Of course now I have three inches of frozen water in the Volvo shed that will come back through as soon as it gets warm enough to melt again . I need to pour a six inch thick concrete pad in there this summer .
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Reason #5473 why I despise winter
Early last week we had ten inches of of this god awful garbage. . . .
. . . nasty sloppy wet filth with the consistency and weight of wet concrete that was impossible to move . Then on Sunday it warmed up a couple degrees just above freezing and rained all day . . .
. . . aaaand since the ground is frozen the water has nowhere to go .
I typically snow blow a path clear around the garage and the house , but the blower could not get through this sloppy wet slush . So it sat there and froze rock solid four inches thick . . .until it rained
Went in to the garage mid day Sunday to get a rubber O ring and found this mess
The Volvo shed I built last fall had about three inches of standing water and was coming under the sill plate of the back wall of the garage
Spent about six hours bailing water. Lost count somewhere past thirty buckets . But it must have been well over fifty of those five gallon buckets full . Figured I needed to stem the flow from the outside before I was going to make any headway . So I spent several hours outback in the cold rain trying to chip channels in the ice to divert the deluge , but even with the big heavy six foot breaker bar I could not cut in to the frozen ground deep enough to get it to drain .
That is about a half inch of standing water . Good thing I built my workbench on rollers.
As it got colder and things outside froze , the flow stopped and I was able to get ahead of it . I was beat to crap Sunday night after that ordeal .
About six more hours of squeegee work on Monday before it got cold again and froze got us mostly dried out
Sure glad I saved those old kitchen extractor fans from various projects .
Of course now I have three inches of frozen water in the Volvo shed that will come back through as soon as it gets warm enough to melt again . I need to pour a six inch thick concrete pad in there this summer .
Of course now I have three inches of frozen water in the Volvo shed that will come back through as soon as it gets warm enough to melt again . I need to pour a six inch thick concrete pad in there this summer .
Wow. I'm glad I live on a hilltop.
ReplyDeleteYea, most of our town is a marsh. And we are near the high spot. My property slopes slightly towards the road out front, so with the conditions we had it is inevitable. A nice poured floor in the Volvo shed should solve the problem. I just did not have time to get it done last fall with other issues going on. I figure I was lucky to get the shed built at all.
DeleteAll too familiar. The big difference between where you are and where I am is that we've had more snow and less rain.
ReplyDeleteYea if it had been 5 degrees colder we would have had snow instead....but that slop we had plus the rain was a recipe for disaster.
DeleteYep. We are going back into the freezer up here, -30c for the weekend.
ReplyDeleteI am sick of winter...
So long as it stays below freezing I am good. The flooding will recommence as soon as it warms up a bit again.... We are down to -18 C this am, the deck outside was popping like gunshots all night as the frozen ground tightened up around the cement foundation posts.
DeleteThe weather is a mighty foe. Sorry for your troubles. I grew up in the snowbelt of NE Ohio but moved to SW Ohio for employment 45 years ago. We get two weeks more of both spring and fall here so we eliminated a month of winter. No regrets.
ReplyDeleteWould a French drain be of any help in your situation?
I was thinking of a french drain myself but I am no sure it would do much once filled with water and frozen solid. Ground freezes about four feet deep here in Maine. I also don't have a real good grade away from the garage even though the property slopes ever so slightly from the back line towards the garage. I think the ultimate solution would be to pour a slab in the Volvo shed to fill the hole and elevate the level. Currently it is just dirt and that is about six inches below the exterior ice level right now. I had lined it with several layers of heavy plastic before I parked dad's old car there. I expected some moisture, but not three inches of standing water. I got as afar as I could last year before health issues got the better of me. In the future I certainly will have to make sure I clear path in the snow around the back no matter what.
DeleteI see what you meant. Man, it's always something. Usually out of the blue and it bites you in the ass at the worst possible time. At least down here, it may be wet and chilly but you have to deal with ice (could there be anything worse) and bitter cold. No wonder people from rural Maine have a reputation for being stoics. No one else could live there.
ReplyDeleteYea, one day when I grow up I will live where I don't have to deal with this crap. The trouble here is the extreme temperature swings. Brutally cold and just above freezing and then a weather mass coming up from your ways loaded with moisture. We get sloppy heavy wet snow or rain on top of ice, that is darn near impossible deal with and you get what you see above. Up north of us they have had 150 inches of snow so far this winter, but its all nice cold weather snow, dry and fluffy, so it don't create the same problem.
Deletewould a flame thrower help making channels in ice outside to carry the flow away? maybe make channels this summer for next winter's flow.
ReplyDeleteHi Deb, you know I had thought about that myself. However the flamethrower might be a bit difficult to obtain. Perhaps a weed burner torch might do the trick though.
DeleteI never understand those who profess to love it or think it is beautiful. For me the end result is invariably stress and pain. Not sure how much longer I can put up with the abuse.
ReplyDeleteNow that is a great idea.. I had not thought of roof heat cables but that is fantastic. I will have to go get some of that stuff and lay it out so it makes a channel for the water to run off. Of course this morning it is all covered in another foot of snow. I also spent another couple hours at mom's on Saturday breaking up the ice dam in front of he garage where a frost heave is about a foot higher than the garage floor.
ReplyDelete