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| this is the way we clean the house |
Man toy - pressure washer - #1 dad gift - once you start
pressure washing, it is hard to stop, you just look around and see all sorts of
thinks that need it, roof, siding, deck, grill, concrete...
Of course, in a perfect world you would just get the
pressure washer out and start using it, right? Ha! That is hilarious…. ROFL… sorry -
maybe some folks can actually do that, but not at our house. Either it doesn't start or it doesn't stay running, and of course you need lots of water.
Water, something we don't have a lot
of - don’t even think about the well water, it barely is enough to keep the
house going. So… many, many years ago Buddy devised a way to get creek water to
our house to use for outside jobs (watering the lawn, washing cars, filling the
pool, etc.) Now our house is on top of the hill and the creek is in the valley
below, so how to do that? No, not a pump. The creek actually starts out way up
on the property at an elevation higher than our house. So he used his
transit/level and calculated how far up the creek he would have to go to drop a pipe in, have it run
down to the valley and up the other side to our house, and have the water run via gravity all
the way into a holding tank. It took about 1000 feet of plastic pipe,
maybe more.
So before beginning the pressure washer job, a trip to the
creek is in order to set up the 'creek water' pipe. Every winter he removes the
pipe intake and drains the pipe so it won’t freeze and then in the spring he
puts the intake back into the stream.
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| ladder sitting on top of hand rail |
The way our house is built and the 18:12 pitch of the roof
(steep!), we get a lot of use out of ladders. Over the years I have been the
one at the bottom (just hold the ladder dear) for things like working on the TV antenna,
waterproofing the chimney, fixing shingles, hanging Christmas lights, and most
memorably putting out the fire after the house was hit by lightning.
The long 40' aluminum extension ladder has been propped up
on every side of the house at one point or another, with Buddy doing acrobatics
at the top and me holding the bottom.
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| C- Clamp! OSHA?!? |
On the back of the house the ladder can sit on solid ground, on one side it can sit on the deck, but my least favorite place is the side where it has to sit up on the handrail… eek!
I have been shuddering at this sight for 37 years now.
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| before and after |
When we replaced our old roof with a new metal one in 2006 I
thought naively that it would be good for another 30 years, but I didn't think
about it getting dirty - and it really needed cleaning, buildup of pollen,
dust, etc.
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| all clean and shiny again |
Another item checked off the To Do list for this summer, but the list is long and grows daily. Ahh, the Joys of Home Ownership!
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| sponsors |
This weekend project brought to you by
LARIN C-clamp, MONSTER house wash, waterproof ROCKY boots
