Yep you read that right, "Amazon delivered my underground bunker." I was eating lunch at some one off hole in the wall. A local Mexican owned hamburger joint no less. The burger meal was great. Meat even tasted like real lean ground sirloin. Or just maybe what real hamburger meat is supposed to taste like. Totally unlike most window burger joints. I did not even mention the home made style fries too. The buns are gigantic compared to most other places. Whataburger is really the only place that I can think of offering burgers this size. At least the size they sell now. Not so many years ago they were much larger. Originally their idea was a bigger burger at a better price. Nobody made pans to bake buns big enough that Whataburger was planning to sell. They ended up paying major bucks for specially built dies to fabricate the new bigger pans. Real history was being made that day. Up to this time way back then, burger joints were trying to sell one on the cheap. McDonalds had mastered the true "fast food" concept. Building your burger while watching them slap it all together. Then selling it more than affordable to everyone. Whataburger decided to charge a little bit extra and put a lot more effort into making their new bigger burger. It worked and the rest is, well it is all history. As in the past. The only thing I dont like about my local burger meal is they are just way too big. As in too much food for lunch. Maybe if I had plenty of time sitting back in a recliner watching "I love Lucy" reruns, then might not be so bad. This is the only downside eating here. So I dont frequent the place all that often. OK you say if I am complaining so much, so why eat here? The food is great, at least far as burgers go. The price is decent considering how expensive all the drive thru joints have gotten. I should check to see if they offer a junior burger, that might be a better option. There is a similar place I eat when at a buddies land a few counties away. This is where he wants to eat lunch. When he finds a place it gets used up until finally realizing he doesnt like it any more. The burgers are almost as big. Not as filling but still too big for a single lunch meal. I end up way too full and not feeling like doing any more work for the day. So I looked over their menu there and sure enough they did have a junior size burger meal. Now with the smaller portion of tater tots and not so much burger to digest, the size is more suitable to a working stiff. Not a hard working stiff, but a tired one. While sitting there in the Mexican burger joint gorging myself, I received the text. Amazon notifying me of delivery. This got me to thinking about what I had recently ordered. Then it hit me. I was skeptical at first. But they were advertised as closeout items and marked way down. Since Amazon offers free shipping with orders over $35, how could I go wrong? There was no way I could pass this deal up. I admit this was totally an impulse buy. How often do you see these for sale? Especially marked down as returns or a closeout? I dont have Amazon Prime. But if I did would not have worked out for me at all. No way would that allow enough time to clear out a spot to put them. Obviously these were not going to be guaranteed overnight shipping, but still expedited. Fortunately with this order being over $35, free shipping was included anyway. This would leave enough time for me to do something before they arrived. So while I was gone this afternoon, Amazon dropped off my bunker. One of the other businesses around the shop must have signed for it. I sure would not like for these to get stolen sitting out here. I bought all of the remaining inventory they had available. No chance of replacing for what these cost me this time around. Not even close. The original estimated delivery date was still about six weeks out. I did get a notice yesterday that my Amazon order had been shipped. Since these were coming all the way from China, I thought maybe having some lead time to take care of things before they arrive. Right now I am not even close to being ready for them to show up. But it does not matter, they have been delivered. Originally I wanted them to deliver at the shop here. But I could have easily changed that location to my cabin later on by the time they were going to ship. Would have, could have, should have, now where have I heard that before? This was going to be my plan. It would have given me enough time to clear a spot to set them out by the county road. Now they are parked all around the side yard at shop in town. I wonder if code enforcement is going to send me a notice? They tell me all the time that parking on the easement on this side of street is against city ordinance. I wonder if this also applies to concrete? With upside down as people have become and everything gone wacko in the last few years, it would not surprise me one bit. Yep thats me taking this picture with my phone. Gotta love technology. To think I have an expensive digital camera that does not work as well as a cheap Android based phone. Who ever would have thought something like this could happen? All those years ago watching the original Star Trek episodes thinking just how far out science fiction reached was totally unrealistic. Now all these years later William Shatner is claiming he invented the cell phones. I guess in a way he can make that claim. Or at least for the flip phone. If you look down a bit there is the shadow of my super cool dog Abby. I am not sure what else is behind me making the rest of that shadow look so long. At the angle of light, may just be all legs. Lets just leave it at that. These sections are taking up my whole fence area along the street. Glad I dont have a truck blocked in between any of them. It would be stuck there for a while. Probably a very long while. There are two sizes delivered today. I figure it shouldnt be too hard trying to put them together. A lot of these delivered today are about 6 feet tall. Actually measure about six feet square and 8 feet long. You see here this is perfect for a walkway. Or even a small cubby to have a folding bed of some type. Maybe a table or shelving on both sides. Compact living or very decent storage. Underground and climate controlled. From inside, you see there is a decent amount of space. Not so much as long term living, but something to get by when that time comes. It would have been nice if there were more of these larger ones. This one here measures about 7 feet square. More than enough room with that extra foot on side and above. Doesnt take a lot to make a big difference on things this size. Especially if you are stuck down in a hole for any length of time. Wow, I didnt see this in the pics on Amazon. But on the end of several there is a lot of wire protruding from the concrete. This might be how they connect different sections that dont just butt together. Should be more than strong enough for anything short of a direct blast. Looks easy enough to build up forms against this wire from the inside and fill with concrete to join the sections together. Or fold the steel reinforcements down to make an end wall. There is enough sticking out so I can even join sections at an angle. I can probably work a staircase into this wire too. Either way I have options. One or the other or even a combination of things. Or just close the end up and call it a wall. Fortunately I just got new tires for my 16 ft flatbed trailer. It is going to take some long slow driving to get each one of these transported down to my cabin. Talk about great timing. The old tires are really old. Not so much wear, but were purchased back in the early 1990's. They were premium Goodyear Marathon tires. Not cheap at all. These are specifically designed and rated only for trailer use. After all these years now and no signs of failing. Of course the rubber is all dried out and sidewalls cracked. But they are not leaking and steel belts have not separated on any of them yet, yet, yet and yet. Since there are four of them. The only thing I have to worry about is them blowing out. At this point is not if, but when the tires go boom. With all the weight of just one of these concrete boxes, it is a given. No reason to risk rolling on these trailering the concrete down to cabin. New tires all around, yes very smart. With the weight of these sections, I sure hope they wont be way exceeding the limits of the trailer axles. So these new tires were put to use just in time. Unfortunately my old dinosaur diesel truck is acting up. Either I sucked up some chunks of the old pickup screen from tank into the lift pump, or the injection pump is worn out. I got my work cut out for me over the next couple of weeks. I realized another kink in the armor here. With all the Iran crap going on, gas is at an all time high. Dont even go there about the price of diesel. I sure dont plan to use my F150 to pull the trailer. Not even if only loaded with one of these. Sort of bad timing all around. But when is everything perfect? Once these are moved, then the pressure will be off for a while. I have no idea where to dig the hole yet to bury my future bunker. After looking over the layout of the land, there are not too many places without large trees. My plan does not include making a big hole in the trees that can be seen from overhead. I hope to keep the over head branches in a canopy so it keeps things going on less obvious. Since drone technology is rapidly progressing, it wont be long before all government agencies will be using them for convenience. You know to cut down on costs. Yea right, like I believe that. The tax man sure could get crazy with drones. They can see everything you have built on your place. Like the lady at the tax office told me. "We tax everything that we see" I think they like using these drones to snoop on everyone. Just to see what you are doing. Nothing more than to get nosy. It seems some people in government just cant keep their noses out of everyone elses business. But then I would have to put my tin foil hat on to say something like this. Much later in the evening, I received an email from Amazon. I guess they are relaying information about my bunker chunks from manufacturer. Maybe it was on China time, not here. Well this sucks. Maybe this is why there was a six week delay originally. Included with the purchase of these, there was supposed to be a package of hardware. "We regret to inform you that that some of the items you purchased were unable to be shipped at this time. As of this date these items are on backorder. But manufacturer states the items are not showing as inventory in current catalogs. There is no estimate of when they will be shipped out or if they will be available again. You can request a return slip and we will refund your original purchase price. Or accept a 50% refund and keep the items already received. We are very sorry for this inconvenience. Your feedback is very important to us. After this transaction is completed, please go to the link provided and fill out your experience with this purchase."
Since all of this has been ongoing for the last several months, I am way behind on what is posted here. Will try to catch up on everything. So far it has been moving along a lot better than I first expected. But running into a few snags along the way. One main problem is connecting the tunnels together leading to larger rooms. OK this is my plan for some of the boxes. Tell me what you think. Going underground with this type structure, hopefully connecting sections to make larger rooms. With this not visible makes it difficult for the tax man to assess what is down there. Now you say if there is some type of access that can be seen, then they could force their way in and put a taxable value on my bunker. What is the purpose of having an underground bunker if the tax man knows about it? That puts it on public record. Heck why not just have an open house when I am finished and invite all of the local parasites to come by for a looksee? No I dont think so. I have two ideas that might work in unison. The nice thing is for now these pieces of concrete just sitting out on the land are not taxed. But if I build a bunker and they find out, you got it, taxable. I can easily bury these a few at a time. Then leave some above ground covering over the spot. So for all the tax man knows is there are some of these left over blocks just sitting out catching rays in the sun. My other deluded idea is building an obvious entrance above ground. One with a seriously reinforced doorway. A walled up steel door using concrete. The only thing is it leads to nowhere. You open the door and nothing behind or below it. So the tax man can come on by and inspect all he wants. Nothing there. The access door will just be for looks. Another piece of surplus like the concrete building blocks above ground. The county surely isnt going to move anything to try and locate what is actually buried. It is way too cost prohibitive and they sure dont want to look like fools. Oh wait a minute... Another cool thing I figured out is how to possibly sink these boxes without a lot of heavy machinery if it becomes necessary. This will only work for some of the smaller culverts. My idea is stand one up vertically, with opening on top and bottom. Then I dig out all around about a few inches at most from inside. As the perimeter dirt is shoveled away, the concrete will naturally fall down. So long as I dont remove too much dirt, the box should move back and forth as it sinks down. Easy enough if I control the angle and descent by how much dirt is removed from around the sides. I am still working on how to tip one over after the depth in the ground is reached. I have a few ideas that work out in my head, but could end up with me crushed dead. So holding out on that until I test it on a smaller concrete piece first. Actually it shouldnt be hard at all, now thinking about it some more. That is if I dont want to bury it too deep in the ground. I can dig out on the one side it needs to tip over, then all done below grade. Work the ground on one side of box just like dropping it down, but letting it start to tip in that direction instead. Just need to have the level finished out before it goes past center. Yea this can work. Then repeat for the next to it and pull the two together. I can do this. Might be a lot of back fill after it is set in place. Oh well, it is only time and labor. I sort of hit a major homerun with trading out work for work. A guy with some heavy equipment has already dug out a large trench with a dozer. So I can lay some of these down there and cover them up before anyone gets too nosy. I did a major brake job on his F450 Superduty Supercrew Dually. What a mouth full. It is also a long bed, not that it makes any difference. Those four rotors are heavy heavy duty, let me tell you. The guy is slightly mechanically inclined but very hard headed. He chooses to do his own brake jobs. Really nothing more than replacing the pads when they wear out. Even if they go metal to metal. He has done this to most of his vehicles for years so considers himself an expert. He does not take into account the uneven wear on rotors. Since the lining material is full metallic and even ceramic for some vehicles now. These run super hot and wear the rotors very unevenly. What most people assume as "warped" is nothing but extremely uneven wear. On the truck he was having problems with overheating and wearing out pads way too quick. Both left sides are severely dragging. The brake fluid was even boiling off, vaporizing and him loosing all of his brake pedal. That is a scary thought with a big monster trailer connected behind you. Maybe a good reason he decided to swap for the brake work. Easy fix for me. I knew exactly what the problem was. There are two main reasons for this. The phenolic pistons in those calipers can wear uneven on the face and also become swollen absorbing the brake fluid. This is from excessive heat and pressure. I dont buy rebuilt calipers. I only rebuild them. They are stupid simple to work on. Unless an original caliper is trashed out, it will be better than any rebuilt one you buy. The reason for this is because the caliper bodies are dipped in acid solution to remove rust and all contaminants. This actually removes a thin layer of material on all machined surfaces. Now there is nothing within spec anymore. The mounting area and groove for square cut oring are no longer holding tight tolerances. You can see the problem here. Multiply this every time a core comes in for a rebuild. The caliper rebuild kits are only a few bucks. Those plastic or phenolic pistons will get machined flat on the face and turn down the diameter about 0.005" smaller to what the correct size used to be. Except that would be a metric measurement not in inches. I could replace with new pistons, but this works just fine. Been doing this not too many years after Chrysler started using plastic pistons in vehicles. That dates back a long time. Many years before I was even old enough to drive a car. But I already knew how to use a lathe back then. Lot of things I could fix for my bicycle. Not much difference in how you cut pistons or seat posts. When I was a kid, a neighbor had this same problem on his big monster Chrysler New Yorker. Got tired of paying for the experts to fix the ongoing troubles. It was his idea to machine the old pistons down. I just happened to have a small 6 inch Craftsman lathe from my grandfather. Enrolled in junior high metal shop at the time did not hurt either. The one thing I did discover after the neighbor figured out a solution is he was the main problem to his troubles. I went for a test drive with him. This is when I noticed he rode the brakes all the time. He was a two foot driver. Even tho he resolved the locked up wheels and brake pedal failure, the excessive wear of pads did not change. His other complaint was having to replace the tail light bulbs all the time. He concluded the car company was using inferior materials and making excessive profits on replacment parts.His next vehicle was not going to be a Chrysler product. So when the old man mentioned brake troubles on his Super Duty, I tried to explain what the problem was. He just waved me off and did not care. Only that he would be more than happy to trench a section of my property if those brakes were repaired and no more loosing the brake pedal. His heart cant take another offroad excursion like the last one. With all that hard work done it was easy enough to lay these down and connect together. The first straight run are set in place. To seal between the joints of each section, there are some installation kits that did arrive with them. Nothing more than strips of tar. I layed down a bunch of small gravel that looks more like some type of chips. The concrete blocks move easy enough over the stuff. A while back I picked up a chain hoist at a swap meet for $20. I cant believe it didnt need any work done to fix before I got to use it. That is a first for me. I buy stuff on the cheap, knowing it will have to be repaired before it is functional again. I put heavy I-beams across the open ends of these concrete boxes that need to be pulled together. Then connect with chains. A lot of cranking on the chain hoist for a few inches of movement, but they slowly slide and connect together. Lots of time to get the first two mated up, but the next one is easier. This also scrapes the ground flat and makes the rest of them not so much of a headache. But I have to dig out between the boxes as they come together. All that loose rock is being pushed up and will keep thie from joining. The last few inches, I trench out underneath to hollow it out. Then a perfect fit as they butt together. I watched the old mans monster size Case track loader drive over the top of these after they got set in place and covered over. I feel the brake repair as trade for the work was more than worth the effort for the amount of labor I got in return. Right now I have three runs already buried. They make the shape of a T. I may try to add two more at an angle on both sides of the long run. Or not. Things are getting a bit more complicated than I was expecting. But if that one major something happens too soon, be it economy collapsing or terrorist attacks, like so many people are predicting, I want to have just as much of these buried as possible. Then worry about connecting them in the future. Here is what comes with the boxes. Nothing but strips of tar that get squeezed in between the joints. Just peel back the paper and lay the strips on the stepped edges. I am not impressed. I guess it is not so important about making the joint water tight. I have hopes that with application of additional materials, the joints may be better sealed. Decided to order a few 5 gallon buckets of Flex Seal paste. In grey of course to sort of match the color of concrete. This gets heavily applied all around before any leaks occur. Or before the next big rain. Oh thats right, this stuff even works under water. What was I so worried about? One thing I thought about would have been very smart is using these concrete boxes for a foundation under my little rusty cabin in the woods. Nine of them buried together would make the perfect basement or anything else I wanted to have underground. Maybe even a shooting range, how cool. I may try to bury one off to the side. Then a trap door from inside the cabin that I can crawl down there. When first starting to build my rusty cabin, someone asked if I was going to put a trap door somewhere for a quick escape route. Then maybe tie it to a network of tunnels. I think he was being totally serious. Most people have no idea how much time and effort it takes just to build a small cabin by yourself. As in no one else offering a hand. No machinery to use either. Simple hand tools and a whole lot of patience. Another suggestion was layering A500 steel plate around all of the windows so I could safely shoot at people trying to to take my place over. I had barely even broken ground then. My realistic goal was build a place to live. Not some pipe dream from Fallout4. Unfortunately all of this concrete was not available from Amazon when I started working on the cabin some years ago. My only focus at that time was to build a place to live that is all paid for and not a heavy burden to keep up or pay rent to the tax man just to live there. I dont see how anyone can afford to buy a house these days. Land has gotten so expensive every place that is livable. You have to be rich to even cover a decent down payment. Who wants to own land they dont own? I would not have built my cabin on land that was still owned by a bank holding the note. That is a very bad thing. So what if you are half paid for when the economy tanks or shtf. The bank decides to foreclose on your property. Guess you should have read the extra extra fine print. With all of the doom and gloom, I am trying to stay ahead of the game preparing where and how best I can. With all of those short term predictions that could easily come true, what else should you be doing right now but attempting to ready yourself for the inevitable. What happens if when you get layed off from work? If any of those predictions you read about are even remotely close to becoming reality, you are screwed. Forget Social Security payments, no more government retirement is coming in the mail. Oh thats OK, you have that big 401K. It was way on up there the last time you checked. Didnt a lot of people already loose theirs once before? You are out there on your own and no reliable income. Now what? Yea thats right, you diversified your portfolio like recommend by all of those expert financial planners on TV and radio. Added in all that gold. Hope you bought the real stuff and have it in your hands. But who is going to trade you when there is no more food to barter for? Whats that? One ounce of gold for a loaf of bread? Does it happen to come pre sliced? Hopefully more to come. I will get some inside pics when I remember to bring a light. Sort of dark down that long corridor now that it is closed off. A lot of overcast lately so not much sun shining down to help out. Stay tuned.
