Quads And A New Lifestyle

[Geeba]

Good post Xman! - always enjoy the read

I remember the flooded roads and creaks when we drove through Queensland in the wet season.... our trusty Ford Falcon ploughed through even to the point water was coming through the dashboard vents! awesome car.... we simply stopped after the flood, bailed it out and carried on.

[xman]

I spoke to the BuZzard the other day and he was somewhat upset I had not updated this post so this update is inspired by the whinging pommy bastard. I figure if he is good enough to keep our forum financial, the least I can do is add something here plus it might actually keep him quite for a while. He may go off and whine about the Brexexit result or something.....
Anyway, things are progressing nicely. I got around to re-clothing my pool table. The original one I got with it had a nice tear in it from day one so I ordered a new piece of cloth for it and got that job done...


A couple of hours later and bamm, doesn't she look sweet. It plays as well as it looks to. I made the light for it some time ago and has an LED fluro in it.


I've been cutting down more trees around the house. Can never have to few a trees around the house when our bush fires hit at summer time. Basically what I do is target the trees that are never going to amount to anything and clear the area so fire can't spread easily from one tree to the other. Before any greeny starts bitching about me cutting trees down, just bear in mind these trees are about 8 years old and this hill will quickly re-populate with gums trees if left alone.


This was the hill prior to me cutting down these trees...


Rather than burning the trees this year, I have been cutting them up and using the quad log trailer I made some time ago to drag the trees up and using them as back-fill around the house so I don't need as much dirt to fill around the house. This is where I've been back-filling using the trees and this is partially covered with dirt....








I bought a new chainsaw for this season that is running well as I would expect from a Husqvarna. I now have two 20" bar Huskys and one 16". Different saws for different jobs basically. The 16" is idea for cutting trees up in the creeks and the 20s are more for the larger trees but this last one has more power and can take up to a 26" bar and chain.

This is the view back up to the house with the trees cut up ready for the quad trailer to pick up. Pretty hard work getting the quad trailer combo out of fully loaded but it beats carrying it out on the shoulder...


A couple more scoops of dirt with the tractor will have this area in front of the house back filled. I was mainly concentrating on the area up further so as to form a parking area for the machines that come out of the shipping container and in front of the workshop so this area is still waiting...


Inside the house I moved one of the woodfires and started replacing the wood floor around it. I was never really happy with the cheaper wood floor and are slowly going to replace it all with the higher quality polished floor boards...


This is it just about done....


This machine does heaps of work for me. I use it to cut large areas that have had the tea tree cleared from it. The tea tree likes to grow back and requires mowing a couple of times over the next couple of months to finish it off....


Unfortunately, this is what happens when you hit a tree stump...


Fortunately, $22 and about 15 minutes work and I have a new blade fitted. I really can't bitch, this machine has mowed acres on that original blade.

Back outside and this is the site of the green house or poly tunnel as I call it. The ground is slowly being leveled and the dirt is being pushed up to the end near the container where the two 28000 liter water tanks are going to go. I'm waiting on getting a ripper for the tractor to break up the dirt to finish this job off. The tractor is ideal for moving dirt but the ground really needs to be broken up or the tractor clutch suffers doing it with the 4 in one bucket the tractor has...


Now comfort has finally kicked in. I suppose it has to do with becoming a soft old bastard. Electric blankets for the beds. Can't over do it on account of the power the blankets suck from the batteries. About 18 amps per blanket actually, about as much as it was taking to power my 2TB Xbox and the 25" TV, but I just put them on for about 20 minutes prior to hopping into bed and that's long enough to take the chill out of the bed...


As for the power, I have done some experimenting and found what the real issue with the solar battery setup actually has to do with the amps coming from the solar panels is not massive, about 6 amps during winter and about 30 amps in summer. Six hours during the shorter winter months and about 16 hours in summer. Summer isn't really an issue but winter can really suck. I have taken the batteries out one at a time and charged them fine here in Sydney using my 10 amp mains charger. It takes several hours and the 120 amp/hour batteries are fully charged. Put them back in circuit down the farm with the other 10 batteries hooked up and they won't fully charge.

Seems the issue is when 10 X 120 amp batteries are all being changed off only the current from the solar panels, it simply is like trickle charging them. I have come up with the solution. I have made a variation of one of my "famous" battery stepper units. Quite simply it directs all the solar panel power to one battery at a time. A couple of hours later it re-connects the now fully charged battery back into the circuit and grabs another battery to be connected to the solar panels. It continues to "step" along through all the batteries and then starts over again. A couple of days of this treatment and all the batteries are fully charged something it was never able to do when all the batteries where attempting to do when they were all receiving an amp or two all connected up in the one big battery bank.

I have just about finished the prototype electronic stepper board and are waiting to install it to the house's solar battery setup. Other than that there have been numerous smaller jobs I have done around the place but I have no picture of those at this time. Well that is it till the next time or until the pommy bastard starts to whine again.

[hawsey]

You are getting there love it .

Sent from my Vodafone_SU6 using Tapatalk

[Geeba]

Whats been going on at the farm xman?

[xman]

Always more stuff than time allows. Knocked over a big arse tree the other week I'd say was weighing about 15-20 tonnes. Tree was the one in the dam that died and was going to fall so rather than risk it going in the dam and be useless, better to knock it over on dry land and use the wood. One hard day and two chainsaw blades later was all cut up. Boys had the quads with trailers moving it up to the house and I split most of it up through the 15 tonne gas block splitter. Should be fine wood for the fires as we come into winter.

[wadesg1]

Hey xman ive always enjoyed coming on and checking on the progress that you have made. would love to get an update on how everything is going on your property down south and you got and xbox projects going on?

[dratstab]

Ha, I had forgotten all about this forum until I got spam pm.

Anyway, nice to check out this thread!

[Geeba]

Yes - I did enjoy reading Xman's updates, good memories of working on Aussie building sites for me.

[dratstab]

Your farm ok with all the fires going on?

[xman]

Your farm ok with all the fires going on?

Yep, fires missed the farm. Got mightly close though. Burnt halfway through the farm behind ours after burning for about 40kms from the south. It sat there back and forward for the next 78 days until rain finally killed off the fire. To the east all the way to the coast, about 60-70kms is gone, totally. That was how wide the firefront was. Many houses in the township burnt including the school over a century old.

Man's stupidity allowed that fire to become so big. The coast of our state is made up of many old state forests. These have over time been declared national parks so no goes into these national parks and control the scrub unlike what used to happen when they were forests.

As if that wasn't bad enough councils then started declaring farms between these forests, (an old idea having pastures between forests to stop forest fires from all linking up), be prevented from keeping clear these areas and allow them to return to scrub. They were still farms but the owner couldn't touch these now declared "nature corridors".

This went on for about 20 years until finally the conditions were right, drought, wind and lightning and it started in the south, Bateman's Bay on the coast and with the wind behind it blew north right up the coast and slightly inland.

Seems the animals got priority over common sence and now there are no animals left. Witnesses at our local town said on the day the fire hit the town only a few feral pigs and kangaroos got out in front of the fast moving fire and most were on fire.

This same pattern of man's stupidity happened all over the state and our neighbouring states until it finally caught up earlier this year.

ATM there is a Bushfire inquiry going on like there has been many in the past always after such fires and the findings are always the same. More controlled burning of the bushland when we are not in summer conditions but this is now being highjacked by the global warming alarmists saying such fires are a result of global warming.

Either way, we have always had such fires and always will and unless more burning is deliberately being done when we are able to control them, mother nature will do it for us when it suits her. That is Australia and always will be.

It is no worse than it was and has been and unlikely to get worse in the future providing we here in Australia do as we have always done in the past and not get complacent like we have been getting in the last 20 years.

Our forests here are gun trees and these trees love fire. It is how they germinate. We have many trees here that only grow taller from fire burning them so with such trees making up our forests, it's easy to understand how much of a part fires are in the Australian bushland.

Previously we Australians understood this and did a good job of preventing such uncontrollable fires but these days there are too many that don't understand "the facts of Australian fires" preferring ideals that may suit other countries but only end badly when tried in this country.

Maybe they may learn but I fear not preferring to ignore the past. That's what we get listening to educating idiots with unproven ideas that never are held to account when it all goes wrong.

Xman.

[dratstab]

Glad to hear your farm is OK

[Geeba]

Hows things in the Bronze land? farm? xboxes?