BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

If you’ve been around Facebook lately, you’ve probably seen my “Note” about being busier than a one-legged cat in a paper kicking contest… wait… that’s… hmmm… Dammit. Someone must have spilled my metaphors and just tossed ’em all back into the box all willy-nilly and they’re mixed up…

(SIGH)

Well, no use spilling my tail over chasing a cry.

So, anyway… I’m full boated. Just way too much going on in one place, at one time. Therefore, today’s blog is more or less one of those CBS Sunday Morning, “We’ll leave you with…” sort of interludes. If you don’t watch CBS Sunday Morning, basically their sign-off for the show is that tag line, followed by some video of something, usually serene.

In my case, however, I’m going to leave you with some pictures of my Friday, a few captions, and an advertisement at the end. (Hey, THEY always go directly into a commercial, why can’t I?)

Jack-hammering out the section of walkway alongside Hell House. The sewer pipe for the West end of the house comes out right around the middle of the window, about 5 feet below ground.

Concrete pad gone. Pictured here is one of the two holes in the ground that were revealed beneath it. Because of the pressure on the pipe and the fact that it washed out, it literally sluiced away earth and clay, creating these two chasms that went all the way down to the broken pipe. We dubbed them The Grand Canyon and The Mariana Trench.

Don’t let appearances deceive you. That clay pipe only looks intact. The sweep (turn) is broken at both ends, the 2 foot section near the bottom of the picture is shattered underneath, and where Scuba Steve is standing there’s another two foot section of pipe. However, it is another 8 to 10 inches down because The Grand Canyon had washed out beneath it, so it had broken off at each end and simply dropped to the floor of said canyon. This, of course, resulted in the poo, etc, pouring out of the cast iron pipe to fill the void. It was, to say the least, a might stinky. Good thing it was cold (38 and windy) that day. If it had been July, August, or even September we probably would have needed respirators.

We had a piece of the high grade PVC on hand from installing the drainage system at Hell House a little over a year ago. A trip to the commercial plumbing supplier garnered us a “boot” to go from Cast Iron to PVC, and then another “boot” designed to connect PVC to Clay pipe. Here we have Scuba Steve inspecting his handiwork in search of leaks while we were doing a pressure test. Once it passed, we back filled with pea gravel and all of the dirt. A replacement concrete pad will have to wait until spring or summer next year.

There you have my Friday. The joys of maintaining inherited rental property. All I can say is, DON’T DO IT! Have rental property, that is. The headaches aren’t worth it, in my opinion.

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That’s it from Merp Central for now. I have a ton of stuff yet to do, not the least of which is finish a writing project that is due soon! :-O

More to come…

Murv

The continuing saga of inherited rental property which sucks the very life from you…

For more background on the story, see Week 1 entry HERE.

And so, since I am exhausted, AND I’m already into the week 3 at Hell House, here are some pics with short explanations…

Monday – We started week 2 with knocking out a section of foundation where a crack had formed. Fortunately, it was for the most part superficial. On the left is a picture of Scuba Steve, my contractor buddy, hammer drilling so we can set rebar to pin the repair concrete to the foundation proper.

After planting the rebar into the holes, Scuba went to the “Happy Van” as we like to call it, pulled out some plywood, and anchored it to the foundation to build a form.

Then we mixed up a bunch of concrete, as if we hadn’t been mixing enough of that already for the stairs and such.

Here on the right is a picture of the concrete poured in place with plywood forms anchored in place.

We literally created a chute from a piece of cardboard so that we could pour the wet concrete directly in behind the form.

Once the soupier mix had started to set up, we took a slightly drier version of it and troweled in along the top edge of the form.

When we pulled the plywood off the foundation the next day, other than a slight color variation, you’d almost never even know there had been a crack there.

Monday – Tuesday – Wednesday: In addition to the front sump and back sump, the basement had a low spot issue. This meant it was necessary for us to jackhammer a trench into the floor in order to install a secondary floor drain. The trench was a bit over 25 feet long and terminated at the original floor drain so we could tie in.

You can see the standing water around the old water heater and the base of the furnace. When the basement flooded it completely destroyed the water heater, however the workings of the furnace were up and out of harm’s way, fortunately for us.

Scuba with the jackhammer. He ended up with several bruises AND a huge blister on his hand after two weeks of driving this thing.

The blue thing around his head is one of the coolest inventions of all time. When we were doing all of this it was fairly hot and we were sweating like the proverbial stuck pigs. The blue thing is a sponge on a rubberband. It works even better than your average headband at keeping the sweat out of your eyes. Scuba happened to have an entire bag of them and he gave me a few. I now swear by them when it comes to any work where I’ll be doing some sweating.

And, here we have the Grand Canyon…

After jackhammering and sledghammering, we had to dig the trench down to the proper depth for the pipes and the trap on the floor drain, which is why you see piles of dirt everywhere. Scuba is doing the Scuba Steve dance in the background…

I took this picture shortly after we finished the digging and had laid out all of the PVC pipes and fittings along the side of the trench for a dry fit. Fortunately, the dry fit was a success and we were able to glue it and start back filling very quickly.

The new secondary floor drain…

Ain’t it purdy?

We positioned this in the low spot near the furnace and hot water heater. Prior to this it had been necessary to run the condensation drain hose from the Air Conditioner across the floor to the center of the basement so that it could empty into the main floor drain.

Now, instead of having something to trip over, the drain hose is only a few feet long and resides in the back storage area of the basement.

Sometimes it’s the little things…

The tie in to the main…

When we originally tore out the floor, we had intended to tie in to the drain for the bar sink, however when we arrived at that point we discovered a bit of a problem, that being a footing for one of the structural piers. Therefore we had to continue several more feet to the main line.

The second line is from the aforementioned sink that used to be in the kitchenette prior to the basement flood requiring a total gut.

We left it intact complete with vent pipe, but capped it off. That way if the basement is ever redone, the plumbing is already installed.

The trench 14 bags of concrete later…

As with the pad, stairs, and foundation, we mixed and poured all of the concrete by hand using a wheelbarrow. You can’t really see it in this picture, but there is also a form with a square pad poured where the old water heater used to reside (it is moved in this pic.) The pad is where the new water heater has a perch now.

All told, between the stairs, pads, foundation, and the trench, Scuba and I (and Duane) poured something on the order of 32 bags of concrete, all mixed by hand.

Thursday – Friday: These two days saw the installation of the new hot water heater, which included an enormous amount of plumbing since the old copper was too small to meet code and specs. I didn’t photograph any of the pipe cutting, joint sweating, etc. However, it took two days to redo the plumbing, gas pipes, and venting for the water heater and furnace. Just so we have something to look at, here is the new hot water heater sitting pretty on the nice, raised pad I mentioned earlier.

All of the venting is shiny and new. When we were carrying it in, Scuba had slipped several of the fittings onto my arms. Before we ever reached the back door we had both broken into a chorus of, “Oz never did give nothin’ to the Tin Man…” Yeah, I know. We aren’t right in the head. But, we know that so it’s all good.

And, of course, each day at 5:00 PM, it was “Beer Thirty”, whereupon we would take a break for a can or two of the brew…

Scuba Steve

Swervin’ Murvin’

And finally, when Saturday rolled around, it was time to paint. All of our friends showed up to slop antique white on the upstairs walls that were ready for paint. As promised, here is a picture of The Evil Redhead on stilts, doing the cut in work in one of the back bedrooms.

The Giantess Evil Kat

This brings us to Week 3 at Hell House, and hopefully the last hell week since the tenants should be moving in this coming weekend. For a taste of just one of the things I had to tackle, courtesy of the former tenant…

More to come…

Murv