2 Engineers Retired

  Our road is considered by some to be, well, challenging. The Causeway One stretch runs a single lane through the middle of a beaver pond.  We have affectionately named it “The Causeway”. Now the causeway is stable, but not too wide.  And it seems to be gradually becoming more narrow.  One reason is basic, there is vegetation on either side of the traveled part of the road, the non graveled part, and as it grows it does have a tendency to creep inwards.  This is being trimmed of course, but well nature is nature and it likes to expand its foot print.  However the bigger issue is, you guessed it, the beavers.  By now I am guessing that there is an assumption that we dislike beavers, but that is not true – we find them to be incredibly fascinating.  We do however find them challenging, and in some cases, like the fencing around the conduits the challenge is quite fun – and it feels like a real win when something works. On to ...

Kind of a snowflake Well – as far as I can tell this has probably been the rainiest summer since we started coming to the lake.  That being said, I am not entirely sure since before we moved here full time, if the weekend weather was looking like rain – we could find something else to do elsewhere. A whole lot of these ... Makes a field that looks like this Once you live here though, the rain, and the sun are part of the fabric of every day.  There is no question that living at the lake is absolutely marvelous during good weather.  And by that, I mean sunny, with a light breeze perhaps, and low humidity.  And sometimes we get that – last year for example when there was a drought.  But this year – we are wet, wet, wet. So what is a major benefit of this wet summer weather.  Well of course to anyone reading from western Canada the obvious benefit is the lack of forest fires.  And if we...

(Sorry – couldn’t resist) As I mentioned last post one of the dams we opened had a culvert in it.  Now theoretically a culvert is used to allow water to pass from one side of the road to the other (or perhaps from one side of a dam to the other) – but of course if the beavers get at it this does not work too well and we are unplugging a culvert instead of opening a dam.  There is a plugged culvert in a dam at the top of this hill The plug at the culvert primarily occurs on the upstream side for some reason.  A straight up screening or grating across the pipe does not help as this will also be blocked up.  (These are both diligent and resourceful creatures). What we have found is that by installing a vastly expanded screened area on the upstream side there is not enough flow through any part of the screening to attract specific attention with a result that it is pretty much left alone.  Beavers follow sound to determine where to build...