Clearing the path home (Driveway part 2)

I started this portion of the project on my extended July 4th weekend with a rented mini excavator and a inexpensive Poulan chainsaw. A neighbor of mine works for a local equipment rental company, and ended up helping me out on the cost of the rental in trade for fixing his HVAC system a few weeks prior.

My family decided to set off on a mini vacation and left me to my "path" for the next few days. It made for a mission style approach to the driveway, because the sooner i was done, the sooner I could enjoy my bachelor-ism. After walking the planed path a few times I began the 1100 linear foot journey with the excavator. This by far has been the best tool I have ever used in my life. I have a few hours of experience with a smaller unit at work, and after a few moments of adjusting the hydro valve setup for a more intuitive control sequence I was off.  I chose to begin by pushing over all of the larger trees and up rooting them with the excavator. Once I had them down I would remove the branches with the chainsaw and shove them to the side. Tree after tree they were dropping, and I was making good progress.

Soon the equipment began to fail, first my iPhone decided it was more suited for a life in a cushy office setting not a 96 degree day in NC.

 

Soon after the iPhone gave up, the roller on the end of the bar on the chainsaw decided to fail, this left me no choice but to go on a trip for some lunch and a new bar for the saw. Roughly an hour or so later I was back at it moving along swiftly.  

By roughly 4pm the same day the bucket on the excavator decided to fail. I found my self on a holiday weekend looking for a service tech that could weld up a rather crappy prior repair. Never the less the day was shot and the ticks had began to dig in, so I retreated to the house for a cold tea, and a pair of tweezers.

The next day was much of the same, it started off by meeting a repair tech from the rental company, he welded the excavators bucket back together and I was quickly on my way.  Soon I was faced with a rubber track derailment in the woods. This brought back the repair tech, and several hours later we both agreed that the unit had not seen service in quite some time, at this point I began to feel my "good deal" on my rental was in fact a crappy one as I was loosing a great deal of "bachelor" time in the woods getting lime disease in favor of enjoying the cold AC waiting for me back home. 

Next came the un-planed purchase of a Stihl chainsaw..... Yes yet another failure. At this point the mood I was in didn't help the fate of my old Poulan, but i can tell you a Stihl is the only saw to own if you intend to do this amount of work in the woods. The power is amazing!

By about 2pm on the third day I was at the top of the hill overlooking the home site. I still had two rather large trees that I couldn't safely deal with alone, but I could at least drive my Tahoe to the top of the hill and turn around.