What's under your lip/in your nose right now? - Part 2

rothenbj

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Now I wish I had looked further. Today I spent a few hours crotch deep in my pond cleaning out as much of over five years of leaf muck from the bottom of my pond. Maybe it was longer. The deep end had a life of its own. 20 years ago when I put the pond in, I had gotten a few lily plants in that I had pulled from a local pond. They weren't much as far as a root structure and I planted them in plastic baskets with rocks to hold them down. They were left undisturbed the entire time.. Well, somehow they had gotten out of the baskets and had rooted in the underworld muck.

One had gotten pulled away a few weeks ago when we were taking stuff out from outside the pond and I unrooted a second today. Here's what they look like at 20 years. They're about 6 inches long with off shoots of fingers anchoring them. Somehow they exited the baskets and anchored themselves in that muck.

I did my best to take the two that lost their anchor and bury them back in the baskets and again put stones around the roots to keep them on the bottom, we'll see. I also fed them hopefully to strengthen them up again.

Anyway, I took the dogs out to do their business tonight and felt pain between my index and middle finger. I looked at the limited light I had and there was something between the two. When I came back in, I got a closer look, it was a tiny tick that anchored itself there. I got tweezers and got it out and flushed it down the toilet. It was then that it hit me that I should have kept it and magnified it to see exactly what type tickit was since it was so small. Hopefully not a deer tick. I guess I'll find out.

lilly pad root.jpg












lilly pad root.jpg
lilly pad root.jpg
 
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hittman

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  • Jul 13, 2009
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    I really need to do something about the standing water issue in my back yard but I’m not sure the best way to handle it. We built some dirt up in the back corner of our yard a couple years ago but think it was a mistake now. Where our yards meet with the neighbors, there’s a low spot and with all the rain we’ve been getting I’m getting a pretty good spot of standing water. Besides my sprinkler lines buried, all of our power, phone, and cable lines are buried. I probably should pay someone to come and fix it right but I hate to spend the money right now.
     

    rothenbj

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    Yeah, that is no fun Hitt. I get standing water at the end of my drive due to, as I said in my post about my mailbox issue, the road rising. Now whenever it rains or snow melts, I have a pool to negotiate to get to my mailbox. I'll bet the road raised a good foot since I moved in. When I asked about raising the end of my drive it was going to cost me $1,500 on top of the cost to repave 100 yards of driveway, I decided not to spend the extra. Now I kind of wish I had.

    Speaking of my mailbox, I'll have to take a picture of it. I no longer look like I live in Pennsyltucky.
     
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    hittman

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    I looked at some different stuff online but am not sure what is the best option. It doesn’t help that our backyards are a natural run off as you go down and two houses on my back side had a company come in and run the lines from their sumps to the property line and it flows down toward me. I called the city to see if that was legal and they acted like it was no big deal. I don’t want to do something that is just going to make it worse on my neighbor but somehow need to get the water flowing off from that spot. The other problem is we have a lot of clay in the soil.
     

    Waho

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    We have a walkout basement, so our backyard has the two slopes that leave a low area that would have standing water and take ages to dry out with all the clay. When the guys were filling in the pool I mentioned that issue.

    They had a mini excavator, so dug a small trench from the low area curved around to the back corner where it's also lower. Back filled it with the sand and gravel from the pool then threw 6" of dirt over it. I was skeptical as the whole thing took them less than an hour but it's worked like a charm. With the grass covering it you can only tell anything is there by the weird 50 ft strip of taller/greener grass.

    I bet you could accomplish something similar by renting a small trencher and putting a drainage tile down. Easier said than done with all your buried utilities though.

    Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk
     
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    hittman

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    We have a walkout basement, so our backyard has the two slopes that leave a low area that would have standing water and take ages to dry out with all the clay. When the guys were filling in the pool I mentioned that issue.

    They had a mini excavator, so dug a small trench from the low area curved around to the back corner where it's also lower. Back filled it with the sand and gravel from the pool then threw 6" of dirt over it. I was skeptical as the whole thing took them less than an hour but it's worked like a charm. With the grass covering it you can only tell anything is there by the weird 50 ft strip of taller/greener grass.

    I bet you could accomplish something similar by renting a small trencher and putting a drainage tile down. Easier said than done with all your buried utilities though.

    Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk

    I know very little about stuff like this which is my biggest problem. I of course would have to call to have the lines marked. So your guys just put sand and gravel with no kind of drainage pipe? My yard isn't very big to begin with but it's a royal pain in the .... to try to mow when we get the water back there. It's raining on and off all week and I already have some standing water there.
     

    Waho

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    Yep, no tile. Our soil back there is heavy clay so I'm guessing the sand/gravel is the path of least resistance. The very back starts to rise up again creating a bit of a bowl, and the trench cuts through that out to the lowest corner which adjoins the tiled field behind my house.

    I feel you with the difficulty mowing it. When the pool was still there, next to the retaining wall would have 4" to 6" of standing water almost all summer. We had cattails/reeds/other marsh plants trying to grow.

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    hittman

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  • Jul 13, 2009
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    Yep, no tile. Our soil back there is heavy clay so I'm guessing the sand/gravel is the path of least resistance. The very back starts to rise up again creating a bit of a bowl, and the trench cuts through that out to the lowest corner which adjoins the tiled field behind my house.

    I feel you with the difficulty mowing it. When the pool was still there, next to the retaining wall would have 4" to 6" of standing water almost all summer. We had cattails/reeds/other marsh plants trying to grow.

    Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk

    Once warmer weather gets here it's not as bad. I was thinking about taking a shovel and trying to dig a shallow trench to let the water flow and then just planting grass over it. It would probably just fill back in though. If I come across the right person, I might have someone at least come and look at it to see what the best course of action is. We are getting a lot of rain late this year which has brought it more to my attention. Usually by now it's much warmer and it's not as much of an issue.
     

    Burnie

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    I know some of you have gotten the shot, I was wondering if a magnet will stick to the shot site, been seeing videos saying it will and just wondering if it is true or BS.

    https://www. bit chute .com/video/aq1aTigWg0JF/

    ECF breaks the link, so I broke it up. Shows people sticking a magnet to the shot site.
     
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    rothenbj

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    Kitchen drain issues again. Thought I found the problem after taking the pvc apart under the sink and finding all kind of crud but no. Then, I went into the basement and undid the flexible coupling I installed a number of years ago when I cut the tube to extract the snake I sent down the air vent and lost, clearing the clog. I sent the snake both directions but didn't come up with much so it looks like the vent is clogged again.

    I saw a YouTube where they sent a garden hose down the vent and flushed it that way. That might be my first attempt tomorrow to clear it rather than dragging the heavy rigid machine up on the roof. Living in the woods is a challenge. I keep looking for a cap for the pipe that will work but I worry about capping it so that the winter weather would cause the same issue as debris clogging it up.
     
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    hittman

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    Good luck. That sounds like a real pain. I keep forgetting but need to call a guy about trimming two trees in our front yard. I’m going to ask him to clean the high gutters too. I just can’t bring myself to go that high on a ladder any more.
     

    rothenbj

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    Hitt, didn't you ever get those stabilizers for your ladder. I was climbing 2 1/2 stories two years ago to clean out my gutters and put gutter guards on. Now at 73 it's difficult to get off the ladder and onto the one story easy to walk portion of my roof (did it today). I tried the water flush technique and that didn't resolve the issue and I'm not even going to attempt to haul the rigid heavy duty snake up there again, just too dangerous.

    Speaking of the gutter guards, my gutters were pretty covered by debris since I installed them so I got one of those Mr Longarm 24' poles and a brush off Amazon and I don't need to even go up to clean that off anymore.
     
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    hittman

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    I did buy the stabilizer a couple years ago when I was putting trim on the side of the house. I'm just not good with heights any more. The front peak on the house can't be reached with a 28' ladder. I guess it's fear holding me back. I was never great with heights but after that fall years ago it's been worse.
     

    rothenbj

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    Yeah, when you're afraid it's no fun. That's how I felt negotiating the roof.

    Plumbing issue solved, at what cost? To be determined. The local plumber did me good. The was working some other job today but, I suppose it was his wife, talked to him and he came over, perhaps on his lunch break, and got the blockage cleared.

    I probably could have done it myself if I wasn't holding out for HF to have a sale on their snake. I have a Rigid that I might sell when I get the HF as it gets rave reviews from everyone. The Rigid is a beast but it won't make the bends I have getting from the sink to the lateral. Snaking it from my cutout, I had the feeling it wasn't even getting to the last five or six feet. I suspected it was finding the vent pipe instead.

    I was just as happy to pay for this one though as I was curious about the hookup under the sink as there is the J trap followed by a second J to get it back to a 90 degree, I think they call it street elbow (threads on one side), glued to the vertical pipe leading to the lateral. To me it still looks jerry rigged but he had no problem with it.
     
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    hittman

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    Glad you got it taken care of. I've come to the conclusion that I'm better off paying for some things to get done. The guy that I called about trimming the trees also does gutter cleaning so he's going to go by my house and take a look and give me a bid. It'll be nice to get both done. I have trimmed what I could reach of both trees each year but they have gotten out of hand and the pear tree is just too close to the house. It's starting to grow over the top of the house.
     

    rothenbj

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    LOL, all the trees around me are over the top of my house. Neighbors trees are overtop of my house. I've got a dead one in my back yard that I will probably pay to get knocked down. I can't see a way to fell it that won't get hung up in another tree creating more of an issue. At the same time, I have limbs I want removed that I can't reach with ladder and a 10' trimmer. I also have two oak trees I'd like down but might just do the one off my drive that drops the most acorns on my drive and cars. It's bowed at the top heading toward my front deck and has dropped branches on my car causing damage. In fact, a fairly decent sized branch came down in the storm last night that would have done some major damage had anything been under it.
     

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