New Fence as a Thief Deterrent

New Fence as a Thief Deterrent
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After having a lot of small stuff stolen from the land, the thieves graduated to taking something of real value.My dad’s commercial grade backpack blower came up missing when he left the land for the day.

Hopefully the new gate will make it harder.

Now they have to either come from the neighbor’s place or through the woods. – I am working on things to prevent those types of threats also.

Besides my new fence working as a Thief Deterrent, I also have a wireless camera on the way to help with catching them.

Also, I soon hope to have my perimeter fence started, we found all the corners, and I have most of the posts.  I still need to clear the brush along the perimeter and get some more gates so that I can access areas when I need them.

Right now, everything of value is locked in the shipping containers, but there are some larger items like the sawmill that are chained up.  I don’t feel comfortable with chains as any one low enough to steal would have no problem cutting a chain.  I want to set the sawmill trailer back up permanently and take the wheels off.

However, I hope a gate and a camera will do a lot to tell the neighborhood crackheads that there are easier sources of pill money than my place.  However, that may be wishful thinking as getting caught is not even a good thief deterrent when the scum is a druggie.

How to Make a DIY Wire Basket

How to Make a DIY Wire Basket

DIY: Wire Basket
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This DIY Wire Basket is a neat project, which makes a useful basket – which you can use to organize or meet some

metalworking requirements on a scouting merit badge.

I like them for gardening, as I can easily wash my fruit and vegetables off with the hose before I bring them in the house.

My wife likes it because I use it to wash vegetables before I bring them into the house.

Either way, it is an easy project that is very useful and a fun way to spend an afternoon.

Material:

  • 2’x10’ Hardware cloth
  • 26 Gauge Floral wire
  • Metal Coat hanger (Optional)
  • Rubber hose (Optional)

Tools:

  • Tin Snips
  • Needle nose pliers

Procedure:

  1. When designing your basket you need to allow for the sides. We are going to make a 5 inch deep 8 by 8 inch basket to carry in our vegetables. Since the sides will fold up we will need to cut out a piece of wire that is 18 inches square.
  1. Using tin snips cut this into a cross shape with 5 inch squares taken out of each corner. This will make eight inch “wings” that stick out on each of the 4 sides.
  1. Make your creases/folds along the “wings”

    DIY Wire Baskets
    DIY Wire Baskets
  2. Cut the floral wire 1.5x the size of the side you’re going to connect. This means for a 5 inch seam, cut the wire 7.5 inches (or 8 if you want extra).
  1. Start at one end, and pull the wire almost all the way through leaving about 1″ of slack to wrap around that first corner several times before weaving up the side.
    • Hitting every square looks better, and make a stronger basket, but you can save time by only weaving every other square if you desire.
  2. Lastly, trim the ends of your wire, and tidy up the basket.
  3. If you desire you can make handles by cutting up a metal coat hanger and using needle nose pliers to create loops on each end
  4. You can make the handle fit your hand better by sliding a rubber hose (like an aquarium hose) over the coat hanger before attaching it to the basket.

How to Make a DIY Airlift Mud Pump

 

Experimental DIY Airlift Mud Pump
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I decided to make an experimental airlift mud pump to clean out my old pond.

I have a spring fed pond that has been abandoned and allowed to silt over. Brush has grown around it and clogged it with rotting leaves. It has gotten to the point that in sections the silt is so thivk that grass has grown over.  You cannot tell how soggy it is. It is not uncommon for me to be weed eating and step wrong and sink to my waist in think mud.

Swampland Breeds Mosquitoes

This causes a danger.  Additionally, it is a breeding ground for mosquitoes so I have been looking for options. I can’t afford to hire someone with a dredger.  My backhoe can’t get to the area.  I was at a loss.

I was playing on youtube and found a guy that uses airlift pumps for outdoor hydroponics. it uses a cheap air pump instead of a more expensive electric pump, and because it is air powered and not electric it is safe around water. Down the internet research hole I went.

In looking at how it worked I learned that gold prospectors use dredges to suck up mud, recovery divers also use similar systems to recover boats that are lost under tons of sand.

Can the process work for thick mud? I see videos of Koi pond owners using similar systems all the time on a smaller scale. The lack of videos means one of two things – no one has thought of it, or it doesn’t work.

Will a Airlift Pump Work?

I cobbled some pipes to make my Experimental DIY Airlift Mud Pump, the most expensive pieces being the fittings. It took me less that 15 minutes to build.

I put my diesel air compressor in the truck and drove down the hill to the pond. Now right now Tennessee is under a state of emergency due to extreme dry conditions and we are under a total burn ban. I did not know until I went out to my pond how dry it was. It has really thickened the mud, and if I was careful I could walk slowly on the thick dried crust that formed.

This made the experiment much more difficult.

An airlift pump will lift waterlogged debris the same distance up and the nozzle is held under the water. the pond was 10 feet deep, so I bought a 10 foot section of pipe to make my airlift. If it was wet enough for me to push the nozzle 10 feet down under the surface, it would shoot mud 10 feet into the air.

It Worked, But the Wetter the Better

The ground was too dry to do that, so it only went down about 3 feet – which made it hard for the mud to make its way out the other end of the pipe.

Instead of a geyser of mud, I got more of an old faithful eruption…

As the pressure build up, the mud would spurt out. It made a neat sound, as I got to where I could estimate the time between spurts.

What was happening is that it sucked the mud from around the nozzle and had to wait until more wet mud oozed down around the pipe end.

I cannot wait until the weather changes and I have lots of wet mud to work with. Once I get some time to experiment with nozzle configurations and get a good working model I will scale up to 4 inch pipe.

Navy divers use 9 inch pipe and have to be careful as the suction is so strong it can pull body parts into the tube.

The Thief Strikes Again

I made a bigger set of pipes, and bought a roll of trash pump hose, and more airline.  I also redirected the creek to fill the marsh with a little more water.  However, when I went back to try again, the thief had cut into my shipping container and stole my air compressor.

Demolishing a Trailer with a Backhoe

 

Backhoe Demolishing a Trailer
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I wanted to tear down the trailer in a way that made good use of the lumber, but after almost two years of messing around, I decided to just do it.

The video above shows my backhoe demolishing a trailer.  This was so much easier than knocking boards with a sledgehammer.

Using the backhoe made this a lot more fun.  Additionally it was easier and took minutes instead of weeks.

I don’t have much more to do to finish cleaning the trailer up.

The stopping point now is removing the trash.  A burn permit helped with much of the wood that was not able to be salvaged, and the Sheetrock is being composted down to help amend my soil.

My dad and I also figured out the easiest way to take the deck off the metal frame.

Once the top is cleared off I will show that process.

I can’t wait until the trailer demolishing is completed, as I need the double wide gone before I can build the range and set up the sawmill in a semi-permanent location.

All in all I think a Backhoe Demolishing a Trailer is the way to go.  If I ever have to do this again, this is how I am going to do it.

Disconnecting a Trailer Marriage Wall

 

Disconnecting a Trailer Marriage Wall
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Disconnecting a Trailer Marriage Wall is not something that is easily found on the internet.

I know I searched for hours trying to find out how to do it.

Finally, I sucked up my fear of heights and got my big self up on a ladder and started tearing into things until I found the bolts that connected the two halves of the double wide together.

I looked at the problem with a view toward how these trailers are delivered.  Starting out, I knew that they come on site in two complete pieces.  I also knew that the top and bottom had to be easy to get to.

Common sense said the top cap of the shingles should have been installed after the two halves were bolted together.  I started there and found that the shingles at the top of the trailer were easy to pull up.

A thin piece of chip board sat under the shingles and this board was not nailed or anything.  Under that board was the bolts.

There were not a lot of bolts, but the were two different sizes and un equally spaced throughout the top of the marriage wall.

Once these bolts were removed, the two trailers were disconnected at the top.

There were still a lot of bolts under the trailer, but we never really got them all – I gave up and dug out the backhoe.