New House Blog: Episode LXII - The Root Of The Problem

As the title of this Episode indicates, we will be talking about roots, problems, and problems caused by roots.

Everybody Must Use Stones

We had a problem.  Specifically, Becky had a problem when she parked her truck in our driveway.  The problem was that the position of her driver-side door, when parked in our driveway, forced her to have to exit the truck directly onto the grass.  Additionally, when unloading supplies from her truck - groceries, for instance - she would have to walk around the open driver-side door onto the lawn.  There were a few circular stone things, as you can see in the picture below, but there were not enough and they did not extend far enough to ease Becky's truck-exiting troubles.

Please note that there was a seventh stone thing, but it was removed prior to this photo being taken, as can be seen by the vacant circle in the dirt.

We looked for additional round stone things at both Home Depot and OSH, but we couldn't find anything that matched, so we decided to replace them with something entirely different.

The next couple of photos show what we chose to use as replacements.

 These new, colorful stones extend further and wider than did the round stone things.  Now Becky can exit her truck and walk around her driver-side door on a nice stone walkway.

This view is looking toward our New House.


















Roots Are A Problem

As you will probably remember from this Episode, a thornless honey locust, or THL, can propagate from roots in the ground.  A short while after our documented removal of the previous crop of THL sprouts from the same Episode, we discovered a whole new crop of THL sprouts shooting up from the ground.  We knew we would have to dig deeper and chop harder in order to quell this uprising of THL sprouts.  The old THL tree was removed weeks ago.  Why can't its roots just accept this fact and die?  Anyway, here's a picture of what we uncovered in our most recent root dig.

No, that is not a buried octopus or squid - it is in fact part of the root system of the old, removed THL tree.  You can see a fresh THL sprout shooting up from said roots at the bottom of the picture.

The root was engaged in a fierce and energy-draining battle, and we were successful in removing a large quantity of rootage, as can be seen in the next photo.

For added effect we sprayed some Roundup weed killer on the exposed ends of the roots we left in the ground in the hope that it would weaken or kill the roots.  If it doesn't work, and more sprouts emerge, we may have to try an actual root-killing product.


Putting Down New Roots

Our calla lilies, mentioned in this Episode, did not survive.  All three plants died.  We don't know for sure if it was too much water, too little water, too much sun, or too little sun that did them in, but they all succumbed to something or other and had to be replaced.  The one closest to the house was replaced by digging up a bulb from the front yard succulent garden - a bulb we otherwise would have disposed of, as it would have grown up in the midst of our succulents - and planting it near the house.  We pretty much ignored it, and it has thrived and flourished under our neglect.  Occasionally we give it a squirt of water.  One of the other deceased lilies was replaced by a new Asparagus Fern (Asparagus Sprengeri).

 This is a non-succulent that can, according to its label, be in the sun, the shade, or both.

The third deceased lily was replaced by a re-positioned decorative rock.

Also new to our succulent garden is this young Tiger Jaws (Faucaria Tigrina).  It is quite small at the moment, but we are already seeing signs of new growth.

This new plant is a Firesticks (Euphorbia Tirucalli).  We saw these at a friend's house in San Diego in December, and we had been looking for them ever since.

The other two Firesticks plants were planted next to the Asparagus Fern, thus necessitating the moval of some of our decorative rocks.

Here you can see the Asparagus Fern, two Firestickses, and some of the moved rocks.  The leaves in the upper left of the photo are from the bush that grew from the bulb we dug up.  We still don't know what kind of bush it is, but it seems to thrive in our yard.

In the back yard we also have some new roots.  In our cactus garden one of our Curiosity Cactus died and needed replacing.  Instead of getting a direct replacement, however, we planted a Blue Candle Cactus (Pilosocereus Azureus) in the spot formerly occupied by the deceased Curiosity Cactus.  We also added a Stenocereus Dumortierli Cactus (Stenocereus Dumortierli) to our cactus garden.  Sadly, we do not have pictures of these two cactus, so you will have to look them up on the interwebs.

Our final new roots of this Episode belong to our brand new Bacon Avocado Tree.  Yes, this variety of avocado tree is really called Bacon Avocado.

While we don't think it actually will produce avocados that taste like bacon, we do look forward to eventually eating its fruits.

As you can see, we planted it somewhat near our small navel orange and dwarf tangerine trees.  It should get plenty of sun in this location.






Black Helicopter Problems

Another mysterious military helicopter was recently seen flying near our New House.  What are they looking for?  Who are the looking for?

Why do mysterious helicopters fly by our New House?











Back Yard Archaeology Problems

This is not really a problem, but a curiosity.  While digging around the roots of the former THL tree we uncovered this ancient pre-Bishopian artifact.

It appears to be a bottle made of brownish glass, and its patina and discovery depth tell us that it was not simply a beer bottle left over from the recent plumbing work or recent tree removal/replanting we had done.  No, this bottle-like artifact pre-dates all of the recent work that has been done at our New House.

Who made this bottle?  What did it originally contain?  Is it domestic or imported?  Where is the bottle cap?





Problems may come, and problems may go, but there is only one
   bIsh

New House Blog: Episode LXI - Plumbing Woes

It's funny how things are interrelated.  Especially in old houses with old pipes that have been connected to each other for over 40 years.  Change just one thing sometimes - by replacing a hose bibb for example - and something else downstream, or upstream, is affected.  Sometimes one replaced part can lead to a multitude of replaced parts.  This is a tale of just such happenings.

Woe #1

You remember when we changed out our front yard hose bibb, and at the same time removed the extraneous plumbing that was cluttering up the place?  It's chronicled in this Episode, and at the time it seemed like all was well post-bibb-replacement.  However, I noticed that the ground immediately around the water main never dried out after that repair, and for a while I told myself that it was just residual water and that our clay-like dirt retains water for a while - it would be dry in a few days.  For a couple of weeks I told myself this, hoping it was true.  Alas (you've probably guessed what I'm going to say), it was not ok, and it did not dry out, for I had inadvertently cracked the aged, decrepit water main.  And I had cracked it below the house's shutoff valve, which further complicated the matter.  Here's a picture after we dug up the dirt around the water main.

The crack is toward the top of the picture, and it was really more of a hairline fracture - just big enough to allow for a good bit of seepage, but not big enough to be catastrophic.

Notice how corroded and decrepit the pipe is (40+ year-old galvanized will do that); and that's just the outside - try to imagine the condition inside that corroded and decrepit pipe.

At this point, after the dirt was dug up and we saw the condition of the pipe, we knew that this a job for a trained professional plumber, and we were pretty sure it would probably require re-piping all the way from the water meter (out by the street) up to the house.  We called our go-to plumbing company, Benjamin Franklin Plumbing, and Robert came out to assess the situation.  He agreed that a full water main re-pipe would be best, and we scheduled the work.

Robert was friendly and courteous, and he and his crew did a fine plumbing job and their work passed the city permit inspection on the second attempt.  The first attempt failed because they had not yet installed a grounding electrode (basically an 8-foot copper rod that grounds the house).  As you can see, the new water main is PVC, not corrodable steel.

Notice the new shutoff valve and pressure regulator.  Note also that the new shutoff valve is below the ground's level.

 This is the new water main out near the water meter.

They were able to re-use the existing hose bibb.

 Robert installed a nice wooden box around the new water main, and as you can see we have ample access to the shutoff valve.

We reinstalled the brickwork and adjusted it to fit the new wooden box and grounding electrode.

We don't want a big hole right there for dirt and small animals to fall into.  This is one possibility for covering the hole using some bricks.  We may change it up a bit in the days to come.


Woe #2

Plumbing woe #1 lead to Plumbing woe #2.  As Robert was inspecting our in-garage plumbing he pointed out to us some serious corrosion we had not noticed before.  Archaeological evidence shows that sometime in the past the pre-Bishopians had a water softener in our New House.  Said former water softener was somehow connected to an old loop of pipe that we mostly ignored after we moved in.  Said old loop is where the serious corrosion was.  It sounds complicated, but pictures will show how not-complicated the situation really was.

 This is an overview of the old loop.  The main corrosion spots are in the top left corner of the loop and in the right-hand spigot.

This is a close-up of the corrosion in the right-hand spigot.  I was going to show a close-up of the other really bad corrosion spot, but it's just too nasty and gross to post.  Suffice it to say it was worse than what you see here.

The good news in all of this is that replacing this old loop was within our plumbing abilities, and we were able to do so with no hassle or trouble.  Well, except for having to go to Home Depot a second time because someone (that would be me, Bish) read the tape measure wrong and thought we needed 1/2" piping instead of the 3/4" piping we actually needed.  And except for Home Depot's plumbing section being a mess that day and not having any usable 3/4" 90-degree elbows.  We had to make do with what they call 3/4" 90-degree elbows with side outlets and 3/4" plugs for said side outlets.  Behold the finished new loop.

We are happy to report that the metal where the old pipe connects to the new is in really great shape and shows no signs of corrosion, despite how dirty it looks on the outside.



Woe #3

We're not sure exactly how woe #3 originated, or exactly how the interplay of woes #1 and #2 contributed to it, but we know for sure that it came about after the first two woes were addressed and resolved.  In a nutshell, the cold water was coming out as a rusty trickle in our 1/2 bath - the 1/2 bath with the cool water pump-looking tap.  The hot water was unaffected and normal, but the cold just would not clear up or increase in pressure.  Our suspicion was that the tap itself was where the trouble lay, and some testing with a spare tap proved this to be the case.  We disassembled the tap as far as possible and did not discover any blockages, but the tap refused to provide a clean healthy water flow.  Time to replace the tap.

 Because we like the design so much, we decided to replace the faulty tap with an identical new tap.

 This worked out well, because we didn't have to replace the base of the tap.  This is the old tap, uninstalled.

This is the new tap, providing a clean, healthy flow of water.  We don't know exactly what caused the old tap to fail, but replacing it resolved the issue.

This is the old tap, just before it was unceremoniously dropped into the recycling bin.  How can you be sure that the tap pictured above is in fact a new tap and not just a picture of the old tap?  True, there are no photos of the two taps together; but if you look really closely at the picture of the purported new tap above, you will notice that the connectors for the inlet hoses are slightly different from the connectors you see in the picture on the right.




Thus concludes our tale of woes and
       bIsh