Friday Again?

Gee...just realized I haven't posted anything in a week.

Been pretty busy here, with both Iowa stuff and "Homeowner" stuff.

After spending both Saturday and Sunday on the Iowa giving tours and talking with WWII vets, I figured I'd have Monday to unwind.

WRONG!

The main drain line from our garage, where the laundry is located, out to the street broke, and had to be repaired. The house was built in the early 1940's, and they used fired clay soil pipe, rather than cast iron. The pipes just slip-fit together, and during 70 years of earthquakes and ground movement, they start to leak a bit. Trees, having water seeking roots, look at this as a new found oasis, and come running.

Sure enough, tree roots invaded the drain line, and grew so much they cracked the pipe. Every time we did laundry, water would bubble up through the ground when the washer emptied.

A few years before I met my wife, she had the same problem with the drain from the house to the street, and had most of the pipe repaired, and they added a clean-out tee where the pipe comes out of the house.

Fortunately for us, the guy who lives across the street is a plumber, and he offered to fix the mess if I helped him.

SO.......Monday morning I'm out there swinging a pick and shovel to uncover the pipes. Once we had them dug out, it was easy to see where the root entered, breaking the clay pipe, and exited, breaking the pipe again.

All of the houses in this tract started out as two bedroom, one bath, 950 square foot "starter homes", and they were all built identically, so our plumber friend knew exactly where all the pipes ran, saving us the time of digging in the blind to find them.

The piece of root we pulled out was about 6 feet long, and two inches in diameter, so it had been growing in there for quite some time.

After cutting out the sections of broken pipe with a neat tool that looked a lot like the exhaust pipe cutter I have, he replaced the sections with ABS plastic pipe and rubber couplings.

We then refilled the holes, and now the drain works as it should.

He only asked for $300 to do the work, but we paid him $400 because to us, it was worth the extra money, and he's a genuinely Good Guy.

I shudder to think of what it would have cost us if we just "called a plumber" to fix it!

This coming Saturday and Sunday will be two more days on the Iowa. Saturday we have a group of Naval ROTC people coming, but newly minted and retired, and a few of them want to see the radio and transmitter rooms, and then the same on Sunday, but with some WWII vets who were Radiomen on other ships, including the USS Missouri.

Should be another great day on the Iowa!