Digging in drainage, and other stuff

Well, work on the Walipini is on hold while I fix up the backhoe, so I will regale you with my other tasks around the 'farm' in the meantime!

First I replaced a old GFCI breaker in my house main circuit panel.  As I suspected, the breaker was the one that controlled the outdoor outlets.  So, now, with the new breaker in place, I have my outdoor outlets working again!  Yay!

I decided that GFCI does sound like a good idea, but instead of the outdoor receptacles, I want to protect the outlets by the sinks inside the house.  Therefore, I added one GFCI outlet near the kitchen sink, and plan on adding another near the bathroom sink.  The bathroom sink has a shared switch cover plate, so I will have to wait until I can find the right cover plate before I can install the GFCI outlet there.

Besides screwing around with the electric system today (and agonizing about how I should install the 2 100 amp garage panels that I bought last week), I also laid out and started digging the front drainage ditches to catch runoff from the house roof and the sump pumps.  Here are some pictures documenting the progress so far:

Note to self: the post seen here is exactly 16 feet from the corner of the house (the south-eastern corner).

I am using the quick-spade thing on the forks of my tractor to dig because using the backhoe here is NOT a good idea.  Besides the fact that the backhoe is leaking hydraulic oil, it also weighs about 9 tons!  There is a sewage line running under this section of the yard that I would rather not have to repair just yet!  The quick-spade is good enough to dig this shallow ditch - only going down, at most, 2 feet.   I do use the pick and shovel to cleanup the ditch after the quick-spade goes through.  The quick-spade doesn't dig near as good as a backhoe - but it digs wonderfully compared to a pick and shovel!  Especially with all the rocks around the foundation of the house....