Skimmer's Done

Finished the pool skimmer caulk last night in the dark.

I had enough caulk this time, but not quite enough experience.

I had a suspicion I would need to completely caulk over what I had caulked earlier in the week, otherwise you'd see an obvious difference in flow. Sure enough this morning when I checked it, there's about an eight inch section I didn't re-caulk and it's noticeable.

Oh well. Lesson learned. At least it's done and I don't have to worry about ice cracking the coping or concrete because there wasn't any caulk.

- b

Night Moves

Spending all weekend trying to best utilize the weather, I ended up having to relegate some things to Monday night after work.

The tractor's got lights right?

Yeah it has lights, but once you try to use them, you realize they weren't really meant to be used. I need to do what my dad did and rig up some old car headlights on the front and maybe mount the current lights out back (reverse is very dark at night). Maybe mount some KC Daylighters on the front?

Jen would kill me, but they'd work nicely. They even come with a nice little toggle I can mount in the dash of the tractor. Hell. I've practically convinced myself.

I only did the front yard (dunno why. wishing now I did the back too). I hadn't cut the grass or mulched the leaves in a few weeks. I figured a quick trip around the yard would give me a little head start if/when I got to it this weekend. Unfortunately the sun doesn't come up for nearly another hour, so I really don't know how well I did.

After the yard it was back to the pool skimmer.

I have to admit. The expansion joint caulk made me nervous. After the super-duper adhesive experience I had with the pool tiles, I was a little nervous using some other caulkable pool thingy. My fears were unfounded. This stuff was great. Almost too great. It came out of the tube like warm butter, which I thought was pretty amazing for a silicone based product. It flowed into all the depth and gaps and leveled itself out nicely.

It didn't take long to realize I was going to run out. Unfortunately it took until this morning to realize I should have simply put a thin layer down inside all the joints to seal in the bottom of the gap, then gotten more to finish off the job later. Instead I tried to do a couple of the joints completely and left some of them completely undone.

And now it's pouring outside. Worse case scenario (I hope) I have to do it again. At least I'll know how to do it and how much I'll need.

- b

For Caulk Sake

So the day before I noticed a huge split between my wood siding behind one of my gutters.

We need new siding. That's just plain and simple. The splitting is nothing new. A few years back I spent a few days caulking the entire front of the house (needs to be done again) hoping to get a few more years before we actually had to get new siding.

But this split takes precedence. This one is cause for concern. It's on the western side of our house. It takes the brunt of the majority of the weather we get. Also I have suspicions the effects of this one has actually penetrated the house.

In our living room, at the ceiling along that side of the house, we have this funny thing going on with the paint. It appears to be bubbling.

Typically when paint bubbles there's some kind of contaminant. Now our house originally had popcorn (i.e. textured) ceilings. It could be this is some kind of leftover from the work done to remove the texture. Either way, I'm not taking chances and the fix (even if temporary) isn't that difficult.

So up the ladder I went.

The split was pretty bad. There appeared to be things living in there.

The bad or missing paint is where the gutter was. It really wasn't hard removing and replacing the gutter. Why the painter didn't do it (LAZY) is anyone's guess.

After cleaning out the crap, I stuffed as much of the gap with backer rod (strip of foam to fill up the space too big for just caulk).

Then caulked it. Considering the western orientation and my possible moisture infiltration, I went ahead and caulked this entire section. It's about five and a half feet wide between the chimney (which I caulked too) and the front edge of the house. I think it took three tubes of caulk, which meant a trip to Home Depot for more (I should just keep a case of the stuff around).

In the caulking mood, I decided to tackle a similar job at the pool.

Since replacing the pool skimmer, the expansion joints between the concrete pads and coping has been missing or damaged. Not only is it unsightly (especially if you're considering selling), but it can cause damage if water gets in there and freezes over the winter. The expansions joints that were there are made of some kind of really hard, yet flexible, plastic. It's a real pain to remove or work with, so I spent most of the time since the skimmer job trying to figure out the best way to remove it. Finally it came to me. I could use my pneumatic cut-off wheel to just cut it out, so that's what I did. I got the majority of it cut out and cleaned up. To replace it, I'll use pool expansion joint caulk. It's a self leveling super durable caulk that does the same thing as the plastic. It just comes in an easy to use dispenser.

I got it all cleaned up, dry and filled with sand (sand is cheaper then backer rod, since I had it free in my yard, with cat crap no extra charge!), then went to apply the caulk.

The reason why I was doing any of this caulk stuff that day was mostly because of the weather. It was sunny and 65° F all day. That's great weather for caulk. As I'm reading the pool caulk instructions, I see it's application is good down to 0° F. Knowing that, I decided to leave the spot alone for a day or so to dry out more. With a temperature rating that low, I could effectively apply the caulk one night after work regardless of outside temp (at least for a few weeks), and instead spend more time caulking other things that did have temperature limitations.

Back to the siding.

This is on the front of the house. I re-caulked (the previous owner had done it at some point) the front of the house two years ago. Most of it is still ok (just ok, not fine). I'm guessing because of the window install the integrity of this caulked area was lost. In the bottom of the gap, you can see the backer rod I put in two years ago.

The gap had gotten so big, it required two more pieces of backer rod (Yeah I know. This is like using a band aid for an amputation).

So now I'm really in the caulking mood and proceed to check out what else is in need.

Of course everything needs it. All the windows in our downstairs haven't been touched since we moved in.

Then I find our bay window is like this.

And suddenly I get bored/tired of caulking. It's late anyway. At least that helps explain why our bay window leaked last year.

At this point, all I can muster is filling some carpenter bee holes.


You'd be surprised how roomy those little holes can be.

- b

Pool's Closed

Finally! Freakn' took forever to get around to it.
Even replaced the tiles I should have replaced months ago.

Though something tells me I'm going to regret the 3m marine adhesive I used.

Either the cover somehow got into it before it was dry or the mortar I didn't remove (see photo above) from where the tiles were will pop off and take half the tile with it next year if/when I open it.

- b

Backwash

When the pressure at the pump gets too high, it's time to backwash the filter.

It's sort of a headache that I kind of dread, though not sure why.

It basically consists of installing a long hose to the pump equipment and "back pumping" water through the filter and out the hose - essentially rinsing the filter into the yard.

There's no real labor involved just time and aggravation. Aggravation from the old hose clamp I use to connect the hose to the waste pipe, aggravation of the hose twisting, etc. Normal stuff I suppose I shouldn't get all worked up over.

Though oddly enough, I didn't find it too aggravating when I discovered a mouse (or something) had chewed a hole in my hose and it was gushing (waste) water at my feet.

Sure, I had to disconnect the hose, cut it and fight with the hose clamp again, but what can you do?

It takes about 10 minutes to backwash the gunk. The next step is replacing the D.E., which takes a lot longer. It's a fine white powder you have to dump into the skimmer. I have to dump 8 coffee can loads in, but not all at once. Each can is painstakingly emptied very slowly to be sure the D.E. dissolves and flows freely through the pipes to the filter. If you do it fast, it gums up and sticks in the pipes - a real pain in the ass.

Like I said, not a whole lot of work, but something tedious I dread.

Of course letting Gretchen swim in the pool doesn't help. Within a day of back washing and Gretchen swimming, the pressure is already up half to where it was when I back washed.

This means, I'll have to pull the filter apart and actually rinse the filter grids by hand -something you should only have to do once a summer, but with the (spoiled) dog it's quite frequent.

More on that, when it happens.

- b