Paynus

Looks like a penis. Ha

Inspections Round 1 Complete

Well I can't believe it, but we passed our first 3 inspections. The electrical guy gave me some work to do before the final inspection. The plumber did a great job according to the inspector and he had nothing bad to say about Holly's and my framing job. We'll be throwing up insulation this weekend and getting that inspected hopefully early next week. Then it will be time to build a bathroom! Mothers day this weekend. I will be cooking a ham for Holly's family and then going out to breakfast with my mom on Sunday. The rest of the weekend will be work on the house. Woo we passed!

Above ground sump pump retrofit (continued)

I guess you can only post 4 pictures per blog. so i added another to show the progression.

Above ground sump pump retrofit.

Well the battle with the sump pump is finally over. I was finally able to install the sump pump tonight with my slightly engineered above ground basin. Basically the issue was I had a small 5 gallon basin with my old sump pump which couldn't pump out water draining from our washing machine fast enough. It eventually rusted out and died so we bought a new sump pump. Of course when i brought the new one home it did not fit in our basin. So i bought a new nice 18 gallon basin. Now the problem arose that it did not have a side intake on the basin. After travelling to multiple supply stores it was finally recommended to me to go to a pool supply store for the piece I needed. So tonight I finally got to test out my plumbing skills and install this new sump pump. It went pretty smoothly at first. Laid out all the supplies i needed. Drilled the hole in the side of the bucket 15 inches high on center. Make sure its high enough so the waterline does not reach. but alas, the hole i drilled was an 8th of an inch too small. Why? because I had a 2 1/8 inch hole saw which I use to install doorknobs so I thought it would work. Of course a job is never complete without a trip to Lowes. Ran to Lowes got my new shiny 2 1/4 inch hole saw and I'm ready to roll. I drill the new hole (By the way, if you need to drill a hole on top of an existing hole with a hole saw... so many holes... use a piece of spare wood behind the hole you're trying to drill. It worked wonders.). installed the flange or whatever its called so now I have a nice drain into the side of the basin. I then added a threaded pipe to the pump and cut a 12" drain pipe to connect with the threaded pipe in the pump. These pieces are connected with a rubber compression gasket. Seems to work fine. I haven't seen any water coming out of it. Then on the side of the basin, I used a similar setup. Had a threaded pipe into the flange, and cut another piece of pipe to fit to the drain under the utility sink. Tested the pump out and it pumped like a champ. Covered it all up and cleaned up. I think i may get a new lid, it seems like it will leave water in the basin, and I don't want that to make the basement stink. Oh well, that should be an easy change.

And then the rains came.

So we get home from being out during a fun torrential downpour and what do we find? Our shed is chilling in our neighbor's backyard. As you can see the stuff inside the shed stayed put as well as the floor of the shed. Now along with a new bathroom and bedroom it looks like we're now in the market for a new shed.

Electrician Level 4

After a couple electrical projects I'm starting to feel more comfortable with this. Today I had a breakthough I have not had yet while doing a project. I got all the tools ahead of time I knew I was going to need. This was the first time I didn't have to make a second trip to get more stuff. Only took me a year and a quarter. So i finished running the new wiring in the basement to fix what our "certified electrician" had done. Ran all new wiring and used the old knob and tube holes to run the wires through. I have no idea why he didn't do that first time! Then i fished the wires up to the light switch through another knob and tube hole, instead of the hole in the wall created by my dad and i when we were ripping out the floors in the living room. Now i don't have to worry about hanging myself on wires when going to do the laundry. Electrician ftw. Still haven't gotten a hang of the formatting but above are some before and after pictures.