You might be a red neck if your yard looks like mine.

During construction of my additions, which includes the expansion of a single car garage to a two car garage, the building of a cedar covered porch and the building of a boat house, my yard has gone through various states of disrepair.  I just want to say right up front, that  I have the best neighbors in the world as they never complained to me about its unsightliness.  And even when one did mention it to my next door neighbor my next door neighbor defended me by telling them I am too busy to mow my lawn and we (the community) like people that fix up their houses and do things themselves. 

On the other hand since I don't belong to a home owners association there was really nothing they could do about it.  To encourage people to keep their lawns nice we do have the lawn of the month award in our neighborhood and through the 30 years that my parents and I have owned the house we have never had the the lawn of the month sign on our property.  

I live in a cul-de-sac and the sign appears in various neighboring properties all around the cul-de-sac mocking us.   But as you will see, this non lawn of the month status of my property over the last two years is completely understandable.   I probably should have put a "Not the Lawn of the Month" sign in my yard.  I might actually be a redneck because my lawn looked like this.

  

 

 

I did a search on google for redneck and yard and I found the following sentence at this link

"You  might be a redneck if you mow the front yard and find a car."

This was the case for me.  I actually did have my sisters car in the front lawn for awhile when I was trying to sell it for her and it was surrounded by two foot tall grass.  I have mowed the grass maybe two times over the last two years.   The thing that usually gets me to mow the lawn with the weed eater is when I discover I'm about to step on a snake.  They are harmless but they usually scare the shit out me due to the surprise.  Besides the tall grass, there are craters and mounds in the yard which make it look like a war zone.

I do not have picture of the car on the front lawn but here it is when my sister dropped it off.

 

My lawn also had an outboard motor laying in it for awhile.   This motor was a 1998 9.9 Hp Mercury 4 stroke that had been made by Yamaha.   It usually started on the first pull but had the problem of stalling and then getting flooded.  I put a lot of work into the motor including putting on a new timing belt, impeller and overhauling the carburetor.  At one point water which cools the motor stopped coming out of the engine.  That is when dad and I over hauled the cooling system for the motor.   Unfortunately, I found out that a lot of parts were obsolete including the gaskets I needed.  But I was lucky and found the last complete gasket set in existence for for the motor on ebay and bought it for $60.

Dad and I got the motor working perfectly.  But then I let the motor sit for a month and it ended up doing the same flooding thing it always does.  So I bought a nice new Yamaha 9.9 hp and threw the old motor in the lawn.  And it stayed there for 5 months.  I did eventually put the motor on Craigslist and listed it along with the gas tank, shop manual and gasket set for $500 dollars.  Someone came by and offered me $400, I negotiated the price down to $300 and we had a deal.  Below is a picture of the motor being repaired and when it was on the boat.  The Mercury is almost as big as 50 hp 2 stroke Yamaha on the boat.

In addition to the outboard motor in the lawn there was a serious amount of scrap lumber scattered all over the yard.  There was lumber of all shapes and sizes.  There was yellow pine, oak, walnut, cedar, pressure treated lumber, plywood, particle board...you name it was in the lawn and sometimes had nails poking out of it or rattle snakes as my dad likes to call them.  I got bit on the foot twice.  There was so much lumber that when I cleaned the yard up I filled a 10 yard Dumpster and there was still a huge pile left over.

Aside from the lumber lets not forget the 28 foot boat trailer in the front yard, the kayaks, water pump and junk pile in the back yard and the dirt driveway which all added to the red neck ambience of my house.

And if your still not convinced that my yard was neglected, consider this fact.   The police sent me a card in the mail telling me that they found something of mine and wished to return it.   Well it was my boat trailer license plate.  But when I looked at the paper work it said that they tried to deliver it but the house was abandoned.   I guess its time to buy a lawn mower.

Anyway,  having almost finished the boat house, I decided to switch gears and spruce the place up a bit by doing some landscaping.

What I wanted to do was to put dirt in behind the new retaining wall in the backyard and put in the swail.  I  estimated it would take five 18 yard dump truck loads to complete the job.  Dirt around here is a little scarce  so each dump truck is $180.  I also found out that it would cost me $600 to rent a skid steer.   So that would be $1500 total.

After coming up with the estimate I wondered how much I would save by doing this task myself.   When I got  a quote from a contractor I got my answer.  -$150.  This turned out to be one of the few times when the contractor was cheaper than what I could do by myself.   The reason being is that their is little labor involved, the price of renting the skid steer is high and the contractor had a cheap dirt source.

I let the contractor do the job.  I'm glad I did because the contractor almost flipped his skid steer into the canal.  I can only imagine what would happen if I did that.  Would the rental company make me pay 25 thousand dollars to replace the skid steer?  Luckily one of my trees saved him from ending up in the canal.  They got a truck over here to right the skid steer and everything was ok.  Here is the picture of the backyard with the new fill and 5' x 64' by 3" deep swail.

 

 

Once the fill was in the back yard I was highly motivated to plant the grass seed.  Planting grass seed was where I could save money because it cost about $1500 to $3000 to sod 1500 sq ft of yard but the Pensacola Bahia Grass seed cost me $56 dollars for 2000 sq ft.  My existing grass is Floratam (St. Augustine) which is for the most part buried under the dirt but will eventually come poking through.  It will be interesting to see which grass wins out.

However before I could seed the yard I had to put the new sprinklers in because I had completely buried the old zone and the new seed needed to be constantly wet.   To do this I consulted this link and this link for a background in sprinkler design. Those links make sprinkler design seem complicated but since I had already had a zone before in the backyard my system was already really designed.

 In any case the design information assured me my pressure drop would not be too much and that my flow rate was adequate for the number of sprinklers I had to use.  In my case my pump was capable of 62 GPM and the 11 sprinklers I used would need a maximum of 30 GPM.  It also taught me to place the sprinklers head to head or in other words the water from one sprinkler should reach the head of the adjacent sprinkler.  I was not to strict in following this rule because if it was inadequate I could always put in another one at a later date.  I also followed the suggestion of the links and drew the plans out on graph paper (Visio).

The pump that I had was a 1.5 Hp Flotec that is about 20 years old and had been sitting without use for 2 years.  When I applied power it didn't work.  So I went to Ace Hardware to get a pump and as I was kneeling in the aisle someone walked by and said, "no praying."  I replied,  "lord please make my sprinkler system work."   We both laughed.  I bought the pump and I went back home.   I got to work uninstalling the old pump.  However, before cutting the pipes I decided to unbolt the motor.  The motor would only come out a 1/2 inch so I decided to push it back in and turn it on.   It worked!   So I bolted it all back together and tested it again.   The pump pushed water into the old zone.  Prayer answered!

I returned the pump and proceeded to install the sprinklers.  The hardest part about installing sprinklers is digging the trench.   They make a machine for this which makes quick work of it but I thought since I had soft dirt in the ground it would be no problem.   Wrong!  It was still quite the work out and there was a lot of sticks in the fill dirt.  I used a narrow shovel and pick to dig the trench and it took me about 7 hours to finish the job.  The laying of the pipe and assembling of the sprinklers took about an hour.

The sprinkler I chose is the Torro  570 Z Pro Series Sprinkler which I liked because the spray radius and flow rate in GPM are right on the label.   Also the sprinkler is adjustable from 0 degrees spray to 360 degrees of spray.   You never know what may end up in the lawn and so its nice to be able to redirect the sprinkler away from it or shut it of entirely.  I used the adjustment to turn all the sprinklers off and pressure test the zone.  I only found one leak in a Teflon taped fitting.

The sprinklers are 4 inch pop ups so that there is plenty of height to get above the grass.   In addition to control the height of the sprinkler, I used funny pipe which is flexible tubing that attaches to the rigid PVC 1.25"  pipe I used to convey the water to the sprinklers.  To attach the funny pipe to the sprinkler and the PVC, I used the threaded fittings  with heavy duty (grey) Teflon tape (three wraps).   The assembly of the fittings is shown below.

Since I had 1.25" PVC to cut I use a PVC ratcheting cutter tool I obtained at ace hardware which saved a lot of time and allowed me to cut the pipe at the installation location. 

There is another advantage to using funny pipe besides controlling the height of the sprinkler.  I found that I had to cut the 10' PVC pipe very rarely because the funny pipe would take the sprinkler to the right location.  Below is and example where I have the funny pipe fitting set up so that I could bring the sprinkler to the right location beyond the elbow.  I had yet to install the funny pipe and sprinkler in the picture.

 

In videos I have seen people use radiator clamps to attach the funny pipe to the fittings but I did not use a clamp since when it is pushed on to the fitting it is already tight.  This passed the pressure test.  I have doubts that the radiator clamp would last in the salty wet environment.

After attaching all the sprinklers and burying them, the 11 sprinkler head zone worked great.   There seems to be plenty of coverage from the sprinklers.   Since the system is new I have had to clean the sprinkler filters of dirt even though I flushed the whole system out before I installed the sprinklers.  I expect I will have to do this less and less.  One sprinkler working is shown below.

Since I decided on planting grass seed and it is slow to grow I discovered that erosion is a problem.  It didn't help either that a tropical storm dropped by out of nowhere and dumped a ton of rain on us.  So much water in fact that it filled up the swail.  This meant at the lowest point the water went over the side of the swail and then carved the grand canyon in to my property. 

Well maybe I exaggerate a little....four wheel barrows full of dirt was removed to be more precise.  To combat this I put in a temporary gutter at the overflow point.

I was not able to beat out the contractor on the fill dirt installation.  In fact it would have been more expensive for me to do it.  

I was however able to save money by installing my own sprinkler zone.   Homewyse.com prices the job at $800 to $1200 for 1500 square feet.   It took me 11 hours (not including the trips to the store) to finish the zone and I spent $219.  I saved about $581 or 72 %.

I also saved money by making a wise decision to use grass seed instead of sod potentially saving up to $3000. 

Cue the cash register sound.

Happy Building!

The Dr. 

Lulu said, "Please please build me a boat house." Part 5

For the previous blog I wrote about the roof framing for the boat house.  For this blog I will focus on the electrical installation.

The electrical installation wasn't too bad.  Luckily I have a Ph.D. in electrical engineering so that I understand how to work with electricity.  However,  they didn't teach me anything about residential wiring in school.   So I had to figure out how to do the outdoor wiring by myself and I did this by studying the building code which is online, looking at what electrical devices that were available at the building stores, asking questions, looking at examples in the neighborhood and watching youtube.

The electrical project involved putting in a light, a receptacle and power to the boat lift motor.  The first problem I encounter was that the motor came with a long 30' flexible plastic sheathed cable bundle that connects to the lift control box.  I'm not sure but I don't think the inspector would like the cable bundle to be out in the elements exposed.   So I had to figure out how to put the cable in schedule 80 electrical conduit.  After looking at the neighbors installation I decided to use a gray flexible plastic conduit to interface with the motor.  See picture below.

 

Below is view of the flexible conduit coming from the motor and attaching to the rigid pvc conduit which then finds it way to the control box down by the dock.

 

In addition to the motor switch I also installed some out door lights on boat house.  I actually attempted this first before the motor wiring.  I first fastened the gray conduit with two 90 degree pull elbows and the light fixture to the boat lift.  Then I attempted to pull the wire through using my brand new fish tape.    I had to pull on the fish tape with all my might.   In fact I had just barely got the wire through before the fish tape broke free of the wire.  My fish tape real was all distorted and bent and almost got ruined by this wire pull attempt,  Needless to say I was very worried about the 50' wire pull I was going to have to do to get the wire to the house from the boat lift.

I knew I was doing something wrong so I started looking on youtube about wire pulling.  I found nothing but after talking with my dad he had mentioned when he was working in construction he saw the electrical guys apply white grease to the wire before pulling it.  It was pretty hard to find the grease as no one in the store knew what I was talking about but I did find it an it is known as wire pulling lubricant which is at Lowes.  With the lubricant pulling the wire from the dock to the house was very easy even with the two 90 degree pull elbows.

Here is a picture of the light fixture I used.  I installed green lights which are easier on the night vision.

 

The end result for the boat lift control, receptacle and light switch is shown below.   The receptacle and light switch are hidden underneath the waterproof flaps of the outdoor box.  To operate the boat lift,  the idea is to plug the short flexible wire (its black in the picture) coming from the lift control into the receptacle when it needs to be powered.  I think the inspector will be ok with approach as the wire is short.  If not I can always use flexible conduit to get the wire to the power source.

In the above picture some pvc cement can be seen on the conduit.  This is the high strength glue for sprinkler applications which I neglected to wipe off.  The building stores sell a special kind of pvc glue especially for electrical work.  I tried it and it is nice that the glue does not dry as fast and can be wiped off a long time after the joint is made but I think I like the stronger sprinkler application glue better.

Once the light fixture was installed.   I dug a trench about 2' deep from the dock to the house.  Digging the trench took about 6 hours but was a good work out and gave me an excuse to jump in the ocean afterwords.   So refreshing!

However I had a challenge to overcome.  I had to slip electrical conduit under 10' of patio slab and then I had to route the conduit up the wall on the inside of the garage.  I did not want to bust up the patio if I did not have to.  After consulting youtube, I found an easy method of placing the conduit under the slab.  The method uses the walkway tunnel kit which is a jet nozzle that is glued on end of the pipe and a hose attachment which is glued on the other end.  If I had not run into a rock the first time I tried it I would have had the conduit placed in less than minute under the patio. Luckily, I was successful on my second try by directing the conduit through a slightly different route.  A video the walkway tunnel kit in action is available at this link.

I did however have to bust a hole in the garage foundation with my harbor freight jack hammer so that I could find the conduit end and route it up the wall in the garage.  Here are a few pictures showing what was involved in this process.

Below is the water nozzle with conduit attached inside the hole in the garage foundation

Below is the hose fitting end outside the garage after the hose has been detached and the pipe has been inserted under the slab.

Below is a picture of the conduit in the trench and attached to the conduit under the slab.  The slab is kind of visible and is buried under the ladders.

Be careful when using the walkway tunnel kit.  I recommend not tunneling a pipe to close to the cement slab.  The tunnel kit washes dirt out and makes a cavern.  It may cause the walkway to crack.  Deeper is better.  Also the quicker the pipe is installed and the water is turned off the better.

Once the pipe was placed under the patio I then prepared it so that could go up along the wall.  This meant putting a 90 degree pull elbow on the pipe and chiseling out the wall footer so the conduit would run up flat against the wall.  See picture below.

 

Below is picture of the wire being pulled through with the fish tape.  Some white grease is visible on the wire.  To attach the fish tape to the electrical wire I cut all the wires off except the ground wire.  I then looped the wire around the fish tape and used several wraps of electrical tape to secure it.  It is important that the taped up joint is not any fatter than the actual wire.

After the wire was pulled, I routed it through conduit to the electrical panel and attached it to a GFI breaker.  For more about GFI breakers see my previous blog

Once the electrical was finished for the boat house I gave it a trial test. It worked perfectly!

So the question is how much was saved by doing project myself?

I spent 20 hours doing this task.  At $50 an hour that would be $1000 dollars for labor.  An alternate estimate for the amount that a contractor would have charged for the work is about $900 dollars.   I arrive at this from talking with my neighbor next store and he said his electrical installation for wiring up his boat lift was $600.  For me I had the additional work of adding the light and interfacing the conduit to the motor.  Usually the interface to the motor is taken care of by the boat lift contractor.  So I added and extra $300 for this.  My only cost was for electrical supplies and was $294.

That's means a whopping $606 or 67% was saved.  Cue the cash register sound.

Stay tuned for the next blog where I discuss the finishing of the boat house and if it would have been better from a financial perspective to have let the contractors do the work.

Happy Building!

The Dr.