We've slowly been working in the garden on the area that was a woodland.
Last year, part of that area was levelled and my observatory built next
to the shed. The rest will become another lawn and have a fullsize
railway feature. To help move to the next step of that project, we had
seven bulk bags of slates, topsoil and gravel delivered onto the front
drive this morning. It needed to move almost 200 feet to the back
garden, over a gravel driveway. Pushing a wheelbarrow over the gravel
drive was going to be back breaking and take forever, so I decided to
put the Dodge to work and give the crane a proper test.
The bulk bags were around 850Kg and
I didn't want to try and lift that load in one go. I did have a number
of half ton bags I use for taking hedge clippings to the council tip.
The soil was first to be moved and I shovelled it from each of the big
bags into two of my small bags. When they were full, I used the Dodge to
carry them one by one to dump them by the shed. This soil was to fill
the raised bed vegetable planters.
|
The two big bags of soil were next, dropped down by the workshop. These
still looked around three quarters full, so must have been around 600Kg
each - the heaviest test of the crane so far. The veggie planters were
filled from the small soil bags, leaving me those bags free for moving
the gravel. The large bag probably had more weight in it than the soil,
so I split the load into five, using four of my small bags and the
original large bag. Once they were all loaded, they were transported
around to my workshop hedge. By this time it was late afternoon, I was
tired and so I dismantled the crane and put the Dodge back in the
garage. We've ordered some more small bags to help manage the remaining
four bags of slate still on the front drive.
|