A day of waste disposal triumphs!

Dear family, friends, and others,

I had a backhoe to play with on the property today. Most of the rest of the trash was moved into the dumpster. A huge pile of bottles, cans and other debris from the former owner's "burn pile" disappeared there as well. It's amazing what you can do with one of those little machines...

A vast number of thistle plants were laid waste by the backhoe as I made trips around the property, some were over eight feet tall! I felt like I was driving through darkest Africa with that bucket in front of me, pushing down the weeds before me as I thundered through some "not yet mowed" parts of the property.

The Lord worked out a wonderful timing series today too. About mid-morning my friend Tim called and asked for help with his basement that had flooded. I went over with my little pump and we worked a while, then I came back to Walnut Hill to get a shop vac and assorted other tools. While I was there it occured to me that I needed to uncover the septic today because the guy was supposed to come pump it at some point. I knew where the tank was, but wasn't sure where the access hole was, so I ended up scraping the dirt off most of the tank before I found it. Now I know that from the SE corner of the house it's 39' due south, then 3' due west and dig. Buried treasure, of a sort. Anyway, I'd just uncovered the access hole when my cell phone rang and the septic guy said he was coming down my road and could he come by now. Worked out perfectly. He was in and out in about 20 minutes. He said the tank is old fashioned (c. 1949 with the house, probably) and will have to be replaced at some point in the future as they tighten regulations. (I figured as much.) But for now we're good to go, we made it under the deadline of July 1.

It took longer to cover up the septic than it did to uncover it. (Capt. Murphy came to call.) There had been a depression in the ground above the septic before, and I wanted to replace the dirt I'd removed and add to it while I had the backhoe there. So up the hill I went with the backhoe to a dirt pile I'd found. (An old 4wheeler jump.) But the rocks on the path down the hill were so bad that I had to put about eight buckets full of dirt on top of them so the machine wouldn't tip over coming down with the _two_ buckets I needed for the septic hole. So it took me about 90 minutes to do a 10 minute job. Go figure... :)

Dinner with Tim and his wife was pleasant to relax and unwind with good company at the end of the day. The water was receeding in his basement and the shop vac no longer needed. But I had brought a broom/squeegee combo that turned out to be just the ticket for corraling the final dribs and drabs.

Between removing the "burn pile," dumping much more trash I'd picked up, helping a bit with Tim's basement and getting the septic taken care of, it was a productive day.

I'll probably work with the machine a bit in the morning, filling the odd hole around the place with dirt before they come to take it away. It needs a good pressure wash at the moment and I don't have one... yet. First I need to get a new pump hooked up to the well so I have running water. Probably Wednesday or Thursday I'll tackle that chore. Then we'll see how much pressure I have and whether it'll do the job.

With all the rain, my "almost dry pool" is now about six to eight inches deep again. I'll need to pump it out and start over. We needed the rain, the ground was/is very dry, but it's a pain to have to repeat a chore.

Thanks for reading. More updates as we make more progress,

Doug

Workday! Saturday, June 17, 2006

Today's "I'd like to know" section:

-If anyone has found a good method/tool for cutting one sidewall out of a tire so it makes a large shallow planting bed, let me know. There's got to be a way to do this that doesn't involve $70,000 machines.

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On Saturday morning some friends from church came over and worked like beavers until very late in the day. I had a long list of tasks I had thought up: clear brush, weed, carry out garbage, etc and we accomplished ALL of them as well as some others we dreamed up together.

Among the things we did:

-Took all the bags of filthy clothes from the house to the dumpster.

-Moved all the "left behind" furniture from the house to the barn/dumpster.

-Moved three big "sidelight" door panels (that had been left behind) from the house to the barn.

-Removed the bagged debris from the upstairs of the barn so it's ready to have all it's rat droppings and broken glass vacuumed up. (Yuch!)

-Moved the stack of firewood from the driveway to the chicken coop

-Trimmed the hedge alongside the barn

-Cleaned up around the "burn pile" at the back of the fenced yard. We burned a lot of brush and junk up. (Hope to rent a backhoe later this week to get the residue into the dumpster.)

{I am in love with the local hardware store. They are friendly, knowledgeable and rent all sorts of neat equipment very reasonably. I'm not going to the Big Box store if I can help it. These guys are GREAT!}

-Moved all the tires we could find into piles. Those with steel rims to be trucked somewhere and derimmed, those without rims to be used next year for growing sweet potatoes! (I can never find the kind of sweet potatoes that I really like. Now I have a chance to grow them!)

-Cleaned out the chicken coop of it's "mouse hotel" couch and other assorted debris. We left the push mower cum car tire, lawn chair and parasol as a conversation piece. Only a picture will adequately do justice to this contraption. I have no idea what it is or is for... :)

-A family took on the mission of cleaning all the weeds out from around the pool deck. They worked VERY hard in the hot sun and had it done in no time!

-Last thing of the day we removed the first section of paneling from the living room and saw what was behind it. Nothing but furring strips and concrete block. Zero insulation. Confirms what I'd expected and firms my resolve to make sure this house is made very energy efficient. We might lose some floor space but it'll be worth it, IMHO.

Notes on the pool:

The pool liner is probably going to have to be replaced, now that it's drained. It may serve another season or two, with lots of manhours of labor to dig out the five years of accumulated leaves and whatever else didn't manage to crawl out of the pool...

But then we'll be right back to replacing it, so I'm going to see about just buying a new one from the git go and be done with it. If I have the backhoe there this week I can probably bundle the whole thing up and lift the liner out with the backhoe arm. We'll see. There's probably several hundred pounds of putrifying dead leaves left in the pool. Yuch. Might as well try to work smart, not hard.

Good news- the filter and pump appear to be intact and are the exact same sort as some friends have, so they can teach me how to operate it. The decking needs a good scrub and power wash with clorox, but other than that appears to be totally sturdy and intact. It sits in the direct noonday sun, so some carpeting on the deck will help to keep feet from blistering on it. Whew that thing gets hot!

Someday I want to build a solar heater for it and run the filter water through it. It certainly has a lot of energy falling on it, might as well harness it!

That's all I can think to report for Saturday. It was a wonderful day with good friends who really helped buoy my spirits about the task in front of me.

I'm sure there will be other days of work ahead but the bulk of the "clean up" seems like it's now behind us. Hurrah!

I've got an album of photos I've started to post online at this link:

http://community.webshots.com/user/Stickbug54


Doug

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My First Blog

This is a "first blog" attempt to record the progress of fixing up our "new" old house, which I've named Walnut Hill. I chose that name for the stunningly simple reason that it has a hill on the property which has a lot of walnut trees on it. :) The house I grew up in was called Hickory Hill so it has a certain nostaligic flavor for me too.

Today I arrived around 8:30 AM to help the rolloff dumpster guy place the dumpster on the flat ground near the barn, near the largest trash pile left by the former owners.

After hauling all that into the dumpter, or stacking old tires alongside it..., I cut down overgrown weeds all around the pool. Yesterday I disassembled, cleaned and reassembled the power outlet by the pool and this morning I started the little pump going right away. It's not fast so I was thinking this could take days to drain.

(Earlier this week I found a dead squirrel floating in the pool, which has not been touched in 5 years according to neighbors. Therefore I decided to go with the "replace the water" not the "clean up the water" method of getting the pool usable. Turned out to be a good idea, keep reading...)

I cleared away overgrown privet hedge near the south entrance to the barn, then began cleaning out the room just inside there. I hauled off about 8 wheelbarrow loads of junk and dirt and debris, took the top off the old chest freezer. Have to find a way to get rid of it at some point... can't go in the dumpster they say.

Hauled away all the debris piled by the north door of the barn that I'd tossed out of the upstairs (hayloft). Began to pick at the things inside that doorway. Took away the pink Barbie Lamborghini. Sits atop the pile in the dumpster like a trophy...

While I was taking a lunch break about 2PM I visited the local hardware store. Older model store, not a Home Depot type place. Friendly staff, LOTS of the sort of things I'll be needing, good quality stuff. Anyway, they have a rental business too, and I ended up renting a 72GPM submersible pump which drained the pool to within a few inches of dry in less than four hours. The pool is 25' diameter by about 4' deep. I haven't worked out the volume yet, but it was a lot, I'm sure. Tomorrow I'm going to start shoveling out the five years worth of leaves matted on the bottom and see what I can do to make sure the liner is in good shape. Found a dead squirrel decomposing on the bottom of the pool as the bottom came into view. (Water was very cloudy and you could only see down a few inches.) Thought about naming the pool the "Floating Squirrel Swim Club" in honor of these two fallen furry critters.

{Note to the future, find a way that will give squirrels a way to climb out if they fall in.}

For all the hard work today there seems to be a decent amount of progress made.

Yesterday I priced a new water pump at around $250, so hopefully we can get that up and running soon. It'd be nice to have a hose handy when we start to burning the brush piles that are growing around the place.

I'll try to figure out how to insert some pictures in here as time goes on.

Off to bed,

Doug