New House Blog: Episode CI - Aftermath

As part of our 100th Episode celebration we bring you a second Episode within 24 hours of publishing the previous Episode.  If I recall correctly, this is the first such occurrence in the history of the New House Blog.

Aftermath 1 - Firewood

In the previous Episode (our 100th, you know) I cut down two trees and mentioned something about firewood.  I am now going to go into a little more detail regarding said firewood.  Both Tree #1 and Tree #2 were made of wood (held together by sap), and it seemed like it would be wasteful to let all of that beautiful organically-grown wood go to the city's composting machines, so I decided to claim a bunch of it for use in our wood-burning fireplace. 

About 98% of the wood you see here is from the two trees.  What you don't see is that I had to leave most of the trunk of Tree #2 at the Parents' House because it was just too thick for me to process with my available tools.

When I took this photo some of the wood still needed splitting and trimming to fit in our fireplace (notice the three logs standing upright in the background).  My hope is that the sun will dry out the wood a bit, and maybe some of the sap will drain out.

Aftermath 2 - Rust

I've mentioned our eSpring water purifier once or twice in the New House Blog.  Recently the time came for its filter to be replaced, and I took some photos of the process.

There is our eSpring, hiding under the sink, out of the way.  It quietly does its job of purifying our water day after day, month after month, year after year.

Why do we feel the need to purify our tap water?  Well, one reason is rust.  Here you can see the aftermath of several months of running water through the filter cartridge. 

Can you tell which filter cartridge is the new one?  Here's a hint: it's not the rusty one. :)

Here you can see actual purified water after it has flowed through the eSpring.  In addition to rust, our eSpring filters out chemicals (including MTBE), and all kinds of nasty little microbes.















Aftermath 3 - Lawn

For the past few years, due mainly to watering restrictions in our area, we have not maintained our front lawn.  Occasionally I would mow it when it naturally grew in the spring, and I might remove the largest weeds sometimes, but that was about it.  This past spring the watering restrictions were lifted, as far as we know, and we decided to try to have an actual, mostly-grass, non-weedy lawn.

The first step was to completely strip the existing growth and basically take the front lawn down to dirt.  This was done manually, with manual tools, by yours truly.  The next time we do this, maybe we'll rent or borrow a rototiller.

After stripping we spread fresh seed, topped it with fresh lawn soil (also called topsoil), and spread some fresh grass food/lawn starter.

To our great delight the new grass seed sprouted and grew.  After a couple of weeks we put out some more grass food.  A few weeks later I put some fresh seed, topsoil, and food on the patches that hadn't sprouted.

Several months later this is the aftermath.  I have mowed the new lawn a few times, and it's mostly staying green.  There is a brown patch under part of the redwood tree, but it was initially as green as the rest of the lawn.  That area does get sun, so I don't think that's the issue, and it gets water, too.  My theory is that maybe the falling needles are somehow negatively affecting the grass, but I don't know for sure.  Any thoughts, anyone?

Aftermoth

We finish up this Episode with a visit from Mothra.

Becky discovered this big beauty on our balcony one afternoon.  It  was still there several hours later, and into the night.  In the morning it was gone.

We believe it is a variety of sphinx moth, possibly a tobacco hornworm.  We don't grow tobacco in our yard (yet), so we don't know why this one is in the area.















As a moth is drawn to a
    bIsh

New House Blog: Episode C - So! Much! Sap!

Welcome to the exciting, action-packed 100th Episode of the New House Blog!  Yes, folks, we finally reached our 100th Episode, and it is packed full of interesting information, including at least one fact you didn't know before.

October is here (I know it's November right now, but I had planned on writing this in October), and that means the beginning of Accursed Shamrock Season.  So far this season we've had to pull fewer than 10 accursed shamrocks from our main succulent garden, and we believe this is due to our relentless policy of pulling them out on sight.  It has taken a few years, but I believe that our succulent garden is finally basically free of these pesky plants.

Brief 'Hood Update

You may remember the House Of The Blue Cars, first mentioned in this Episode.  That house is now for sale: asking price - $1 million (okay, technically they're asking $999,000, but that's basically $1 million).  What is included with this house that justifies the $1 million price tag?  A secret underground laboratory?  An olympic-sized pool?  A 15-car garage?  A private telephone line to the Kremlin?  Nope (as far as I know).  Well, is it at least a huge, fancy-shmancy mansion?  Nope.  It's just your average, ordinary, single-story house in your average suburban neighborhood.  House size is about 1500 sq. ft., on about a 6500 sq. ft. lot.  And this price is not an anomaly - it is in-line with the current housing market in this area.  When I was growing up this house would probably have been closer to $100,000, and only huge mansions cost $1 million.

So! Much! Sap! 1

The Parents' House had two large evergreen-type trees that were planted when we moved into the house 20+ years ago (I was still living with them at that time).

Here you can see my dad with one of the newly-planted trees, which I will call Tree #1.  I remember that my dad and I planted the trees, but I don't remember who else may have helped us plant them.  There were two such trees -  one on each side of the small back yard.

The little trees grew a little for the first few years, then Tree #2 started a growth spurt that never really stopped, and a few years later Tree #1 also started it's uninterrupted growth spurt.  Yes, these two trees just loved growing and growing, and that meant that they occasionally needed trimming and pruning.  In fact, in I did some tree trimming in this Episode.

After my dad's passing last year the trees started getting out of control, and the job of keeping them trimmed and pruned was getting to be too big to reasonably handle, so my mom decided that it was time for the trees to go.  I grabbed my trusty extendable ladder, my work gloves, some tools, and headed over. 

Yes, this is the same tree pictured above, Tree #1.  And yes, that is an ancient, disconnected Dish receiver on the roof of the house.

I got to work chopping, lopping, hacking, snipping, and sawing.  And that's when I discovered the sticky, viscous, flowing, maddening sap.

There were a few abandoned nests in Tree #1, possibly held in place by all of the sticky sap.

This is the tree after several hours of manual labor (I worked harder, not smarter), and several gallons of sap. 

Sap and more sap.  Sap on the blades of my tools, sap on the handles of my tools, sap on my ladder, sap completely saturating my work gloves, sap on my shirt and pants, sap on my skin, sap on the branches, sap on the trunk, sap on the sap....

In the end, I prevailed, and not the sap.  The tree came down after several hours of manual labor.  Tools included Frisky, Pinchy, Bari, and some unnamed clippers and an unnamed lopper.  After taking down Tree #1 I wanted to let my tools soak in a vat of Goo Gone for several days, but instead I left them at the Parents' House and went home.










So! Much! Zap!

You may recall that we have replaced several electrical outlets and light switches at our Improved House, and every so often we find it necessary to swap out another old outlet or switch for a new one.  Recently we found it necessary to change out one outlet and three switches.  Looking back, I think maybe we should have just replaced all of the outlets and light switches before we moved in to our Improvable House.

We chose to replace this outlet because it was quite loose and didn't hold onto plugs very well.

Unless you're new to the New House Blog, you've seen outlet swaps before, so I'll keep this brief.

This is the old outlet.

This is the old, improperly-spliced wiring and j-box.

It seemed like a good idea to replace the old j-box along with the old outlet.

Because the replacement procedure for all three light switches was basically the same, I'm only showing photos for one of the three. 

This is the old switch.

This is the old taped-together wiring that we've seen so often in our Wired House.

I have been assured by an electrician brother that this is a perfectly cromulent method of splicing.  After splicing it was wrapped in my signature yellow electrical tape.

The new switch works great.




















So! Much! Sap! 2

Two weeks later I returned to the Parents' House to start in on Tree #2.  At this time I would like to thank Mr. Sawzall for the invention that bears his name.  And I would also like to thank Mr. Carbide for inventing the material that bears his name. 

This is Tree #2.  It was planted at the same time as Tree #1, and it was larger and had a thicker trunk and more branches (and more sap).

Before I returned to start on Tree #2 I picked up some brand new carbide-tipped pruning blades for my sawzall (inherited from my dad), and I was able to work smarter, not harder.

I noticed that the sawzall blades would get quite hot after a while, and they seemed to be less effective they got superheated, so I made it my practice to swap in a fresh, cool blade after cutting through three or four thick branches.

In the morning, I had the assistance of a nephew who shall remain nameless.  He helped out by cutting up branches on the ground and stuffing them into my mom's yard-waste bin.  After the lunch break (his lunch break was quite a bit longer than mine) he did not return to work with me.  He claimed he was feeling sick from eating too much.  I remain skeptical of said claim, which is why he doesn't get his name mentioned here.

This is Tree #2 at the end of the first day of working on it.  It had at least as much sap as Tree #1, and I tried to manage the sap contamination.  I did this by using a lot of blue nitrile gloves.  I covered my brand new, sap-free work gloves with the nitrile, and when the nitrile got sap on them I peeled them off and put a new pair over my work gloves.












So! Much! Carrion!

The other day, I came home from work and found these friendly creatures in the street.

That's right - turkey vultures.  They're not super rare in these parts, but I've never seen them in the street before.

Upon closer examination, it appeared that they were eating the remains of a small animal, possibly a 'possum.










So! Much! Sap! 3

Day two of working on Tree #2 took place a week after day 1, and this time I had the added aide of a borrowed electric chainsaw (thanks, Derek!). 

This is Tree #2 on day two of taking it down.

Tree #2 is down!  The chainsaw helped a lot, and both it and the sawzall made the job easier.  It was still a lot of work, but it was less work than it would have been with only manual tools.

Look at that placement.  It fell right where I wanted it to fall.

My sap management technique definitely helped with reducing sap contamination, but it was not quite 100% effective.

The chainsaw, however, remained sap-free.

Now the trees are down, my mom's back yard is a lot sunnier, and we have a bunch of new firewood.

There were no nests in Tree #2.












Now to spend some time de-sapping my tools.  Where did I put that Goo Gone?
    bIsh