This post will be a short ‘Gap Closer’ from our annual “Summer Vacation with the Grand Kids” and our current travel.
When I retired 13 years ago, I tore down the cedar board fence around out backyard, and told Patsy that one day, we would put up a new fence. She kept asking “when” and I was able to keep dodging her ‘pushiness’!
This summer, my success came to an abrupt end! So, we started shopping and decided on a black metal fence, since we like the view out the rear windows of the house. The previous wood fence was six foot tall on the sides and only four feet tall across the back to allow some of the view.
With Rick’s help, I found the fence that Patsy liked, and ordered the components of the fence. We had to delay the delivery until our Summer Vacation with the kids was over. Rick said he would help, and we decided we would do it ourselves. Once we did some planning, and layout, it was fairly easy.
Rick bought a tractor about a decade ago, and has a post hole attachment. That made the initial part of the task easier, except for the buried power, telephone and cable TV lines, as well as the big roots of the mighty oak trees that we planted 30+ years ago!!I bought a laser transit at Lowes to get & keep the fence level as we installed it!
Once we determined the elevation that we wanted to set the fence, and got the holes drilled, it went pretty easy. We mixed the bagged concrete in the bucket of the tractor, one hole at a time. It took one weekend, some of the nights in between, and the following weekend to complete the jog. My nephew, John King, help us and got it finished.
After a couple of weeks of rest, and a hurricane, Patsy and I completed the landscaping around the yard and fence.
My first engineering “work'” in 25 years!
Backyard view before fence:
Backyard view after fence installation on day Hurricane Harvey visited!:
Concrete “Mixing”:
On a sunny day:
Hurricane Harvey was a cruel visitor to the Texas Gulf Coast. Except for rain, I think our storm impact minimal compared to areas to the East like Houston and Beaumont. The rain amounts in our area was more like 12 inches compared to the 42 inches that was forecast. Our damage was contained to a small leak in the roof at a skylight, that dripped into a tub below. Lost a lot of limbs off our 7 Oak trees, and one big one came down at the edge of the roof and bent up the gutter some.
The storm hit us around 7:00 pm on Friday evening , and we lost power at the house around 3:00am on Saturday morning. As the storm winds slowed, Patsy and I managed to go to the storage to get the Bus so we could use the Bus’ on-board generator to power our refrigerator as well as our neighbors.
The Bus is parked in a 60' pull through with 16' tall doors on each end. On the end where I park my Bus, the roller tracks gave way to the wind top to bottom.......... and the door was hanging by the spooler at the top, and the door was 'blowing' like a blanket on a clothes line....... beating the heck out of the front cab. It was very windy, but i managed to push the heavy door away from the Bus and it's windshield while another guy used the chain to roll up the door. To be able to store stuff behind the Bus, I park it only about 2 feet from the door. Luckily, it did roll all the way up, and did not hit the windshield.
More luck...... the lower front of the Bus looked like it had been sanded with a lot of scrapes, but as the rain hit it, it partly washed off!!! It was mostly dust and paint chips off the door! Although the paint is worn through to the Fiberglas in places, the damage is relatively minor. That new diamond shield is great stuff!!
A Bus parked in the unit next to mine had been parked about 8—10 feet from the door, and his door failed similar to mine. However, since his door was blown further and more violently, it did much more damage! His windshield was broken in several places, his Fiberglas front was really torn up, and the driver’s side mirror was ripped on the arm.
The other door of my shed ripped loose from the spooler, but was held at the bottom. It just layed over all the stuff that we had stored behind the Bus. It did fall short of the back of the Bus, but it tore up a lot of the stuff stored there.
With the front door rolled up, I was able to drive out, and took the Bus to the house.
As for Victoria, the whole town was without electricity and water from 3 days to over a week in some cases. The city authorities said on TV (in my Bus, I had TV) that we should have water back in about 3--4 days and power could be out for most for 1--2 weeks. They said to boil the water...... The first question was HOW? Most people cook with electricity!!
With the Bus in the driveway at home, we were good. Att night, we had a/c for sleeping, some clean water, in our tanks, power to cook, TV for information, and life was good. I was able to run a cord to my next door neighbor to power his fridge and freezer!
We were in good shape, and were very lucky!! Here are some random pictures:
Loss of tree limbs in backyard (one of them also took out the gutter above the ‘boarded-up’ stained glass window):
My storage unit is the second from the left with the door laying on top of my stored stuff. The other Bus was parked in the third door to the left of mine:
My stuff with the door still laying on it, and then with the door removed in the second picture…….. you can really see the damage:
My neighbor’s Bus:
The other side of my storage unit. Again, mine is the second of the two missing doors! This is where the front of my Bus was facing:
We did attend the first Fall meeting of the Lone Star Allegro Club which was held in Sulphur, LA. We had a good time, but did not take a lot of pictures. We did get a good one of the Bus on our lake-side site:
