Tree Roots

I took today off - last day in a 4 day stint. I was planing on using today and yesterday for shoring - but that was finished on Saturday. The excavator guys were around again and spent the whole day here. Jim had to go off and do something in the morning so I got Glen to dig out some tree roots - from the 12m pine that was cut down. It was such a struggle that I had to help him with my reciprocal saw and cut some of the roots. Some of the roots had formed a tightly meshed web and this made it even more difficult.

Jim offered to take the roots to the tip for me - he estimated that there were 2 tons of roots. Initially I accepted saying that they were far to big for me. However I reneged and fortunately Glen latter offered to load my ute with the excavator. On the first trip, the Kimbriki guy said that the roots are classified as stumps - expensive, but I said that they were not very thick and that I loaded them myself - which was true - the first load was mostly small stuff. The second trip the guy kept on saying that I should be on the weigh bridge - about three times but not quite condemning me. I said I had another trip and then I would go on the weigh bridge - he was happy with that. That trip I carefully hid a big piece at the bottom ~200kg. I managed to unload it no problem.

The last trip was such a laugh since mostly it was that last huge root mass that stuck out of the ute by about a metre - there was no way anyone was going to let me through for free. Jim wished me luck and asked me whether I wanted a chain to tie the root to something stationary and drive off. He also hoped that there was a friendly excavator guy there to give me a hand. When Glen was placing into the back of the ute - he pushed it around and it was quite funny to see my ute also being pushed forward as well. I was pretty nervous about taking the root myself - what happens if I can't unload it???

I went the the weigh bridge and then off to the dumping area. Fortunately all the attendants were busy in conference. One guy noticed me and asked me if I just wanted a ticket. He gave me one just for veg without even looking at my ute. I struggled a bit to heave the root mass off - inching it along. Eventually I got it over the side and it was resting against the side of the ute. The only was I could tip it over was to use my feet with my hands handing onto the side of the ute with my bum on the tray. They are sure going to love me when they try to mulch this sucker. It would have been almost 4m long 80cm wide and around 40 cm thick. It certainly looked massive. But being pine it was actually quite "light". Off back to the exit weigh bridge to pay. My load weighed 550kg - I estimate the root mass would have been about 400kg of that.

Now I can move the water meter again and put in a request to council to modify the driveway on the verge.