Does pumping away 9,000 gallons of stormwater per hour make a difference, or is it instantly replaced via a hydrologic mechanism we don't understand? Are we bailing a boat with a hole in it?
It's really hard to tell. We're just starting to get to learn the dynamics of this property. Sarah tested the soil and it drains OK--not great, but not terrible. And in normal times its absorption rate keeps up with the rain. But after a few days of persistent and increasing precip, the ground gets saturated, then add 4 more inches in 48 hours and a shallow pond manifests in our backyard. It's kind of pretty! Better to have too much pure fresh water than not enough.
Even after the rain ceases, surface water from the surrounding hills will continue to trickle in, so part of the impetus to use the pump is to get ahead of this latency effect. But does it help? I ran it from 8am-5pm while it rained steadily all day. At times the standing water level dropped, then it rose again while the pump kept chugging away.
I had things to do indoors, but I was fascinated by how the water revealed the contours of the land. I kept walking around and around, half-consciously observing the flow but really learning on a more intuitive level through my legs. I hadn't intended it, but I logged 13,000 steps without leaving our .38 acre lot. And that doesn't account for when the phone was on a tripod shooting a timelapse of an engineering feat that made me feel proud as Moses. (Robert, that is.) I'm a genius! I just invented the drainage ditch!
Ha ha, I poke fun, but somehow I didn't realize the "obvious" until I'd internalized the topography and absorbed the water's dance. Was the answer all along a humble shovel?
Ultimately I think we'll manage the situation with grading and passive drainage, but until then the pump might come in handy in a pinch. However, I'm embarrassed by it. It's loud and polluting, so out of consideration for the neighbors I built a little bunker of shame to muffle the sound.
Framed with 2x4, clad on 3 sides with OSB and plywood scraps, one side is left open to accommodate the exhaust. It will also have a lid. It's going to be exposed to weather so I took time to paint it with an unopened can of purple that came with the house: That was sort of fun, but the best part of the day is when I get in bed and the kits put on a wrestling exhibition. Their affection for each other is touching and they're such good company while Sarah is away. And what is that new chirping sound Patchouli is making?
Way back at the end of April, I was up on the roof patching a leak when our resident river otter waddled through the side yard and across the road to Hood Canal. Not sure what it does in our backyard, but it's pretty boggy back there so it's not too surprising and we saw them come through at least three times this spring. The posted speed limit at this bend in North Shore Road is 20 mph but I see people routinely doing double that, so I vowed to make an OTTER XING sign to hopefully improve their chances of reaching the other side. I thought it would be quick and easy, but the scrap plywood I used was pretty rough, so I used a whole container of wood filler to smooth it out. It took a couple of passes--fill, sand, repeat. I was hoping to find reflective paint, but this off-the-shelf oil-based yellow enamel seemed close enough. I bought gloss sunburst yellow and flat black to enhance the contrast. Enamel is sticky and it took a while to get even coverage, applied with a foam b...
Twenty-five years before The Housegleaners blog--and well before blogs even existed--I started photo journaling online with Picture of the Day , which continues to grow and creep forward like a glacier with the weight of half a lifetime behind it. Things were on hold here for a week or so as I laid in bed getting over My First Covid ™️ . Right before that happened, I closed the book on this trilogy, an epic saga of discovery, disappointment, and ultimate triumph. Soon to be a major motion picture! (((Click images to visit original pages with extra photo links; best viewed on laptop.)))
After spending most of the past two weeks replacing inefficient aluminum windows and doing a lot of shuffling and reorganizing of materials to make space, today I shifted focus indoors to start getting a sense of what things might look like when we finally get around to finishes. Because so much of what we're doing at this stage is basic structural improvement, we've been resigned to living with the shoddy unfinished drywall look of a remodel that was abandoned midstream. But because we have guests coming, we thought it would be nice to tidy up the west-facing sitting room that's adjacent to the kitchen. The dangling cutout to the left of the heater was particularly irksome both as eyesore and source of drafts, so I started the day by taping and mudding it as well as the seams and corners of that wall (but not along the ceiling as that will be vaulted later). I also finally got around to cleaning up the rough edge from when I tore up the waterdamaged linoleum floor. I used ...
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