Category: Life with Pratts

The Sewer Saga – 2

I got good at guessing when it was time for the septic tank to be pumped out. The situation being what it was, for the next year I usually kept the cover of the tank exposed. Fortunately, the washing machine had a dedicated dry well. Don’t know what that is? Look it up! Without the dry well, the tank would have needed pumping far more frequently.

About a year after failing the percolation test, just as the town inspector had promised, lines were being spray painted on the street for the sewer line extension. By that time, we were actively looking for a house in another town.

We weren’t having any luck finding something in our price range. Then, during lunch one day at work, a friend and colleague came up to the cafeteria table, and instead of joining us, he said, “Come on, there’s a house I want you to see.” His neighbors across the street were putting their house on the market. It was perfect for what my wife and I wanted and needed. I made sure that weekend’s open house was canceled.

Now I need to backtrack to a post from a few years ago.

Creative Financing

The Sewer Saga – 1

When our son was five, we wanted to sell our first house and move closer to where I worked. But we couldn’t do that, because the septic system had failed. I’ll spare you the unpleasant details of how I knew that.

Massachusetts Title 5 regulation requires a functioning septic system, or municipal sewer hookup, to sell a property. The first step was calling the town and requesting a soil percolation test. A licensed inspector with a clipboard and stopwatch came out with a guy holding a shovel and bucket, who requested a hose. He did the digging then poured the water, while the inspector tracked the drainage time.

The soil in my backyard failed the test. The inspector said a new leaching field would require removal of the 24-ft. above-ground pool, along with a big tree. The backyard would have a huge mound with a vent pipe. The estimated cost would be at least $25,000 (equivalent to $50,000 today).

My thought was that, in addition to the cost of a new septic system and leaching field, the backyard would make the property extremely difficult to sell, even at a financial loss. During the recession of the early Nineties, the house had narrowly missed falling into negative equity. For a moment it seemed the best thing to do was get a new septic system, stay in the house, and continue to endure my commute.

But wait, said the inspector. A sewer line would be coming to the street the following year and the town wanted everybody to connect to the new system. Would I be willing to delay putting my house on the market and keep the septic tank pumped out as often as necessary, until the sewer line came to my street?

ABSOLUTELY YES!

He torn up the paperwork for the inspection and said, “I was never here.”

Rats ‘n’ Bats

Here’s something very scary to see. A rat catching and biting into a bat! Mr. Rat carries it off, presumably to have Mr. Bat for dinner.

YIKES! What are the implications of that nightmare?

https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/11/08/g-s1-96931/rat-bat-virus-video

Last night, sitting at my drawing table, I heard something I’ve come to expect this time of year, when the weather gets cold. What I heard was the sound of a mouse crawling around in the wall between my office and what I’ll call the media room.

I set a non-lethal mouse trap that has worked for me in the past. This morning it hadn’t been disturbed. I decided to finally take more decisive action and go under the porch to see if I could find a likely point of entry, where the inside wall is located along the foundation. This gap looked like it. There’s even a crack there.

I’d heard that steel wool works as a mouse block. I have a supply on hand that’s used to polish the rim of my Thorens turntable platter. I stretched out half a dozen wads of it then packed it good and tight into the run of that gap.

Either the mouse is still in the wall and has been napping all day, or he left to take advantage of today’s 62 degree weather. If the former, is he stuck inside and will he find his way to the trap? If the latter, will he be prevented from getting back inside?

As I Used to Say at Work…

… “let’s swap all the tires until we find the flat one.” With “tires” being an expression for whatever the not obvious cause was of a technical problem.

That’s the situation I’m in right now. The power company sent a notice yesterday, warning of possible outages, due to high wind. So, I wasn’t surprised this morning to see there had been two of them. But then I saw that the router was offline.

Power was off, not only in the office, but throughout the finished half of the basement. Checking the power panels in the unfinished half, it was easy to see that one of the circuit breakers had popped. Resetting it once, twice, three times, didn’t work. So, something must have shorted out due to a power surge.

The first thing to do was see if Internet service could be restored. With a very long extension cord, I connected the office gear to a test outlet next to the panel. Success! That put me back online. Would the circuit breaker still refuse to reset?

Yes, it did. So, where’s the problem? I disconnected everything else, and tested the breaker again. It held! Yay!

Now the question is, what shorted out? I’ll test each outlet and, assuming they’re all good, reconnect everything one by one, to see what pops the breaker. But not right now, because I have a dentist appointment to fix this damn broken tooth.

Side Door Man

A couple of years ago there was this little project on the side door of the garage.

A Fool and His Tools

Today, I was hoping to get by with painting the casing on the other side of that door. But in the process of scraping, I saw the wood on the lower half was getting spongy. Having a section of pre-primed casing on hand from the previous job, I decided to replace, rather than paint.