and fix it.
Another thing of irritation was the old spillway pipe. They asked what we were going to do with it. I would think that for that much money they would have buried it, they had a huge hole it would have easily went into. or hauled it off, but instead the guy just said it ain't my pipe, you got other junk around you can put it with. Such arrogance and attitude, I told my wife we were dealing with a millennial redneck snowflake. One day we down there and that guy was showing his youthful silliness, by picking a buttercup stem and trying to give it to his buddy. Not the kind of visual that gives you confidence in people working on a job with construction equipment. The guys actually doing the work, I can respect. I think those guys would do well to end their association with the arrogant kid that subbed the job out to them.

 

[KAstocker]

@Ky hills what was the expected price? $24k seems pretty darn high. I thought pond cleaning was more like $5-10k. I am trying to figure out if we ought to clean out a pond now or wait another 10 years.

 

[Ky hills]

@Ky hills what was the expected price? $24k seems pretty darn high. I thought pond cleaning was more like $5-10k. I am trying to figure out if we ought to clean out a pond now or wait another 10 years.

Started out at estimated around $10-12k,
It was for cleaning out a pond and putting back a culvert that had washed out of a road.
We got got no doubt about it. I'd say you could probably get a good bulldozer operator to clean a pond out for $5-10k.

 

[Brute 23]

It is going to depend on the size of your pond. $5k on 1/4 or 1/2ac pond is pretty good. $5k on 3ac pond will probably be light.

 

[dfm]

In the dry country of SW OK, 110' x 100' x 14' $5,500. Cousin has the dozer and EVERYONE calls him. $5,000 reimbursement from NRCS so $500 out of pocket.