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Maybe I can invest the money I saved…

It seems that I’m forever fighting the natural flow of water around my house. Since we’ve moved in, I’ve ripped out all kinds of old drain lines and replaced them with new ones, but problems still keep popping up.

Most recently, the gutter on the highest part of my house (where I can’t reach) started just gushing over the side, gouging a hole in the ground where it splashed during a really rainy day. My first thought was that I had a clogged gutter, but I couldn’t be sure because I couldn’t see in it.

My local gutter guys wanted $110 to come clean it out, a price I didn’t want to pay until all the trees had dropped their leaves at least. But I’m a tad (just a tad) anal about knowingly having things wrong with my house and my not fixing them, so I started relooking at the problem and decided that perhaps the problem wasn’t in the gutter, but in the drain lines.

The original builders had used that cheapo corrugated plastic piping and I’ve ripped enough defective pieces of it outta the ground to know it was probably suspect. So I found the start of the pipe at the bottom of the downspout, and using some exploratory shoveling, found where it plunged deep into the slope of my backyard hill. I stuck the hose in it and turned the water on to see if I could find out where the water was coming out, if in fact it was, but I couldn’t find it.

To make a long story short, I ended up ripping the whole thing out and here’s what I found:
IMG_2432

I replaced this plasty-crap with about 25 feet of 4″ PVC piping. Miraculously, I dug under two sprinkler lines and didn’t break either of them.

IMG_2431

It was a banner day…but I have a feeling my back is going to be screaming tomorrow.
Now I just have to get that retaining wall done, but then I’m sure it’ll be something else…

Chris Souther's avatar

By Chris Souther

Chris joined the Air Force out of high school. After four years of supporting communications for the Department of Defense, the White House, and stations around the world, he left the military and moved to Atlanta. For the next six years, Chris continued working in the telecom field, eventually traveling around the country teaching companies like MCI, Nortel Networks, and Cabletron, how to do what he did.

When the dot.com crash happened, upon recommendation from his wife, Chris re-enrolled in school and earned his B.S. in Communications (PR & Marketing).

Since then, he was worked in network security, healthcare, banking and finance (and FinTech), general high tech (AI/ML, Cloud, IoT), and most recently, application development fields. Now, with more than 15 years of both Marketing and Communications under his belt, he helps organizations grow their business through the proper application of marketing, communications, and content.

And he blogs on the side. It keeps him sane.

One reply on “Maybe I can invest the money I saved…”

And….

You did way more work than the guy who you paid to do it would have, used better parts than he would have, and (while laying out on your back tomorow) you can marvel in your JOB WELL DONE!

RE: That IS true! And, I know what’s down there and where to look for problems in the future, etc. Oh, and my back feels fine, shockingly!

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