God, Is That You?
She was actually looking at Beth when I took this
picture, but you can’t see Beth in this picture. 🙂

Blame dedication, I guess. Dedication is code for ‘stubbornness’ though. At least for me. At least for today. I decided last night as I was heading to bed that I would finish the hole digging and get as much done in the basement today as possible. Namely because it’ll then be done, but also because it’s supposed to get pretty hot this next week, and the idea of doing a lot of manual labor during that time isn’t really appealing.

So I went into the basement this morning after reading the paper to finish digging the hole. To my surprise, there was water in the hole. Only in the deepest part, though — the 30″ deep pseudo-hole. Standing water. Crazy. I knew I’d be getting close to the water table, but I didn’t know how close I was until this morning. It was obvious that it wasn’t down too far, though, because all of the clay dug out was pretty moist. But it was good to see water, because that gives me hope for what I intend to accomplish with the sump basin (without running tile).

I finished digging the hole which took probably an hour or two (I wasn’t keeping track) by the time I squared it out and got it roughly as even as possible. It ended up about 31.5″ deep (from the top of the concrete floor). After cleaning everything up well (the dust and clay immediately around the hole), I hauled in the gravel and started dumping away. When I got the base depth I wanted, I tamped it down a bit and set the basin in place. There will be a (planned) 1 inch drop from the existing floor height (to make it like a floor drain). I was way short on estimating the amount of gravel needed, though. I really should’ve measured the hole and done the calculation before, but I guessed instead. Long story short, I ended up with about 1/3 of what I need to complete the job. But that’s alright. I’ll just have to make another trip to get some more. In the meantime, I’ve got enough to have the basin set in the hole at the desired height and somewhat surrounded by an inch or so of gravel.

I cleaned up the floor of the cistern and also the basement floor and steps today as well. All of the major dirty stuff is done, so they’re dry swept and vacuumed. It all needs to be mopped yet, but I need to start at the top (cleaning) and work my way down before it gets to that point.

And as a random note to end this post, I ran out of LP gas for the grill today. Fortunately, there was enough to get the potatoes done, but by the time I went out to put brats on, it was all out. So I need to get that cylinder filled Monday. It actually lasted quite some time (a little over a year), although we’ve grilled about 4 times as much this year than we did last year, so usage wise it’s mostly been this spring/summer.

So tomorrow will likely be an indoor day. It’s supposed to start heating up again now, so I’ll either tinker in the basement with cleaning projects or hang around upstairs doing random things. We’ll see what happens. I know I’ll end up taking a nap at some point, though. It’s inevitable. And that’s alright.

Until next time…

“A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.”
– Abba Eban (1915-2002)

–MZ