Teamwork

Have you ever noticed how a road crew works?

There's always one guy with a shovel who's actually in the hole digging. The rest of the guys stand around watching and probably making raunchy comments about the digger's style. Everyone has an opinion on who should be in the hole and how it should be dug, but nobody wants to do the actual digging. It's rather amazing to me that somehow the hole always manages to get dug despite the workers. Why do I have these photos?

Last week AT&T installed a fiber optic line through the neighborhood. They installed it right through my sewer connection. Found out when I did the laundry Sunday and the basement drains barfed up unmentionable stuff.

I want to divorce Murphy. He's ruled this house way too long.

Down the Foundation and Into the Basement

I think there's a curse on the end of July.

We finished breakfast at the picnic table this morning and the Engineer went to the basement to gather tools for his day's activities. He came pounding back up the stairs shouting, "The basement's flooding!"

My mouth said, "Not again!" You don't want to know what I said inside, it would singe the skin right off of you.

Fortunately (yeah, right) we haven't gotten half way through the repairs on the basement from last summer's flooding, so there was no carpet on the floor to be ruined.

Late last July, the sprinkler system of our behind neighbor up the hill broke at the junction box and ran all day flooding our basement. This time it was his next door neighbor whose sprinkler broke. When I went around the block to try to find out what was going on, I just followed the stream in the gutter to the geyser in the neighbor's front yard.

The Engineer had claimed that my raised beds would cause our basement to flood, but I think they helped in this case by absorbing enough water that the fill was sodden.

Months ago, the Engineer in his worry dug a trench behind the raised beds that spreads out towards the sides of the house and put down french drains then pea gravel. The water didn't get into the back of the house, it mostly flowed around to the side. Looks like we will have to spread those drainage ditch wings farther and do a little grading.

Sure wish the flooding had been from a big rainstorm instead of the neighbor's sprinkler system. Then it would have done some good as well as some damage.