Anyone that has ever used our facilities knows to watch their backside after flushing as our "system" is known for burping and causing one to panic after a loaded dumb gives way to a possible fake flush.
Each year our septic has gotten worse and worse which finally, after seven years of toilet burps, caused us to make the connection happen.
This was no easy decision as it would have us completely tearing up our front yard. There's really no good time for that to happen. Being that the city lines are 22 feet down, we feared the worse. Thankfully, we (Ray, the guy with the master skills on the tractor) only had to dig 12 feet deep without disturbing our driveway.
It started with Jose cutting the many-years-old rhododendron down and then the Holly tree right next to it. Charlie was most upset as the Rhodie was known as the climbing tree or the "Ninjago" tree for him and the neighbor boys. Perfect timing for the Holly tree to come down as it gave many of us Christmas accents throughout our homes both inside and outside.
After Jose managed to locate sprinkler lines and uproot the trees, Ray did his thing and made some massively large dirt piles in a flash.
The kids loved watching this happen through bedroom windows and standing in awe of the depth of the hole dug. Myriam was barking orders for the guys to leave Mommy's plants alone as she watched them dig each one up. She received many laughs that day…
With just a few hours of no water to make the city connection, we were back and running…darn, had to do laundry again. Although, that too has been a challenge as our dryer of twelve years finally decided to be done with us making the spare bedroom look like a drying room filled with racks and hangers everywhere.
We have a huge appreciation for non-crunchy underwear now that we've had line-dried skivvies for a few weeks!
{The connection at the house after the tanks were destroyed and filled in.}
{Holly for the taking. }
{Twelve feet down sure makes a mess.}
Oh no.
Oh yes. That's a faucet turned on with no running water.
Sunday morning we woke to this.
The main water line was exposed in our frigid, northeastern temperatures which gave us frozen pipe lines and no running water. Thankfully, we were spared a water damage by only having the outside pipeline freeze and nothing inside bursting with frozen glee. After an hour of some heat gun usage and some more work on the tractor covering up the water line, we were back in running business.
A baby wipe shower can only do so much…
And, why not make more mess to match the front yard. Tim decided to have Jose and his fast working crew take down a cedar and evergreen too! I was so busy making dinner for a work party that Jackie and I didn't even notice there was this HUGE tree down in the back yard.
Charlie is LOVING the dirt mess creating BMX bike jumps and tracking in mud everywhere.
This will be my life until April.
Our spring project list has grown by a mile over the past week, but that doesn't even worry me a bit.
My toilets are flushing, there's no burping noises or bubbles to clean up and the only worries about having a fake flush is if you really did plug the joy ride to the ocean.
No comments