IT'S ON, LAWN!

Yesterday I seeded the entire back yard and the side yard (plus a few spots here and there in the front yard that were bare), spread starter fertilizer, then watered the ever-living hell out of it. So, if the "lush, full lawn" copy on the side of the Scott's bag isn't complete hyperbole, I should start seeing grass in a matter of days! Or maybe a week or two. Honestly, I didn't read the bag that closely. Then I threw it away. But! The point is: grass! And more importantly, no more digging or grading or mucking about with the lawn.

I hope.

###

#250 In which our hero imagines the prospect of a flood-free yard.

Since I last updated the yard situation, definite progress has been made. I was concerned about getting the grading right, since if the water didn’t run toward the newly-installed drain, then it’s not really going to help the flooding situation, y’know? Fortunately, Mother Nature helped out in this regard, by making this one of the rainiest summers this decade.

Seriously, the rain we’ve gotten is just stupid. Whenever I contemplated getting back there to rake, it would pour buckets, make the backyard an impassable quagmire. So I’d wait a couple days. Then, when it dried out a bit, I’d go back there and do what I could.

The problem is that there’s a lot of clay in my soil, so unless things were bone dry (which they haven’t been in about two months) it was like racking cookie dough.

But, the good news is that this constant rain give me plenty of opportunity to see if the water was moving like it should. And it wasn’t. So I shoveled and raked some more. Still got lots of standing water. Finally, The Scientist and I pretty much at the same time figured out that we weren’t going to get the water on the side of the house to drain all the way to the street. So we needed to add another drain.

Fortunately, since The Scientist was wise enough to insist on a clean-out near the downspout, I was able to simple cut that flush with the ground and add a drain cap to it. Instant drain! Works great, too.

Then, I realized that we were getting a lot of water that was getting stuck between the big drain in the back yard and the little drain up front. I made the command decision (against the wishes of The Scientist) to add yet another drain in this trouble spot.

Here’s the thing: I don’t ever want to screw around with this drainage bullshit ever again. And since the yard is torn up already, now’s the time to do something like add another drain. If I waited until the grass was restored, then I’d have to dig up turf and reseed and it would be an ever bigger pain in the ass. This is the argument I presented to my wife. She remained unconvinced.

Her fear was that since I was cutting into the professionally-laid pipe--and I am manifestly NOT a professional--I’d leave a gap that dirt and silt would get into and we’d have blocked pipes. A legitimate concern, I conceded.

So I carefully cut into the existing pipe, carefully added the drain pipe then, just for good measure, blasted the shit out of it with expanding waterproof insulation foam. I’m certain that it won’t leak.

And since I finished the second drain (we know have a total of five drains surrounding our house, in case you’re keeping count--and that doesn’t include the existing drains in the window wells, the French drains in the back and on the one side, nor all the perforated pipe now connecting everything together in the back yard) we haven’t had any real water problems!

There’s still some puddling, but I’m hopeful that will go away once I finish with the topsoil and actually get grass growing again.

Which brings you up to date.

There’s a truckload of topsoil sitting under a tarp on my driveway because, of course, about an hour after it was delivered it started raining and didn’t stop for two days.

But the forecast is for clear skies the next couple of days. My plan is to lay all that topsoil, then seed by the weekend, at the latest.

And hope it doesn’t all wash away before something, anything, takes root.

###

#248 In which our hero concludes his tale of backyard trouble, sort of.

It’s been more than a week since I last posted about the yard work. In that span, the job was completed. Well, sort of completed. And by “sort of” I mean “not even fucking close to being done.”

It makes me tired to even consider relating all the details, but basically, it went down like this: our contractor got to about this point in the project:



Then he told us that he was probably going to have to charge us more than he estimated. Mostly because it patio was a complete monster, and he hadn’t anticipated that. And we get it, The Scientist and I aren’t completely unsympathetic… the guy’s a small businessman trying to make a buck in an industry that probably cuts pretty close to the break-even point at the best of times.

But then it turns out that he wanted to charge us a LOT more than the estimate. And when he came calling for money the backyard wasn’t in much better shape than you see in the photo above. He explained that if you read the contract we signed, he agreed to spread enough topsoil to cover where the patio was, and where the sidewalk was. But, the problem is that he destroyed my entire backyard in the process of removing the patio. He spread about a 10x10’ section of topsoil, and apparently considered his work done. Which is bull-to-the-shit, of course.

Anyway, what it all boiled down to is if we wanted to go to war with this contractor… and the answer is no. The Scientist and I are both sick to death of all the water issues we’ve had with this house, and we don’t really have the time nor inclination to try to bully a contractor into half-assing another weekend worth of work on our property.

Soooo… that means that I need to go back there with rake and shovel and level out the dirt, then spread the remaining topsoil. Something I’m really not looking forward to. Not to mention grass seed, fertilizer, watering… ugh. Like I said, it makes me tired just thinking about it.

###

#247 In which our hero continues a woeful saga

So last weekend rolls around, and a decent-sized crew shows up at my house around 10am. This is very encouraging, and I'm hopeful that these five or six guys can blow out the rest of the work. And since it's just Saturday, we have an entire day left in the weekend. Good news all.

Since last they were here we had a little rain so, not surprisingly, there's some standing water in my backyard.


But nothing to get excited about. Especially not with half a dozen guys ready to work, right? Well, nearly as soon as they arrived, the majority of those guys, including the main contractor we're dealing with, got back into his truck and drove away. They left two young guys.

To be fair, I know next to nothing about landscaping or laying pipe (heh) and maybe it is a long, complicated process... but man, it sure doesn't seem that way. The trench had been cut, all that remained was to dump some gravel in the bottom, assemble the pipe, and back-fill it, right?

Well, these two dullards spent a long time standing around looking at the trench. Then spent even more time standing in the trench. I mean, it's only 30' or so of perforated pipe, and the pipe is sitting right there on my lawn, so stick it together in the hole already, huh?

At one point The Scientist wandered out to check on the progress. Seeing the two lackeys in the hole with mostly completed pipe she casually asked, "you're still going to put in that clean-out, right?" To which they both enthusiastically said yes. Half and hour later, I came out to find they down on their hands and knees in the trench with a hack saw taking out a chunk of the pipe. "Is that were the clear-out is going?" I asked. "Oh yeah," the head flunky answered. "It'll be great to have this here. Keep you from getting clogged." Right. I'm not a complete idiot, hack saw. I see you forgot about it and are retro-fitting it now.

After the nap The Scientist and I packed up the girls to get them out of the house. When we finally returned, the site was empty but, despite all earlier indications, it seems like a fair amount of work was done.

The big trench between the house and the neighbors was mostly filled in.


And there's the clean-out! A little high, maybe? The cap is only pressure-fitted on, I assume it will be cut down to a more reasonable length later. By me, if no-one else.


The giant pile of material on my front drive is finally dwindling.


These jokers did manage to trash the neighbor's flower bed a bit. Not horribly, but I was hoping to maintain good neighbor relations through the process.

But this was all done on Saturday, leaving all day Sunday to finish up. Hurrah!

Then... Sunday morning came. Then it was 10am. Then it was 11am. Then it was 11:30 and I finally called the guy. Are you coming over to my property today? My contractor apologized and said he wasn't trying to leave us high and dry, but he had a big job that had to get started today, and he was consumed with that... but he would send over a crew later. And are you still planning on finishing this up today? I hope to, he said.

By 3:30pm when still no-one had arrived, I got pissed. I called again, to basically say what the hell?

More apologies, more assurances that the work would get done. The five minute conversation went from "I'll try to get a crew out there still today" to "Well, I'm probably not going to be able to get anyone over there today" to "I'll definitely have someone over there tomorrow." He told me that the job he was on today was bigger than he anticipated, to which I reminded him that I didn't really give a shit about any job other than my own. "I'm trying," he replied.

So anyway, some work was done on Monday. There's lots to do yet, and starting today it looks like the rain in rolling in to stay for several days.

Hope these guys don't mind getting wet.

More to come.

###

#246 In which our hero continues the discussion of his backyard--or what's left of it.

When last we spoke, the contractor had muscled the cement patio and sidewalk out of the backyard and side of house, respectively. That took all of the first day, more or less. Since the guy doing the work had budgeted two hours to finish the removal, well, let's say I was concerned.

That afternoon as he was cleaning up he said he'd be back at "about the same time tomorrow." Of course, he originally told me he wanted to be there at 8:30am, and didn't show up until 9:30am.

The next day, he didn't get here until about 10:45am. Now, to be fair, I have to say it was Memorial Day weekend, so it was probably a nightmare to pick up equipment, etc. If I ever have big work like this done again, I won't schedule it over a holiday. This guy probably lost an hour trying to get one of these:


THE TRENCHER! He unloaded this angry-looking machine and carefully rolled it around into the back yard. After some staking of lines and measurement, the trencher started to dig, well, trenches.




After sufficient dirt was dug up and piled on the remains of my grass, he started to lay out the perforated pipe.



This is the stuff that's supposed to really cure the water problems. In addition to the pipe, we're having two large catch-basins installed (the one at the back of the property line is shown above). This pipe/basin combo is supposed to suck up all the surface water AND help the saturated land dry out faster. I hope they work. Because if they don't, the next step is to build an 8' levee all the way around my property.

And here's a photo of my wife pressing her boobs against the window.

The trenching and layout of pipe took the remainder of the weekend, including Monday. We also had a significant amount of material (gravel, dirt, topsoil) delivered to (read: dumped on) the driveway:

And that's pretty much where we're at. The contractor told us he thought he could bust out the entire project in a long weekend, but clearly he could not. Part of that was the surprisingly thick patio, and part of it was that he had trouble getting some of his crew to work on Memorial Day.

Something he didn't bother to tell us when he bid the job was that he has a regular Monday-Friday job. Which means he can't work on weekdays. Which would have been fine if he really did finish the job on Monday... but again, he did not. So all the crap you see above has been sitting in our driveway for the week.

I'm a little pissed about it, but his work up to this point has been solid. And he did come in at $2K less than the next highest bid. I guess you get what you pay for. But if I can save two grand and have to deal with not being able to get my car in the garage for a week, I can deal.

Now, there's talk about rain this weekend. If this guy can't or won't work in the rain... then that's another issue. He'll be back tomorrow. Can't wait to see what time he gets here.

To be continued.

###

#245 In which even more money is thrown into a pit specially designed to accept said money.

The latest round in improvements in the money pit that we call home began last weekend. The Scientist and I decided to just bite the bullet and hire a guy to do what needs to be done in the back yard.

The basement waterproofing system works just fine; but the new problem we have is that when it rains really hard the window wells fill with water and we get leaking around the glass. So, we hired a guy to pull out the broken cement patio, install drains, and grade and landscape the yard.

Here's the back yard before work began:


Here's another photo showing the big problem with the patio:



See how there's a good four inches of slab above ground near the camera, but back by the house it's sunk below the level of the ground? So much so that the former residents built a stupid little cement ramp to the sidewalk? Well, since the patio is angled back toward the house, all the rainwater beats against the foundation. Not good. It had to go.

These photos were taken moments before the landscaping guy showed up with this:


When we first had this guy out to look at the property, I was concerned that he would have to do all the work by hand. It's a really tight fit between my house and the neighbor's fence, and I didn't think he'd be able to get any heavy equipment back there. As it turns out, I was wrong:


Guy can drive some equipment, I'll give him that. He got right to work tearing up the slab, and for about 10 minutes it looked like he'd make short work of it:


Then, we ran into trouble.

This cement slab is apparently the king of all backyard cement patios. The landscaper said he'd never seen such a thick slab before. I guess most patios like this are thick on the edges, but much thinner in the middle. This slab was a solid four inches thick throughout, and reinforced with rebar.

This wouldn't have posed a huge problem, except that when the landscaper went to pick up the equipment from the rental place, the skid steer-mounted jackhammer he rented was broken.

He tried to muscle it with the Bobcat, but it quickly became apparent that the patio was going to win that fight. So he had to run over to Home Depot to get a hand-held jackhammer.


That did the trick. When they started jackhammering was about the time the girls and I went down for our naps (this might have been an issue for amateurs, but the girls and I are pro-level nappers). When we got back up, the back yard looked like this:


The accursed patio was now broken and defeated in my driveway:


The landscaper had scheduled two hours to remove this thing, and it took nearly all day. So we're already behind schedule and over budget. Good start to the project, huh? And the back yard's quite a mess:


Little did I realize just how bad it was going to get.

More to come.

###

NEW SPEW

As usual, I am going to blame my lack of posting on being busy at work. I could write in the evenings, of course; but the truth is that generally after writing all day, my motivation is low to sit down and write some more. But once we get the new computer set up (Hey! We got a new computer for Christmas!) maybe I’ll be a little more excited, considering that our current computer would lock up if you tried to do something demanding, like cut and paste in Word.

So, a quick update:

• More water in the basement, yah! As I’ve commented on before at length, this fucking money pit of a house drives me crazy. Last month when it was unseasonably warm we got a lot of rain. The basement waterproofing/sump pump system we put in worked great. But the backyard still flooded, and our attempts to divert the water after from the house worked a little too well… the water instead pooled up in the side yard, and filled the basement window wells. When that happened water started to seep in between the cracks in the windows. End result was The Scientist and I out at 11pm digging a trench from the side yard to the street to release the water. And it worked surprisingly well. I spent a long time in the back yard watching the flow of the water, and I’m pretty sure I understand how to contour the land so that the water flows where it should. This is a project (a BIG project) for the spring. Right now the snow and ice have returned, so we should be safe from flooding for a couple of months. *Crosses fingers*
• Lily hasn’t crapped her pants since the big blow-up. So that’s nice.
• I’ve been hacking and coughing for weeks; apparently the tail end of whatever ick I got over the holidays. I finally went to the doctor last Monday and he gave me antibiotics. He also told me that the weird little dry patch on my cheek probably isn’t cancer. So that’s one thing to stop worrying about.

That’s about it for now. I’d love to write about some of the frustrating and ridiculous things that have been going on at work… but I’m about 80% sure that some of my co-workers have discovered this site. So I’m not saying anything.

###

CHEAP SWEEP

There's a chimney sweep in my house!

When we bought this house three years ago, we asked the owners how recently they had the fireplace flue cleaned. "It's probably due," was the answer. Since this non-answer could have meant anything from "last year" to "never," I resolved to have it cleaned, and soon.

But... as this things go, we moved in the winter, and had many fires in the fireplace, and there was never any sign of any kind of problem, so I pretty much blew it off. The following year I called a guy, but he only worked weekdays, so I blew it off again.

Well, this year I got a bug up my ass about it and decided that I wouldn't burn any wood until it was cleaned properly. I talked to a guy down the street who said he had a small fire in his flue; which turned out to be not a big deal, but I've read about chimney fires where the fire department has to destroy to chimney to put it out. That is, if the entire house doesn't burn down first. And considering all the other BS that we've gone through with this house, I wouldn't be surprised to add "devastating chimney fire" to the list.

So, that's why there's a chimney sweep in my family room right now.

I find it incredibly charming that chimney sweep still exists in our modern day world as a profession. Not that this guy showed up in a top hat and bow tie and started singing while he worked (but how much would I have loved that? I would have payed extra, even), rather, he's here with an industrial-sized shopvac and a bunch of brushes on long poles. But, in that sense, I guess he's not so different from his processors.

Then again, judging from his business card, simply being a chimney sweep doesn't pay the bills. This guy lists "Air duct cleaning & sanitizing; video chimney scan; cleaning; caps; dampers; tuck pointing; masonry" among his services. I guess you need to pay the bills year-round.

It looks like he's going to do all his work from inside, and not climb out onto the roof. Which, I have to say, is a little disappointing. I mean, the #1 thing is that my chimney doesn't catch fire, but still... would a little theater be too much to ask?

###

SEED NEED

Quick update the home front.

We finally gave up on the landscape guy. Like I said, he was offering us a terrific price, but clearly we weren’t high on his list of priorities. He told us a couple times that he’d be out, and then he blew us off. The last time he said he’d be out “sometime next week” to level and seed the front yard--not surprisingly, he never showed. I wonder if contractors ever think, “boy, why do people have such low opinions of people in my line or work?” or do they just realize, “yep, we’re all douchebags.”

Anyway, The Scientist wanted to get some seed down before weeds started popping up, and I reluctantly agreed. I tried to level the yard as best as I could, but in my neck of the woods you dig deeper than two inches down and you start to hit hard clay. So there’s a noticeable hump in the middle of the yard which I really hate… but there’s not a lot we can do about it now.

We’ve also scaled back our plans for the back yard. While it still floods in heavy rain, the waterproofing/sump pump in the basement are doing a great job of keeping everything dry. We’re considering just hiring a handyman to tear out the cement patio slab in the back (it’s a mess) and haul it away. Then we’ll build a deck down the road.

So that’s it for now. Not a very interesting post…but there are interesting events coming up in the near future that promise to give me plenty of blog fodder. Stay tuned!

###

HARD YARD

An update on the state of the yard: there is no update.

The basement remains nice and dry, thanks to the waterproofing. However, this doesn't do anything for the horrible flooding in the back yard. The plan is to have additional drainage installed back there, and along one side of the house (where there are basement window wells below ground level with no drainage in them). We're also going to have the ugly cracked cement slab in the back removed and replaced, eventually, with a deck.

The Scientist is friends with a woman who's son happens to be a landscape contractor. We had him quote us a price for all the work above. Now, I don't know if he's being nice since my wife is friends with his mom, or maybe the guy just works cheap, but it's a really great price. Hundreds less than anyone else would quote us. Now if we could only get the fucker out here to do the work.

It's incrediably frustrating. After we accepted the quote, he stopped returning calls. He said he'd put us on his schedule, but we haven't heard from him in weeks. Our front yard remains a muddy mess, and I'm sure our neighbors would appreciate a little yard improvement. But, given the great price the guy is giving us, it's not worth it to say "hey, fuck that and fuck you if you can't bother to return a phone call" and find someone else. As much as I'd like to.

I have never had a good experience with a contractor. We had work done on the old house, and that guy tore up our front porch, then vanished for a month. We've had contractors just blow us off when we asked for quotes. I mean, we are basically going to these people and saying, "Hi! We'd like to give you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for your time and expertise. Would you like to take our money?" and they can't even return a call? Jesus! I'm mostly frustrated because I want all the bullshit water-related work to just be done. We've put better than $10 grand into this damn house, and it's all been related to waterproofing or water management on the property. There are plenty of other projects that we want to do (like getting rid of all the hideous wallpaper) that we haven't even started.

I just want people to do their jobs. That's it. But it seems that that is asking too much.

###

CELLAR HELLER epilogue

Actually, looking around the basement, there’s not much more to add, photo-wise. The battery back-up--and let me tell you, that is one big-honkin’ battery--has been installed, so that’s ready to go. The cement is drying. All our crap is still stacked up, waiting to be, well, not exactly organized, but rather dispersed around the basement.

It’s going to take about a week for the cement to cure completely, so I think I’m just not going to go down there until then. And I encouraged my wife to (not) do the same. Because, well, honestly, because The Scientist has lost her mind regarding the basement. But wait, one more thing about the work in the basement before I cover my wife’s madness.

As part of the process, an inspector from the city had to check up on the job mid-way through. Now, I pretty much hate every single person who is in the employ of my city. Except the firefighters, because they were very nice to us when we showed up at the firehouse one day for an impromptu field trip with the girls.

And when I say “my city,” I don’t mean Cleveland; at least, not Cleveland proper. We live in a suburb on the east side (the, ahem, better side, if I may). The government of this particular suburb apparently believes in iron first rule, judging from various ridiculous city laws. Like, for example, if you leave your trash can out on the tree lawn after trash pickup, you’re subject to a $150 fine. For leaving your cans out! Or how about this one… my driveway was in violation because a couple of the slabs sunk, leaving an unacceptable gap of one-half of one inch. The city informed me that I have to fit it, toot-sweet, or they’d fine me bigtime. Never mind that the STREET is full of potholes that far exceed a ½-inch in depth. That’s right, a few feet from where my ½-inch deathtrap lie, there’s holes of six inches. So I need to fix my driveway RIGHT NOW, which the city can occasionally drive around and slap some asphalt in the holes, which inevitably cracks and works itself out a month later.

But I digress.

So the city guy shows up--hmm. One more thing about this particular inspector. We’ve been talking with him since we had the sewer line replaced.

He looked at our basement, and saw the water problems we were having. He’s the guy who told The Scientist “Y’know, this is an engineering problem with your back yard. You shouldn’t be responsible for other people’s water,” setting up the false hope that the city would actually do something about this “engineering problem.” Which, of course, they did not.

And this fucker backpedaled like crazy on that issue when I talked to him. Just as I expected, he gave me the “there’s ten thousand houses in the city, and if we did something for your property we’d have to do something for everyone’s property” and “a lot of people have it much worse than you” and blah, blah, blah.

He poked around in the basement, and asked me what I thought. “Me?” I said. “I don’t know anything about this stuff. I’d rather hear what you think.” And then he went into a lecture about how “if inspectors like me had our way, home owners would never put in basement systems like this” and “well, the system works, but it’s far from the best solution” and so on. His bottom line was that the right way to fix the problem is to dig up the yard all the way around the house and install new footers.

To which my thought was, “Well, no shit, buster.” The Scientist and I investigated that option, and the sad truth is that while it’s the better solution, it’s also tens of thousands of dollars, opposed to the low thousands that we’re paying for the in-basement thing. When I told him as much, he was quick to add that oh yes, he knew, he used to be a general contractor and realizes that it’s much more expensive that way and people do what we’re doing because of financial reasons and again, the system does work and y’know what? If you understand why we’re doing this maybe save the fifteen minute lecture about how we’re doing it all wrong, huh?

Add to it this gem: The Scientist was adamant about having a clear-out on the far end of the pipe. The guy selling us the system said we really didn’t need it, but if we wanted one, then no problem. I tended to believe the waterproofing guy, but I asked the inspector about it anyway.

ME: So, do we need a clear-out valve on the far end of the system?
HOME INSPECTOR: If you want one, just tell them.
ME: Well, I’m asking, in your experience, do we need one?
HI: Tell them to put one in, it’s no big deal.

Christ! Just answer my question! I ended up having them put in two clear-outs, one on each end, just to be safe. Do we really need them? I have no clue. The home inspector did nothing to alleviate my animosity toward city workers.

Okay, now. My wife’s craziness.

The basement is covered in tile. It’s not especially nice tile, it’s an ugly gray and many of the tiles are worn and cracked. When we were talking about the job with the waterproofing guy, The Scientist asked him if the crew would remove one tile away from the wall, or two tiles? Or maybe three? So it would be a consistent number around the entire basement wall? Would they save the tiles and put them back after they were done?

Her concern being that the floor would look bad with missing tiles. My thinking, of course, is “Look bad? To whom? The nobody we ever invite down there?” No-one goes into the basement except The Scientist and myself, we don’t even allow the kids down there. So what does it matter?

Apparently, a lot. Now she wants to re-tile the entire thing once the cement is dry. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all about having a nice looking house, but I’d rather put my energy into improving the parts of our home that people actually see. And there’s no shortage of jobs upstairs, starting with the UGLY wallpaper in every room.

So, honey? I think it's dumb. Let’s focus on the rest of the house instead. Besides, even if the basement isn’t the most attractive part of the house, at least now it’s dry.

###

CELLAR HELLER DAY 3 1:50pm update

Aaaaand done! Last few photos later, right now I'm going to jump into bed and get as much nappin' in as I can before the girls wake up.

###

CELLAR HELLER DAY 3 1:20 update

As the rest of the family naps, I'm still up waiting for these guys to be done so I can pay them and, hopefully, get a bit of a nap in myself.

The lion's share is cemented, with only a bit around the sump itself to go.

Then it's just a matter of plugging the damn thing in, and waiting for the next hard rain. Which, being that winter has finally decided to come to Cleveland, probably won't be until Spring. It kinda sucks to have to wait months and months to see if this investment is going to work like it's supposed to... but then again, maybe I should be so anxious for water in the basement again.

###

CELLAR HELLER DAY 3 12:15pm update

The third and final day! It's been a little challenging to write updates with the entire family home... but The Scientist is wrangling the girls right now, giving me a second to update.

The usual crew (plus one extra guy) got here around 10am. They promptly started dragging in buckets of gravel and conveniently staging them right where I wanted to walk.

Before laying the gravel bed, they drilled "weep holes" in the blocks at ground level to release any standing water. Surprisingly, there wasn't much. Then, after the final connections were made in the pipe (including the clear-out fittings) everything was buried in gravel.


That's double-washed #57 river rock, in case you're wondering.

Next comes the hook-up of the battery back-up for the pump, and a final layer of cement on everything. Couple more hours, and we should be high and dry for good.

###

CELLAR HELLER PART 2 3:01pm update

Once agian, work is done for the day. Apparently the gravel lot is closed on Saturdays, so they need to get out there today and pick up what they'll need for tomorrow to finish up. Or so they tell me, I dunno. Maybe they're going to Wendys to hang out and eat fries until 5.

I guess I don't really care, because a lot of work was done today. All the pipe is in, and the sump pump is ready to go as well.

They did a test run on the pump, and it made short work of the foot of water that was in there.

Tomorrow it's laying down gravel and cementing over... about an hour's worth of work, Eddie tells me. Cool. I'll be glad to be done with this damn thing.

###

CELLAR HELLER DAY 2 12:25pm update

Went out to run some errands and came back to find that the crew has been busting ass! I'm really impressed by what's been done.

The trench is all dug and just needs to be cleared. And look at this!

We have sump pump! Or, some of it.

Oh the humanity! Full of water from the start. But soon enough that water will go...

Out this hole in the wall. It's already tied into the downspout system outside. And look at this:

They finally dug around the hot water tank. "I wondered how you were going to get around the hot water tank," I said to the guy. His reply: "Very carefully." Skilled with a jackhammer and funny, too!

It looks like they're going to get the pipe layed, or at least most of it, today. And I think the pump will be all set up, too; but maybe not wired to the electric yet. And Eddie tells me that he won't install the battery back-up until tomorrow.

Probably the worst part of all of this is second-guessing yourself. I mean, this is a pretty big operation going on in my basement... but is all the fuss and bother really necessary? I ran into my neighbor as I was coming back, and he asked me what was going on. I told him, and he kinda gave me the fish-eye, and told me how he had put a ditch in his backyard to deal with runoff. It felt like he was saying, "Dude, really? You need all that bullshit? I dug a ditch, solved my problem. Aren't you going a little overboard?"

And, y'know, maybe we are. We're going to have additional drainage put into the backyard, and grade the yard away from the house. Would that have solved the problem by itself? Maybe. We've never know. But, all you can do is tell yourself that you're solving the problem... maybe we're over-solving the problem, but better that then have to come back in a year and dig up the lawn again.

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CELLAR HELLER DAY 2 10:50am update

Y'know my plan of hanging out in the office, with heater and computer on hand? That sounded really good, until this started:

Jackhammer (.wav)
They're doing something around the chimney stack, and the sound is coming right up and assulting my eardrums. Fuck this, I gotta get out of here for awhile.

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CELLAR HELLAR DAY 2 9:59am update

The basement guys just got here. An hour later than yesterday. This after Eddie told me he was behind schedule yesterday. Hmm... maybe not the best sign.

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CELLAR HELLER DAY 2

Aaaand we're back! Well, the basement guys aren't back yet, but should be here shortly. All in all, from the homeowners viewpoint, yesterday wasn't so bad. The noise wasn't horrible, and the mess was pretty much contained in the basement and on the mats those guys put down. The worst part was the cold... we have the thermostat programmed to go down to 60 degrees during the day, but with the door wide open and the bucket-boys coming in and out, I'm sure it got much colder than that.

Today's plan is to hole-up in the office with a portable heater. More later.

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CELLAR HELLER 3:20pm update

I haven't exactly been keeping up with the hourly updates, have I? Well, see, I had a big breakfast, then I had to, um, take a nap. But it wasn't even a really satisfying nap, y'know? What with the front door wide open and three strangers in my house, I couldn't fall asleep properly. And then there was the jackhammering. But that ended soon enough, and the steady rhythm of one bucket-boy carrying two loads up the stair--tromp, tromp, tromp-- and handing them off to the second bucket-boy who shuffled over the plastic to the front door--scree, scree, scree--then dumped them into the back of the truck--ka-BASH!--was a rather soothing sign of progress. I dozed off a little.

I finally came back downstairs (after making sure there wasn't pillow lines on my face) to find them packing up! At 3pm! Doesn't anyone work a full day anymore?! But I jest. These poor bastards did some hard labor in my basement nearly all day, and it's freezing, t'boot. They were off to dump all the crap from my basement into some unsuspecting landfill.

Now, why are we doing this again?

Oh, right... you dig a big hole in the basement floor, and a short time later it's got half a foot of standing water in it. That's why.

According to the foreman (Eddie, remember) it's been tough going, too. He had hoped to have the entire trench dug today, and finish up tomorrow. That isn't happening. He says that the earth is full of broken cinder block, most likely cast-offs from when the house was being built. Meaning that instead of picks and shovels to clear the dirt (mud), it's back to the jackhammer. So more digging tomorrow, and finishing it up on Saturday.

More joy:

Hey, look! They did tunnel under with nary a crack in the drywall! Kudos! But what about the hot water tank? How did they deal with how close it is to the wall?

Apparently by saying, "Fuck it. We'll worry about that shit later."

So, that's it for today. More fun tomorrow.

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CELLAR HELLER 12:16pm update

I just went downstairs to poke around some more, since the crew left to get some lunch. Imagine my surprise when I found this:

Yeah, that's a pair of pants. I noticed that the bucket boys had taken off their sweatshirts, presumabably because carrying cement chunks is sweaty work... but who the hell took off their pants?!

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CELLAR HELLER 11:45am update

Went out to brunch with the paster of my church (that's a whole other blog entry) and came back to find this:

"Brute" indeed.

I'm really surprised to find how little there is between the bottom of the house and the earth. I always figured that there was a big, thick layer of cement down there... but it would seem that there's a couple of inches of concrete, then dirt.

The future home of our sump pump. That's the radon mitigation system pipe you see hanging above it. I really thought that the pipe went down a couple of feet, but apparently it ends only inches below the surface. This is what's keeping deadly gas out of the house?

There's three guys on the work crew... Eddie, the boss, plus two young guys. Eddie weilds the jackhammer, and those two other guys are stuck with humping big buckets of debris up the stairs.

I know nothing about running a jackhammer, but I kinda expected to see more progress. They've been all around the perimeter, but in places they've only cracked the floor, and haven't removed any of the concrete. Then again, I guess they've only been at it for two hours.

The crew just left for lunch, undoubtedly to talk about the douchebag homeowner who keeps getting in the way to take photos.

More in an hour!

#196 In which our hero prepares for what is most likely going to be a long, loud afternoon.

Today's the day! Basement waterproofing day! While I am looking forward to the permanent absence of water in my basement, I don't expect the process to be much fun. But, to feed my never-ending love of Schadenfreude, I thought I'd post an hour-by-hour update of the project. Weee!

Currently, it's 9:12am, and I'm waiting for the construction guys to arrive. Here's what the basement looks like right now:

After much moving around of shit, the basement floors are clear, and ready to be destroyed.

The hot water tank is awfully close to the wall... I wonder how they're going to dig around that?

Here you can see the smallest glimpse of all the crap I've stacked up.

And finally, the finished part of the basement. The corner you see above isn't the outside corner of the basement, there's actually more basement on the other side of the drywall. The waterproofing guy assured me that it wouldn't be a problem to tunnel under the wall without disturbing it. Can't wait to see that.

UPDATE: At 9:15am, shortly after I finished uploading the above photos, I hear a knock at my door. It's "Eddie," the crew foreman. He has bad teeth and reeks of cigarette smoke... not a good sign.

And hey, what do you know? By 9:16am there's already a problem. We have a radon mitigation system installed in the house, and one of the pipes that keeps the deadly radioactive gas from killing my family is right where we wanted to install the sump pump (as seen in photo #3 above). Eddie mulls this over for awhile, surveys the outside of the house, then announces that he has to call his boss to figure out what the hell to do about it.

Apparently the answer is "don't worry about it." The radon system is essentially a pipe stuck in the ground with a fan on the other side, and having the pump right next to it doesn't cause any problems. These guys are the experts, I guess. But I'm less concerned about it since the pipe in question is only one of two in the basement.

It's now 9:43am and I just saw the jackhammer go down into the basement. It is a no-bullshit LARGE tool, clearly designed to inflict maximum damange to concrete.

Ah, it's 9:49am and the jackhammering has begun. Not as loud as I had feared, actually.

Stay tuned for the next update.

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BASEMENT DEBASEMENT

The Scientist gave me hell for not posting in a week… but man, I’ve been busy! And when I’m busy at work, I’m sorry to say that it's the Internet who suffers. Because writing at home? With the girls running around? Forget it.

I’m especially busy right now because I’m taking Thursday and Friday of this week off. A fun vacation getaway, you ask? Nope. We’re having the basement waterproofed, which will hopefully do away with our water problems forever.

We’re having one of those internal waterproofing systems installed. Basically, it works like this: a crew jackhammers a trough all around the inside of the basement walls, to a couple feet down. Then they lay perforated pipe, cover it with gravel, then re-cement overtop that. All this pipe runs to a sump pump, which will quietly chug away in the corner. The idea being that any water that tries to seep in from under the foundation (where our water has been coming from) hits the pipe first and is magically whisked away. Hey, here’s a photo of something similar.

Soooo… Thursday morning, bright and early, burly men with jackhammers are going to descend into my basement and, by all accounts, make an ungodly amount of noise. The guy who sold us the system said, “I’ll be honest with you, the first six hours are really rough.”

Speaking of which, here’s some unsolicited advice to sales guys worldwide: if you sell a product or service that isn’t widely known for it’s honest salesmen, like say, aluminum siding or basement waterproofing, it’s probably not the best approach to pepper your sales pitch with the phrase, “Well, I’ll be honest with you…”

Guy who sold us the system said that probably 12 times in the half hour we talked. I know it’s just a verbal tic, the equivalent to saying, “um” or “y’know” -- but it still bugged the hell out of me. Every time he said it I thought, “Oh, okay, now you’re being honest with me? Before, not so much?”

Anyway, I’ve been busting ass to get the basement cleaned up for the decimation that awaits it; moving boxes and shelves and various and sundry piles of crap away from the walls. I thought the basement was disorganized before, now it’s a disaster.

But, right now it’s dry. And after this weekend, it should stay that way.

I hope.

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