Apparently at least a few more words are needed.
The bobcat arrived and managed to shift the trailer without much drama, until it sunk up to its axle in glorious Bunyip mud. My ever resourceful bro-in-law happened to have a thirty year old hand winch tucked away in the shed and with some wrangling, we (and by we here, I really mean he) slowly but surely winched the 4 tonne machine out.
I know someone has tried to explain this physics thing to me at some point but seriously, I think some things are better left not understood. How can a hand crank move 4 tonnes of machine stuck in knee deep mud? I’m sure Dad would insist it involves something like force times distance and a fulcrum, but the truth is much simpler. MAGIC! IT’S ALL JUST MAGIC! There are some areas of life that brains aren’t designed to understand. For me, that includes physics and Australian politics. Best just to accept it and move on.
Once the bobcat had magically been transported out of the mud by MAGIC the boys packed up and headed off to a prior social engagement, aka the pub. The trailer remained about 15 metres from its intended destination. Heartbreak. It was at least that much closer than it had been at the start of the weekend. I’ll take it.
Luckily I can now give a proper ending to this leg of the project, as Tom and Dad came to help me finish the job this weekend. Here I am using more physics MAGIC to winch the trailer down the final stretch of boggy hill to land on its blissful bed of hand laid crushed rock!
After weeks of waiting and a few more of wrestling, this is a sight for sore eyes I’ll tell ya. It was important to get the trailer onto the pad before we start building, firstly because it was hard enough moving it with nothing but a floor on it, but secondly because once it was on even ground we could chock it up and level it. The chocks take the weight of the trailer off the wheels and stop them from deteriorating and balances the load evenly. It’s important to start with a level base for building as well, otherwise the whole thing would end up wonky! Small details but pretty important ones.
All of these battles with the mud are my price to pay for starting a building project in the middle of winter, I get that. Some people have so far suggested that was a bad idea. I will concede that there’s probably a reason most people choose to wait out a Gippsland winter rather than build through it, and it was never really my intention to start smack bang in the middle of one. Things outside of my control pushed timelines back, etc.
However, I’m going for the silver lining here and will say that it has probably been a blessing in disguise. I know when I first discussed the idea of putting a trailer on the block with my sis, she warned me that it gets wet in winter. Just for the record – wet, Chloe, is one thing. Being the drainage site for every block within the vicinity and a floating swamp, is another.
One other thing I know about myself is that often I need to learn things the hard way. If I’d started this project in the middle of a dry hot summer and someone had told me that the block gets ‘wet’, I’d have shrugged it off and dumped my trailer on the ground and got to building! No drains, no foundations, no worries! Until there would’ve been all of the worries. Let’s go with the angle that this is the universe’s way of looking out for me, making sure that I cover all bases and my tiny doesn’t float away.
And possibly also its way of telling me never to try moving this thing ever again unless it’s a baking hot, long, dry summer.
Ooh a hand winch, that’s amazing! We are contemplating hiring the biggest winch we can find to pull our tiny up the hill to its real home. I agree about the winter thing as well, so much better to sort that out now than have to do it with a half built house. Can’t wait to see some frames!
There might even be some mechanical winches out there that would work?? I was almost going to ask my sister in law to drive her 4×4 over to use the winch attached to her car, haha!
How is your site prep coming along? You needed to have the hill cleared first too, right?
Yeah and we can’t even start that until things dry off! It’s going to be a challenge. We are almost at the cladding stage and I would like to hold off on that before we move it, but we can’t have our sisalation and flashing tape and stuff exposed to the sun for that long so I think we will have to put it on and just hope lol
Won’t the cladding be extra bracing for when you move it? Why do you want to hold off?
We have ply on for bracing already, I want to hold off so it is as light as possible for the move!
Ah, yep! Fair enough! Are you keeping track of the materials for weight? How’s it looking so far?
We aren’t really calculating it at the moment, we probably should though! Going to use a combination of vinyl weatherboards and corrugated iron for cladding to keep it as light as possible and everything else is the lightest version we could find so I think we will be ok, or fingers crossed anyway haha
Given up on the pallets for cladding? Yeah, it’s a bit like that! Can’t do much about it once you’ve chose all the light options you can – throw the kitchen sink outside when you have to move it?! Haha!
Yeah ditched the pallet idea, too heavy and not enough time :/ what are you thinking?
At the moment, most likely going for profiled ply kind of sheets – looks like boards but it’s light and quick and easy to put on. Something like this: http://www.shadowclad.com.au/shadowclad/ with some corrugated iron around the bottom as a feature. Bit like this: https://au.pinterest.com/pin/506232814347257874/ or this: https://au.pinterest.com/pin/506232814347258030/
[…] ran smoothly off the bat, finally getting the trailer into place in a few short hours of winching (see my previous post for plenty more about winching!). Tom and I had consulted the night before and made a list of the materials we needed, so he could […]