Had driveway sealed twice in two days

[Clipper]

We had the driveway sealed yesterday and an hour or so after they left it rained like hell. When it stopped I could see patches all over the driveway where the sealer had washed away, leaving the old gray unsealed asphalt showing again. The stuff needs to dry for at least 5 or 6 hours in order to be able to be rained on without washing away.

I called the company last night and told them what happened. At 9 am today they came back and redid the entire driveway again. Today it stayed hot and sunny and it was almost completely dry when the sun went down. I have to love a company that stands behind their work. For $315 they started out with a broom handle with a wire brush on the end of it, a heavy duty commercial weed eater, and a very powerful back pack leaf blower. They used the weed eater to edge the entire driveway, and the wire brushes and blower to completely clean the driveway.

We could drive on it tomorrow afternoon but I will wait until Sunday and then I will bring the travel trailer home from the neighbor's driveway. It is good to have good neighbors. He has three driveways and let me park our trailer in t he one that they have their trailer parked in. He said I could leave it there for as long as we needed to. It has been there for about a month between the complications with the concrete project and getting the sealing scheduled. I told Kathy that we should get he and his wife a gift card for a dinner at one of the local restaurants.

I have been at a standstill today. I should have thought ahead and took the tractor and my lawn and garden tools out of the garage and put them up in storage building. Not being able to access my shop and the garage has been frustrating. I am normally in and out of the garage and workshop all day long. It will be good to have the driveway done, and the trailer back home. Now I can start working a little at a time to restore the trench line across the lawn and plant some grass.

When you are used to being outside and being busy all day every day it is really frustrating when I can't do anything but sit on my dead butt and watch television when it is a nice bright and sunny day.

[BHU]

For $315 you can't go wrong. Think I'll look into that. I finally got around Sat. morning to restaining our deck. I had to replace a few damaged boards & have been putting off staining it because of the hot humid weather we've been having. Hopefully tomorrow we can walk on it without leaving footprints.

[Clipper]

No matter the cost, I would do it BHU. The old bucket and brush has gotten expensive too. I was looking online at Lowes and Home Depot at the sealer in 4.75 gallon cans and for anything of decent quality it ran anywhere from $40 to $75. It would have taken a minimum of 5 pails to do our driveway not to mention the time and ass busting labor I would have to expend in the 90 degree heat. I would not have used the cheapest sealer for sure. Fuller Paving has a great reputation in this area, not only for their quality asphalt paving, both residential and commercial, but also for their sealing with quality sealer. They are the ones I see most doing entire commercial parking lots as well as residential driveways.

[Clipper]

I may bring the trailer home today. It depends on how Kathy is feeling. I don't want her out in the 90 degree heat to help me if her back and feet are flaring up today. Her neuropathy and foot pain make it almost impossible for her to get a decent night's sleep. I may have to wait until a neighbor is around to help me hook up and make the move.

Yep, another day in the high 80's and into the mid 90's with the heat index possibly reaching over 100.

My neighbor across the road finally got the main trunk of the huge tree down that had broken off about 30 feet from the ground and landed on one of his sheds. I am heading over with my saw to help him cut up the remaining limb wood. We hooked a 100 foot cable to the upper portion of the standing trunk and pulled tension on it with his truck while he notched and cut, notched and cut some more until he was far enough through the trunk to cut it free from the back side. The resulting stump is about 3 1/2 feet in diameter and the 30 or so foot section of the tree that he felled is going to be a job to cut up into blocks small enough to move.

They are not very well off and with the pandemic their business has not been making a lot of money. They needed the insurance money for other things I guess so poor Terry has been working feverishly a few hours every day for about two weeks to get to this point. I have to wonder how he will move and get rid of the huge blocks from the main trunk.

[BHU]

That sounds like the cherry tree we had cut down a few years ago. That stump was at least 3 feet accross & 4 feet high. The outfit I hired wouldn't cut it any lower because there was a metal fence that the tree had grown into. Spring of last year I finally went to work on that sucker & cut it down to almost ground level. Took me 3 days & had to replace the chain 3 times to boot using my WORX electric chain saw.

[Clipper]

I bought an extra chain for my saw and I am thinking about buying the electric sharpening machine at Harbor Freight. That insures that the teeth are sharpened at a correct and uniform angle. I think the machine costs about 30 bucks. I just watched a you tube video of a guy using the Harbor Freight electric sharpener and it looked to be a fairly simple operation. I would only have to sharpen 6 chains to pay for the machine. I might even post a note on social media and sharpen chains for other people. It took the guy in the video a total of about 6 minutes to do a chain off a 16 inch bar and that included set up.

I have always hated having to stop in the middle of a project to touch up and re-sharpen the saw with round file made for the task. Starting out with two freshly sharpened chains should cover me for most of the small cutting projects I would be undertaking around here.

[Clipper]

Aug 10, 2020 17:22:36 GMT -5 BHU said:

That sounds like the cherry tree we had cut down a few years ago. That stump was at least 3 feet accross & 4 feet high. The outfit I hired wouldn't cut it any lower because there was a metal fence that the tree had grown into. Spring of last year I finally went to work on that sucker & cut it down to almost ground level. Took me 3 days & had to replace the chain 3 times to boot using my WORX electric chain saw.

Metal and chain saws don't get along well. When I used to burn wood in a wood furnace I lived in Point Rock, I found metal on a couple of different occasions. Metal in a tree will totally ruin a chain saw chain if you are running the saw at full throttle when you hit it. I was cutting up a storm felled maple tree years ago and not once, but TWICE I found sap spiles that had grown into the middle of the tree and were not visible and wrecked two different chains. At some point in time someone has collected sap for syrup and after the season they didn't remove the tap (spile) from the tree.

Lesson learned at the time? Don't cut maple trees, period.

[BHU]

I had to cut that fencing out with an axe. Part of it is still standing back there. The people behind me put up a stockade fence last year & rather then erect the fence on the property line where that fence is considering it's theirs they had the fence put up 3-4 feet feet back. Now that space is covered with weeds, tree saplings, vines etc., etc. growing back there because they don't maintain it. Out of sight, out of mind for them. Boggles the mind why someone would do that.