Soft Water and a Hawk

The house is 11 years old and had all it's original appliances. So when the dishwasher didn't clean the dishes very good, I just figured it was old, looked up a replacement via Consumers Report and bought a new one - No major improvement. That was last year. This year I attacked the water going into it. I normally have to change the water filter every month and when I change it, it is black. I'm told this is from the sulfur in the water. The water system already has a spray tank where the water is aeorated to release sulfur gas before it is pumped into the house but apparently this isn't enough. So we just had a water softener installed. And it worked - the dishes are clean and not spotted - our hair is much more manageable after a shower - Wow, what a difference.

We were sitting outside enjoying the 80 degree weather the other day and much to our surprise a hawk flew in and landed in the tree right next to us. There are a lot of hawks in our area (and not many small birds - surprised). Most of the ones we see are Red Tailed Hawks but this one is a Sharp-shinned hawk. We figure he was checking out Kayla to see if she was something it could catch and carry away.

Hydroponic Gardening

The soil in Florida is nothing to rave about so instead of putting in a regular garden we opted for a hydroponic garden. Here it is all set up.

The Styrofoam containers are all filled with a 50/50 mixture of vermiculite and perlite. The vermiculite absorbs and holds water. The perlite is just a filler and is the little white balls that you see in most store bought soil. 

The nutrients are mixed with water and stored in a 44 gallon garbage can. A submersible pump is placed in the bottom of the garbage can and connected to a timer which turns it on three times a day -  morning, noon and evening. You adjust the time that it is on until you get 1 quart of nutrient filled water per column per feeding. That's 3 gallons per day or about 2 weeks per garbage can.

We started with Home Depot plants - One tower (far left with two containers) has tomatoes, next is lettuce, next is strawberries and the nearest has herbs. The base units have bigger plants like broccoli, cucumber, brussel sprouts, etc.

I looked up what plants I could put in this time of year and found I could put in anything - only restrictions is during the summer when some plants can't take the heat like lettuce.

Still Working on the Pool

Someone asked where the pool is relative to the house so here is a shot from the backyard. The screened-in portion of the house is the Lanai. The screen section next to the pool will be removed and the big screen house that will cover the pool will have an ell which will attach to the Lanai.

You might have noticed in the first picture that the edge of the pool now has tiles. When filled, the pool water will come up half way of the tiles.

On top of the tiles is a nosing being grouted here. The pool deck will come right up to this nosing.

See I told you, they now have poured the concert deck and walls for the pool. My daugther Ina and her family are visiting so we were with them at Disney World this day and I didn't get any in-progress shots.

But here are Carter, Brady and Ella - the first ones to hang their feet into the pool.

More Pool Stuff

The next day the Gunite was hard as a rock. Bob the Builder's guys backfilled the dirt they had dug out all around the pool and vibrated it to make it solid.

No sooner than they finished compacting they started to dig it out again to lay in pipes.

 
Sure was a lot of pipes.

They did an overnight pressure test and then filled it all back in again.

Sure looks impressive.

Dug out the dirt again. This time to make a space for the outside wall and room for the forms.

They were expecting rain so they covered everything that might wash away with plastic - it didn't.

The county inspector has to come and check everything next but it's moving along.

We'll be swimming soon

A little over a year ago I gave Elite Pools a deposit on an in-ground pool. Bob Smith (owner of Elite Pools - we call him Bob the Builder) said it wouldn't take more than 3 weeks to complete it so we'd have it before Christmas. When he went to get the permit, the problems started. First we had to move the location of the pool in relation to the house but after a couple of tries, that problem was resolved. Most of our lot is in a flood way - that's different from being in a flood plane. Most of Florida is in a flood plane but a flood way designation is much tougher. It was established by FEMA about 8 years ago. The flood way is the area where the 100 year flood will drain off the land and out to sea. If you build something in the flood way, they don't want that structure to raise the flood water level and thus back up the water and make it deeper. The structure can't raise the flood water level by more than 1/8".

In my case there are drainage ditches on two of my borders. To find out how much I'd raise the flood water level, I had to have a topographical survey done on my lot and a civil engineer (whom I hired) had to run a series of computer programs to get the answer. This was the first time the civil engineer I hired did something like this and he had some problems running the computer programs. When he finally got an answer the county building inspector told him he had to submit it to FEMA to get approval. He finally found someone in FEMA to send it to. They took a month to respond and told him they don't handle small stuff like someone's swimming pool, they only review big commercial stuff, and he should submit it to the Hillsborough County office for approval. He then took it back to the county office which took another month to review it and finally at the end of September they approved it and this October they gave Bob the Builder a permit to build the pool. By the calculations  the pool would raise the flood water level by 0.001".

So on Monday of this week, they brought equipment in and dug the hole for the pool. It was early in the morning, you can still see the outside light on in the background

Hole is dug and they start hanging the cement backer (yellowish looking paper) unto which the Gunite will be sprayed. In front of that they tie in the reinforcing rod for the pool walls.

Here's the completed pool wall with seats shaped and drain lines in place.

Then they start spraying the Gunite.

It is coming from a truck which holds a dry cement mix. Water is added in the mixer just behind the truck and pumped via a hose to the pool.

As the guy sprays it on another starts leveling it out. There is a wire stretched along the top of the frames so the guy leveling the gunite also gets it in a straight line.

They sprayed and leveled until they got the whole thing done. The tarp on the left hand side is to protect the house from overspray.

They didn't start until 2 PM so when it got dark I switched on all my outside lights - they didn't finish until 8 that night. It was too dark to take a picture so this one is from the next morning.

You can see a slight imperfection near the bottom of the pool on the right hand side. It's called a slump and occurs if too much water was mixed in. They'll fix it when everything is dried up hard. I will have another progress report in a few days.

A Sunny Jungle

Not to dwell on how much everything in Florida can grow over one summer but look at this beautiful Live Oak Shrub.

Oh, I guess it isn't a shrub, it's just the new sprouts that grew out of the Live Oak Tree that I cut down last winter (It was too near to the planned swimming pool). Yea, all that grew up over one summer.

And before all the snow melts up North, we just wanted to let you know the water in Florida is just fine.

But I should check the tide schedule before I decide to go for a swim.

It's a jungle out there!

Florida had a great growing season this year. It rained a lot and when it wasn't raining it was warm and sunny. We left in April so the weeds had a good 6 months to grow and did they grow.


You could hardly see the front of the house - some are 6 feet high.















The side yard wasn't much better.













We pulled a lot of weeds.




Now to top all this off, when I clicked the garage door opener, nothing happened. Luckily I also had a front door key with me and I got into the house that way. The problem was no electric power. So I went to the fuse box but nothing was tripped. Looked at the electric meter outside and it was blank. Called the power company and they sent a guy out. The fuse at the house transformer was blown, the guy said it was probably a lighting strike and quickly changed it and restored power. Small world - the guy was from Waterford, CT. Polly's son was 2 years behind him in Waterford High School.