Broken Machine, Excavation on hold

The dozer's steering clutch on the right side broke last week.  Due to the weight of the machine, and the hill it was difficult for him to get it off the property so he could fix it.  It took another machine to pull him out and gently ease him down the concrete hill at the start of our road.  Looks like we're delayed at least another week. 

I've been keeping busy working on Kent's cistern.  There was a leak in the small cistern, about 5k gallons.  I drained the water into the main cistern, pressure washed it and vacuumed it dry.  Kent's son Tom is coming in a few days so we can work on the repair and reseal the cistern. 

We have also been working at neighbors house demolishing their kitchen.  We pulled out everything including a dividing wall and island.  It's been fun work to keep us busy.  I've also continued to work on sanding and repainting their sea-side aluminum windows. 

The rotten rock on the island can be sharp so we need to check the road and driveway after each days excavation if we drive down to our property.  We were reminded of this the hard way when we got a flat tire in the jeep.  We made it down to a flat spot where our driveway starts so I could change the tire.  Bad news is the hole was too big to fix so we had to buy a new one.

With the road to our property cleared we were able to have our three 40' containers with our dome panels delivered.  That was an adventure, and a bit expensive because they needed two vehicles to get them up the hill, one to pull and another to push.  The containers have been on the island for around five months in a secured area with the original seal.  It was great to open them and see the size of the panels up close.  You can go to aidomes.com to get an idea of their size. 

I haven't been updating the blog because we've had long days and I'm too tired to work on it.  I believe I've mentioned before that our internet is slow here so it can take awhile to upload pictures.  I find that my writing gets worse as the night goes on, sorry in advance for any run on or confusing sentences.  Below is the draft post I had from last week before the dozer broke. 

                                                                                   

Rock, Rock, Rock!!!!

Did I mention our island is hard granite rock?  The other VI's are volcanic, ours was formed by plate movement.  The rotten rock on top was easy pushing, but the granite under has been tough.  I've talked to three neighbors who have modified their house designs due to the amount of rock, and the cost of chipping it.  We have plan B in place if we need to raise the house on columns to the terrace level if the rock chipping becomes too expensive.

All has been going great for the last few days.  I haven't posted updates because it's hard to see the elevation changes and progress as they chip down and remove the rock.  The camera makes it look like very little has been done each afternoon.

We wanted to save the turpentine tree on the west side of our house.  It would have made a great tree outside of our bedroom.  It's the largest tree in front of the dozer in the picture below, from when the track was off, but the elevation change over the last two days would have put it too high, and the roots would be compromised.  It would eventually die so it will come out in a day or two.

Our neighbors on the other side of the hill have had Chico work on their property as Smith hammers ours.  Smith breaks the rock as far as he can reach with the back hoe, then Chico comes back and moves the debris.  It's worked out well for both of us since they're paying half the cost to bring the equipment out here.

Our neighbor have a drone and took some pictures as they were working today.  You can see me to the right of the jeep picking up flat rocks out of the quarry to be used as stairs and a patio.  I'd load up the jeep, drive up to the terrace area and haul them to the camping area to the west (right).  Denise is walking down the hill with Bella.  The terraced area is the upper part and may be fully cleared tomorrow.  It will follow the curve of our ridge and lead down to the septic tank on the right of the picture.  The elevation of the picture doesn't give you proper perspective.  I'll see if he can come back and get a good picture at house elevation.  The picture shows about 1/3rd of our property so I'll also see if he can get a higher elevation shot.

That's all for the update.  Hopefully Chico will be back to work soon.

Kevin & Denise

It's Hammer Time

Saturday's excavation was going well for the first three hours.  Chico was making progress on the house pad and started the terrace area above it.  The terrace is the area that started out as a mistake when he was cutting the road and he should have turned right about 20 feet earlier.

This will work out fine since we had planned for a terraced area, if the hill had to be cut steeper than we wanted.  It will also allow an 8 foot wide area to plant trees and most likely be my herb garden.  The East end of it will still be the generator house.  One of the main advantages to the terrace is the view of our property from down below.  When looking up to a big hill cut the rock really stands out.  The terrace will hide the area so all you should see is the house in the middle of trees.

The dozer is 8' wide and Chico was mainly in rotten rock for the first 30' and he could break it.  The hard rock vein was pushing the dozer towards the edge so he went back down to the house pad to finish up what he could before we brought the jackhammer out.  On the lower area he caught a hard rock with the edge and knocked the track off.  Digging was done by 10:30 am.  More on the repair and today's excavation below.

Sunday we went to the Honeyman's property and helped him construct hurricane proof beehive stands.  They are two rows of cut power poles set in the ground with 4x4's going across each of the pair, I believe there were 11 or 12 pairs.  Down each row we placed 2 rows of 3x8 wood for a total of 110' of area to place beehives.  He said he should be able to fit around 60 hives on the stand.  Both Denise and I forgot to get pictures but he'll send us some and I'll give an update.

This morning Chico arrived to fix his dozer.  Alvin dropped of the backhoe with the jackhammer and Smith stuck around to help fix it and then went to work on the rock.  Here's the dozer waiting to be fixed on the lower level that needs the hammer.

Here's the dozer on the lower level with the track off and being aligned under the dozer.

Once the dozer drove back on the track, the backhoe pulled it over the top as Chico drove forward.  When the end draped over the wheel he was able to pull tension with the backhoe and bolt it back together.  

The plan was to have Smith break the rock and Chico would move it but he also had a blown seal on a hydraulic connection.  Chico got the dozer up the hill to fix the leak while Smith got to work on the rock.  He did as far as the arm could reach but his backhoe doesn't have the pushing power so the broken rock will be removed in the morning once Chico finishes repairs.

Here's Smith chipping away at the rock.  He's a bit more per hour than Chico and it will probably take him another day or two to finish.

That's all the adventures for today.

Kevin & Denise

BEEn Wondering what happened to the bees?

After I published last nights update I realized I had a draft post from the bee resolution.  I guess I was a bit excited with the progress and didn't check the site.  Long story short is we were finally able to get the queen out of the hive.  On the third day we found there was a forth chamber hidden in the tree on the left seen in the picture below.

We knew about the middle tree, broken tree on the right, and the mostly empty chamber in the rocks.  We found a crack in the wood inside the hole of the middle tree and could hear many bees inside.  Once we were able to enlarge the hole enough to stick a one inch pipe through we were able to smoke them out.  That's the first time I've had around 50 thousand bees swarming above my head.  It was really amazing to see, but what I found most impressive was the behavior change once the queen was removed.  Instead of having their butts in the air while crawling around the inside of the hive, they calmly walked around looking for food. 

Many thanks to the VI Honeyman for the time and effort he put in for us.  Denise and I are going to his property Sunday to help him build more hurricane proof hive racks. 

Today's excavation went well.  Here's a shot looking East towards Salt River Bay.  Same view as yesterday with the jeep but he's widened and lowered the area. 

Here's the North view.  The rain shower over the sea is blocking the view of St Thomas, St John and the British VI's.  

Tomorrow we should have a West view of  Baron bluff to Hams Bluff at the west end of the island and Puerto Rico.  

Here's my Super Denise supervising the action.  The view is looking south east up the driveway.  

Tomorrow will be the last day of the dozer for a few days while we hit out the rock with a large jackhammer.  The rock seen on the previous picture's right side side is called rotten rock and can be removed with the dozer.  The harder rock below, locally called blue bitch, needs a bit more negotiation to make it move.  The hammer will cost us a little more but it's needed. 

That's all for today. 

Kevin & Denise

Excavation down to the house location

The bees have relocated so Chico was able to make great progress on our driveway today.  We had a brief concern of an additional hive as he progressed.  Some bees started flying around him and he was stung on the nose.  I put on the bee suit and searched the hillside but didn't find anything so he continued without any other bee issues. 

Over the past eight months I've created trails through the hillside where I wanted the driveway, house and other items on our property.  It was hard for him to follow the trails as he's cutting the hillside into a driveway, and pushing dirt onto my trails, downhill and out of his view. 

Here's a picture of the trail after the right turn of the S curve.  The left hand turn is about 40' lower.  You'll see the actual driveway he cut on that trail in the video below. 

I stayed close by and directed him as he cut through the rock and dirt.  I ran back up the hill for a few minutes and when I returned I noticed he hadn't made the right turn down the hill.  I designed the driveway with a gentle S curve so the house will not be visible from the road.  I had him stop again, showed him the path and after a course correction he was on his way.  Turns out the extra straight area he cut was in the perfect spot.  I planned on having an 8' X 10' concrete diesel generator/solar controller and battery house around that area, so that's where I'll put it.  This will keep the generator noise at the house to a minimum during power outages.  It also makes a straight shot up the hill if we decide to connect to commercial power. 

Here's Chico heading up the road towards the viewpoint.  Our driveway is on the right. 

Basically the same picture but this shows the dozer at the start of the S curve.

After another 40' down the hill he made it to my trail to the west headed toward the house.  It was quick work for him to cut a path straight through to the center of the main dome area.  Now the work begins to cut down the house pad to fit both domes and the link.  After the house area is cleared he'll drop down and cut the straight sides around 3/5's of the main dome for the concrete cistern/wrap around deck. 

Once Chico left for the day Denise and I were pretty excited so we jumped in the jeep and headed down the hill.  Here's  a picture of the jeep at the house location.  The house will actually be about 10' lower once the pad excavation is complete. 

Sorry blog readers, I put us first today and completely forgot to get better pictures to post.  We had been down on our little trails so many times in the past eight months with trees extending over our view.  This was our first time seeing a wider angle at house level, with a wider view still to come (210 degree view).  We were also busy with the GPS confirming excavation areas and marking other points.

Denise recorded a video of us driving down the road and turning left on our driveway to the house location.  The driveway and road are still in the rough cut stage so don't be too alarmed when you see it.  It will be far different when we're done.  The switchback from the road to the driveway will also be changed so you'll make it in one turn with most vehicles.  larger trucks, including concrete trucks will pull past the driveway and back down.  When we reach the bottom you're facing West.  The tree's are still high but as we dig down those will be removed so you'll see Hams Bluff on the West end, and Puerto Rico.  The video took a long time to upload so in the future I'll probably stick to pictures. 

Christmas time brings a larger number of cruise ships to St Thomas, 34 miles to the north.  Every night we see the bright lights of the ships sailing away.  I've tried to get some pictures but it's too dark. 

That's all for today.  We hope tomorrows excavation will be as smooth. 

Kevin & Denise

Plan Bee

I woke up Sunday morning and decided I would go tackle the rocks above the bee hive.  If I could pull them away I could expose the base of the tree and we'd have better luck removing the queen.  I put on the suit and headed down the hill. 

I didn't have smoke, but I knew I would really annoy them anyways due to the rocks that would need to tumble over the hive entrance.  I didn't want to be out of breath using a pick ax and breathing smoke so I figured I'd get in and get'r done.  I removed two large watermelon size rocks off the top of a broken tree next to the hive.  The tree was about 1' diameter and appears to have broken in the last hurricane, and I now know why it was weakened.  The bees had created a tunnel in the roots between the two trees and both were hollow at the base.  I'm guessing that the water from the hurricane pushed the rocks down and covered the top of the broken tree.  Looks like nature can sometimes work faster than FEMA when it comes to repairing roof damage.  When I pulled the smaller rocks around the hole in the top I was happy to see many bees and good looking honeycomb.  The picture below shows what I first saw. 

Here's the same picture with some highlights.

I called up the Honeyman and he said he'd be out if a few hours.  That gave me time to sharpen, oil and fuel the chainsaw.  With good smoke around we spent about an hour clearing rocks from the top and bottom of the new opening, and could smoke from the old to the new holes.  This gave us a good plan to get to the queen.  Once we exposed the lower part of the right chamber we were able to pull out honeycomb down to about an arms length in the hole.  This was still about a foot higher than the chamber on the left.  We used the chainsaw and cut a 1' square section out of the side which gave us deeper access.  That additional arms length let us find the brood we were looking for.  There were good larvae in them but we couldn't find the queen.  After a little more digging we were able to heavily smoke from the original opening to the new hole and drive most of the bees out of the hive.  The video below is vertical but I was quickly trying to get a shot of the hive openings and of the bees congregating on leave clusters.  We hoped the queen was there and they were following, but that was not the case. 

With no sign of the queen we figured there had to be another spot in the hive where she could hide.  Once we stopped the smoke, some bees would return to the hive so she had to be in there.  I noticed an area in the rocks above the second tree that seemed to have a void so I pulled out smaller rocks until I found a basketball sized chamber.  We could see a small amount of smoke filling the 3rd chamber as we smoked the other two.  We tried many things, including using a long 3/4" PVC pipe to get smoke deep in the chambers but couldn't locate her due to the many hiding areas in the rocks.  We were running out of daylight so put some ammonia in the hive to deter her from returning and set up a bee box up wind with some brood in hopes she'd left and would find the box more appealing. 

I returned Sunday morning to find most of the bees had returned to the lower chamber. 

The Honeyman said the queen was most likely still in the hive when we left, or she left but it was too dark for them to search for a new home so they went back.  Either way he said he'd come back Wednesday morning and we'd smoke them out early, and for a long time.  Hopefully she'll take the hint and leave so we can continue with the driveway. 

We did end up with over 2 cups of excellent honey.  Here's one of the darker combs. 

This is me after a long, exhausting day with the bees and extracting the honey from the combs.  Sometime this week I'll melt the combs and extract the remaining honey. 

Chico did work on the road Monday and was able to clear and level the viewpoint area.   Here's what we started with back in May. 

Here's when he started working clearing the area. 

The viewpoint is a curve in the road on our property where you can see Puerto Rico, the other US and British virgin islands, Buck Island, Salt River bay, and Christainsted.  Our house will be below on the left.  The road curves to the right and goes down hill to our driveway so we will see this view as we leave or head home.  Denise and I are going to build a rock bench/love seat on the left side that will face north (Left in this picture) so stay tuned for the finished product. 

Here's the road entrance when we started clearing it the first of May.  It took us almost a week to get down the road to the corner. 

Here's a look after Chico took a few hours to clear the road.  It will take some final grooming work after construction is complete. 

This view is from the viewpoint looking west down the road to the entrance.  The Christmas palm on the right side with the orange marker was one I had him dig up at the edge of the road and move down here.  The bench will be beside it. 

Here's a few hours later after he'd cleared the road to the entrance.  More had been done but I forgot to get a final picture but it's dark now.  Since the bee's are still around Chico is going to spend a few days doing some excavation for our neighbor. 

All this work could not be completed without proper supervision.  Here's Super D making sure the dozer is on the right path.  

Now for some other fun stuff.  Denise liked this picture of the sunset when I was on the phone with the Honeyman discussing the next days plan.  Lucy has her favorite ball she takes with her on our morning walk.  

We went to "The Village" party in Frederiksted which has food and alcohol booths in little buildings (the village part), a stage with live music and rides for the kids.  Our friends who grew up on the island said they won't let their kids ride them because they're the same ones they rode when they were kids.  They said after the festival the rides are stored on some property in the rain forest.  Steel and salt air do not mix so they don't trust them. 

We woke up early this morning and watched the first sunrise of 2019 from the viewpoint. 

Later today we watched the first sunset of 2019 from the deck at Kent's house.  2020 sunrises and sunsets will be from our house!

Lucy and Bella were being funny a few days ago.  Lucy was minding her own business with her ball when Bella walked up to her and ended up giving her a Bella hat for a few minutes.  The picture's a bit blurry because I took it through the screen.  I figured they'd move if I got up to open it. 

An finally, Jack and Ivan are still hanging out being best buds, spending the days relaxing in paradise.  It's a rough life for them. 

That's all for now.  I hope to have the bee situation under control tomorrow and good pictures of the hive. 

Kevin & Denise