Day: September 1, 2026

Today I was supposed to be getting straight back onto fitting the Savannah’s new screen but first I had to finish a task that I started yesterday, namely an attempt to recover the data lost on the computer disk drive that had crashed. I was using special software that crawls very slowly over a drive seeking each little piece of lost data and reassembling them file by file. It takes forever and cannot work on a disk drive, or parts of a drive, that have been physically damaged but it’s worth a try.

Initial results looked very encouraging because the software could ‘see’ almost everything that had been lost, but seeing it and being able to lift it off the drive are two different things. In the event the only file of real value that I managed to recover was the Excel spreadsheet of the Savannah’s hours. Don’t get me wrong. If I’d had to choose just one file this was it, but I’d hoped that I’d have got more. Nevertheless, I feel blessed and relieved that I’ve managed to recover this one.

I had some other things to do and by the time I’d done those I have to admit that I wasn’t motivated to then go to Malbec to work on the Savannah’s screen. Instead, later in the afternoon I thought I’d go and start my excavator up and raise its boom which slowly sinks as the hydraulic oil in the system passes the seals. That’s quite normal but previously the boom dropped far enough for the end of the boom to contact the tarp wall covering of the excavator’s garage and if I hadn’t noticed it would have ended up splitting it, so now I raise the boom on a regular basis to prevent that happening.

And then I had an idea. I thought that as the excavator’s engine needed to be run anyway I’d tackle something that I’ve been thinking about for a little while. Looking from my house down to the bottom of my back garden the ground slopes downwards to where the front of my tool store/workshop will eventually be and then it immediately begins to slowly slope upwards again. This means that the ground at what will be the back of the structure will be higher than at the front and as the concrete base on which it will be built will be flat the ground on either side will have to be progressively shaved down from front to back and on the same level from side to side at the back.

It’s difficult to see in photographs but is easiest with the excavator garage in the picture. As both the dumper and the excavator needed to be started up and run and I need the practice, I decided to get them both out of the garage and tackle the side further from the garage. I had to be careful because the distance between the hole I’ve already dug out and the fence is pretty narrow and the ground is dry and soft without much support for the excavator’s weight. I’d swapped the buckets over to the wider, smooth edged one weeks (months?) ago before the heatwave but hadn’t used it for grading the ground. I also I have nothing like the skills of a pro but I’m quite satisfied with the results of half an hour’s work, as the photographs below show.

I’ll need to get to the back via the side closer to the garage but I feel pretty confident that it won’t take too much to get the ground around the hole level enough. Before pouring concrete the hole will receive a sub-base of stone and ‘remblais’ that will be pounded down with a compactor and wooden shuttering will then be put in place. Once the concrete has been poured any gap between the concrete and the ground after the shuttering has been removed will then be back-filled but before then I have to complete the work on my Savannah and also prepare the ground around my house for some other works that are planned. So much to do.