Another Day, Another discovery
This week most of the big construction fun took place outside the house. Water main and lead line-replacement work has thankfully moved off our block for the next little while, but they’ll be back next Wednesday.
Why will they be back? Oh, because the work crews found out that about half the supply lines the village thought were copper were not, in fact, what the records said they were.
Yup, we still have bunch o’ lead line festering somewhere between the copper shut-off valve at the main and the copper pipe at our meter.
Full props to the crew who dug up a sidewalk to visually confirm the weird readings their equipment was giving them (Not only 2 different metals, but also the water line curved around the parkway tree. Because of course it did.)
The company thought they’d be replacing 28 lead lines along our 4 block length of road. Nope. There’s a lot more than that.
I don’t think our tree will survive the line replacement process. The line replacement actually itself won’t cause much landscape damage, (It’s a freaking FASCINATING process, tbh) but they had to dig out a third of its roots to do the visual inspection, and they will be unavoidably maneuvering heavy equipment across the rest.
It won’t die immediately, or even quickly, but I kinda hope the village will remove & replace it. I will, in fact, advocate for that, using a safety argument. I’d like to be sad about losing A Big Tree, but It’s a 30-70 year old maple with a lot of sus horizontal branches and a nasty habit of heaving up all concrete in its vicinity. (the sidewalk blocks that got dug up were a sunken, crooked mess of cracks already, tbh.) The current tree is better than having a ginkgo, cottonwood, or Callery pear, but I’d much rather have a basswood or a cypress or a buckeye. Hell, I’d even take a swamp oak or a hackberry..
But. I. Digress. The main point is, after next week we’ll have confirmed copper water lines from the water main to all our indoor fixtures…except maybe the first floor bathtub. Water inflow and outflow will both be happenng through modern piping.
That’s a huge happy.
It’s been a week of relative quiet indoors too — work continued in the basement (working toilet again! ALL THE FLOOR IS INSTALLED) but that’s quiet, and the upstairs work paused while repairs for All the Demolition Surprises were arranged.
I spent a lot of time working or at least doing research out on the patio.
(Funny thing, I remember the basement renovation as a constant disruption from start to finish, but now that it’s happening again, I’m recalling how things go in fits and starts through the whole process.)
Today the calm ended. The drain stack is coming out as of this writing, and work on the plumbing, HVAC, and electrical are all scheduled to happen next week.
This is how the first floor bathroom looked when I left for the library this AM. ( quiet workspace and working bathrooms FTW!)
They’re hoping that’s as much cutting as they’ll need to do, kinda like doing arthroscopic surgery house-style.
Loads of other things are happening, besides house and street upheaval. Audio for Weaving In The Ends is NOW AVAILABLE on a bunch of different platforms, including Audible, progress is happening on the Relics story collection, and I have lots of happy plants in the garden.
I need to update my website to show the audio, figure out how to get an email address that’s approved for sending email newsletters (apparently my gmail address or any free email address is no good?) do some more writing, and general try not to be a summer hermit.
More on one or more of those topics next time. This has been more than enough for one update. Until later!
One last pic for the algorithms!
