Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Irrigation drain valves

Here's a tip for those of you that are getting ready to turn on the sprinklers or irrigation. Turn off the irrigation drain valve! Yeah, who knew. Here's the story. Two days ago I decided to turn on the irrigation for the summer, so I turned on the valve at the curb then went and watched all of the heads to make sure they were ok. A couple needed fixed but that's another story. So I went back inside to do other things. A couple hours later I went down stairs to check the laundry and guess what? That's right a flooded basement. Even worse it seemed to come from the carpeted room. Pretty soon my kids are giving me roving reports of where water is puddling up. I was finally able to track it down to the irrigation control box behind the house. The whole box was flooded and seeping in through the basement foundation. I thought the pipes had developed a leak, but I turned them back off at the curb just to make sure. Needless to say the immediate worry was getting the basement carpet dried. But I called my landlord over to show him and the first thing he asked was about the rear irrigation drain valve. UMMMMMM!!!! I turned the one off in the front!? He grinned and said "No, there's one in the back also" OH. Sure enough I had left the drain valve wide open. That leak I thought we had. It was all my fault, now to tell the wife. So please for irrigation preparation, please check all of your irrigation valves.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Estimate for car repair

Just a little update on that fender bender. I went around town and got couple of repair shops to give me an estimate for car repair on my door. They were nothing like the repair estimate the insurance adjuster gave me. I need to go back to my insurance and see if they will give me a new estimate. For car repair at one shop was over 23oo dollars. Another gave me a closer estimate at about 1800 dollars, but both leave me with a lot more than my 500 dollar deductible left owing. Course there are hundreds of websites who promise a quality estimate for car repair sight unseen, but I don't think I will trust any of those. Anyway just a little side note in case anyone was wondering.

Barbecue Entertainment

Here's a thought? While you are busy with this barbecue, whether it is a gas grill or a charcoal grill, what do you do with your guests? Do you let them mingle among themselves? Do you have games ready to play? Does it help to have another party host to help? I'd like to get a few ideas from you on this. I personally have my wife to help and she usually chats with the adults and let's the children entertain themselves in the backyard. I've tried setting up a volleyball net but unless I get it started myself it never seems to get used. What do you do? Please leave a comment and let me know.