Answer #1: "Our smallest excavator is 5' wide." . . . I have 4'4" access - FAIL
Answer #2: "Yeah, I could do that for $600." - DOUBLE FAIL
In theory I could rent a trencher from Home Depot for $140 for four hours and dig the trench that way, but I'd have to get the thing back to the house and I don't have a truck (or easy access to one) with a ball hitch. Plus I'd probably cut a foot off. In reality, Home Depot doesn't rent any digging equipment during the winter since the blades get trashed when people try to cut through 6" of frost. Saturday afternoon, after my ride (more on that in a moment) I did some work with the mattock to see how hard it would be. I would say that trench digging pretty much honks, but it isn't $600 bad! On Sunday, we got the thing finished in about two and a half hours with two of us working.
Today, the trench is filling up with snow, but at least I didn't have to dig in the snow. Depending on how frozen the dirt gets, backfilling might be an even bigger pain. Just a reminder what the purpose of all this hard work is:
The car is clean and dry, the outside world is snowy and cold, no more car scraping for me, sort of. I was half tempted to bike into work today on the mountain bike but I'm not that crazy. Most of the wiring was run yesterday for all of the outlets, fixtures, etc. The order is called into the supply house for the other items needed to finish the job; service panels, direct burial cable, and specialty items not available through regular sources.
The car said goodbye to its dry, safe home and headed out into the cruel, cruel world. The power to the garage is temped in for right now, but all of the loose ends should be tied up by the end of the week, pretty much bringing the job to a close, but not really. I still have to build the room and plan out work benches and storage for the garage, but it is nice to finally have something usable.
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