At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

A miter saw is a great tool for making precise cuts. When we installed laminate flooring in our previous house, I was able to borrow a friend's miter saw. I don't have one though. However, for the 2" drain pipe I ran, I was able to make fairly straight cuts with the sawzaw. I clean off the burs with a piece of brick or rock or whatever else is handy.

Unfortunately, the workers who installed the other outdoor 2" pipe for our basement floor drains did not appear to make very straight cuts. They also used a sawzaw. I found one leftover pipe that had been cut at a not very square angle. I'm assuming the other piece of that pipe is in my drain line underground. Hopefully that pipe is joined "good enough". Ignorance is bliss. Sometimes you sleep better by just not knowing.

 

[Obed]

Long Weekend, Furniture Shopping, etc.
This past weekend we went to eastern NC to visit people where we used to live and to facilitate moving our piano. We have a piano that has been at a friends house for the past 13 years while we were living in the camper. When my wife designed our house, she made sure we would have a good location for the piano. The piano weighs about 650 lbs. We hired a piano moving company to move the piano. This past Sunday the moving company picked up the piano at our friend's house in eastern NC. We were impressed at how good a job the movers did. They had their procedure down to a science. We believe the piano will be delivered to our house this Sunday. We are really looking forward to having a piano again. We just couldn't make it fit in the camper.

On the way to eastern NC, we stopped in Hickory, NC and shopped for a couch and matching chair all day Friday. My job was to sit on couches my wife showed me and tell her if I thought they were comfortable enough. My other job was to chase my 16 month old daughter around the stores and entertain her. Actually, I was the one who was entertained. I had a blast playing all day with my daughter while my wife shopped. It was a win-win arrangement for everyone. Normally when my wife shops with me, it is a bad experience for both of us. Shopping is not on my list of fun things to do.

I'm still reeling from the furniture prices. We found a couch and chair that might work ok but are not completely convinced that we want to pay the price they want. The couch we really liked did not have a matching chair. My wife is going to shop locally this week and compare prices.

On the way back home Monday we stopped at a hardware store in the small town (2000 people) where we used to live. My wife bought seeds for next year's garden. She has been having a hard time finding purple hulled peas where we now live so we went to the HW store specifically let to get some.

 

[Obed]

After getting the 2" PVC piping installed that drains our basement floor drains, I no longer have to manually carry out water buckets from the basement twice a day. Yay! The PVC pipe shown in the picture drains condensate from the gas exhaust for the gas furnance and gas water heater. The same pipe also drains condensate from the AC unit. Below the end of the pipe is a floor drain that runs through the concrete slab.

 

[acme97]

I'm still reeling from the furniture prices. We found a couch and chair that might work ok but are not completely convinced that we want to pay the price they want. The couch we really liked did not have a matching chair. My wife is going to shop locally this week and compare prices.


Have you thought of going to the furniture manufactories in High Point NC? I know a bunch of folks that swear by them. Especially if you are looking for a lot or whole house kind of thing.

 

[Obed]

Gutter Issue
Today we got some very heavy rains. All the gutters and new underground drain pipes did fine except the 2 story section shown in the picture. When the rain was the heaviest, lots of water overflowed the gutter and ran onto the ground.

I cleaned the debris out of the gutter shortly before the underground 4" drain pipes were installed. As such I will be surprised if the gutter is clogged with debris. I hope the underground drain pipe hasn't been crushed. The grading contractor has been driving his heavy equipment over the spot where the pipe was laid. I guess I'm going to have to run a snake down the downspout to check it. I'll also have to run the snake through the cleanout. I'm sure the pipe is not completely clogged because the gutter overflowed only when the rain was the most severe. The snake may give me a false reading if the drain pipe is partially crushed because a partially crushed pipe might allow the snake to go through it. Unfortunately, the contractor put a 45 degree turn in the pipe which might cause problems for my snake. The drain pipe is about 50 feet long.

 

[Obed]

I'm still reeling from the furniture prices. We found a couch and chair that might work ok but are not completely convinced that we want to pay the price they want. The couch we really liked did not have a matching chair. My wife is going to shop locally this week and compare prices.


Have you thought of going to the furniture manufactories in High Point NC? I know a bunch of folks that swear by them. Especially if you are looking for a lot or whole house kind of thing.

No we hadn't. We were directed by multiple people to go to Hickory NC to the "Hickory Furniture Mall". Several furniture factories are in Hickory. Supposedly the prices at the mall are supposed to be discounted. However, my wife had the impression that the higher end furniture was significantly discounted but was not convinced that the medium to low end furniture prices were that great. We were not shopping for the high end.

Obed

 

[tony Cecil]

Your gutter may not have enough slope to it...Tony

 

[dstig1]

Gutter Issue
Today we got some very heavy rains. All the gutters and new underground drain pipes did fine except the 2 story section shown in the picture. When the rain was the heaviest, lots of water overflowed the gutter and ran onto the ground.

I cleaned the debris out of the gutter shortly before the underground 4" drain pipes were installed. As such I will be surprised if the gutter is clogged with debris. I hope the underground drain pipe hasn't been crushed. The grading contractor has been driving his heavy equipment over the spot where the pipe was laid. I guess I'm going to have to run a snake down the downspout to check it. I'll also have to run the snake through the cleanout. I'm sure the pipe is not completely clogged because the gutter overflowed only when the rain was the most severe. The snake may give me a false reading if the drain pipe is partially crushed because a partially crushed pipe might allow the snake to go through it. Unfortunately, the contractor put a 45 degree turn in the pipe which might cause problems for my snake. The drain pipe is about 50 feet long.

Could be simply too much rain for the size of the gutter and downspout. The only way to fix that is to make them both bigger, but if this is not a common event, then you are probably fine. If a lot of roof areas drains to a gutter, it is certainly possible to overload it in severe rains. If that is a common occurrence, then they should have installed the larger size, but if it is just an occasional issue, then make sure all is clean and un-crushed, as you noted, and live with it on those occasions. Most of the times we have no issues with overflowing, but in extremely heavy downpours, it does happen. I've never worried about it. My $0.02

 

[955Lincoln]

Gutter Issue
Today we got some very heavy rains. All the gutters and new underground drain pipes did fine except the 2 story section shown in the picture. When the rain was the heaviest, lots of water overflowed the gutter and ran onto the ground.

I cleaned the debris out of the gutter shortly before the underground 4" drain pipes were installed. As such I will be surprised if the gutter is clogged with debris. I hope the underground drain pipe hasn't been crushed. The grading contractor has been driving his heavy equipment over the spot where the pipe was laid. I guess I'm going to have to run a snake down the downspout to check it. I'll also have to run the snake through the cleanout. I'm sure the pipe is not completely clogged because the gutter overflowed only when the rain was the most severe. The snake may give me a false reading if the drain pipe is partially crushed because a partially crushed pipe might allow the snake to go through it. Unfortunately, the contractor put a 45 degree turn in the pipe which might cause problems for my snake. The drain pipe is about 50feet long.

Hey....easy troubleshooting idea. Remove the cap on your cleanout during the next big rain. If the water starts to flow out of the cleanout that would indicate a problem downstream past the cleanout.

 

[patrick_g]

For the last 4 gutter downspouts, I chose functional over pretty.

Good call! I too have some downspouts that drain into 4 inch underground pipe. In places a pair of 4 inchers go together into a 6 inch. (note a 6 inch pipe has more than twice the capacity of a 4 inch)

A few of my downspouts are not connected to drain pipe as they drain harmlessly down-slope across concrete, gravel, and grass. All my drain pipes drain to daylight into a creek feeding into a pond or into a pond directly.

The central portion of the house and adjacent sections on either side which contain significant 2nd floor space (My wife's 800 sq ft tea room at one end and my wood shop, metal shop, and 3 car garage at the other end all have relatively large expanses of 12:12 pitch roof. Standard seamless gutter has a pretty good capacity but large roof expanses will absolutely definitely overload it in heavy rainfall.

I have no gutter cleaning-clogging problems and my gutters overflow whenever it rains hard. It is a simple matter of basic arithmetic. The amount of rain falling per unit time per unit area when summed over the area of a large roof feeding a gutter can easily exceed the volume that the gutter can handle without overflowing. My overflow problem is not the capacity of the drain pipes. My gutters can't feed my pipes fast enough to back up the water and fill the downspouts. The problem is the width and depth of the cross section of the gutters (and potentially their placement too.)

Unfortunately too soon old and too late wise!!! A gutter contractor comes on site with a roll of material and forms the gutters in a custom installation that looks nice and seems in line with what you have seen in the past. Unfortunately one size does not fit all. If your buried pipes can handle the volume without backing up and your downspouts can handle the volume that leaves the open question of the gutters themselves being sized to handle the max rainfall you experience. My gutters are "standard size" but are, in fact, seriously undersized for the area of roof they service. Again, one size does not fit all. I suspect you might have this problem as well.

In my case overflow water from the gutters is an inconvenience not a threat to the structural integrity of the house. If that is the case for you then you may elect as I did to grin and bear it. If it is a structural integrity issue then you may need to retrofit at least some of your gutters with larger higher capacity ones. The weakest link of the chain may well be the capacity of the gutters not the downspouts or buried drain pipes.

Best of luck to you in finding a safe and satisfactory solution to the problem.

Pat