Lot's to update, since I missed a post last week

After my last blog entry, Shawn cut off the cleanout from the septic line that we had installed inside, and I helped him redo the pipe and put the cleanout outside. I didn't take any pictures of the new setup before we backfilled the trench, but I can get some of the inside of the house so I'll have to get those for next week.

Two weekends ago, my father-in-law, Derald, came to help Shawn on Saturday. They worked on finishing the soffit and fascia, and the corner box at the back of the house. With that finished, they moved onto the East side, and got as far as the kitchen window (the double window in the picture). They had to use ladders because they left the scaffolding in place so that Shawn can do a bit of siding and finish caulking the double sliding door.

Shawn worked a bit on Sunday to do more, and got as far as the laundry room window, as you can see. Also, my dad suggested to Shawn that to try to do fascia by himself, maybe he could put a nail in the middle of the fascia to hold it up temporarily since it is lightweight, then nail each end. Shawn tried it out, and that seemed to work all right.
Then the flu hit our household, and Shawn helped me care for our son, so not much work got done that week. He also went away on a biz trip overnight during the week.

On Wednesday, we decided to rent a skid loader for the weekend to get all of the trenches backfilled, the grading done, and the garage floor leveled out. So we ordered 3 truckloads of 3/8" rock for the garage and slab base. The skid loader arrived on friday, and we had decided to rent it for 40 hours instead of just 16 because it seemed like maybe it would not be enough time.
Then Friday, Shawn began to get some flu symptoms. Uh Oh. But he stocked up on sudafed and nasal spray, and went to work on the yard. Unfortunately, the controls for this skid loader are so much stiffer than the one we had before. So his shoulder started to bother him, and even though it was painful, he felt he had no choice but to work on the project. Lots of Tylenol was consumed. But that still meant that he had to take more breaks to let his arm settle down a bit, and with the cold symptoms (that thankfully only lasted two days) it wasn't ideal conditions. But despite all of that, Shawn accomplished an amazing amount of tasks and completely transformed the landscape around the house. He took Monday off work since weather stayed nice.

Here's a picture of the front as of Monday pm. All of the trenches were backfilled, then he worked on the garage (and had to do much shoveling becuase it was hard to get the skid loader to do fine detail work by the walls inside. Didn't help the shoulder either). Then he spread the rock inside the garage, outside in front for the parking area, and in front of the main entrance. And look, we can now park our cars inside the garage (though we still need to level the rock in there someday)

And since Tuesday turned out to be nice weather, we took vacation from work to do as much as we could, since it calls for rain the rest of the week, and we return the skid loader on Friday.

We worked on getting the area in front of the window wells graded, and I think it will turn out nice once we add some grass, rock, and cut the level of the window wells down. I am happy that I get more view out of those windows than previously. So use your imagination to picture the slopes on each side covered with rock, the window wells lower, and nice grass to finish it all off.

You can see the two wires sticking out of the ground between the window wells. Sometime the electrician will come out to hook up the electricity and install a main panel in the house. With rain for the rest of the week, I doubt it will happen until next week now. Unless they come out on Saturday.

On this next picture, you can see the grade on this part of the house. I think it turned out nice. And the chickens really appreciated all of that fresh dirt and all the worms they could find in there. If you look closely you can see a couple of my chooks checking out the new landscape.

Here is a picture of the progress we were making along the back. This was about 2 pm yesterday. Shawn went into the house to use the restroom and I was taking pictures when I heard a loud buzzing sort of grinding noise.

So I headed back to the old house, and asked Shawn what was making the noise, and he said it was the propane tank, and that my mother, who was in the house, thought she smelled propane in there (Shawn thought it smelled like sauerkraut, and thought it might be something my mum cooked). So I called the Co-op, and the guy on the phone said that regulators from time to time will buzz and you can hear it if you're standing next to the tank. I said I was about 200 ft. away and I could hear it, and mentioned that my mum thought it smelled like propane in the house, though when I went in, I thought maybe it was a faint smell, but not sure. That changed his tone of voice very quickly and told us to stay outside and sent a technician out to do a safety check. Ten minutes and the guy was at our property.

So for the next two hours I went around the house with the guy checking this and that, and Shawn continued to work on the grading. The tech guy put a pressure valve and pressurized the system and watched the gauge drop in pressure. Yeap, there must be a leak somewhere.
He had a nice little sniffer, and he checked the stove. No leaks there. So then he went to our old heater, and the sniffer did detect a small leak, though it was minuscule and not something he would worry about. He closed the valve to the heater, and we were still losing pressure. So he went to the water heater, and the shut off valve leaks, but it really shouldn't be dropping that much pressure. So he shut that valve off, and still we lost pressure. So the guy now is puzzled, and thinks there's a leak in the pipe somewhere in the house. Nope, not there. So he takes off the regulators at the house and at the tank. Nope, those work fine. So he tested the line between tank and house. "Holy cow! You guys have an underground leak in your line somewhere."

My lightbulb goes on, and I mention that I suspected the electric coop hit our gas line last year when they installed the power to the pole and ran a trencher through the area, though they said that no, they hadn't. So the guy goes and pokes some holes in the ground where the electric trench was dug last year, and stuck the sniffer thingy in there.

He was so excited, the little sniffer thingy was new and he'd never used it to check propane levels on the ground. So he got the manual out to check for underground leaks. So he pokes some holes in the dirt, then dropped a sensor in the hole and checked. He said he'd better check the manual, because his reading couldn't be right. So he did it again, following instructions step by step. His readings were right. Our soil is 20% propane between house and tank. He said that if the house wasn't there, he would have liked to start the soil on fire to see it burn. So yeah, we've been leaking propane into the dirt for some time.

Really Nice. Since last October we've been pumping money into the ground. We did think our propane bills were outrageous last winter, but it was so cold, and with the old house (and Evan cranking the heater to it's maximum setting when we weren't looking) we really didn't look much into it. They guy said that with our propane use, we should have been at 60% full on our tank at this point after our last fill, so the leak would explain why we're at 20% instead.

So the easy fix was to rent a rubber hose from the co-op to put between tank and the old house that will go above ground, since we don't plan on living in the old house and hope to move soon. We had to move the tank closer to the house, so Shawn did that with the skid loader, while the guy went to get a rubber hose. He said that if after the underground leak was fixed, and we still had leaks at the heater and water heater, he couldn't let us hook up again until we got those two things fixed. Thank God that after he put the rubber hose on the tank, the pressure gauge held even after 20 minutes of chit-chatting while we waited. He then went around again to do the sniffing thing safety check, and he said we're ok. The water heater shut off does leak, but what he said was that would only be a problem if the pilot light ever goes out. So keep an eye on the water heater, since, reasonably, he didn't expect us to buy a new one for the old house.
At least we won't be wasting any more money pumping propane into the soil.

So, back to grading. Here's a nice shot from the SW angle of the house. Shawn worked until about 9 pm to get it all done. I'll have more pictures of the back and East side for next week since it was too dark by then.

Today it supposedly rained a bit, so we'll see how the ground is when we get home tonight. Maybe Shawn can mess around with the skid loader to move some concrete chunks that are by the barn, and touch up any areas of that house grading that might need it. Otherwise, he might just give his shoulder a break. If he can't work tonight, tomorrow I'll call the rental place and see if they would let us keep the skid loader until Monday, since we've only used about 22 hrs of the 40. We'll see what they say. After this is done, I suppose is back to soffit and fascia for Shawn. Siding... we might be done for the year, since I think the boards get stiff with the cold and the nails might blow out the back of the siding boards. We'll just take it a week at a time and see what we can do.