Did the Earth Move For You, Darling?

This will look great on the resume.

Kathy and I had so much fun moving 12 tons of broken concrete that we thought we'd branch out into dirt. Last week, removing the concrete uncovered some old, forgotten plumbing in the backyard, some of which was still in use. Disturbing the dirt collapsed some of the oldest pipe, so we had to call the plumbers to replace it all. That became a two-day, two-man job, with one plumber crawling under the house while the other kneeled outside shouting directions. "This way! More to the left!"

To save a bit of money -- and because I'm stupid that way -- I dug out all the old pipe myself. The plumbers charge plumbers' rates to dig holes, so I figured that my unskilled labor was as good as theirs. I trenched the backyard to a depth of about four feet, piling the loose soil where (I hoped) the plumbers wouldn't need to work. The result was an ankle-breaking trench of death, sure to trap unwary trespassers, large animals, or visiting guests to the B&B next door.

Once the plumbing was completed -- thanks, Marc and Alfredo! -- Kathy and I got to fill the trench back in. Easier said than done. Mostly, that just means shoving the loose dirt off its pile and back into the hole whence it came. But you have to stop every so often and pack it down. Otherwise, it'll slowly sink and make ugly lumps in the backyard when you least expect it. So in keeping with the unskilled labor theme, we walk all over the dirt every few minutes and try to pack it down. It's a funny-looking dance, but we enjoy it.

The other half of the project is, naturally, digging new holes! At the same time that Kathy's tamping down the dirt from our plumbing adventure, I'm digging out the dirt from the ramp that runs down the side of our property to the side street. We're trying to even out the slope here in preparation for making it a proper ramp, so that we can roll the garbage cans down it safely.

So here we are, two grown and outwardly intelligent adults, shoveling dirt in opposite directions. I dig up dirt from the ramp, fill a wheelbarrow and take it to Kathy, who then throws the dirt back into the trench. For variety, we sometimes trade places. Digging a hole to fill another one. Isn't this the definition of futility? It's what my Dad would call donkey work. But by golly, we're good at it!

16 Tons and What Do You Get?

...another day older, but no deeper in debt!

Kathy and I have finally removed all the busted-up concrete from the backyard. It took four trips to the dump, and more than a few scraped knuckles, but at least it's behind us now. Last Saturday we filled up the pickup truck twice and made two trips to the dump. Mother's Day was Sunday, so the dump was closed. What are we supposed to do on Mother's Day with no access to landfill? Sheesh.

Believe it or not, we hauled a total of 8,000 lbs. of broken concrete. I'm surprised that tiny backyard could even hold 8,000 lbs. of concrete, but the scales don't lie. The truck gets weighed on the way into the dump and weighed again on the way out, and they give us a little slip marked with the difference. The loads averaged about 2,000 lbs. (1 ton) per trip, so 4 tons total. And we did it all by hand, bucket, sledgehammer, and wheelbarrow. Do I know how to show a girl a good time, or what?

Actually, we've moved about 24,000 lbs. in total because we moved each chunk three times: Once from its original location to a big pile in the backyard. Then, from the pile to the truck. Then once more tossing it from the back of the truck into the landfill. So that's three moves per piece for a total of 24,000 lbs. in a week. What fun.

The bright spot: The local landfill only charges us a flat $5 per truckload of concrete, regardless of weight. That's because they resell it to contractors. In fact, they have separate piles of busted-up concrete depending on whether it's got rebar in it, or bricks, or any other "contaminants." Ours is the clean stuff, so we get off cheap.

Oh, and the other thrill is that we always "treat" ourselves to drive-thru fast food whenever we take a load to the dump. It seems only appropriate.

Drain Teaser

Pop quiz: How many pipes do you see in this picture?

Click on the photo to enlarge it, and see if you can count all the drain pipes. Go ahead... we'll wait...

The correct answer is: eight. Yup, we have 8 different sewer pipes leading out from under the house. And that's not even counting the ninth one you can't see in this photo.

Don't believe me? Check out the image below to find the ones you missed. The bad news is, most of those pipes are made of cast iron, and iron rusts. Pipe #8 is even older. It's clay.

This all became suddenly relevant on Thursday when I moved away the last pieces of concrete and started smelling... no, not that. It smelled like dishwasher soap. Turns out I'd started the dishwasher about 15 minutes before heading outside. Now the dirt's all wet and smells like soap. Uh-oh.

I thought this old plumbing had been abandoned long ago. Nope. About half of these eight sewer pipes are still in service, even though a few of them are almost 100 years old. The packed dirt had been holding them together, and once I removed that, they crumbled apart. Good thing sewer pipes aren't under any pressure or they would have blown apart long ago. Instead, they just kind of quietly leaked into the ground, unbeknownst to any of us.

Call the plumber. He goes nuts trying to figure out which pipes lead to where -- and why. Then he whips out a cool pipe-inspection video camera called a See Snake. You send the camera down the pipe and watch it on a little color LCD TV screen. It sounds disgusting (these are sewer pipes, after all), but it's really kind of cool. Sort of like a mole's eye view of the world.

The more the camera explored, the more pipes we found. It seemed like every few feet the pipe would branch off in yet another new direction. Some of the pipe was new ABS, some was iron, some was clay, and some was just plain gone, held together with rust and packed dirt.

While scoping out one section, the plumber says, "I can see that this is where your washer drains." How do you know? "Well, we can tell if a sewer pipe is used for a bathroom or not, and there's no, um, 'evidence' of a bathroom on this line." Oh, I get it. Sorry I asked. It's also about this time that I notice the plumber is wearing black rubber gloves, and never touches the camera directly.

After an hour or so of exploration, we effectively map out the proverbial plumber's nightmare you see above. Our best guess is that the house started with very minimal indoor plumbing, circa 1893, then gradually added fixtures in the 1930s and 1960s. Apparently it was easier to run new waste pipes instead of tapping into the existing ones, so now we've got a hodgepodge collection of vintage plumbing from different eras. All eight eventually feed into one ABS pipe that makes a 270-degree bend and goes out to the city sewer line -- and even that is new. Remember, this house had no direct sewer connection at all until we bought it. It just drained into the neighbor's house.

Now the single pipe leads all the way around the back yard and out to the side street. It's the long way around, but you know the old saying about flowing downhill.

Mystery Goop

Can anybody tell me what this stuff is?

Today I found some chunks of this white waxy stuff buried in the dirt underneath some concrete. It's snowy white and about the consistency of Crisco. I'm amazed that it's still soft and sticky after all these years. I don't know when this particular slab of concrete was poured, but it's probably at least 50 years old. This white gunk has been underground all that time.

These samples have a dimple pattern on them because the underside of the concrete included some broken-up pieces of pottery or something that was patterned. That may be a clue. Was there some reason this gunk was stuck in this particular spot? Is it some sort of modeling compound? Preservation material? Lubricant? Sealant?

At any rate, I've set the stuff aside until I figure out what it is. It's very soft and soapy and tends to come off on my hands, so I'll just rinse it with water and put it out of the way. Any suggestions are welcome.

The Secret Abattoir of Dr. Hart

You dig in the backyard and this is what you find.

Please tell me that other people find bones -- lots of bones -- in their backyards, too?

They say doctors get to bury their mistakes. How else to explain all the bones in the dirt?

This haul is from just three days of busting up concrete. There was no particular concentration of bones. They were scattered all over the place. A few here, a few there. No big piles or collections that I could tell. I'm sure I missed a few, too.

Most of them seem pretty neatly cut, not broken, so I'd say they've been butchered. Like with a bone saw. A doctor's bone saw.

One final clue. I also found some small pieces of charred and blackened wood nearby... almost like... like charcoal. So they were cooking and eating the flesh! Aaaaahhh!!!!

Mystery solved. The good doctor liked barbecue.

At least, that's what I'm telling myself. You can think what you like.

Djimbo Unchained

"Breaking big rocks into little rocks. Dat's what Djimbo do, all day, ever day.*"

So, you like our garden? It's really low-maintenance. Or at least it was, until we decided to break it up.

About one-third of the backyard was paved over with concrete (the other two-thirds is either bricks or weeds) and we never liked the concrete much. It's easy to care for, but tough for plants. On Saturday we finally worked up the ambition to rent a concrete saw and cut through the concrete in nice, straight lines, slicing off the parts we didn't want from the parts we wanted to keep.

(Concrete saws are interesting beasts, by the way. You want to keep a close eye on them, because anything that can cut through concrete will have no trouble with your ankles. Also, the big spinning blade makes a dandy gyroscope, so the saw refuses to move if you try to turn it. ("No, you walk around me. Got it?")

Side note on concrete-saw economics: The rent on the blade costs more than renting the saw itself. In effect, you're leasing the wear and tear on the blade, and the saw comes for free. Just FYI.

Anyway, once the slab was sliced, the fun began. Time to wallop on the sledgehammer. I busted off corners of the old concrete and Kathy hurled them into this pile. Whack, whack, whack, toss, toss, toss. Repeat.

That took up most of Saturday and Sunday. The next two days I finished off the job, breaking off the odd-shaped bits here and there. At one point, I uncovered a rusty pipe running across the yard and straight toward the house. I already know where the water supply pipe is, so this must be... the gas? Yikes! Don't cut through it!

Gingerly cleaning off the pipe while trying to remember the phone number for PG&E, it broke off in my hand and... nothing. No rotten-egg smell, no explosion. In fact, the pipe had already been cut about four feet further along. It might have been the water or gas pipe at one time, but thankfully was abandoned.

Now there's just the small matter of transporting all this ballast to the dump. But we're getting good at that.

*with apologies to Jamie Foxx and Samuel L. Jackson.

The Mystery Spot

Any idea what this is all about?

As Kathy was stripping all the wallpaper from the downstairs rooms, she came across this one section that appears to have been painted brown. We can't figure out why.

It's an area about four feet high and maybe two feet wide, and it has fairly straight edges, like someone was trying their best to paint a rectangle freehand. As you can see, it's really more like two squares, because there's a break in the paint about halfway down, and the upper square is a bit wider than the lower square. The paint dripped across the white space between the two halves, as if they were painting behind a shelf without removing it.

The paint goes completely behind the chair rail, so it clearly wasn't there (or was temporarily removed) during painting. And the left edge of the paint goes around the corner until it reaches the window sill.

We can't figure it out. Was there a cabinet or shelf here, and they wanted to paint the back of it without removing it from the wall? If so, why is only this part painted, and why doesn't it match the rest of the room/wall? This particular section of wall is exposed to the outside, so does that have something to do with it? There's no evidence of holes or patching here, so it doesn't appear to have been a mailbox or pass-through of some sort.

(There's less brown and more white in the photo at right because it still shows some leftover wallpaper.) On one hand, someone went to the trouble to paint these squarish patterns on the wall, but on the other hand they're not perfectly straight or tidy. The drips and slightly imperfect edges suggest that it wasn't always visible -- or they just didn't care.

Any ideas? We're open to suggestions.