Category: House

The house has a street light, or it did anyway.  It survived the winter, but shortly thereafter rusted out and ceased to function.  The glass panes had at one point been replaced with ugly plastic cutouts.  The cutouts were never sealed into place, and I was constantly putting them back after the wind would dislodge them.  This no doubt expedited the light’s end, since water was allowed to invade its innards.

I had often wondered why the plastic panes were there to begin with.  I found out during the course of my project when the village elder came over to see what I was doing.  He explained that the panes’ replacement coincided with the delinquent neighbor’s kid’s acquisition of a BB gun.  Lovely.

Regardless, the lamp was in the plans for replacement, as even when it did function, it was still an ugly steel pole whose base had unevenly sunk, causing the setup to lean irritatingly towards the driveway.  It looked pretty bad–bad enough that apparently I never got a good photo.

And so, armed with shovel and a brief moment of motivation, Liz went out to wage war on the derelict illuminating apparatus.  Then she hit a tree root, got tired, then became disheartened after discovering the lamp was cemented a couple feet down.  It wasn’t good cement, either.  It crumbled upon being struck with the shovel.  So then we had not just an ugly and non-functioning lamp, but now an ugly and non-functioning lamp and a hole.  Liz abandoned the project, which was no doubt her plan all along, leaving me to tackle it on my own.  She also rolled her ankle and collapsed in the yard–something which may have sapped her motivation.

Axe, mattock, shovel, and determination eventually yielded a complete hole around the lamp, but the pole went deep, there was a lot of concrete, and I was wary of severing the electrical line.  Then I examined the pole where it currently protruded from the mass of masonry.  It was really rusted.  I pushed on it and it leaned further.  Then I put my full weight against in and down it went, snapping off at the bottom and preserving the electrical wire–a fortuitous shortcut.

It was at this point that I recounted a discussion we had prior to digging–was the power off?  I recall her saying that it was, but she insisted that she said she didn’t know.  It’s obvious I should have clarified, or at least have gone to check myself, for when I began to wrench the pole free, an exposed and very much energized wire contacted the steel frame.  Now, I had had the good sense to don leather gloves first, which insulated me, but the resultant shower of sparks out the top and into my face was nonetheless disconcerting.  This is when I dropped the pole in a reflexive panic of self-preservation and we had a revisit of the aforementioned conversation.  I then turned off the power, removed the pole, tested the line with a volt meter, and capped the exposed wire.

Then it was off to Lowe’s!  Alas, it was apparently a popular year for street light replacements, as they were completely sold out of the one we wanted.  So it was off instead to Home Depot, who did have a light we liked.

Back home, I pondered the instructions.  I was pleased to see that I would not be required to drill down 3 feet.  Instead, the light came with a simple mount for installing into existing concrete.  Luckily, we had many bags of quickcrete–leftovers from the fencing install.  I poured a new base, effectively raising it to the desired height.  Then I leveled it, and waited overnight (it called for a 4-hour setting time).

The next day, I checked the wire.  This would all be for nothing if the line had gotten damaged.  Fortunately, it was still good.  And so, I assembled the light.  I had to assemble it completely so I knew how to orient the base.  It was slightly off, but that was a minor irritation.  I drilled the mount holes according to the instructions and set the bolts.  Then I attached the pole.  The lamp is top-heavy, and that made me nervous, considering there’s only 3 bolts, using a friction-anchor system, each 3 inches deep.  But I suppose I’ll trust to the light’s engineering.  The top wobbles, but the base is sound.

I also assured Liz that I wouldn’t use white bulbs.  I used 3, 100-watt equivalent 2700K LED bulbs.

It does glow nicely, emulating a vintage street lamp.  And my fears were put at ease when that night a front moved through and hammered the fixture with strong wind and rain.  Hopefully it’ll last for years to come.

–Simon

Amusingly, it was shortly after writing this post that I received a bourbon barrel from Liz as my anniversary gift.  That isn’t as weird as it sounds.  The traditional year-5 gift is wood-themed, I like bourbon, the last barrel was a nice rustic decoration, and of course it’s been an effective rain barrel and we’ve discussed wanting another one.  And so, she arrived home late one day with this barrel in her back seat, suffering another round of tears to the leather of her car’s interior.  Dry, they weigh about a hundred pounds, although they are very oddly shaped to maneuver solo, but as before I managed to muscle the thing out of the car.  I also had some time off work, so the following day I began my project, leveraging the prior barrel’s lessons to make the second a little better.

This time around, I had a reciprocating saw, so I didn’t break any drill bits.  Also, the wood of this barrel wasn’t as dense, so it was easier to cut.  Still, I think I’ll just go buy a large wood bore bit should I ever do this again.  That would be way easier and would yield a rounder opening.

For the spigot, however, I didn’t want to deviate from the proven method.  Last time, I drilled a 3/8″ hole and gradually whittled it down with a knife until it accommodated a 1/2″ brass spigot.  Manually cutting away slivers of oak is exhausting, but I didn’t want to risk drilling too much and ruining the seal.  It took an hour, and I was thoroughly baked from the summer heat, and I had a bloody knuckle, but eventually I was able to grind away an appropriate hole and forced the spigot in with vice grips.

I also had the same materials available for the screen, which is still working a year later on the other barrel, so I didn’t feel the need to try anything different.  I constructed the same square frame, secured with staples, two layers of nylon screen, and nailed it to the barrel with finishing nails.

This time, I wanted the barrel higher to allow easier access to the spigot.  I already had a couple cinder blocks from a previous abandoned project, and the height was good.  But the base wasn’t wide enough that the barrel’s frame was being supported by the sides, so I extended it with leftover pressure-treated 2x4s.

I worry, when I make these, that I’ll go through all that trouble only to end up with a barrel that doesn’t hold water.  Fortunately, this was not a problem.  I filled it to test, and it held just fine.  Hooray!  I cut the boards and pounded in the spillover–leftover brass piping from the last barrel.  Here’s a final shot with it working as intended with the following rain:

Of course I had to trim the downspout, and I laid a brick spillway, but that’s not really interesting or difficult so I won’t go through that.

Now, I can save about $34 a year.  Ha!  And fear not–I am not a hippie.  I still use chemical fertilizers.

–Simon

…but it is illegal in some states.  No, I’m not talking about marijuana (which still isn’t legal here).  I’m referring to capturing rainwater.  For the most part, this law correlates to the abundance of natural rainwater and by definition–how its variations will effect the local ecology*.  Here, no one cares if I capture a 55-gallon barrel of rain because the average annual precipitation for my city is 41.1 inches (according to weatherbase.com), and since 1 inch of rain per acre is 27,154 gallons (according to water.usgs.gov), and since I have 0.48 acres, if I do the math right (27154*0.48*41.1) then I receive an average of 535,694.1 gallons of precipitation per year on my property alone.  Excluding precipitation from the winter months, I have roughly 88.1 days with rain.  Every time it rains, I inevitably capture a full barrel, so 88.1*55 would be 4,845.5 gallons of captured rainwater per year (assuming I capture a full barrel every time–which I don’t because I don’t always use it up before it rains again, and the spigot is necessarily located where I can’t access all the water anyway), which is 0.9% of the total precipitation for that land mass.  Yeah, who cares?

*Except Texas.  Last I checked, they still don’t have revised water laws, despite the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer.  And of course, there’s the Las Vegas area….

Therein lies the background, but why would I want to bother with this?  Firstly, it’s a free resource that saves me money.  4,845.5 gallons = 647.7 cf, at $26.9 per 1000 cf, that’s… $17.42 saved for the year.  Okay I suppose that isn’t much for an entire year, but still, it’s free.  Secondly, there’s the smug factor.  I’m doing my part for the environment.  Nevermind that I use twice that per shower…. Thirdly, we had the barrel sitting around as a souvenir from our trip to Kentucky, and it wasn’t serving any purpose, and besides–a project!  These reasons were as good as any.

The barrel had sat on the patio for several years at the townhouse, and a lot of water had leached into it in that time.  It was a two person effort to move the thing, so before I did anything else with it I needed to drain it.  Choosing the widest board–the one with the plug–I drilled a hole near the bottom to both drain it and to place a spigot.  The resultant bilge smelled wonderfully of residual Wild Turkey and was perfectly clear with a slight amber color, and having filtered through carbon and infused with ethanol, was probably okay to drink.  Still, I erred on the side of caution and refrained.

While it drained I needed to figure out a screen system for the input.  So I simply cut a board, assembled a square, fastened it together with a staple gun, then attached nylon screen to both sides.

Next, I needed to drill a hole in the top.  I admit, this sounded simpler than it was.  I did not fully appreciate the strength of American White Oak, hardened by fire and essentially pressure-treated with bourbon.  Nor did I posses the appropriate tools for the job.  The process claimed four drill bits.

I wanted the frame removable yet secure, so I opted for 4 wood finishing nails.

Then I had to find a way to attach a spigot.  I went to Lowe’s a perused the plumbing.  My first thought was to attach a bulkhead, but the wood was rather thick for that.  I stood with the parts in had, staring at the barrel, but then I considered that I might be overthinking it.  After all, the beauty of the wood was that it was solid yet flexible, and it’s water-tightness was because it swelled when saturated.  Perhaps the wood alone would make a seal around the brass.  I widened the hole just enough to get the first threads in, then with brute strength and a set of vice grips, forcefully cranked the spigot in.  Then to test it, I positioned the barrel upon a couple beams so it was high enough to access the spigot, filled it partially with water, and waited.  Initially, it leaked, as was expected.  But after several hours, the leak stopped.  Satisfied, I cut the downspout to accommodate the barrel.

A year later and it’s still working just fine.  I’ve since drilled an overflow, although in downpours it just spills everywhere anyway.  But I’ve also installed the rain garden since so all the excess flows away.  I’m thinking we could use another one of these for the front yard.  With two, I could save $34.84 a year–enough for a bottle of bourbon.

Added to my vegetable garden, it’s one more incremental step towards self-sufficiency.

–Simon