Welcome again to Saturday Morning Home Repair blogging, where we talk about fixing houses, the things in them that are supposed to work for us, and fixing them up. An ad hoc cadre of building professionals and gifted amateurs attempt to answer questions that arise from readers, and offer encouragement and advice for those inclined to do things for themselves, if they can. We all do a lot of things, collectively, and can probably help out with insights from our vast experience.
Or sometimes, we just gab.
Before we get to the gabbing, I'm going to beg. Plead, even. We need more people to take on the job of opening the shop. It's pretty easy, and you don't even have to get up early to do it (that's my secret). In fact, you don't really even have to know anything about home repair at all to do it. If you're so inclined, you can tell us something about the houses in your area, or just open the shop and let the crowd in. There will likely be a comment from CJB with the schedule. Please sign up for a week so we can keep this running. Thank you!
OK, back to our regularly scheduled diary. Our topic for today is water. Take it from a boat guy, you can't beat water. You can channel it, direct it a bit maybe, nudge it where you want it to go, but if you get into a fight, water always wins. About twenty years ago, the Army Corps of Engineers changed their mission statement from (in part) "controlling rivers" to "managing rivers." It doesn't sound like a big shift at first, but it took a huge change in attitude.
What does this boil down to in a house? Water will always follow the path of least resistance, so you need to keep it moving and moving away from the house. Wet basements won't be completely solved with sealants (especially from the inside). You'll need to move water away from the house with a French drain or keep it from getting to the house by regrading. Likewise with gutters and roofs. If water pools, it'll find a way into places you don't want it to go. Keep it moving to the downspout and then away from the house.
So now a few pictures to illustrate the power of moving water, but more in a vacation sense. Mountain buffs will recognize this group of peaks in the Swiss Alps--the Eiger hiding in the clouds on the left, the Jungfrau on the right, and the Monch in between. The near side of all three mountains drains into the valley behind the ridge in the middle distance.
From there, it falls a few hundred feet through a slot canyon to the valley floor below. The waterfall is called the Trummelbachfalle (loosely translating to thunder stream waterfall). In typical Swiss, style, the locals cut some tunnels through the canyon so that visitors can see the water slowly cutting through the rock and feel the solid bedrock rumbling under their feet. 10 individual falls are visible from the tunnels, this is just one.
Much closer to home, we have below a shot from Rialto Beach out on the Washington coast. The driftwood on the top of the breakwater are several feet above the highest tide line, and some of the trunks are three to four feet in diameter. It takes a heck of a storm to throw the logs up there.
We were lucky to catch low tide, so we could see the difference in texture between the rocks that just get hit by waves and those that get polished continuously by sand and gravel.
And last of all, a couple of sea stacks. These rocks are a bit harder than the surrounding ones, so they stand up slightly better to the wave action. As the soft rock wears away over millenia, the stacks are left on the shoreline. As you can see, this is a damp and misty place, on the edge of a temperate rain forest.
That wraps up our tour today. What are you working on, and what week will you sign up to cover the shop?