Tuesday 2nd July 2019

Big Day out for Mr Mitarai

Busy day.

Got a call from the water tank folk asking if they could bring forward our delivery... yeah no problem as we planned to be at Marnie to paint the inside of the container and try the BX on Marnie soil for the first time.

So to start the day I had, the previous evening, loaded the BX onto the trailer after Jamie towed the ute from the bog.  All good and 1st attempt at loading the BX up on the trailer all went well except when I went to move the ute and trailer, the trailer brakes were binding.  Too late to sort last night so tackled the problem 1st thing this morning.

Not sure the cause but we just backed off the tension in the trailer brake cable and all good.

Next task was securing Mr Mitarai for the 20 min ride to Marnie.  This was a bit difficult due to finding tie down points which would allow good lashing angles to solid points on both the trailer and tractor. After a few tries and re-familisation with how to use those bloody racket straps, it all looked fine.


I had asked our neighbour at Marnie, Paul, to unlock his driveway gate which would allow us to down the side of 22 and make it easier for the tank delivery dude and me to get into 22 and unload.  I haven't got our drive way done yet due to the rain.

Tank delivery truck arrives and geez those tanks look huge.  May have to hope it rains again soon !


I did have visions of the The Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling event when unloading those tanks but the driver assured us the tanks just flop on the ground and stay put.  He was right as you can see on the video below, and if you listen hard enough you can make out the boys chuckle at the sight of big things falling over.




The tanks were now actually sitting on our neighbour's strip of land, which runs down our side of their driveway.  Paul was good enough to grab his Bobcat and tow them over to the middle of our block for temporary positioning, and off his land :).  Looks like he has done this before!  Hope the bottom of those tanks isn't now too thin :)



Now onto more mundane things like painting the inside of the container.  White will make it less cave like and without power we couldn't use a power spray, using a roller was a nightmare. Had to resort to brushes for the end wall, but the roller did work for the side walls if you painted horizontally.  I didn't realise the side walls have different profiles to the end... the things you learn :).  Not looking forward to painting the ceiling and the second coat tomorrow.


We then turned our task to unloading then BX for the first time.  Took a little bit of manoeuvring but worked out OK. Then we used the BX to move the trailer itself onto the block for storage.  We didn't use the ute as the ground is still a bit soft and I didn't want to get bogged for the third time.


And a big moment was the first turning of a sod for the build, see below.  Didn't have a gold trenching bucket, an orange one just had to do.


Finally we called it a day and popped Mr Mitari into the container for the evening, and locked it up.

Tomorrow we'll be back for the second coat of the interior and I will try a test dig in a few spots to see if I can actually get the driveway started.

Thanks to Mr. Fraser for his attendance and the sharing his own experiences with tanks, bogged vehicles and other useful things, and Paul for his lightening moving tank skills. 













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