Carports, sewer lines and scrap lumber, oh my!

 7:33 am - Saturday - February 22nd - TWW - 34° F, humidity 52%, wind 8 mph out of the east.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 63° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I spied a Manatee while out riding our Cannondale tandem bicycle near Ft. Pierce, FL.....

....seems like a lifetime ago....12 years to exact!

The ground level water storage tank from which TLE and I fill our IBC water tote was down to about 1200 gallons, and the new water storage tank out by the orchard was only filled to 1500 gallons the first day so it was time to make another trip to the water station to collect another 1800 gallons of fresh water to top off both of those tanks.  We left TWW around 9 am to do just that, and were back before 10:30 am.  

Another task we wanted to complete while Charles and Phyllis were here, as it was definitely a four person job, was to finish the construction of an enclosed carport for the two side by sides on the property.  It took around 90 minutes to get the steel tubing framework assembled, and attach the fabric cover, sides and ends.....

The orange Home Depot 5 gallon buckets are full of cement

....and it turned out quite well.  Charles bought this one used off of Facebook Marketplace, and it is really in pretty good condition.  Now the Yamaha Rhino and the Cushman can be kept out of the weather without jamming them into the two car garage.

I helped Charles top off the two 2,500 gallon tanks, and then I headed over to our site to begin digging to find the sewer line which runs from the cleanout to the septic tank.  There is a cleanout at the right rear corner of the house, then there is the one that we have been macerating our effluent to each week, which is about half way between the house and the septic tank.  Why am I trying to find the sewer line you might ask?  Well, it has become apparent that macerating has not been getting all of the solids out of our black tank, so we need to be able to dump the traditional way, using gravity to thoroughly flush out the tank, so we are going install another cleanout closer to the Newell, then install a 3" above ground PVC line to that cleanout.  We would need over 50' of the flexible sewer hose to reach even the new location, so installing a hard line, which will not suffer the same UV damage as the flexible hose does, is the proper solution.  Next year when we return we'll dig a formal trench to the sewer line.  Digging any trenches here is extremely difficult due to the layer of caliche rock about 12" below the surface, digging a 50's trench would take days to accomplish...days we just don't have right now.

Using line of sight between the cleanout at the house, and the cleanout about half way to the septic tank I thought I found the right spot to dig.  I expected the dirt to be easy to remove since it had already been dug 8 years ago, but I kept hitting shelves of caliche rock, so I knew I was digging in the wrong place.  Finally Charles suggested we dig out the dirt at the halfway cleanout to see which direction the sewer line was really travelling after the cleanout, and were we ever surprised....the actual path of the ditch dug eight years ago was about 7 feet further north than we expected.  Regrettably I had dug 3 other holes before the final one, wasting a lot of time.  Sometimes it takes two brains to equal one, right?...

In this picture you can see the cleanout (circled in red) at the corner of the house, and the halfway cleanout in the foreground....that's how I initially line up the direction the ditch had been dug, but I was wrong

In this picture you can see the halfway cleanout in the background, and the successful hole we dug to find the sewer line....now we are facing middle of the right side of the house....we were way, way off!  You can just see one of the first holes we dug to the left of the correct location....doh!

The direction we initially followed

.....we'll have to dig several feet each direction in order to cut the pipe, and install a 'T', and a riser for the new cleanout......that will be a lot of work, but for another day.  At any rate we finally found the sewer line, but it was almost 3 pm, and time to get ready for dinner.  

While Charles and I were searching for the sewer line, TLE and Phyllis were sorting through a scrap lumber pile on east side of the two car garage, so we can discard what is unusable, and preserve what is usable, plus clean up that eye sore....

.....things are happening fast now, and we are getting a lot done every single day.  We'll sort through what they found, and move it either to the burn pile, or into the barn to keep it in a usable state.  Those long planks on the left can be used for siding on the barn to dress it up a little.

Phyllis and TLE prepared collard greens, and BBQ/Orange Chicken over Risotto.....no pictures, sorry, but it was delicious!  And that was our Friday.....thanks for stopping by!