Finally, Another Update
Oct. 17th, 2022 08:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trickykittyI have to go back and see where I've left off any time I've posted. There's so much going on all the time now and I talk about different aspects to different people, I can't keep up with where I am, let alone where the story of my life is in relation to any particular person or group. I tell an aspect to 5 different people, but in two days' time I can't remember to whom I told it.
At least with DW there's a recorded history.
So apparently I can't use images I posted to Facebook for any length of time in a post here, as proven by broken links in my previous post. I'll eventually, maybe before the end of this century, get around to re-uploading those to my normal repository and fix the links, but it's a low priority thing.
85' of sewer was eventually replaced under the house - everything but the sewer in the yard. Afterwards, the roommate's toilet will sometimes gurgle when I'm taking a shower or we run laundry or the dishwasher. So my plumber friend D (literally, that's his name, short for Demetrius, but he goes by D, and don't you ever write it as Dee, because "that's a girl's name") came back out and put his camera down the line to discover a belly, so the water will sometimes backwash towards the house causing the air in the system up through the toilet p-trap which causes the gurgling. As long as that's all it's doing and not actually backing up into his shower like the belly near my bedroom did when we first discovered this mess, then we agreed to hold off a bit longer for that repair. He had to come back yesterday to look at the new toilets. They have Super-Duper Power Flush 5000s in them, and apparently the tank-to-bowl gasket was a little loose, so when Trey flushed his toilet a bit of water was spewing out the back since who knows when. Plumber friend tightened the bolts for both of our toilets, so hopefully that will be good.
They finished the contracted work on my pool, which was to drill out the cement capping off the drain and skimmer and then replace the plaster, tiles, and coping. A new motor to pull the water from the pool to the filter was installed, and the filters were replaced, and then we turned it on and saw just a hint of dirt clear out through the jets into the pool, but otherwise start moving the water around. And then water and shit-ton of water roaches started pouring out of a crack in the surround and yard at the far back end of the pool near the last jet, and another shit-ton of dirt started pouring into the pool from that last jet. We turned it off. There's an obvious break in the return line between the last and next to last jet holes. The family was able to enjoy semi-cool swimming water after a day of toiling in the backyard helping me work on it, but without the water moving, chemicals can only do so much.
The plan was to have someone come out to detect the leak and hopefully begin repairs on that. That person was out of town the week after the discovery. Supposedly he returned, but then the pool guy was flaky for week two. The weekend between week two and three saw my neighborhood experience a powerful thunderstorm cell that seems to have only affect the nearby area. That caused damage to the fence next to the pool equipment and dumped ANOTHER shit-ton of dirt, leaves, twigs, and small limbs into the pool so that it went from a pretty blue to immediately dark green/brown overnight - more on that storm in a minute. So a week (or was it two?) went by before we could get the fence propped up. And then this week the pool guy had a serious case of food poisoning and says he didn't eat anything between Sunday lunch and Friday lunch when he was finally able to hold down a little bit of food. At this point, I'm really frustrated with him. He's supposed to be by on Monday to check out the pool, and we'll determine if it needs to be drained completely again or not. Trey thinks the water is non-salvageable at this point. I have no brains left to think with, so while I purchased the pool guy-recommended shock and acid, after sending him a picture of how it looks he said to hold off until he looks at it Monday. More than anything, I'm pissed that the pristine, brand new plaster and tiles are already dirty beyond belief with algae and dirt and I've again got a mosquito haven in my backyard. I'd say it won't be used again this season, but shit if on 10/15/2022 we aren't having a high of 94 freaking degrees! If the pool was in working condition, the water might be a little cool, but it would still be used by my nephews easily. Either way, roommate and I are now discussing the pros and cons of getting a pool cover versus trying to deal with the return line right now.
So, the storm on whatever Sunday that was a couple weeks ago...
Trey and I went out into the backyard to look at the pool when it was still pretty blue to check out if it was still leaking, since by that time the water reached just below that last jet spot and 24 hours had gone by. Every 24 hours, the pool was losing about 1/2-to-1 inch to the leak prior to then. We confirmed that the water level was holding, so the only leak we could detect was in that return line, and not in the pool base itself. Whew. (It's still only lost maybe 1/2 inch in the two weeks since then, and that would be to normal evaporation.) As we walked back to the porch, I saw the tall 5ft box filled with other broken down boxes that was still there since the day before when the family descended to help with wrangling the backyard and putting yard furniture together. I grabbed it to take it out front for recycling the next morning, pulling it through the house and into the garage. I opened the garage door just in time to notice a ton of wind blowing a bunch of the leaf debris from the yard work into the garage. I sat the box down against the wall near the laundry room door and decided to grab a broom to sweep the stuff back out. As I turned to go back into the laundry room, Trey opened the door to come out both to see if I needed any help and to question all the loud wind he was hearing. Just at that moment, I turned back towards the opened garage door in time to see the bottom fall out and water gushing down like we were under a waterfall. There was about 15 more seconds of heavy rain and some wind when all of a sudden we watched as a powerful burst of wind picked up all the trash bags full of yard debris that were set out next to the mailbox and THREW them down to the other end of the cul-de-sac. My eyes grew instantaneously twice the size they should normally be.
The storm continued for the next ~20min and then finally died down. I turned on the french drain sump pump after just a few minutes, as the amount of water being dumped on us at once had already started pooling in the front walkway. The wind blowing the trees was spectacular! (Keep in mind, I otherwise LOVE thunderstorms.) Trey commented that I missed getting blown about and drenched by literally seconds, and he's not wrong. Once the rain abated to a drizzle, all of the neighbors emerged from their homes as Trey and I walked to the end of the cul-de-sac to retrieve my trash bags. Next door neighbor had lost a gigantic branch of his mature tree in the front yard. The neighbor next to him on the corner of the cul-de-sac also lost a large branch that was now blocking half of the cross street. And the light post made from an old telegraph pole at that same corner snapped in two like a toothpick with the top of the light sprawled out across the same street. The neighbor facing the cul-de-sac (our houses directly face each other) called the light pole in to 911, as it was now a downed electrical hazard. My only damage was the 4 panel section of wooden fence that the electrical for the pool filter machinery was attached to. It was perpendicular to the initial gust of wind that threw the trash down the road, so it got the brunt of the wind. The equivalent fencing on the other side of the house was still intact. I was worried that the fence issue had damaged the pool mechanics, but the pool guy confirmed it should be okay, but the electrician I had out had other thoughts, another story for another paragraph.
So, the electrician and his assistant...
They replaced the two outlet receptacles on the front and back porches with updated covers versus the little metal hinges that don't actually keep water out. All of the kitchen and bathroom GFCIs were checked and reseated as needed. A live-but-covered receptacle in the garage was returned to being an actual outlet again. I will buy a 1ft extension cord to reconnect the garage door lift to a different outlet that isn't directly connected to the light switch on the wall that can turn it off completely. Everyone keeps accidentally flipping the switch and it's bad if it's while the motor is running to lift or close the garage door. We also confirmed that another light switch in the garage is actually for the light bulb in the attic. The electrician couldn't find the main ground wire, but theorized it might be connected to the rebar in the foundation. Code now wants two grounds anyway, so he put in a copper line and drilled in a second ground. He also raised the main service cable as far as possible since it was too close to the roof. After looking at the pool, he was concerned that the electrical boxes were attached to the fence, as they shouldn't be in order to prevent exactly what happened to me from causing secondary electrical damage. So he will be getting me a quote for a separate enclosure/stand that can be independent of a potential fence falling down.
Both the electrician and my plumber friend question why the pool filter machinery is on the grass and not on the cement slab right next to it. I have to keep reminding folks that there used to be a generator there and the pool was either built before people put that stuff on a slab or it was built cheaply and they didn't want to pay for a slab, and the sellers had CEMENTED the pool so that equipment was useless to them anyways. I have plans to eventually move the equipment to the unused previously-a-generator slab. I'm hoping that can be way into the future, but since we also have to repair the return line, just like with the sewer it would make more sense to just get it all over and done with at once than piecemeal. But I'm seriously out of funds for any more large repairs at this point.
We've chopped down a ton of bushes around the house. I wanted all of the holly bushes and the things I thought were firs but are probably cypress bushes to be gone. I hate holly and all of it's pokey leaves, and now that we've chopped down a bunch, I've been plagued by stray leaves coming into the house and stabbing the crap out of my feet. I just want all of the stuff that I don't want gone for the time being. There's at least 4 grasses in the back yard that we have identified and there's bamboo encroaching from the backyard neighbor's house. I can't recall if I've mentioned it, but I have 1 apple tree, a bunch of figs, a persimmon tree, and the nephew discovered garlic chives growing in the area where the figs are. There's a few other trees I haven't identified yet and a couple of crepe myrtles. (You can't throw a stone in a North Texas neighborhood and not hit a crepe myrtle.)
There's still office stuff to go through, curtains and iron stuff to be dealt with, pictures to be hung, and all of the internet cables to string through the attic now that the temperatures are finally starting to act like it's fall. I haven't been able to start using the workout room yet, although roommate has, so that's good. I still have stuff that I want to sell or give away, which will clear out certain spaces. They finally installed the solar screens on the windows, so that seems to have helped cut down the temperature differences between the side of the house with the thermostat and the afternoon sun versus the side of the house with my bedroom that gets fridged while the A/C keeps running to cool down the warm side of the house. Solar panels are scheduled to be installed in mid-November, but who knows how long after that it will take to get them actually turned on and my electric bill swapped over. I ordered these at the end of July, so still having to wade through two and a half months of heat-induced electric bills without them has made me annoyed.
I've lost that umph I was feeling early on trying to get things done and sorted in the house. I'm not done, but the past few weeks has been me taking a mental break away from it. I'm not waking up or coming home manic to get something done, but instead saying to myself, "Yeah, I'll get to that later." I don't really want to be saying that to myself, because I want the unpacking at least to be done already, but as the roommate has commented, it's good that I'm finally chilling out a bit. He's watched me have almost zero short-term memory recently due to wearing out the higher functioning thought processes recently. I should be getting somewhat back into the swing of doing stuff again here shortly. The pool issues have seriously put a dampener on my Go Get Em' attitude.
At least with DW there's a recorded history.
So apparently I can't use images I posted to Facebook for any length of time in a post here, as proven by broken links in my previous post. I'll eventually, maybe before the end of this century, get around to re-uploading those to my normal repository and fix the links, but it's a low priority thing.
85' of sewer was eventually replaced under the house - everything but the sewer in the yard. Afterwards, the roommate's toilet will sometimes gurgle when I'm taking a shower or we run laundry or the dishwasher. So my plumber friend D (literally, that's his name, short for Demetrius, but he goes by D, and don't you ever write it as Dee, because "that's a girl's name") came back out and put his camera down the line to discover a belly, so the water will sometimes backwash towards the house causing the air in the system up through the toilet p-trap which causes the gurgling. As long as that's all it's doing and not actually backing up into his shower like the belly near my bedroom did when we first discovered this mess, then we agreed to hold off a bit longer for that repair. He had to come back yesterday to look at the new toilets. They have Super-Duper Power Flush 5000s in them, and apparently the tank-to-bowl gasket was a little loose, so when Trey flushed his toilet a bit of water was spewing out the back since who knows when. Plumber friend tightened the bolts for both of our toilets, so hopefully that will be good.
They finished the contracted work on my pool, which was to drill out the cement capping off the drain and skimmer and then replace the plaster, tiles, and coping. A new motor to pull the water from the pool to the filter was installed, and the filters were replaced, and then we turned it on and saw just a hint of dirt clear out through the jets into the pool, but otherwise start moving the water around. And then water and shit-ton of water roaches started pouring out of a crack in the surround and yard at the far back end of the pool near the last jet, and another shit-ton of dirt started pouring into the pool from that last jet. We turned it off. There's an obvious break in the return line between the last and next to last jet holes. The family was able to enjoy semi-cool swimming water after a day of toiling in the backyard helping me work on it, but without the water moving, chemicals can only do so much.
The plan was to have someone come out to detect the leak and hopefully begin repairs on that. That person was out of town the week after the discovery. Supposedly he returned, but then the pool guy was flaky for week two. The weekend between week two and three saw my neighborhood experience a powerful thunderstorm cell that seems to have only affect the nearby area. That caused damage to the fence next to the pool equipment and dumped ANOTHER shit-ton of dirt, leaves, twigs, and small limbs into the pool so that it went from a pretty blue to immediately dark green/brown overnight - more on that storm in a minute. So a week (or was it two?) went by before we could get the fence propped up. And then this week the pool guy had a serious case of food poisoning and says he didn't eat anything between Sunday lunch and Friday lunch when he was finally able to hold down a little bit of food. At this point, I'm really frustrated with him. He's supposed to be by on Monday to check out the pool, and we'll determine if it needs to be drained completely again or not. Trey thinks the water is non-salvageable at this point. I have no brains left to think with, so while I purchased the pool guy-recommended shock and acid, after sending him a picture of how it looks he said to hold off until he looks at it Monday. More than anything, I'm pissed that the pristine, brand new plaster and tiles are already dirty beyond belief with algae and dirt and I've again got a mosquito haven in my backyard. I'd say it won't be used again this season, but shit if on 10/15/2022 we aren't having a high of 94 freaking degrees! If the pool was in working condition, the water might be a little cool, but it would still be used by my nephews easily. Either way, roommate and I are now discussing the pros and cons of getting a pool cover versus trying to deal with the return line right now.
So, the storm on whatever Sunday that was a couple weeks ago...
Trey and I went out into the backyard to look at the pool when it was still pretty blue to check out if it was still leaking, since by that time the water reached just below that last jet spot and 24 hours had gone by. Every 24 hours, the pool was losing about 1/2-to-1 inch to the leak prior to then. We confirmed that the water level was holding, so the only leak we could detect was in that return line, and not in the pool base itself. Whew. (It's still only lost maybe 1/2 inch in the two weeks since then, and that would be to normal evaporation.) As we walked back to the porch, I saw the tall 5ft box filled with other broken down boxes that was still there since the day before when the family descended to help with wrangling the backyard and putting yard furniture together. I grabbed it to take it out front for recycling the next morning, pulling it through the house and into the garage. I opened the garage door just in time to notice a ton of wind blowing a bunch of the leaf debris from the yard work into the garage. I sat the box down against the wall near the laundry room door and decided to grab a broom to sweep the stuff back out. As I turned to go back into the laundry room, Trey opened the door to come out both to see if I needed any help and to question all the loud wind he was hearing. Just at that moment, I turned back towards the opened garage door in time to see the bottom fall out and water gushing down like we were under a waterfall. There was about 15 more seconds of heavy rain and some wind when all of a sudden we watched as a powerful burst of wind picked up all the trash bags full of yard debris that were set out next to the mailbox and THREW them down to the other end of the cul-de-sac. My eyes grew instantaneously twice the size they should normally be.
The storm continued for the next ~20min and then finally died down. I turned on the french drain sump pump after just a few minutes, as the amount of water being dumped on us at once had already started pooling in the front walkway. The wind blowing the trees was spectacular! (Keep in mind, I otherwise LOVE thunderstorms.) Trey commented that I missed getting blown about and drenched by literally seconds, and he's not wrong. Once the rain abated to a drizzle, all of the neighbors emerged from their homes as Trey and I walked to the end of the cul-de-sac to retrieve my trash bags. Next door neighbor had lost a gigantic branch of his mature tree in the front yard. The neighbor next to him on the corner of the cul-de-sac also lost a large branch that was now blocking half of the cross street. And the light post made from an old telegraph pole at that same corner snapped in two like a toothpick with the top of the light sprawled out across the same street. The neighbor facing the cul-de-sac (our houses directly face each other) called the light pole in to 911, as it was now a downed electrical hazard. My only damage was the 4 panel section of wooden fence that the electrical for the pool filter machinery was attached to. It was perpendicular to the initial gust of wind that threw the trash down the road, so it got the brunt of the wind. The equivalent fencing on the other side of the house was still intact. I was worried that the fence issue had damaged the pool mechanics, but the pool guy confirmed it should be okay, but the electrician I had out had other thoughts, another story for another paragraph.
So, the electrician and his assistant...
They replaced the two outlet receptacles on the front and back porches with updated covers versus the little metal hinges that don't actually keep water out. All of the kitchen and bathroom GFCIs were checked and reseated as needed. A live-but-covered receptacle in the garage was returned to being an actual outlet again. I will buy a 1ft extension cord to reconnect the garage door lift to a different outlet that isn't directly connected to the light switch on the wall that can turn it off completely. Everyone keeps accidentally flipping the switch and it's bad if it's while the motor is running to lift or close the garage door. We also confirmed that another light switch in the garage is actually for the light bulb in the attic. The electrician couldn't find the main ground wire, but theorized it might be connected to the rebar in the foundation. Code now wants two grounds anyway, so he put in a copper line and drilled in a second ground. He also raised the main service cable as far as possible since it was too close to the roof. After looking at the pool, he was concerned that the electrical boxes were attached to the fence, as they shouldn't be in order to prevent exactly what happened to me from causing secondary electrical damage. So he will be getting me a quote for a separate enclosure/stand that can be independent of a potential fence falling down.
Both the electrician and my plumber friend question why the pool filter machinery is on the grass and not on the cement slab right next to it. I have to keep reminding folks that there used to be a generator there and the pool was either built before people put that stuff on a slab or it was built cheaply and they didn't want to pay for a slab, and the sellers had CEMENTED the pool so that equipment was useless to them anyways. I have plans to eventually move the equipment to the unused previously-a-generator slab. I'm hoping that can be way into the future, but since we also have to repair the return line, just like with the sewer it would make more sense to just get it all over and done with at once than piecemeal. But I'm seriously out of funds for any more large repairs at this point.
We've chopped down a ton of bushes around the house. I wanted all of the holly bushes and the things I thought were firs but are probably cypress bushes to be gone. I hate holly and all of it's pokey leaves, and now that we've chopped down a bunch, I've been plagued by stray leaves coming into the house and stabbing the crap out of my feet. I just want all of the stuff that I don't want gone for the time being. There's at least 4 grasses in the back yard that we have identified and there's bamboo encroaching from the backyard neighbor's house. I can't recall if I've mentioned it, but I have 1 apple tree, a bunch of figs, a persimmon tree, and the nephew discovered garlic chives growing in the area where the figs are. There's a few other trees I haven't identified yet and a couple of crepe myrtles. (You can't throw a stone in a North Texas neighborhood and not hit a crepe myrtle.)
There's still office stuff to go through, curtains and iron stuff to be dealt with, pictures to be hung, and all of the internet cables to string through the attic now that the temperatures are finally starting to act like it's fall. I haven't been able to start using the workout room yet, although roommate has, so that's good. I still have stuff that I want to sell or give away, which will clear out certain spaces. They finally installed the solar screens on the windows, so that seems to have helped cut down the temperature differences between the side of the house with the thermostat and the afternoon sun versus the side of the house with my bedroom that gets fridged while the A/C keeps running to cool down the warm side of the house. Solar panels are scheduled to be installed in mid-November, but who knows how long after that it will take to get them actually turned on and my electric bill swapped over. I ordered these at the end of July, so still having to wade through two and a half months of heat-induced electric bills without them has made me annoyed.
I've lost that umph I was feeling early on trying to get things done and sorted in the house. I'm not done, but the past few weeks has been me taking a mental break away from it. I'm not waking up or coming home manic to get something done, but instead saying to myself, "Yeah, I'll get to that later." I don't really want to be saying that to myself, because I want the unpacking at least to be done already, but as the roommate has commented, it's good that I'm finally chilling out a bit. He's watched me have almost zero short-term memory recently due to wearing out the higher functioning thought processes recently. I should be getting somewhat back into the swing of doing stuff again here shortly. The pool issues have seriously put a dampener on my Go Get Em' attitude.
