A buddy of mine ran into the exact same thing with a story about a lady who ran a food truck. He spent two weeks reading up on health code rules in three different states and never wrote a single page of the actual story. What finally got him out of it was giving himself a rule, if the detail does not change how the character feels or what happens next, it does not go in the draft. He also started writing the made up version first and only looking stuff up later if a reader would truly notice. Funny thing is, most readers will not know or care what permit a guy needs to strip a roof. Your gut was right when you skipped it. The prompt works for you, not the other way around, and you can always go back and add real details once the story stands on its own.

Man I feel you on the soft dirt thing. I ran steel pads for years and watched them disappear in wet ground down in Tucson more than once. Switched to composite about two years ago on my 35 ton and the sinking stopped, but the real win was my back not killing me at the end of a long day. Only thing I miss is how cheap it was to just toss a beat up steel pad and grab another one. Composite gets chewed up if you drag it across gravel, so you gotta be a little nicer to them. But going back? No way.