Siphoning The Bamboo Lagoon

Almost touching the wood

We have had some serious rain in the last few weeks. Even though the weather is colder, the pool still has a certain amount of evaporation each week so I haven't been too worried about the rain...figured it was just a cheaper way of filling the pool...haha. Anyhow, the other day, it was about 7 inches of rain and it raised the pool level to within a couple of inches of the deck, and definitely over the height of the skimmer basket. I still wasn't too worried until we found out we were getting another two inches of rain over the next few days.

Supposed to be middle of skimmer

This summer, the multivalve on the pool started acting up and each time I did a rinse or backwash, it would take several tries before I could get the valve completely closed so it wasn't dumping water from the pool. I didn't feel like dealing with the valve, so I decided to just siphon off some of the water using one of our garden hoses. Since the pool is on the hill above our house, gravity was in my favor. We have a trenching system that runs along our back deck to keep water from the hill running towards the house and I decided to use that trenching system to get rid of the water from the hose.

Running down the trench

I didn't even have to suck on the hose to get it started...the physics of putting it in the pool and then dragging the other end downhill was enough to get it started. I had to let it run for a few hours (it would have been faster to use the pump but then much more hassle) but mission accomplished and now there is some wiggle room for the rain coming this week.

Six Hours At The Bamboo Lagoon

Storm warnings on the horizon and only a few hours in between waves of rain and wind....what to do? Well, get dressed up in "yard" clothes and battle out the piles of leaves, full gutters, and clutter trenches...what else?

This was only one of three piles of leaves I raked up on these stairs today. I would get them to the bottom and then go up into the ground cover and find even more. I also cleaned out the trench that runs down the side of these stairs for drainage from the backyard and the neighbor's house. Fortunately other than evergreens, all trees in the yard and in the neighbor's yards seem to be naked now...whew!

 Nicely cleaned up if I don't say so myself.

We have two pines in the backyard that drop needles year around. Mix that in with a ton of oak leaves and you have yourself a little bit of work. Between the rock wall and the slab, is the beginning of the trench that runs down that side of the house to keep water away from the house. It was completely filled with leaves and needles as well.

After raking leaves off the rock wall and out of the trench all along the back deck and along this slab.

Second bin made and in use now. Amazingly enough, these two bins probably contain about ten 32 gallon trashcans of leaves. I just keep pushing them down. This saves me having to put them in the yardwaste bins and I will be able to use them as mulch in the spring.

The trench that leads down the other side of the house, and I found that it has a drain in it that was blocked up and wasn't draining properly. The leaves from this trench were soaked and made for much heavier loads to the yardwaste container.

After cleaning up this trench. Looks nice doesn't it? Won't last though, since there are still lots of leaves on the ground on this side of the house that I haven't gotten to yet, I am sure it will fill back up shortly.

On top of this, I also cleaned the front and back gutters (the front ones requiring me to get on the roof), and cleaned up some leaves that had gotten wedged in the space between the roof and our back deck covering. Then I skimmed the pool, removed a shelf from the pumphouse that some nasty animal seems to think is a litter box, and dumped out both pool skimmer baskets before calling it a day.

Overall, it was a fantastic workout and feeling of accomplishment.

Brass Removal At The Bamboo Lagoon

We are making headway in getting rid of the brass in the master bedroom/bath at the Bamboo Lagoon.

Nothing major just yet since getting rid of the plumbing and the shower stall door are down the road, but for now, all lightswitch and socket covers have been replaced as well as the toilet paper dispenser, hardware on the cabinets (even though the cabinets themselves will at least be refaced at some point in the future), and the towel racks....and it looks so much better, even without floors.

The towel rack took more work than anything but that is how things go. The sheetrock anchors that were used previously were not only the strongest I have ever seen, they were stripped and of course the new rack needed a different bracket than the one there so the brackets had to be removed. There was no way to get them out without just grabbing them with pliers and pulling them out, which means another sheetrock patch to be done and the rack had to be moved just a couple inches higher than it was. I'll post a pic when the patch is done since it looks pretty crappy right now.

It is coming together. Yeah!

The Beginning Of The End

Gotcha...I am referring to the eventual end of brass in this house. It will take some time, and money we don't have handy right now but since I had a lightswitch plate to change out, I thought I would at least get rid of one thing. In the masterbath, everything, I mean EVERYTHING is brass and it is all going...but not yet.

Against my nature, I am having to just take my time and not try to do everything all at once. So changing this one thing was a step in the right direction for me. I have taken down some things that we can either live without or that we have replacements for from the other bathroom (since it is still in disrepair). I removed the toilet paper dispenser and a couple of towel racks...all three of these, I have extras from the other bathroom.

So this one, obviously is smaller than the one I took down, but the bathrooms are eventually going to get painted so it will get fixed eventually. And I would like at some point to change out some of the outlets themselves (those that need it, and if we do, we'll do white ones to match). That is the word of the day it seems...eventually.

Leaf Bins At The Bamboo Lagoon

I saw this idea on a snippet during the news a few months ago and thought I would give it a whirl. It involved making a cylinder shape out of some fencing and putting leaves in it and kind of composing/mulching them. I knew we were going to get a lot of leaves (we are not done yet), and we have some areas in the back yard that really need something added to the soil to make it better, so I thought this might be a good way to recycle the leaves.

I ended up using hardware wire instead of fencing because I couldn't get the fencing in a 10 foot piece and I really didn't need 50 ft of it. I actually bought a 10 foot piece and cut into two pieces and made two cylinders from it. I use tinsnips and pliers to cut pieces of wire to fasten the ends of the roll together.

I stood them up on one end in our driveway (which I thought would be a good place to have it so I could turn them easily when I need to later on), and started filling them with the leaves I raked up. This one is almost full and the second one is sitting in the garage for the next raking. This one is only about 2 feet across and it is holding almost three trashcans of leaves in it after compression. I put a piece of cardboard on top with a rock just to keep the leaves from blowing out.

Now we get to just see how it works!