Today's pics- D'Aste Townsite

Bet you had a lot of fun recovering the one in the road. It's all backbreaking work until..........Well, looooookee there!!!!!!!!

That place is on my go back to visit list. Good finds!

You know if you just dig one hole over the monument, instead of two holes on each side of the monument, you do a whole lot of frozen, compacted road digging! Just sayin.:-)

I dug the first hole - about 0.8' in dia with a bar down to about 1.2' and the buzz was migrating south, so I fired up the jack hammer to open things up a bit. The mon was at 0.9' below grade. A good reminder of why I wince when seeing the "Buzz" code words on COSs.

My comment about it not being where is was supposed to be was that this mon appears to be 30' north of the corner. Per the townsite plat, there is a 1/16- (townsite corner) with a WC 40' east and 30' north. This is marked "WC" and is 30' North of the 1/16th/ townsite corner...

Northern Yolo County

I spent most of yesterday on this:

It's a 1" iron pin 2.5' below the pavement surface recovered as part of a monument preservation project.

I had estimated a couple of hours for this visit, but by the time I set up my Survey Crew signs, exposed the monument, set 4 each 2' straddler nails, packed up and moved out of the way while the cowboys moved their cattle across the road, returned and set 4 each backup straddlers at the edge of pavement (just in case the monument installation crew chews up the 2' straddlers), filled and patched the hole and packed up everything, 5 hours had gone by. I spent at least 1/2 an hour flat on my belly with my arm in the hole up to my shoulder digging out the pin. Fortunately, this is in the middle of a very lightly traveled county road.

This is how I left it:

1 down, 34 to go!

I'll return to punch the disk when the construction guys have done their work.

Jim Frame-

You NEED to use a shop vac. looks like your materials would work- most subgrade and gravel goes thru it- pull the really large cobbles out with a mule shoe.

speed and safety.

here are some pics of how we rig ours.

This is a pin we excavated last fall. The top was 1 foot below grade.

Jim Frame-

> You NEED to use a shop vac.

I never thought of using a shop vac. I have the generator with me anyway for the demo hammer, so power isn't a problem. I think I'll go shopping today!

Thanks!

P.S. What's a mule shoe?

Jim Frame-

aka boston digger / post hole digger

Jim Frame-

OMG! Where were you when I needed you in 1986? And 1987, 1988, 1989...

Equine Footwear

> aka boston digger / post hole digger

Never heard it called a mule shoe, but yes, already have one.

I was thinking of fabricating some kind of a heavy-duty long-handled spoon, with the bowl bent at 90° to the handle, for getting those last bits of debris out from around the monument, but I think I'll try the shop vac idea first.

Jim Frame-

Now the proud owner of a Ridgid WD1450 shop vac. It came with 2 each 20" extensions, which should get me to the bottom of most any monument hole I'll encounter. Can't wait to try it out!

Northern Yolo County

Jim,

Sounds like the project I saw advertised some time back. I thought about submitting a rfq on that it, but decided it was a bit far down the road for me and more labor than surveying.

The times I do need to dig down under a paved surface, I stole an idea from some utility potholing company. I use a pressure washer to excavate the soil and gravel and a large shopvac to suck up the water and dirt. Makes for a nice small hole and is non-destructive. Great way to dig down to a brass cap without the back breaking labor and possibility of puncturing a buried line or putting a big gizzy onto a brass cap.

Makes for a quick, easy dig and you don't hardly work up a sweat. All that is needed is a small portable gas powered pressure washer, a 55 gallon barrel of water, and a large wet/dry shop vac. Usually only takes about 5-10 gallons of water, but I like to have the 55 gallon drum.

Easy peasy.

Northern Yolo County

> Sounds like the project I saw advertised some time back. I thought about submitting a rfq on that it, but decided it was a bit far down the road for me and more labor than surveying.

It's probably the same project. It definitely involves a lot of labor, although I sub out the monument installation to a construction contractor.

I have some serious problems with the way the county is letting these contracts. They're treating them as construction projects via RFQ, when they should be treating them as professional services projects using a QBS process. I plan to take this up with the county when I get time, but for now you should probably be glad you didn't bother to submit -- it was extremely competitive, and it would be tough for anyone not local to make it pay.

As for the pressure washer idea, I don't see a need to go there yet. My current approach -- using a demo hammer to get through the hard stuff, and now the shop vac (thanks, Rankin, for the idea!) looks like it'll be a pretty smooth operation. (With all the equipment I already carry for this kind of work, I don't have room in the truck for a 55-gallon drum of water anyway.)

Northern Yolo County

RFQ: request for qualifications or request for quotes. Big difference.

Northern Yolo County

> RFQ: request for qualifications or request for quotes. Big difference.

Check. As you know, this one was for quotes.

For most of the monuments in the project that works fine. This is the troublesome part:

If a monument is missing (could not be physically found), and the County determines to establish the location of monument by means of survey, it is surveyors' responsibility to establish a location of the monument by means of survey, do control and boundary retracement survey.

That's where a unit-price quote gets a little tricky.

Shop Vac

I had my first opportunity to use the new shop vac yesterday. The monument I recovered was a 3/4" rebar set in 1950, apparently at or just below the then-existing pavement, which is now a little over a foot below the surface. Somehow the top half foot or so had gotten bent over so that it was laying nearly flat. That made it difficult to use a shovel to expose enough rebar to locate the bend.

Shop vac to the rescue! I used a digging bar to loosen the material around the bent-over bar, then easily sucked it out with the vac. That made it easy to put a cheater pipe on the bar and straighten it up.

Before:

After:

Northern Yolo County

I have seen utility crews potholing in a similar fashion but on a bigger scale using something similar to a vactor truck.