1 - Putting the Lot number on our house.
-took a piece of scrap wood.
-printed out the font I wanted using word and a printer
-cut out the letter from the paper and the numbers, making a paper pattern
-took some spare spray paint, and flipped the pattern backwards and sprayed it on the blocks of wood (thus making the black part the BACK of the letter)
-used a bandsaw, and cut out the shape of the letter/numbers.
-routed the edges
-sanded
-painted with left over house paint
-put double faced tape on the back of the letters, and put them in place as a family (we had to agree how they should go).
-NOW people can find our house!
2 - Painting the Baskeball hoop
-It's raining season now, this house had a plywood backboard and water was beginning to damage it
-run masking tape in a square around the old RED square
-paint with a brush, using leftover house paint.
-let it dry, put on another coat
-remove the masking tape
-paint by hand using BROWN leftover house paint.
3 - Water tank overflow drainage:
(I wish I thought to snap a picture before we filled in the ditches)
Need: - we have 3 water tanks. Yes that's a lot of water. Here's how water works in this house. The rain lands on the metal roof of the house, to the gutters which fill the water tanks. The bottom of the tanks are plumbed together and go to a water pump. The water pump takes the water and pumps it into the showers/sinks. HOT water comes from the flowing up to the roof, through solar panels, into a hot storage tank, and then runs gravity feed into the house.
BUT, when it rains a lot and all three water tanks are full, they run over. That overflow often times in other houses will go down a drain pipe, into a gutter, and out to the river. BUT, this house didn't have that. As a result the overflow was eroding the ground around the base of the water tank, which over time will lead to the weakening and possible failure of the tank.
SO... today's big project was to create drainage for 3 tanks, into 1 location.
BUT... PVC pipe is expensive. It's $10 for 1 meter. Fittings, couplers, elbows, etc, all cost $15-40 dollars. IT's very pricey.
SO... HOW was I going to do this drainage to stop the erosion?
-Step 1 - for Chore day, dad assigns himself and the kids to DIG ditches.
-Step 2 - the kids whine a bit after only 3 hours of digging... Dad inspires them to dig more.
-Step 3 - go under the house and pull out all the old scrap piping that you can, and sit down in the blazing hot sun to make a jigsaw of it all, put together the pieces
-Step 4 - realize that the pieces are all glued into place, device a method to salvage the elbow joints here's how:
-a. Chop the pvc pipe off at the joint, leaving about 1/2" of pipe left
-b. using a saw, saw inside the pipe until it's just about through the pipe but NOT touching the joint
-c. using pliers and a screwdriver, pry, break, snap the inside pipe out, leaving a good joint in tact.
-d. (this takes time and effort)
-Step 5 - rest from step 3 and 4, check that your kids are still digging. (-;
-Step 6 - Once all the pieces are fit into place, realize that you have to go from 100mm to 80mm pipe, make a funnel out of an old coffee can because hardware is all out of 'reducers' which would cost you $30 anyway. Use duct tape to connect the funnel to the pipe
-Step 7 - Realize that now you need to put an 80mm pipe into a 100mm fitting. So go get an old tire, cut it up, and zip tie it around the 80mm pipe and then snugly fit it into the 100mm fitting.
-Step 8 - test the 4 way drainage.... when it doesn't drain properly, dig more until everything is downhill
-Step 9 - fill in the ditch.
Steps 5-7 are not necessary if you buy the right size fittings. But the blog heading says it all. Time or Money. I didn't want to fix the drainage and have it cost me $200, because odds are, the erosion isn't going to be that bad. It's just as easy to put stones at the overflow, but nice drainage means you can avoid muddy messes of still water that breed mosquitos. So, jury rigging it was. I do not recommend using coffee cans, pieces of tire, duct tape, and wrong size fittings when doing plumbing. But keep in mind, this is a overflow drain, and so long as it was all going down hill, it didn't have to be water tight.
Now, the water flows out of our tanks, and into and around our garden, thus avoiding wasting even a drop.
I do not advise jury rigging plumbing.
Do it right, by the right fittings.
Jury rigging takes effort, creativity and time, and almost always turns out not to work 100% and is frustrating.
But it's cheap!
I'm not proud of my drainage project at all, but I'm proud that it costs me nothing more than time, which was well spent along side my kids doing work together.
