Thursday, February 16, 2017

Get to work, taking down the deck, part one

The deck that the previous owner built had seen better days and it made sense to take it down. I tried bracing it a couple of winters back but gravity worked against me. I needed the pond frozen over so I could stand on the ice to work.

Having to spend several weekends installing water heaters instead of working on the pond, I finally had a chance on the weekend of January 14. I cut some of the bracing and one of the posts. I used spring cleats on my boots and I wore chaps using the chainsaw. I didn't feel like bleeding out on the ice.

The ice was thick enough as I got a good solid thump when the pole it. Rest assured that I used proper techniques to drop the pole and the straight cut was just to cut it close to the ice. I used an older chain in case I hit a spike in the pole that I couldn't see. 


I dragged the pole up the bank as far as I could and called it a good first day. The 15th gave me another chance to work and I took the lower decking off.


One side a time:


And cleaned up the debris:
 

I unscrewed the plywood sheets and then split the 2x6 decking in two. Before my knees gave out, I dragged everything up out of the pond for later.

It took me several days to recover but it turned out that I wasn't able to get back because of warm weather came once again to Iowa and the ice just wasn't safe enough for me to work for a couple of weekends until February 4th.

Part two will show why I was one day short.

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