In the ditches

While we waited for spring to be sprung, Jeff picked up the axe, long-arm lever, and shovel and dug out the side garden with the hopes of improving drainage and keeping our basement dry.

The previous owners built a flower/herb bed along the driveway. I've used this as a place to grow tomatoes since its the only part of our tiny lot that gets full sun. This year we joined a CSA, so its being turned back to a flower bed.

There are 2 problems with this garden:
1) It has no drainage so water runs right back through the fieldstones into the basement.
2) The dirt and mulch was piled up above the sill effectively creating a termite super-highway. If I put on bug-o-vision glasses, I'm certain I'd see signs proclaiming our basement to be a termites' vactionland.

So, Jeff dug a ditch 18 inches deep

and added a lot of drainage rock

and a PVC pipe wrapped in landscape netting.

He added some rocks back on top of the pipe

Pulled off the lower rows of siding.


Added some Boracare to the termite areas. There were several of these spots. Not surprising to find these spots since we already replaced the wood on the interior of this wall.


We added a rain/snow barrier that would divert the water directly into the drainage pipe.

Then went some more gravel, and a piece of trim. The trim still needs to be painted, but I'm ready to add flowers, so this is the "final" photo.

Now, its off to plan a flower garden!

The Queen is dead

While digging a ditch this past weekend (more on that later), the bigger Beechnut found this bug in the dirt.

We think its the Queen Termite. We're going to impale it on a toothpick and put her in the garden as a warning to all the other termites.

What's worse than termites?

I was sitting quietly on the couch when I heard a buzzing. I thought it was a large horsefly. I heard it BANG into one of the french doors in the dining room before it found a path straight for my head.

I thought "Wow! That's a huge bumble bee" and I managed to trap it.

Here it is in a little container before Jeff released it back outside. Its a little blurry, but you can see how big it is compared to his hands. Its almost as long as the top section of his thumb.

Later we wondered what it was doing in our house and some google searching led us to believe that its something called a Carpenter Bee and that it was in our house because it likes to eat wood.
If I see another one of these any time soon, we might be selling the house in short order.

Balance Beam

We bought this house in late October. This is the conversation that occurred the following May.
Jessie: You know, there are a lot of ants in this house this year.
Jeff: Well, we do have a toddler who hides Cheerios under all the large appliances.
Jessie: Yeah, but why do these ants have wings? And why are they all coming out of that new hole in the dining room floor?

That was when it dawned on us that we had termites. Those little buggers ate through a good 5 feet of a 6x8 inch beam that was supporting the threshold between 2 rooms. We treated the beams that showed activity as well as had a termite company put traps around the house, but we hadn't yet replaced that portion of the beam.

We found other areas of termite damage nearby when we opened up the kitchen and the basement walls, and we rebuilt those supports. But we still had to figure out what to do about the bouncy floor between our dining room and TV room, which I might add, is a very high-traffic doorway.

This weekend found Jeff and our neighbor Jon ( Superman ) standing with a Sawsall above their heads sawing off the useless beam.


You can see how much damage was done, because Jeff is holding this piece of wood as if it weighs nothing. And no, he's not freakishly strong. That wood did weigh practically nothing.


Closeup of the damage:


Here's the finished work, with a new beam in place and new supports.
Now, off to find the wire strippers. We realized this afternoon that Jeff managed to cut through the phone line in all the saws-all-ing excitement.

TERMITES!

Recent instant messenger exchange between the authors of SOABT

Jessie: I think you should update the blog about the termites.I have nothing to say that doesn't include how grumpy and pregnant I am. No one is going to want to read that
Jeffrey: here's what I want to write:
Jeffrey: Title: TERMITES!
Jeffrey: Blog: TERMITES! WE HAVE F-ING TERMITES!!! I HATE THIS HOUSE
Jeffrey: The End
Jessie: Fine. I'll write about the termites.




As part of the kitchen project we've included insulating / air-sealing the "Cold Room" in the basement. A little tip to anyone who's buying a house, open the fuse box and see how things are labeled. We looked at the house in the late summer and purchased in early fall. The house wasn't very cold in August, however on the fuse box there's a room labeled "Cold Room". I've never seen a fuse labeled more correctly. This section of the basement was previously uninsulated, walls and ceiling, and mostly covered with just barn board.

Jeff started in on the demo of the "Cold Room" to prepare for the Icynene installation with his trusty Fubar. It wasn't long before The House threw another surprise at us.


The sill between the foundation and the vertical studs holding up one wall of the house crumbled away and the majority of 3 of the studs had vanished. A frantic trip to the lumber store ensued to buy new supports to shore up the wall of our house.

We followed this up with a liberal application of Bora Care to make the house unattractive to termites in the future.

The depressing part about this: examination of another wall showed that there was also termite damage, but a previous owner had already repaired it. I don't recall anything in the seller's disclosure about termite damage...
Since my time machine is in the shop, I have no way to know if we would have bought the house knowing about termite damage, but I wish we'd known 3 years ago to start looking for it. I wonder how much damage we could have stopped just in that time.