Sumac and Thistles and Burdock, Oh My!

There is no Yellow Brick Road to house renovation, but at least there are no Lions, Tiger or Bears roaming the grounds. Weeds are as close as I get, so far.

About a week ago I sprayed a bunch of the aforementioned weeds with a double strength Roundup. Slowly they are withering. Tough weeds. The area north of the barn that has been so infested with them seems to be showing improvement. It will be nice if I can get that under control and my neighbor won't have that sumac stinking up her house.

The pool is still not useable, needs more of something to clear up the water. A trip to the pool store is in order for Monday. As near as I can tell the bottom is slowly appearing, most of the leaves are out and as soon as the water clears up and the deck is scrubbed down, we'll be ready to swim.

Sledgehammers were procured since I last wrote so the upstairs demolition is almost done. There are still two doorways to open up and then we're done busting up stuff. I'm waiting for delivery of some plastic barrels before trying to remove the debris. Much more efficient than trying to bag it and haul out the bags.

The repriming of the well turned into a huge task. I put over 200 gallons down the well over more than a weeks's time and it just barely filled it enough to fire the pump back up. Once it got running again, I let the hose run for about four hours, at a reduced rate, to bring the pool level up. And I ran it dry again. But this time I caught it in time. So I waited two days and tried it again and with a few slurps and spits reprimed itself.

On the first round of fillings I dumped a bottle of Chlorox down there to try to kill off any nasties that crept in. We'll see if that worked. I don't think the Chlorox permeated very far though because you could sure smell it when it came back up. Good to have water pressure on site again, however.

The frost proof hydrant by the barn is now back in operation and doing a bang up job. I finally found the right fitting under the "black plastic piping" section of Lowes. I'd been scouring the regular plumbing area and going nuts to get a 3/4" barb fitting on one end and a 1" pipe thread on the other. When I wandered over to the black pipe section I about fell over when the right fitting was sitting right there and only $.34. When I finally got the fitting installed and began to refill the hole I put a wheel barrow full of gravel in the bottom, tamped that down and then put the dirt back on top. Since I had extra dirt and extra bricks laying around, I built a little "casing" above ground and topped it with brick to help hold the hydrant upright. Seems to have worked so far and provides a nice surface to set a bucket on if you're filling it under the hydrant.

Eloise still needs to have the jumper cables put to her, so to speak. It took forever to find a battery that would provide the amps needed and still fit in the case that was on the tractor. I finally found one and now just need to clean, prime and paint the case so I can reinstall the battery and crank her over. The good news is that most of the grass is mown and not growing very fast right now. But it would be nice to get some of those trees down before they start to drop their leaves soon.

This afternoon I've scheduled a trip to Lowes to pick up some heavy duty linoleum scrapers to see if we can remove the kitchen floor without damaging the wood floor beneath it. Once that floor's up, I can begin work on the PEX tubing which will go in under the floor. I have only about six inches between the floor joists and the top of the cistern. My plan at this point is to open holes in the floor on the east side of the kitchen, under where the cabinets will sit, and drill through the joists. Then I'll thread the tubing through, pulling a loop across under each joist pocket and attaching it on the far (west) wall. There is no way to get in there to attach the tubing up alongside the joists. My plan is to slide 2" thick sheets of insulation in from the side, in the basement, on top of 2x4 "sleepers" on the flat, then twist the sleepers to lift the insulation up close to the bottom of the joists. I'll have a perimeter lined with 2" rigid foam insulation board as well, so theoretically this should force the heat from the PEX upwards. It's not perfect, it won't be airtight on the perimeter, but at this point I don't see a better alternative given the limited access.

Once the kitchen floor has the heat run, we can cut the window and door openings we need, run the heat for the second floor and start building out that room.

Yesterday I spent the day moving dirt since it was such a lovely day to work outside. There were two places on the south and west side of the house I'd dumped dirt the last time I'd had a backhoe on the property. Those piles never got smoothed down and were an obstacle to mowing. Now they're shaped up properly and I can get to more of the property with Eloise once she's up and running.

Much more to write but that's all for now.

Onward and upward!

Doug