Sewer Pipe

 Saturday Night...  I'm fixin' to watch Buck Rogers, working on cleaning up the house after Christmas, making some food, and doing some laundry.  Kim had some issue we needed to talk about, and then I heard the sound of a waterfall.  Water pouring out onto a stone surface.  WTF Batman...  So I went to look for the source of the sound, and it is the toilet.  The toilet was pouring water out of the bowl onto the floor into the study bathroom...

Fucking Yay!  I just love sewage backups, especially on Saturday Night when I'm fixin' to watch Buck Rogers...  I've got this crappy old sewer pipe system that was built in 1978, with iron pipes.  The pipes pretty much disintegrate with oxidation, then are subject to penetration by roots, or just being crushed by the shifting of the house.  Fucking Yay!

Hey!  Lets throw in some collateral problems as well...  I renewed this toilet maybe three, or four years ago, and the hardware is rusted shut.  Yay!  I just love cutting rusted bolts off plumbing, most especially toilets...

I've got a drain auger that I use to clean out sewer pipes.  The screwy thing there is attached to 50 foot long cable.  I push it through the stuck pipe, and it can usually bust the clog.  This time it didn't work...  I went through maybe 35 feet of pipe, very gunky, and didn't open the drain.  So, I'm kinda stuck here at the moment.  I don't know what else to do but call the plumber.  That is going to be very expensive...

West Fence Repair

 I've got this same problem all around the fence.  The old cedar posts have been saturated with water, and are starting to decay.  The lateral forces on the fence panels cause the posts to bend back, and forth right at the base of the post.  Then over tine the post will start to break right where it meets the ground, and will ultimately fail, and break.  When I started this process I had about eight posts that were in this condition.  Here the two posts in the foreground are broken in this manner, but the fence is still standing because of the steel reinforcements I added, and the recently renewed gate section close to the house.

So, there are two things I want to do here simultaneously.  First, repair the broken posts, but also redouble the strength of the fence in general.  At the moment I am concentrating on replacing the broken parts of the fence.  In the near future, after the posts are repaired, I start renewing the fence panels, and integrating my Flow Through Privacy Design where the pickets are spaced apart, and staggered on opposite sides of the fence.

First, I planted the posts in the new locations making sure they are plumb, and level.  I want to have really solid footings for these new posts, so after planting them I leave them alone for several days to make sure the concrete is completely cured before I put any stress on them.  I have experimented with planting posts a lot in the past.  Before I had some novel ideas that didn't work out so well.  This method has worked the best.

Now in this last shot I have removed the braces that were holding the new posts, and attached the fence to them.  Each post is attached to the fence panel with six, 3.5 inch screws.  Now the fence panels have a very solid feel.  They will flex a little, but overall very solid.  Next I am working north along this same part of the fence to the Northwest corner of the fence.