Spending this weekend at home, spending · 5:35pm Aug 22nd, 2024
Back in June, I was idly toying with going to EFNW in person this year, if I met certain financial goals.
Then the following things developed:
(1) All attempts to find help getting the feral kittens at my house fixed cheaply and adopted out fell through;
(2) Hurricane Beryl put a tree on my back porch (and a corner of my house);
(3) My left shoulder and arm got worse, with me finally getting a diagnosis of a sprained left rotator cuff last week and prescribed physical therapy that I'll have to pay for out-of-pocket; and
(4) The drain on my washing machine silted up for good, dumping water on my laundry room floor (which is wooden and carpeted, because 1980s).
So I'm not currently flying to Washington.
Copies of CSP and Fort Libris will be in the book nook, for those who want them.
OH: the colonoscopy was good enough that I'm excused from another for ten years, but they found a couple polyps in my stomach which will mean a gastroscopy again in the closer future. Fun.
Polyps suck.
I mean, partial yay?
Ouch!
Silt? Like clay, or calcium deposit from hard water? Is it going to take a plumber's snake to clear that, or CLR or some strong acid? I have a medium big poplar behind my house. Half rotten and beloved of woodpeckers. Just waiting to see which direction it's going to fall. 
Already got both those books. Most excellent.
5800264 Greywater drain lines are designed to send the water into the soil of the yard rather than into a sewer or septic tank. The problem is, as they age, in addition to whatever contaminants are in the water going out, they let soil backflow up into the pipe as the water is absorbed or just dries up. Eventually the dirt or sand in the line becomes so compacted that it won't let water out anymore, at which point there is a problem. Of course, the process accelerates if the plants growing on top of the line get roots inside and build a rootball.
5800345
OK! I'm glad I don't use grey water drains! I think the hole in the cement in the fuse-box room would be considered a grey water drain, but as far as I can tell, that never worked.
(Having a working french drain emptying into the ditch removes the need for a floor drain anyway.) So, it sounds like a plumber's snake just isn't going to cut it. (Or cut the roots either.)
5800350 No. The whole 30+ feet (9 meters) of pipe has to be replaced, and today I'm going to pay a plumber $1100 to do that.
5800447
Oh! that's not bad! I paid more than that on car repairs this year! I've never seen a grey water drainage pipe but I hope it's large diameter, drains through holes only on the bottom and is buried in at least 1' x 1' channel of 3/4" gravel covered in a geotextile cloth. That should keep the silt and roots out for a while... How long did the old grey water drain last? 40 years?
5800449 I don't know how old the old pipe was, but it was at least twenty-five years old.
As for all the things you mentioned... nope. They just dug up the old pipe and put down a new one (though, to be fair, the new one is a 3" diameter, the old 2"). But the old dirt was just dumped in on top of the new pipe, no plant-block, no gravel, no nothing.
5800586
Well, if the last one lasted 25 years, I guess that can has been kicked so far down the road that you'll never have to pick it up again.