Get to work, taking down the deck, part two

After the initial work day tearing the deck from the middle of the pond, the January Thaw came to Iowa and it took me a couple of weeks before I felt safe to get back to work.

On February 4, I found this:

One of the poles was under the ice and I'm going to have to wait for the thaw before I can think about getting that one. Another was at an angle with only about 4 feet out of the water.

Discouraged but with a job to be done, I unloaded the tools and got to work. The first couple of hours went pretty well and I was able to get the two poles detached:

On the bottom right of the picture, you can see that I cracked the ice but the pole on the left broke through when it hit.

The temp reached to the upper 30's with fairly strong winds from the south. The deck was flapping in the wind and it started to get loose from the ice. I figured that I couldn't waste time taking pictures but I did check the depth of the ice:

I dragged the two posts to the south bank of the pond and took the chainsaw to the deck and cut the 2x6's to get the deck down so I can manage it better.

I used a drill to take out as many screws as I could to get the plywood off and then tried to take apart the joists. I dragged the plywood out of the pond and decided to use the chainsaw to the joists to speed up the process. The wind was cold against the skin even though it was fairly warm for an early February day. By the fifth hour of work, I could feel my joints ache a bit and I could tell I was out of shape from not working so much during the winter.

Then I stepped into the hole in the ice. I didn't fall all the way through but I stupidly stepped back into the hole I mentioned earlier. My left leg was wet to the knee but I still had work to finish.

Dragging the joists up the bank, I cleaned things up of what wasn't still frozen in the ice. I appreciated wearing the chainsaw chaps as they worked as a windbreak when I faced the wind. I could have used a broom but I didn't think that far ahead before loading up for the day.

About 90 minutes after dipping my leg into the water, I was loaded up and turned the heater on high. I headed home, satisfied that I was able to get most of the deck torn down and dragged out of the pond but thinking of the rest of the work needed to clean up.