Just an aside.....
For those of you that didnt know, SE QLD got hit by a pretty intense storm last night. It lasted for a few hours and where we are, at Burpengary, got 56mm in under two hours - that's a lot of rain!! I went down the workshop this morning and, dodging my way through fallen palm fronds and branches etc, opened the door to be greeted by this:
The amount of water coming off the roof inundated the water tank, even with a 90mm overflow. It accumulated around the shed with the other runoff and soon the aggie line and drainage system was overwhelmed as well. From there it could only flow up under the sheet and into the shed - bugger!! The amount of water coming out the aggie line was evident by the scouring at the exit near the driveway:
The worst affected area was where I was working on El Gato yesterday, it was a sea of fine silty mud! Worst of all, I had left some of my stuff on the floor when I had finished up, not tools (never leave tools on the floor), but I remember putting my note book and pencil on the floor when I sat down on the stool!! This was not a good thing, as a lot of my notes and calculations for many projects are in the notebook - bugger!
Anyway, it wasnt going to clean itself! I decided a bit of music to sooth the savage beast was in order so I put on the mellow tones of the Eagles. Rockin out to 'Hotel California' I set to work - moving everything out onto the driveway - for those things I could easily manage - or just dragging then forward to the edge of the workshop for those I couldn't. The cleaning would have to be done in sections - remove items, then clean, then replace items, then clean up tire tracks and footprints. Luckily I had a couple of saving graces on my side - the floor coating. Thank heaven I got the floor coated, or it would have been stained, ugly concrete forever. With the urathane coating, the silty mud just mainly washed off, with the hardest bits just took a bit of water blasting with the karcher. The 2nd saving grace was the sheeting - I had left a 100mm gap between the bottom of the sheet and the floor for this very event, should it ever happen - good thinking 99!!! The 3rd saving grace was that most of my stuff - save for the welding table and one or two other things - are all on wheels, so it was an easy task to wheel most things around to get at the problem areas. Meisner was rocking to 'Try and Love Again' and by the time Henley and Frey were pumping out 'The Last Resort', I had the first area done!!!
Sticking with the Eagles, I decided on the later, more rocking tones of 'The Long Run', and let Henley let loose on the title track. It was the last bars of 'Sad Cafe' by the time I got the 2nd and 3rd areas cleaned.
I kept going - Electric Light Orcheatra's 'Very Best of ELO had me pumped. Jeff Lynne was awesome and he had me singing along to 'Horace Wimp' as I hosed, scrubbed, cleaned and mopped.
Lunctime came and went as I pressed on - the sky outside was looking decidely grey and threatening and I didnt want to be caught with all this gear sitting on the driveway. I was nearing the end, and I put on Cold Chisels 'East' for one last push. Jimmy and I were doing an awesome duet of 'Four Walls' and I was almost done. By the time 4 o'clock came around I was done, packed up and sorted - and everything was sparkly clean once more:
And for you Hallsey, I even cleaned the welder before putting it back into its place (thanks ya b@stard):
So, six hours and a clean shed - but no work.
A sincere apology to Justin for not getting anything done on Leonidas today, mate I just cannot work in anything but a clean and tidy workshop, plus all that silt on the floor was just downright dangerous - but I do apologise for the lack of productivity mate, will try and make it up later in the week if I can!!!Some lessons learnt:
>The floor coating was a godsend - the result would not be as good without this coating. PM me if you want details of the company that did it - well worth it and it looks and stays oh so clean!!
>Put everything on wheels, makes it easier to move and if you have space limitations like me, you are always moving stuff around to optimise space
>If you are going to line the walls like I did, leave a gap to the floor for that 'I need to hose this crap out' event!
>Clean up after yourself every afternoon - I didnt on Friday thinking I was going to keep going where I left off and this just made things harder
>Dont leave anything lying on the floor - like valuable notebooks! I dont make it a habit of leaving anything on the floor, but must have forgottent his one. I wont in the future that's for sure.
New Respect:
>Mother Nature - by crikey we had some rain!! May have to do more to the drainage system but I dont think anything I could have done in this instance would have made any difference!
>Enyo - my Enyo mop (thanks Wifey, it was a shed-warming present!!) was awesome - squeedgy, mop, scrubber - it did it all and it made things a lot easier than they could have been - Clean The World, yay!!
Back to work tomorrow in a clean workshop - yay!!
Cheers,
Tricky
