Hi D1, I think you photo shopped your lawn to make it look that green. That's what I'm thinkin'. Your lawn looks great! I am posting an image showing the dimensions I need. Unfortunately the images get washed out during the upload. Looking at the back of your house starting from the right side these are the dimensions I need. A. From the right side of the house/foundation to the right edge of the slab. B. The width of the slab. C. The dimension from the left edge of the slab to the left side of the house/foundation D. From the right edge of the slab to the right edge of the door. E. The width of the door measured from the edge where "D" ends and "F" begins. F. From the left edge of the door to the left edge of the slab. G. From the house to the edge of the slab near the pines. H. From the house to the property line. A, C, and H. can be close (within and inch or two, "H" can be a foot or two) but the others should be exact or at least within 1/4". The photos show there is daylight available at the sides of the property and some locations to put a rain garden. If you can get me those dimensions I can draw the structure. The little red "dots" in the image below are camera locations. The ones on the corners of the slab should be taken with the camera sitting on the slab looking towards the the lawn just catching the corner of the house so I can use the siding to measure . I was showing 3 others on the left side from about 50'± away. Hopefully your neighbor wouldn't mind if you took a few shots from their yard. Do not use any tele or wide angle setting when taking the pictures as they distort the edges too much. Keep the camera as low and level as possible or a slight tilt up if any. Distance is key. The more area you can fit into a single shot without a wide-angle setting the better. I think the least expensive solution is going to be flashing the entire wall although you may be able to find someone who will come in and cut the sod and remove some top soil for free. So glad you posted some close-ups of the stair as in the other photos it appeared to be on the ground, which it is not, and the sheathing is exposed to the elements with only a thin coat of paint protecting it. Did you like the stair idea I posted above? I am going to specify cedar and Philippine "mahogany" so that it is easier to paint if you choose (just the cedar). Pressure treated lumber will warp split and check like crazy in that location. Guessing from the dual leaders on the corners of the house I am assuming you have a hip roof and not gable ends so I am going to call out gutter drains in those corners sending them to daylight behind the pines. Because lawn drainage is not a major concern in those locations you can use the corrugated pipe already going across the lawn and the same or a rigid pipe on the other side. I will be in and out all day today and tomorrow but will have time to get this done on Tuesday if you can get me the dimensions I need. The photos would be nice but are less important although a good shot showing both sides of the pines (in the same picture, distant) and where your property line ends back there would be a great help. Thanks, Jey

I had a little surprise today - I was using the now 21 yr old Lawn Boy 10684 with Tecumseh 195 and it suddenly started acting like it was running out of gas. I had just finished yesterday washing it, changing oil, changing blade and air filter and cleaning/greasing the rear drive. I used it for an hour before it started sputtering, and there was gas in it. So, I did the old float bowl orifice bolt cleaning but it was perfectly clean - no carbon, no discoloration, just a beautiful brass bolt that looked new. I went to my special/small tools drawer and found the wire tie that had been in there for many years and rodded out the tiny orifice even though it seemed to be clean. I put it back together and sure enough, it immediately started and ran great. I've been running Premium gas with Startron in it for years but perhaps a tiny piece of something managed to get into the small orifice. BTW, when you go to do this orifice cleaning, stand the mower up on its wheels just like you're going to dump the oil. Fuel in the float bowl runs back to the tank. Typically when you remove the bolt, the float bowl stays put - just watch out for the washer under the orifice bolt head.

I hope everyone, who has been dealing with flooding issues this past week, is recovering and drying out. This is a long post, but maybe the construction parts will be useful to some. I have been on the road since Sunday and really wondered what I would return to yesterday. First, some background. Even though I live on a 50+ foot deep sand hill in the Connecticut River valley as Ive described in other postings, the pitch of the main house roof onto the rear Âbarn or extension roof has meant that, for the last 236 years, water has poured down into the corner made by the main house and the extension, pooled up, and run down through the stone foundation and into the dirt floor basement. So, the basement is always damp, making it unsuitable for storage and also a source of dampness and odor that can affect the whole house. Last fall, when those poor people died in Alstead (about 15 miles south of me) after the dam on the Cold River broke, my basement flooded deep enough to cover the furnace motor (nancylouise, I feel your pain). Fortunately, the motor fired up, once I got the sump pump working and drained the basement, but then and there I decided to tackle the centuries-old problem. The solution was two-fold: 1) build a 50-foot long, seven-foot wide (eight-foot roof) farmerÂs porch on the north side of the extension (which houses the kitchen, mud room and garage/carriage house) to deflect the water that comes off of that side of the roof out into the lawn, and 2) build a 24 x 16 foot great room addition into the other corner where the larger quantity of water has always pooled and leaked into the basement. The frost walls from the addition have perforated piping along their outside base and there is even a pipe along the old foundation of the main house that goes through the frost wall and links up with the other pipes, all of which empty into a drain pipe that goes under the drive and dumps into the stream. The new room is framed out and, as of Sunday the roof had been felted, but the metal roof was not on, yet. My rainfall totals for the past eight days have not been nearly as impressive as those of the folks in the Merrimack Valley, but still added up to way more than normal: Friday: 0.40 Saturday: 0.93 Sunday: 1.03 Monday: 0.12 Tuesday: 0.53 Wednesday: 0.01 Thursday: 0.03 Friday (So far): 1.10 Total: 4.15 Odd how, for me, today has been the wettest day, so far. So, how did things fare? The farmerÂs porch was completed earlier this spring and has completely solved the problem on that side of the house (so far). The ground on that side of the basement is slowly drying out (was soupy for most of the winter). On the other side with the room, which now has the metal roof in place, but where the ground has still not been finish graded, the water came off of the roof so hard last Sunday that it created a 2-foot deep sinkhole next to the new frost wall up against the main house. If you can imagine all that rain coming off of the main house onto the new roof and then pouring off in one spot, it kind of looks like Niagara Falls. As a result the water had nowhere to go, backed up under the frost wall and came through the foundation and into the basement. The water was pouring over the rocks of the foundation like one of those indoor waterfalls. I saw this just before I left for my trip, and it freaked me out just a tad, since the whole point of the new room was to carry the water away from that piece of foundation. . But, my contractor put some wood up temporarily to deflect the water over the sink hole, and no water has come through the foundation since, so it is a specific problem with a solution. The site guy is coming up this weekend to dig it out and run additional piping along the wall and a second drain pipe out to the stream (After the grass seed I spread two weeks ago finally sprouted in all this rain, of course). Once everything is graded, we will be adding a couple layers of 6 mil plastic sheet on the ground along that entire wall, which will be under a permanent eight-foot wide, full room length deck. This should move the water away from the foundation and finally provide a permanent solution to the wet basement problem. As a side benefit, the new room is going to be wicked cool  lots of windows and skylights in a south-facing room. Out in the gardens, all the plants seemed to have taken this deluge well. The daffodils, tulips and hyacinths didnÂt lose any petals, and the constant watering has certainly helped all the new plantings. All-in-all, except for that one glitch with the sink hole, which is really a function of the ground settling, things seem to be moving along. Again, my best thoughts and wishes to everyone, who has not been so lucky. If there is a take away from the ramble it is that for anyone considering running exterior ÂFrench drains to remediate a water problem, my advice is to not underestimate the power of water and to overbuild the solution. Better to add larger or extra pipes that will Ânever be needed than to wake up one morning to a cold house, a flooded basement and a submerged furnace. My contractor, the site prep guy, and the foundation guy all thought I was overreacting in my comments about how much water came off of the roof and into the house. In one sense, IÂm actually glad the water came into the basement this week, because it showed everyone what I was talking about. Also, if you have the option, just moving the water away from the foundation might be all you need. The farmerÂs porch didnÂt cost much more than the trenching and piping solution would have cost. But, with the pipes I would have been left with nothing to show on the outside of the house. Now, I have a functional covered porch that actually adds beauty and breaks up some boring lines on that side of the house (before it was just an 80-foot straight piece of wall). So, sometimes you have to think Âoutside of the box. narcnh

Hi tresw and renovxpt Thanks for your insite and questions... tresw: can we use that bentonite stuff under the rails now and in b/ them w/o taking it all down? Is it something like the expandable gunk we use to fill in gaps in the garage to keep the mice out? I asked the enclosure installer how expensive it would be to dismantle and he said "a lot". My husband wondered if we could just use a crane to lift the modules off the rails then saw cut/jack hammer out the decking under the enclosure. The decking outside the enclosure is pitched away except for an approx 6' wide perimeter that the enclosure "sits" on. If you want, I can take some pics of the rail system to better explain how it is laid out... You mentioned a 6' curb; is it 6' high or 6' wide? When the modules are open would we have trouble stepping over it? renovxpt: We would have had no problem w/ the PB pitching the deck toward the pool had he put in a drainage system OR checked first w/ the enclosure manufacturer to see if pitching toward was the correct way to go. He is our GC and subbed out the decking but not the installation of the enclosure; that guy came w/ the enclosure so to speak. I asked the manufacturing co. "hypothetically" how the deck should be pitched and was told away due to the fact that it is not sealed to the decking... A simple question that should have been asked in my opinion! The installer guy is returning in a few weeks to replace a few broken panels. He will take a close look at the problem and assess what can/could/should be done. That being said, are we correct to assume that the only one responsible is the PB? I'll keep you all posted... Thanks! Joanne