Brush Clearing and Water Leaks

We came up Saturday evening for our normal two day working weekend.  This weekend though, we moved the bed and window A/C into the newly finished front bedroom.  It was glorious.  It really is a nice looking bedroom.  However, we immediately made it into a bachelor pad bedroom.  The curtains we ordered aren’t in yet so we hung old sheets over the windows.  The mattress went straight on the beautiful new floor.  There’s a bed frame that we had used in the back bedroom but the legs are sharp and have scratched the floor so it’s not allowed into the finished room.  And to top it off, we used a few cardboard boxes for nightstands.  Classy, right?! 

Now we can figure out the layout

Regardless, it was nice to be in the bedroom and now that there’s a mattress there, we can get a good feel for the layout.  There’s not a lot of open space so instead of a dresser, I’ll end up making a bed frame that has drawers below the mattress.  This will allow storage without over crowding the room.  We’ll likely go with floating nightstands instead of standalone nightstands for the same reason.  We also have to make some decisions on decorations for the room.  All in due time.

No projects planned?! What?!!!

This weekend we didn’t have any major projects planned.  There’s a lot of little odds and ends to be wrapped up so I figured we’d start tackling those unless something else came up.  Something else came up.  Tom dropped by early Sunday morning and said Tommy had a water leak somewhere between the water meter and his house.  Tom’s best guess was that it was in the thicket near the telephone pole just to the south of the shop.  It was too thick to walk through so it needed to be cut back to be accessed. This thicket was on our list to get cleared out but up until now, it hasn’t been a priority. 

Cut. Drag. Repeat.

Oceana and I got started early and we cut and drug vines and branches from the Brazilian Pepper trees.  We kept at it for a few hours until Tom showed up with his “little” tractor.  His little tractor is a beast!  He had the root rake on it and was able to rip out the Brazilian Pepper tree completely.  It was awesome.  We assisted as we could be mostly just tried to stay out of his way.  We took a break for lunch and could see a storm rolling in. 

Filling in the hole

I ate fast and then got the wheelbarrow and a shovel out and started to load up the wheelbarrow with sand from where the Brazilian Pepper tree was.  The sand was dumped in the depression over the old septic tank in the side yard.  We’ve slowly been filling in this hole since we bought the place and it’s nearly full. I was able to get 4-5 loads in before it started storming.  It rained really hard. 

Planting some trees

Once the storm passed, we got back to the landscaping.  When we arrived this weekend, the queen crape myrtle was laying on its side.  Not good.  The storm nearly took it over again but we had put up a few diagonal braces (in the downpour) to help hold it up.  We laid it out, dug the hole, and planted it in the side yard.  While we were digging and planting, we also planted the starfruit and avocado trees.  Oceana set up the sprinklers to make sure that everything would be well watered. While digging up one of the old plants in the yard, we found a pair of turtle eggs. One was half out of the shell and one was still whole. Oceana now has a few new pets!

The well pump is…..broken…

After planting the trees, I started messing with the old well pump.  I was told that it still worked so I figured we’d try to hook it up to the old well head and see what happens.  Nothing happened.  I got power to the motor but it wouldn’t spin on its own.  I tried a few different things with it and then threw in the towel.  I’ve got an old pump at the house that I’ll see about bringing up.  The goal for the pump/well is to use the well water for irrigation for the yard and new landscape.  Enough for one day.

Time to dig some trenches

Monday morning we started trying to locate Tommy’s water line.  What we knew is the location of the water meter and the location of Tommy’s house.  There’s over 200 feet between the two and where the line ran is anyone’s guess.  Tom’s recommendation was to dig a slit trench running perpendicular to where the lines should be running until the lines were located.  It was good advice.  I dug just over 10’ of trench before I heard the thud of a plastic line buried in the dirt.  Good.  I unearthed the lines and saw that both Tommy’s and Mark’s water lines were buried in the same trench.

More trenches. And more roots.

Now we knew what directions the lines ran.  From there we dug a few more trenches which confirmed the location of the lines as we worked our way towards the meter.  Around this point Tom turned the meter on and we walked over the lines looking and listening for signs of a leak.  Nothing.  So we kept digging.  As we got within 10’ of the meter, I dug a continuous trench towards the meter.  The brush was pretty thick back here so I hacked it out with a machete and Tom’s brush axe.  There was also a lot of roots here.  More than other places in the yard.  Those got hacked out with the machete too. You get about 8 whacks with the machete in the sand before it’s too dull to cut anything and needs sharpened. So I kept a file in my back pocket and sharpened it regularly.

Half a mile to access a water meter 1 foot away

I dug until we were near the meter and then Tom turned the water on again.  Now to explain, to turn the meter on, you actually have to go out of the neighborhood, turn right on 27, and go up to the back corner of our property and access the meters from there.  There’s a chain link fence between the meters and the back of our property which is great for security but a bummer when you have to access your meter.  And when I say meters, Mark’s water meter and our water meter are installed in the same box.  Tommy’s water meter is in another box right next to ours.  So there’s 3 water lines all in the same spot.  Well Tom turned the meter back on and there it was – the leak.  I dug a bit more to unearth a 90 degree fitting that when the water was on, it just shot water everywhere.  Tom said he’ll handle making the repairs after everything dried out. Our work is done here for now.

Odds and ends

We took breaks from the morning digging festivities to knock out a few more punch list items. Oceana learned how to glaze windows and she glazed the two windows on the front porch on either side of the entry door.  I made a threshold for between the living room and front bedroom doorway.  More little odds and ends taken care of.  Good.  Enough for one weekend.  Hope you all have a good week and thanks for following along.