In the garden, and RAIN!!!!
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, December 25, 2025 04:27
VIEWED: 1005090
PAGE 272 of 1154
My everything hurts today... 
More stiff than anything else. I'm going to have to get a real good stretch in today before going back down in the muck. I keep forgetting that I'm 40 now.
Anybody know of a good image hosting site? I'd like to actually put some pictures up here of the work being done, but all my old picture sites have seem to have been defunct as the trend has gone to social media and cloud storage.
I'm hoping I have enough lumber for the job today. Really don't want to have to drop everything to get more at some point. I don't have a clear idea yet of what I'll be doing, but I'm formulating a plan in my head.
The main goals this week before the floor gets put in hopefully next week:
1. Finish my work buttressing up the structure.
2. Decide whether or not I'm going to install a few pylons under there (it would make installing visqueen quite a bit more difficult.
3. Pulling up all the patio pavers and putting them in the hole.
4. Making the hole as flat as possible in prep for the visqueen.
5. Fixing a bad part around the door frame. I don't like my friend's fix for it, and if I decide to put an actual door on there instead of just a screen door like it had before, I'm going to need more support for the weight.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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ah ... karaoke. I never had the nerve to try. But I had a co-worker who was really good. I mean REALLY good ... we were at a restaurant that had karaoke nights for a retirement party. and I thought that the manager had given up on playing kraoke tracks and played a song with the original singers instead. I didn't realize it was **** singing until somebody told me who it was, the song was "Ballroom Blitz" ... NOT an easy song to sing! He said he sang all the time in the car and that was the first time he ever sang in public. Hmmm... possibly you could be just as good?
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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So when you're talking "pylons" you mean actual cement footings supporting upright wooden posts?
I had to look up "visqueen"! It's a heavy-duty plastic sheet that you intend to put down over the pavers (which will go over the dirt) to make the space cleaner to work in. Correct?
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Saw a couple of Blue Collar guys TV shows and laughed my ass off, especially at the plane crash skit. Some pretty dark humor there!
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
That was good. I've not seen any of his bits before.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I liked Ron White.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Not sure I know who he is.
He's one of the Blue Collar guys. You named two of the four of them, so I thought you were on a Blue Collar kick or something.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Thanks for telling me. Don't think I realized there was 4 of them. I knew about Larry the Cable Guy.
Not completely on a kick but for some reason their videos came up and I decided to watch them. I have loved Jeff Foxworthy for years since he had a tv show that didn't run very long back in the early 90s, I think. I've got one of his books and his CD, "You Might Be A Redneck."
He just sends me howling as does Jeff Dunham.
No worries.
I never really watched the show myself. Probably caught an episode or two. They weren't really my thing. I'm definitely not a big fan of Larry. Foxworthy comes off as probably one of the nicest guys you'd ever meet though.
I think I only saw one of Ron White's solo comedy specials, but I do remember that I thought it was really funny.
Sorry to hear about your pre-birthday blues.
Not a fan of your birthday, Brenda?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Starting to see that guys like that are an acquired taste.
No, I'm not now. I'll be 55 on Sunday and it looks like I will be spending it alone. Someone I play mah jong with talked about going to the casino but then I ran into her and she said that she is busy. She said that twice. So, I will go by myself on Friday.
Just the older I get the harder it gets being on my own.
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Off to my chiropractor in a bit. Later peeps.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
ah ... karaoke. I never had the nerve to try. But I had a co-worker who was really good. I mean REALLY good ... we were at a restaurant that had karaoke nights for a retirement party. and I thought that the manager had given up on playing kraoke tracks and played a song with the original singers instead. I didn't realize it was **** singing until somebody told me who it was, the song was "Ballroom Blitz" ... NOT an easy song to sing! He said he sang all the time in the car and that was the first time he ever sang in public. Hmmm... possibly you could be just as good?
That's how I was, but I could only do it when I was drunk. Never had a music class after about 6th grade. I can't read or write music. I could just copy songs very well. First time I did it I was at a bar when I was 19 and did Petty's "Mary Jane's Last Dance" and people were buying me drinks and saying I sounded just like Petty. I was hooked for years after that.
There were a few artists outside of Petty that I could do that with. Billy Joel, America, Boston, Soundgarden/Audioslave, Kansas, to name a few.
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So when you're talking "pylons" you mean actual cement footings supporting upright wooden posts?
Yep. But if I do it I'm going to spring for the plastic 4x4 posts for the supports. Expensive, but well worth it for that application I think.
Quote:
I had to look up "visqueen"! It's a heavy-duty plastic sheet that you intend to put down over the pavers (which will go over the dirt) to make the space cleaner to work in. Correct?
I'm not doing it to make the work space cleaner, but yeah that's what it is. I'm actually doing it as a moisture barrier.
I was thinking that I wanted to figure out a way to ventilate the hole after the floor was installed, but from what I read online the pros say that if you have vents in your crawlspace you should always have them closed. That's old school thinking and it does nothing but let all the humidity from outside in your house. The proper way to keep moisture out is a visqueen barrier on the floor and going up the walls, sealed tight.
Although it's known that a lot of water was getting in over the years because of the poor construction and stupid design choices, because of the high water table here the dirt was always wet too. Without the barrier it's nothing but a humidity box down there.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Hm. Wax on, wax off. Water in, water out.
That's always been a design conundrum for me. If you try to make a place water tight, there's always the chance that whatever water does get in gets trapped ... cue spooky Halloween music ... foreverrrr.
And by the nature of human efforts, there's always going to be some flaw in the waterproofing, especially because plastic is so hard to seal to other surfaces and is not particularly durable over the long haul. (Even out of the sun things like ozone and nitrogen oxides in the air slowly decompose plastic enough to cause tears at stress points.) That means that, given time (and there's going to be plenty of time before the house gets torn down), that area will be in contact with the moisture/humidity source and will eventually reach equilibrium with it. One thing I might suggest if your dirt is wet enough, is to throw down some dry cement powder over the dirt, so that it cures in place with available moisture. It might have a longer lifespan and better sealing properties than plastic.
Anyway, given that the area will eventually equilibrate with available moisture, the trick I believe is to change the balance of the equation at the moisture source itself, so that there's less moisture available. Unless you have standing ground water, I think you might achieve that with: waterproofing your block foundation (done), grading the dirt away from the foundation, and perhaps laying in a French drain to reduce the overall level of moisture in the grading dirt itself.
The other possibility is to somehow increase the capacity for moisture removal. If your sump pump is in fluid contact with your porch subsurface water, that's one way.
But it seems like you've reached a different conclusion. If you have the time, I'd appreciate your thoughts.
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plastic four-bys? Hmm... never heard of or seen such a thing! Are they ... um ,,, structurally strong enough? won't bend over time?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Hm. Wax on, wax off. Water in, water out.
That's always been a design conundrum for me. If you try to make a place water tight, there's always the chance that whatever water does get in gets trapped ... cue spooky Halloween music ... foreverrrr.
lol yeah. Water always finds a way.
Quote:
And by the nature of human efforts, there's always going to be some flaw in the waterproofing, especially because plastic is so hard to seal to other surfaces and is not particularly durable over the long haul. (Even out of the sun things like ozone and nitrogen oxides in the air slowly decompose plastic enough to cause tears at stress points.) That means that, given time (and there's going to be plenty of time before the house gets torn down), that area will be in contact with the moisture/humidity source and will eventually reach equilibrium with it. One thing I might suggest if your dirt is wet enough, is to throw down some dry cement powder over the dirt, so that it cures in place with available moisture. It might have a longer lifespan and better sealing properties than plastic.
Some people have said so to me and feel that I'm just wasting my time and money even bothering with sealing the place. It is quite expensive, even on the thinnest recommended 6mm plastic, and it is not an easy job.
Quote:
Anyway, given that the area will eventually equilibrate with available moisture, the trick I believe is to change the balance of the equation at the moisture source itself, so that there's less moisture available. Unless you have standing ground water, I think you might achieve that with: waterproofing your block foundation (done), grading the dirt away from the foundation, and perhaps laying in a French drain to reduce the overall level of moisture in the grading dirt itself.
Well.. I didn't waterproof the foundation... I'm sure of that. I did a decent job tuckpointing stuff, but the foundation was so bad to begin with that it's really a lost cause without rebuilding the whole place. Also, what I trenched out and re-set was only a few layers down on the south side of the place. That part is really solid now and has tar over it, but it's probably only about 15% of the entire foundation that is actually water tight now.
I have a french drain around the house, although I'm not sure if they extended that around the porch as well. I have no records of the work or when it was done. If it was put in after '79, it's likely all around. If not, I either doubt they put it around the porch and joined it, or if they did they did just as terrible a job as the rest of the porch. That is something worth looking into.
Quote:
The other possibility is to somehow increase the capacity for moisture removal. If your sump pump is in fluid contact with your porch subsurface water, that's one way.
The sump pump is in the crawlspace in the main home, and is separated from the ground water of the crawlspace I'm boxing in when the floor goes down in the porch by good masonry work that has no cracking. (It would probably be a good idea for me to wash that wall while I have access and paint the tar on it before I seal the floor).
But even with the sump and the french drain, the dirt crawl under the house is moist all the time as well. They should never have put a below grade crawl on a floodplain in the first place. The water table is far too high for that. During stormy seasons like we had around here until late June like the last 5 years, that ditch across the street made to remediate water was regularly 6 feet higher than my first floor of my house and the sump pump is constantly running. You could set a clock to it between April and June.
Quote:
But it seems like you've reached a different conclusion. If you have the time, I'd appreciate your thoughts.
In the end, I might just do nothing. I plan on building an access panel to get down there when the fl
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