Electricity
An outlet in the garage was not providing electrical flow. We discovered this when we moved our Dustbuster to the garage and plugged it in to said outlet. The charging light did not light, so we plugged in a known working radio and the radio did not power on. D'oh! After turning off what we thought was the right breaker we proceeded to open and disconnect the dead outlet. This outlet, as it turns out, is not on the same circuit as all of the other outlets in the garage, but we eventually found the right breaker (nevermind how this was discovered) and turned it off. The wires inside the outlet were corroded and one of them had broken off from the outlet, thus stopping the electrical flow. The old j-box had to be removed so that we could cut off the corroded sections of romex, restrip them, splice them, and reattach them to the new outlet. Fortunately, there was plenty of extra slack in the romex, so we did not have change the location of the outlet. To remove the old j-box we had to make a bit of a hole in the wall, and we had to make the hole bigger so that a hammer could be used to nail the new j-box to the stud (a drywall-mount j-box would not work in this situation). The new j-box was mounted, and the romex was spliced, taped, and connected to the new outlet. The wall was repaired and a new faceplate was installed. Voila - another outlet replaced and working. There are no pictures of the old outlet, but we can show you the new outlet and the plug for the Dustbuster. Note that since this is in the garage the wall repair is not as neat and clean as an in-house wall repair would be.
New Team Members
Let's meet the new team members. We know we've given you a lot of names to remember, but we are confident that you can squeeze a few more names into your already-crowded memory. First up is our new leaf/grass rake. Let's all give a warm New House Blog welcome to Rakey! Rakey comes to us from the Home Depot at the Great Mall, and is a standard leaf/grass rake.
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| Heeeeeeer's Rakey! |
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| Notice the huge rear wheels. |
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| The pilot's view of El Toro |
We have the wheels set at maximum height right now, per the instruction manual's recommendation for mowing tall grass. On the next mow we might lower the ride-height one notch. Also per the manual, we did not use the trimmings bag for our fist mow in the tall grass.
Unexpected Cable
In the front yard, near the edge of our property, there was some flexible orange conduit sticking up out of the dirt. We pretty much ignored this conduit since we bought the house, but now we have removed it. It turns out that this conduit contained some old cable cables (no, that's not a typo - it means old cables used for cable tv). The cables were not connected to anything on either end - they had been severed and left in the ground. We only traced the conduit a short way, then we cut the conduit and cable and buried them. They are deep enough that they won't bother us, and we don't want to dig up the front yard at this time. Here are some pictures of what we pulled out of the ground. The tools are there to show scale.
Unexpected Water
For this segment we return to our continuing series - Back Yard Archaeology. In this Episode we uncovered some PVC pipes sticking out of the ground. These pipes have now been fully excavated, and I discovered (so far, I, Bish, have done all of the excavating of ancient artifacts in the back yard) that there were actually three pipes in this group, and not just two. The third pipe did not quite break the surface, which is why I didn't know about it initially. Here's a picture of the partially uncovered pipes.
The pipe at the top of the photo has a slightly larger diameter than the other two pipes. While excavating these three pipes I came upon another unexpected discovery - a seemingly randomly-buried piece of PVC. The pictures show it in its actual discovered location - great care was taken not to disturb this artifact during the excavation.
The three pipes ran underground for several feet, then two of them turned upward and one of them turned ninety degrees to the left. And I found another PVC pipe while excavating these three. It was discovered as I was uncovering the upturned ends of two of the three pipes, and it was not as deep as the three, and it was a smaller diameter pipe. See for yourself.
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| Note the 4th pipe, near the top of the photo. |
And now we get to the water. While excavating the leftmost of the three pipes, the one with the ninety-degree bend leading into more dirt, I accidentally punctured a live PVC water pipe. At first I thought that the water coming out of the pipe was just residual water that had been gathering and sitting for years in an unused pipe, but I quickly realized that I had punctured the pipe that leads to our garden's hose outlet. We like having a hose outlet right by our garden. This water line has its own shutoff valve by the house, so I was able to turn off the water flow, but not before the excavation had flooded.
On a positive note, however, I discovered the end of the third pipe right next to the puncture I made in the live pipe.
While waiting for the water to subside I decided to excavate the mysterious fourth pipe. In this photo you can see a bit of uncovered fourth pipe. What you can't see is that the trench for the fourth pipe seems to be a good place for a drainage channel to help with water subsidence.
In this photo you can see more clearly how the fourth pipe's trench would seem to make a natural drainage channel with just a little more digging. I removed the fourth pipe up to the angled coupling at the top of the photo and started to dig my drainage. This led to a most unexpected discovery, and then another unexpected discover. I don't remember the precise order of discovery, so I will arbitrarily mention the amazing ancient artifact first.
Another Amazing Ancient Artifact
While digging the drainage trench mentioned above I uncovered another amazing ancient artifact, or AAAA. This artifact appears to be made of rusted metal and is about 8" to 9" in length. It looks like it might be related to modern wire cutters. Judge for yourself what it might have been.
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| Side One |
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| Side Two |
The other unexpected discovery was the concrete mine. I had never before seen a concrete mine, and I understand that they are very rare, so I was quite shocked at this discovery. And it appeared to be a particularly rich mine, too. We don't know the market value of mined concrete, but we're willing to let it go for only $5.00 per pound. Act quickly, because mined concrete values could go up at any moment!
Pipe Repair
I am happy to report that the punctured pipe has been repaired and the water has subsided and/or evaporated. I was able to remove the three PVC pipes intact and undamaged. This is important, because undamaged artifacts are worth more to museums than damaged artifacts. At this time the fourth pipe has not been fully excavated.
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| The repaired PVC |
What you see below is the result of me testing out the new panoramic mode on my iPhone's camera. They are what they are, and they provide a good overview of some of the archaeological excavations in the back yard. Sharp-eyed readers may even notice one or two items in the pictures that have not been discussed yet. We plan to discuss said (unsaid) items in future editions of Back Yard Archaeology.
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| Click on the picture to enlarge it. |
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| Click on the picture to enlarge it. |
Thank you for your continued support.
bIsh
4 comments:
Your backyard is providing such a wealth of artifacts, it is amazing the former owners could let it go!
One bit of information, too late now for your garden hose supply pipe. But you will understand the wisdom of it.
Back, in the far distant past, when the RV was but a dream, I was a construction engineer. And when building various projects (a bit bigger than your back yard) we had to follow certain rules (called building codes) When laying pipes, we also laid colored foil tape at certain levels above the pipes, indicating that the pipes were directly below. Some said this was to warn future excavators of the presence of the pipes. But I rarely saw back-hoe operators get down to invesigate an old dirty colored foil tape, they just kept digging till they hit something :-)
No foil tape has been found to date. No back-hoes have been found, either.
What are the black "bites" in the tops and bottoms of the final two panoramic photos (especially the last one)? Are you editing out some tell-tale identifying evidence? Or is there something that my computer and/or browser is failing to share with me? Just curious.
@Amy R. The black areas of the panoramic photos are there because of the path of motion of my iphone when taking these photos. My phone went in kind of a wavy horizontal line, instead of a flat horizontal line, and the black areas are the result.
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