Cursed

I would love to be able to string at least two days in a row that are productive and without challenge.  Today was not one of those days.

The ICF shipment continues to be cursed.  The pickup did not happen till today and I have not heard from the carrier to find out if I was charged a penalty as I had till 6 PM yesterday to pick up. The goods were picked up by a tractor trailer, brought to Coquitlam and then reloaded onto a BIG crane truck.  When the truck arrived it was clear withing minutes we were going to have a problem.

Issue #1: The pallet forks are designed for much shorter pallets as they do not extend far enough to clear the 7’6″ height of these pallets. So we could only use the forks for the three smaller pallets and had to sling and chain the others.

Issue #2: We only had 15′ between grade and the cable/tel lines.  For the taller pallets, this was not enough roof to keep the pallets off the ground AND clear the lines.

Issue #3: The truck needed to bring the full shipment was much too large to allow it to enter our property and do all the lifting on the property side of the lines.

Issue #4: Because we ended up lifting by slings, the blocks were much more susceptible to damage and at least three were broken.  This was mainly because we had to lift two skids at a time (they were tight on truck and no way to get sling around just one), and one lift did not have wood blocking at the corners to distribute the weight (I am hoping I can use these broken blocks in areas where I would have had to cut out the fractured section anyway (like at ‘T’ intersections) as I only have a few spare ordered.

Issue #5: This is all billed by the hour.  Although I am sure they will be generous with the number of hours, it still will be a lot of extra hours for the trip back to the yard and the transfer to yet another smaller truck and the return trip tomorrow.  This one will be able to fit in the driveway and lift from the property side of the lines.

Issue # 6:  21 Skids were shipped – 22 Skids are being delivered.  I only have room for 21 skids.  So tomorrow I will have to hand bomb the blocks on one of the shorter skids back onto another of the short skids to make a tall stack again.  They were split apart into two as I understand one of the skids had shifted and needed to be re-stabilized.

So, this is the shipment that just refuses to go well no matter how hard everyone tries.  Lets see what hurtles it flings at us tomorrow.

Unfortunately, this was not MY only issue today.  I started the day consolidating all of the broken up concrete into a smaller and taller pile to make room for a dump truck pup that was to be dropped off this afternoon to allow me to start loading the concrete. Within an hour or so, Alfie was acting funny and just before lunch, the poor tractor decided it was time for a break.  It appears that the main boom cylinder has blown and will not keep pressure.  Poor Alfie could not even hold his bucket off the ground without feeding in continual pressure. So that ended today’s plans to start loading concrete.  The truck was already on its way when I had to cancel.  I will need to diagnose tomorrow and come up with a plan.  I am hoping the repair shop will confirm that the cylinder is the only thing that could be wrong and would be able to quickly change out the seals and rebuild if I rush it out to them in Surrey.

The problem with this setback is that it now delays the whole week and I need to re-book the surveyor who was coming to mark out the excavation, and the arborist who was going to hang my tarp support cable.  It also delays the shipment of concrete blocks I was going to setup for delivery on Thursday/Friday.  So I will need to delay the start of the big dig to mid next week or later.

On a good note, I had North Shore Recycling come by today and give me $50 for all of the metal materials I had about the yard.  Kind of wishing I had saved all of the appliances from the beginning of the project instead of dumping them for free at the transfer station.  The payment to me would have been higher, but I had very little copper in the mix.

So – lets see what tomorrow has in store for me.  The only thing I can do is shake it off and move on!