My Big Fat Ill-Conceived Water Feature (or, Call me Ishmael)
Dear Diary,
The answer still eludes me. And yet ... I can't shake the nagging sensation that an answer exists...
How!?
How!?
How can I take the chaos, the lack of rational thought, and the overall poor quality of workmanship that I've cultivated INSIDE the house and bring it OUTSIDE as well?
...
...
[angry scribblings]
...
I've got it. I've GOT IT.
Make the overall usability of the space worse? Check.
Actively breed insects, specifically mosquitos? Check.
But a safety hazard ... a safety hazard ... EUREKA! How could I have been so blind? Electrical hazards are the best ones of all! And I can cause an adjacent building or system to stop functioning properly to boot!
I'm off!
Yours Always,
The Guy Who Used To Live In This Fucking Place
Some "Backmound" On The Situation
When we moved in to La Maison De La Merde, there was a horribly misguided attempt at a "water feature" in the back yard. This "water feature" (literally spraining my wrists with these air quotes) consisted of large mound, approximately 20" high and 8' around, composed of rocks, gravel, weeds, earth, clay and desperation. At the heart of the mound (literally and figuratively) was a large plastic tub (30 gallons or so) filled with stagnant water. At the base of this tub was what shall hereafter be referred to as "the swamp cake": a densely packed disc of roots, filth, and extremely unpleasant smells.
Aside from it's aesthetic unpleasantness, the water, sans any kind of pump or mechanism to move it around, was an excellent breeding ground for mosquitos. It seems like there may have been at attempt at a pump, because there was an electrical junction box in the water feature. However, the following factors reduced the effectiveness of that particular apparatus:
[For the record, I did actually disconnect the electrical from the mound shortly after taking ownership of Casa De Caca]
It Begins
With me as always, it seems, when the jobs get REALLY dirty, was the intrepid Michael B. Maron. Together we dispatched the swamp cake into a double-wrapped heavy duty trash bag, though not without significant swamp-spillage onto my person (and possibly MBM's person ... I blacked out during some of this).
The next step was to start disassembly of the mound itself. Step one: remove the stone perimeter wall.
Moving heavy rocks from one location to another is truly the purest form of manual labor.
Step two: realize, much to our dismay, that it wasn't really a "perimeter wall" of large stones, but more like "a haphazard pile of stones that just kind of formed a wall-like structure." So, there were about 3x as many stones as I would have guessed and, as a result, it took a long time and sucked.
Once that was complete, we started [trying] to remove the dirt from the mound. It was full of fairly large rocks, and was thus, very slow going. About 40 minutes into this exercise, I realize something very crappy.
Later
The mound, despite it's less-than-ideal composition (rocks, broken dreams), is apparently tailor-made to grow the biggest goddamn weeds I have ever seen. So, we temporarily exchanged the mosquito farm for a weed farm. At this point, we're still punting on this whole mound problem due to our inability to relieve ourselves of its mass following disassembly.
Then there's a breakthrough.
We mention this dilemma to our neighbor, who, rightfully, was afraid of our performance-enhanced weeds, and he tells us that we can just dump the crappy dirt on to the median [head swivels toward the median]. We should note here that the median is home to the beloved neighborhood fire pit, but the section in front of our house isn't really landscaped and doesn't grow much grass, so piling on more dirt was really a neutral exercise.
Naturally, we picked a 90+ degree day to undertake the project. We pulled the weeds we could pull, I bought a wheelbarrow, and we started pickaxe'ing and shoveling that POS mound apart.
After an easy-breezy 5 hours of back-breaking manual labor in the summer heat, the mound was dead.
Next
So, we've now managed to make our already large yard even larger. THERE'S SO MUCH ROOM FOR ACTIVITIES. However, our newly-freed back 9 has some ... quality issues; it's still basically a rocky dirt patch. So, like any good DIY'ers, we're just going to put some [landscaping] spackle on it: wood chips.
The plan is to put down a layer of wood chips and use the recovered stones from the mound to make a small fire pit. Apparently, the City of Chicago has some kind of free wood chip pile which we're going to check out in the no-too-distant future. When imagining this, I can't help but picture the Simpsons Springfield Tire Fire. I hope we discover the similarities are limited.
While we'd love to design and implement our dream back yard right away, we're opting for something a bit more temporary since it'd likely get torn up again by construction vehicles, equipment and materials once the reno gets underway. For now we're just pretty pleased we've conquered our white whale.
The answer still eludes me. And yet ... I can't shake the nagging sensation that an answer exists...
How!?
How!?
How can I take the chaos, the lack of rational thought, and the overall poor quality of workmanship that I've cultivated INSIDE the house and bring it OUTSIDE as well?
...
...
[angry scribblings]
...
I've got it. I've GOT IT.
Make the overall usability of the space worse? Check.
Actively breed insects, specifically mosquitos? Check.
But a safety hazard ... a safety hazard ... EUREKA! How could I have been so blind? Electrical hazards are the best ones of all! And I can cause an adjacent building or system to stop functioning properly to boot!
I'm off!
Yours Always,
The Guy Who Used To Live In This Fucking Place
Some "Backmound" On The Situation
When we moved in to La Maison De La Merde, there was a horribly misguided attempt at a "water feature" in the back yard. This "water feature" (literally spraining my wrists with these air quotes) consisted of large mound, approximately 20" high and 8' around, composed of rocks, gravel, weeds, earth, clay and desperation. At the heart of the mound (literally and figuratively) was a large plastic tub (30 gallons or so) filled with stagnant water. At the base of this tub was what shall hereafter be referred to as "the swamp cake": a densely packed disc of roots, filth, and extremely unpleasant smells.
Aside from it's aesthetic unpleasantness, the water, sans any kind of pump or mechanism to move it around, was an excellent breeding ground for mosquitos. It seems like there may have been at attempt at a pump, because there was an electrical junction box in the water feature. However, the following factors reduced the effectiveness of that particular apparatus:
- The box in question wasn't watertight ... or designed for outdoor use... in any way.
- Even if the box was watertight, the completely exposed romex wire coming out of it wouldn't really perform well, since it's supposed to be used inside aluminum conduits that are, themselves, inside walls, inside the house. Inside.
- The manufacturer, surprisingly, does not recommend installing the interior wire outside, on top of a concrete walkway, covered by a door mat. I mean, it's right in the instruction manual; there's a picture of this exact scenario with a big "X" over it.
- The aforementioned wire repeatedly shorting out due to water exposure causes all the electrical appliances in the garage to stop working, and, generally, I prefer those to work.
It Begins
With me as always, it seems, when the jobs get REALLY dirty, was the intrepid Michael B. Maron. Together we dispatched the swamp cake into a double-wrapped heavy duty trash bag, though not without significant swamp-spillage onto my person (and possibly MBM's person ... I blacked out during some of this).
The next step was to start disassembly of the mound itself. Step one: remove the stone perimeter wall.
Moving heavy rocks from one location to another is truly the purest form of manual labor.
Step two: realize, much to our dismay, that it wasn't really a "perimeter wall" of large stones, but more like "a haphazard pile of stones that just kind of formed a wall-like structure." So, there were about 3x as many stones as I would have guessed and, as a result, it took a long time and sucked.
Once that was complete, we started [trying] to remove the dirt from the mound. It was full of fairly large rocks, and was thus, very slow going. About 40 minutes into this exercise, I realize something very crappy.
I have nowhere to put this shitty dirt because it's literally unsuitable for anything except building this super shitty mound and no one in their right mind is going to come take this from me and I really don't want to pay someone to take dirt away from my yard and I feel like this swamp smell is not going to come out of my clothes.Faced with this issue, we paused work. For a month.
Later
The mound, despite it's less-than-ideal composition (rocks, broken dreams), is apparently tailor-made to grow the biggest goddamn weeds I have ever seen. So, we temporarily exchanged the mosquito farm for a weed farm. At this point, we're still punting on this whole mound problem due to our inability to relieve ourselves of its mass following disassembly.
Then there's a breakthrough.
We mention this dilemma to our neighbor, who, rightfully, was afraid of our performance-enhanced weeds, and he tells us that we can just dump the crappy dirt on to the median [head swivels toward the median]. We should note here that the median is home to the beloved neighborhood fire pit, but the section in front of our house isn't really landscaped and doesn't grow much grass, so piling on more dirt was really a neutral exercise.
Naturally, we picked a 90+ degree day to undertake the project. We pulled the weeds we could pull, I bought a wheelbarrow, and we started pickaxe'ing and shoveling that POS mound apart.
After an easy-breezy 5 hours of back-breaking manual labor in the summer heat, the mound was dead.
Next
So, we've now managed to make our already large yard even larger. THERE'S SO MUCH ROOM FOR ACTIVITIES. However, our newly-freed back 9 has some ... quality issues; it's still basically a rocky dirt patch. So, like any good DIY'ers, we're just going to put some [landscaping] spackle on it: wood chips.
The plan is to put down a layer of wood chips and use the recovered stones from the mound to make a small fire pit. Apparently, the City of Chicago has some kind of free wood chip pile which we're going to check out in the no-too-distant future. When imagining this, I can't help but picture the Simpsons Springfield Tire Fire. I hope we discover the similarities are limited.
While we'd love to design and implement our dream back yard right away, we're opting for something a bit more temporary since it'd likely get torn up again by construction vehicles, equipment and materials once the reno gets underway. For now we're just pretty pleased we've conquered our white whale.
LOL @ imagining that dude thinking his house was gonna look like the Bellaggio
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