078 - Bury The Perimeter
Last year I mentioned a few times our robotic mower which I’ve dubbed “Billy” after the omnivore goat in a Tex Avery cartoon “Billy Boy.”
This is the time of year to pull Billy out of storage and start it up before the grass gets a chance to grow very much.
The new mower came with a spool of perimeter wire which I didn’t worry about as I already had a boundary wire around our property.
Well at some point over the winter it developed a break which needed to be fixed before the mower would work.
You may wonder how does one find a break in a perimeter wire? Wonder no more. It’s actually not too difficult. Find a small motor (I use our weed-eater) wrap one end of the perimeter wire around the spark plug wire, start it up, then walk the perimeter with a radio tuned to the lower end of the AM radio band. The static travels down the line but stops at the break, which you will hear in the radio.
Except it wasn’t working so well today. The signal was fading, not dropping, which means - I don’t know what that means, but I wasn’t able to fix it, so I decided it was time to bury a new line.
It didn't really sink in how exhausting it would be crawling on my hands and knees along the entire perimeter of my property spooling out wire and pounding it into the ground with stakes every few feet until I was about 2/5 of the way done and totally worn out. I thought perhaps I’d finish the job tomorrow, but a quick glance at the weather said it wasn’t really a good idea to not finish today so after a break I doggedly pressed on and finished the job.
I’m worn out. Luckily I should get a good 5 - 6 years out of the new perimeter before I have to do it again!
