New project

Bobcat struggled with the 8 foot forks, but I moved the bathroom to a gravel pad I worked on this morning. We will have to level it because it appears my gravel pad leans to the river, and our roof structure angles from the river. This means water will be pooling on top during the winter with a snow load. Flat roofs with snow do not work, and if you only have three inch drop on six feet, and the unit is not level, you will have leaks. I have to go to Chicago for my shots and will be gone from 7am until midnight Wed., and will get nothing done. I had no time for photos. Hopefully Friday.

Wishing you safe travels and helpful shots.

We have moved the porta pottie to the permanent location.  I had to cut out a level area next to the Box Culvert which I layered with gravel.   We then had to use a bottle jack to raise one side and put flat concrete patio blocks to level the whole unit because we have a flat roof which only has a slight drop from one side to the other, and in the winter with only billboard vinyl, as the snow melts the water has to have enough drop to get off the roof or it will refreeze and you will have a very heavy snow load which will compromise even heavy duty vinyl.

I will show some photos of the box culvert and how we are utilizing it as an elevated area where we are building a gang plank to the raised porta pottie.  I had picked up an office trailer at an auction called Richie Brothers and will eventually move the office trailer next to the new porta pottie and make a changing room and shower, but the toilet uses 1.6 gallons per flush, while the typical shower uses 17 gallons.  With only 250 gallon storage, this limits the showers to about 12 before you have to dump the gray water.

We cut the storage tote and put the ejector sewage pump in today, cut our hole in the floor for a floor drain and toilet adapter.  It has been too cold and rainy to finish the floor, but hope to install it later this afternoon if we can sunny and over 70 degrees.  I have been cutting grass non stop to catch up to the flood damage and the islands are back to paradise status.  The dog is chasing geese and ground hogs, and the white pelicans are herding fish, as the eagles soar with Turkey vultures, and yesterday we saw two fawns who had waded over to the north end of the islands.   I never dreamed I could find such a beautiful place, and long after I am dead, people will be able to access and enjoy this unique natural beauty.  photos to come.

Here is the handicap ramp to the porta pottie being rough framed.



Here is the box culvert which is 20' x 14 ' which my wife and I build the foundation, excavated a new channel pursuant to an ACE permit, and had a crane set the concrete box culvert in four five foot by 14 foot segments. The box culvert is about seven feet at the highest point above the surface of the islands. By coming off the road bed on top of the Box culvert, we cut down the length and material for the handicap ramp and give protection to the base of the porta pottie during a flood.

Beautiful Seaoat

Impressive! That's a lot of work!

Toilet is set, ejector pump is in holding tank, we still need to vent the holding tank, and I will address that in the morning. The vinyl bathroom floor is installed, and we pick up a lockable storm door for the bathroom door. We will run an extension cord 100 feet from the 200 amp service, and we are getting 350 feet of high grade lawn hose to run from the house to the toilet.

I have cut the daughter's campsite which had been underwater a week ago, and the grandkids are only 100 feet from the box culvert. We have to secure the safety railings so no grandkids fall when using papa and Mimi's new porta potty. Mrs. Seaoat has done 80% of the physical work with my guidance, and we hope to test the system with some clean water by Tuesday night. It has been rainy and cold here and more Tuesday so we are limited on what we can do, and I have been invited to play poker again on Wed, so we are running out of time.

The Islands are just beautiful as a friend caught a flathead catfish which weighed over twenty pounds.

Like I said before....what a team.

Project completed and grandkids had fun fishing with their dad. It was difficult with all the flooding and rain, but we got it done for the weekend.

We decided to just use six foot picket fence to protect people from falling off the handicap ramp.  It is four feet wide and can handle a wheel chair.   We do not have the grab bars, and we need to get some privacy adhesive film for the storm door, but the garbage bag is working now.  I will show the unique plumbing job which allows us to transfer waste from tank to tank, and onto our dump truck where we can dump the same at the Municipal sewage processing plant.

Awesome.

Great work! You can definitely be proud of that.

Wonderful holiday weekend. People were catching Northern Pike and Walleye as the river is near flood stage. The flush porta potty got an incredible amount of use and we will try our valves and transfer piping in the morning. We own a couple of regular porta potties and folks just do not like using them now that we have the flush porta potty, but the islands are almost 3/4 of a mile and that is a long walk not to use. We had a stupid who we invited to fish, but told him to stay on the roads bury his truck and rut some walking paths I had created through the woods. I could have lost my chit with this 20 year old because apparently a friend told us he got it stuck at 5 am in the morning and he had been drinking. The grandkids may come out next weekend to help us pick up sticks. The grandsons did not make it out which was surprising because my oldest loves fishing. Too many things to do and too little time.

Looks like it's coming together

The wife has been running the dump truck non stop as the rains and floods have required us to do major maintenance on our major roads on the islands. This involves scraping the sediment from the ice jam flood this winter off the gravel roads, and then sprinkling new two inch gravel onto the exposed hard gravel surface. I have dug around the islands when making new roads and often a full foot under sediment I will find a gravel road which now is just a muddy mess which can swallow a car. In the 1860s a local town about eight miles from the islands had a small steam engine shallow draft boat which would take people to the islands to fish and picnic after church on Sundays during the summer, and since the 1860s a gravel corporation would take gravel out of the river and sell it. I imagine some of these hidden roads were from a century or more ago, but about a half inch of dirt piles up after each flood, and if you do not maintain the roads, people will get stuck.

I will show the transfer of the waste to the dump truck and some photos of the road work on Thursday or Friday. We have a neighbor who is breaking out a huge concrete patio and he is bringing the chunks of concrete which we will make one more boat launch. This has become necessary a a huge maple has collapsed over the channel which leads from our concrete boat launch to the main river channel. Photos to come. Weak but still living.

Waiting for your photos.

The pumping truck came to pump our porta potties, and he pumped 100 gallons out of the new flush porta potty. He charges $20 a pumping and it is well worth it to have a clean flush toilet for our women and children who have to sit down to use the restroom. Guys just pee behind a tree most of the time, but I must say it will be nice for me to use it when I have a sudden attack. All our mechanical connections and shut off valves worked perfectly. We plugged in the sewage grinder pump in the main tank, and effortlessly it transferred 100 gallons to the pumping tank. Photos to come.

I have had people come up to me asking me to put this concept on a steel frame and using a wall toilet, set the pump where the handicap ramp only has to be 12 feet(1 inch per foot) which unfolds from the unit, and put the potties on a low profile semi trailer with a fork lift on back like you see with Lowes deliveries. I have not done the calculations but the porta potty delivery truck could hold 8 of them on a standard 53 foot trailer, and could be used at festivals where you would set them where a water hose could be connected. I would have to design automatic waste transfer features and safety shutoffs, but a once a day pumping with a standard pumping truck would allow a art show or music festival to have ample flush toilets available. I would have to target them at under 2k to be competitive with handicap porta potties, but I think most women would agree some dedicated women's flush toilets at events would make the experience much more enjoyable.

I agree.

Generally agree. Only problem would be the inevitable problems flush toilets suffer, including (especially) things getting stopped up/backed up. Problems might multiply with heavy event usage. Good idea in principle but I wouldn't want to be responsible for maintenance in an event setting. Not to rain on your parade, because I admire what you've done at the islands.

Not much maintenance at all. The toilet has a four inch pipe which drops down without any bends in the pipe where you can get blockage. Not much work on the new flush porta potty today as I was scrapping roads and cutting grass. It was a stunning day as the beauty takes your breath away. Pretty cool a couple we know brought their dog today and the dog starting barking and jumping all over the place one mile from the islands. It is a dog paradise.

Our dog chased a baby groundhog and killed it earlier today. We were not happy with her. She instinctively hunts when she is running the islands and the older groundhogs are wise to her routine, but each year she will get a juvenile groundhog. Got an unpleasant surprise when I got back home as I discovered mice had taken dry dog food from Wilma's food bowl to my sock drawer.....not a little dog food......a whole bunch of dog food. I wish the dog would go after mice and leave the groundhogs alone.