Hay is for Horses!!!

Once again, I was able to get away from the house projects and do a little work for someone else!  My brother and I were asked to build some sort of device that would hay for horses without making a mess all over.  Basically, horses were dragging very good hay out of the feeding trough and then trampling it into the ground where they would not touch it.  Day in and day out, this made a lot of hay go to waste at the horse ranch.

So our job was to come up with an idea as to how to change that!  After looking at numerous ideas on the internet (most out of steel), we decided on a specific plan.  We would devise a contraption that would hold a hay bale, and the horses would have to work to get it.  I was told that this was actually a good thing as it keeps horses from being lazy!

Ya see?  We knew what we were doing!  Kind of.

Well, after a couple of hours, we had ourselves a horse feeder!  The first one went a little slow as we were also making a blueprint for others to be built long after we were gone.  The ranch wanted to have several placed around the pen, and we needed to come up with the model first!

We were pleased with our project!

Stick the hay bale inside, and close the door!

A goofy-lookin' idea with a specific purpose!

Of course, it didn't matter how much we liked it.  What mattered was whether or not the horses would be able to figure it out.  Well, not even two minutes after we placed it in the pen, the horses came over and knew exactly what to do.  It was pretty satisfying!!!

We have success!

They are workin' for it!

We ended up building two that day.

Re-Landscaping an Abandoned Foreclosure: Part Two

Now that the mailbox area was complete, I decided to focus on a much larger area of the frontyard.  Once again, the previous owners had landscaped with rocks, but the weeds had conquered the weed barrier and started to outnumber the rocks.  It was time to clean it up.

The weedy landscaping.

The weeds could grow better where the water came out of the gutter!

I also had a lovely bush left for me.  There are rocks in there if you believe it!

The view just before you walk inside the front door.  Bleh.

I had considered just spraying the weeds with weed killer, but I knew that more would just come up without properly taking care of the degraded weed barrier.  Of course, I also knew that this would be a much larger project this way, but hey, a job that is worth doing is worth doing right.

So first things first, I pulled up all of the river rocks and hauled them over to my driveway.  I was acquiring quite a collection over there between these and the previously-pulled purple rock from around the mailbox!

The river rocks are gone!

I would re-use these after I fixed the weedy area.

The problem was all of the new rocks that were UNDER the weed barrier!  AGH!!!

She looks better already.

Once the rocks were up, I ripped up the basically worthless weed barrier and wasn't too happy at what I found. The previous owners had taken a shortcut and simply applied weed barrier over a different style of rock...then put down new rock. What that meant for me was that I now had to pull out all of the purple rocks from the dirt...not an easy process. I wasn't too thrilled about that! Agh, why can't people do things right?!!!  This project just turned a little bit bigger.

But before I could clear out all of the newly-found rocks, I needed to take out the large bush that had been left at the end of this landscaping area. I mean, it was clearly dead, but the previous owners didn't remove the stump or roots...they just cut it off above the ground. So I called my brother to help me with that project. We did it the old-fashioned way...with sheer muscle and hand tools. I tell you that was work! We dug down below the ground and cleaned up the roots so that we could cut them, but this was a huge bush!!!  It took us quite a while!

This bush had some thick roots!  The damp soil didn't help.

The monstrosity is removed!

After the bush was removed, I could focus on removing those pesky purple rocks.  But it didn't help that the area was pretty damp. The rain would come every couple of days stifling my progress. It was often hard to see the purple rocks in the soft dirt, and even when you could, they didn't always separate from the dirt as easily as I would have liked. I even tilled the dirt up several times, but being damp, the dirt wouldn't get very fine...it would clump up, so it kind of made it harder to tell the difference between a rock and rock-sized dirt clump!

What a pain!

But I worked to get them all out. Now that the rocks were removed, it was clear that I needed more dirt. LOTS more dirt.  I needed the water to drain away from the house, so I wanted a slight angle in the dirt. But after removing all of the rocks and the bush, it was clear I couldn't properly do this. So I picked up a couple of truckloads from a horse ranch here in town. And that did the trick!!! I was able to fill in all of the low areas and achieve my slight angle away from the house. It was now time to put the original river rock back down!!!

Adding more dirt to the area.  Just follow a brick line to see the difference in height from side-to-side.

Adding more and more dirt and then tilling it up!

Filling in the areas that I knew would sink the most.

I called my sister up for this project!  With the winds, I just wasn't able to hold the weed barrier down!!!  So we worked on getting all of the barrier down, then hauling the rocks back to their original place.  What made it difficult is that I wanted to do the project right!  So as we would haul the rocks back over, I made sure that no purple rocks were intermixed in the rocks on the driveway.  Boy, was that a chore!  My brother helped me with that!  After all was said and done, we ended up pulling out quite a bit of purple rocks!!!

Laying the weed barrier back down.  The wind made it difficult that day!

Trying to be strategic about holding the barrier down!

As we came closer and closer to the end, I realized I was WAY short on rocks!!!  How could that be?!

Putting rocks on the seams first.

The mess of rocks on the driveway.  Some were river rock, others were purple.  Sigh.

The mess that was left over after we pulled out the final river rock.  What a project!

So I found myself with the clean river rocks back in their place...but nowhere close to enough of them!  I had to go buy some more.  After buying five bags from a landscaping store, I quickly returned four of them after realizing that I would need LOTS more.  For a cheaper price, he was able to sell me a 1/2 ton load.  Perfect.  So I burdened my shockless truck with a load of rock!  But that did the trick.

The final touch was buying boxwood bushes from Lowe's.  Mom and I planted those, and the area looks sooooooooo much better!  I can also take pride in knowing that the job was done right.  The water drainage should be much better, and the weeds should stay down.  I'm happy with that.

The new landscaping!

No more weeds!

So much better.

Thanks to everyone who joined in on the fun!  A job well done!

Fun Fact!  So I had a bunch of purple rock just sitting in the driveway doing me absolutely no good.  So I put an ad on craigslist saying they were free if anyone wanted them.  Well, a gentleman asks me if he could have them.  Sure, I say.  Well, he shows up with his three young daughters (high school and under), and my jaw drops as he puts them to work shoveling this rock onto a trailer!  It was quite a sight!  Either they were in trouble or he is teaching them some valuable lessons.  I offered to help, but he wouldn't let me!

Well, fast forward a few days, and I get this short email...

Good Morning,
Those rocks worked us pretty hard, but we survived. There were just enough to do the whole project. Check out the attached pictures, and let me know what you think.

And he attached three pictures for me to see!

I tell you, there is some sweet satisfaction in knowing that my worthless rock was put to good use.  Thanks for the follow-up email!!!  And nice job, girls, on a job well done.

So my house looks better, and someone else's house looks better.  I'll take joy in that any day.

Sinking the Sump Pump

Sometimes I wish I could interview previous homeowners to ask them what they were thinking.

When I purchased this foreclosure, the house came with a musty smell...like water or mold was sitting somewhere.  Well, it only took one peek into the crawlspace to figure out why.  The area was very, very damp.  It didn't have standing water, per se, but you could tell it was wet and muddy.

So I decided to check out the sump pump.  And that left me with unanswered questions.

Ok, so picture this:  The house DID have a working sump pump.  The problem was two-fold.  First, the sump pump pit was nowhere close to deep enough.  Recommendations are 36 inches deep.  This was maybe 6 inches.  Second, the sump pump itself wasn't actually IN the pit!  It had been tied to a floorboard.  What is more, the pump float would extend ABOVE the sump pump pit.  I kid you not, the ENTIRE crawlspace would have to flood (and was obvious that it had) before the sump pump would even kick on.

Sigh.  And this sounded like a good idea how???

The sump pump as I found it.  Barely below the ground held up by a rope tied to a floorboard!

My work was cut out for me.  Not only did I have to dig a new sump pump hole, but I needed to install a new sump pump pit.  My problem was that the ones I purchased wouldn't fit through the tiny crawlspace entry hole!!!  We would have to cut one down the sides, fold it half, and then make it work!  After much going back and forth, I decided to just stay with the current smaller pit.  But I did take several large river rock stones and place them both on the bottom of the pit and around the outside for easier flowing of water.  I stole these from my outside landscaping project!

By far the hardest part of the entire job was the digging.  You have to understand that the ground was saturated with water.  It's pure mud.  And very, very wet mud.  And every inch that I dug would just allow water to pool into the new hole.  I had to dig by hand through water!!!  And the water was relentless!  The more I dug, the more water filled the hole!

Digging out the original pit.  The more I dug, the more water rushed in!

This mud was tough to get out!  It was so heavy and sludgy.

Finally getting the new unit ready to pump.  Working below water in the blind!

I elected to install a backflow protector valve and electronic water sensors.  As you can see, the pump is always in the on position with the float tied up.  But electronic sensors sense when the water is full and needs to pump.

The backflow protector valve.  One water is pumped out, it's not coming back!

This was a much-needed project.  As you can tell, this house has basically been sitting on top of a lake for who knows how long, creating a perfect breeding ground for mold and mildew!

In the pictures, you can see the water line on the styrofoam where the entire crawlspace had been flooded before the pump kicked on.  That's not good.

This was one of the more difficult projects to accomplish quite simply due to the large amounts of water that kept rushing in.  Frankly, I probably didn't dig as deep as I should have.  I was growing weary of the project, and it was becoming almost too difficult to work in the water.  The pump could have benefitted from being another foot or so deeper...but the work I did do made quite a bit of difference.

It wasn't one of the more fun projects...and certainly won't be seen to be appreciated.  But it's one of the most important.  I'm glad that one's behind me...