Category: Burningbird

We came, we saw houses.

Jessica Drive was an amazing lot. We loved it. But the house had a lot wrong with it—far more than we wanted to deal with.

The home we’re thinking of making an offer for is linked to this posting. The owners obviously loved the home, and took exceptional care of it.

It is well, and septic tank, but both eventually will end up being public sewer and water. It’s close enough to the city proper.

The big gotcha? It has an encroachment. The home was built on land previously owned by the house next door. They didn’t do a proper survey and the previous owner’s shed does cross the property line.
Now, this can be handled by giving them an easement, on the understanding we would still own the property. But we don’t know how much the shed encroaches. And we don’t know if the loan company will have a cow.

But the house really has been lovingly maintained.

And we saw a big ass turtle cross the yard.

Damn it, it’s time to start writing again, before I get too old and feeble and forget how.

Sorry, still no comments. Last time I had them, it didn’t end well. Hopefully discussions on Facebook and Twitter will be sufficient.

Or the new WT.Social, from Wikipedia’s own Jimmy Wales. I’m ambivalent about it, but if you want to check it out, sign up, and friend me, you can do ALL of this for the low, one-time only price of clicking this link!

The check valve came through.

We had 2.47 inches of rain in the last 24 hours. Before the check valve, we would have been toast. We faced the very real possibility of damaging sewer backup into the main floor of our house.

Last night, not a whimper from the pipes. No bubbling toilets. No clang from a sudden rush of backflow up our lateral.

No backflow into the shower or bathtub, or via the seal on the toilet.

No sewer odor.

Silence. Dry. And we can still use our facilities.

People talk about what they’d miss if civilization suddenly stops. They talk about missing the internet, their phones, TV, and electricity. Well, give a thought to your water and sewer facilities.

Thanks to the O’Fallon sewer and water folks for going above and beyond.

Today will be the first test of the specially engineered duck billed check valve designed specifically for our lateral sewer line.

The O’Fallon Sewer folks really came through for us, being able to find a company who was willing to create something specifically for our odd and trying situation.

Our lateral sewer opens directly into a manhole. The Lake St. Louis force main dumps directly into the O’Fallon gravity main at this same location. And the Lake St. Louis folks have badly overtasked the line. On rainy days, the flow almost overflows the manhole, and the force is enough to drive the flow into our pipes. Loudly.

They’re re-routing the force main to a new gravity main elsewhere, but that work won’t be done until end of year. (Note, in 2023, it’s still noe done.)

Every time we’d get over 1.45″ in 24 hours, the sewer would back up into our bathrooms, leak into basement. Not pleasant.

Regular check valves can’t work, because we always got a little bit of backflow, which would keep the valve closed all the time.

The O’Fallon Sewer Assistant Supervisor wouldn’t give up, and found the duck billed check valve that could work in these circumstances. The company agreed to design one just for us.

It literally is a miniature version of this beastie. You all thought I was joking, but nope, it’s a miniature of these.

It was a real operation to install it, too. They had to shut down the force main, send a truck to blow air into the gravity main further down the line, and lower some poor guy into the manhole. The steps broke, and he had to watch out for the rebar.

Works great when things are calm. Now, in the next two days, we get a real test. Fingers crossed.