My Dog is on Vacation

She doesn't know it, but she's avoiding the waterproofing men and the noise and disruption going on this week. Monday I went to work after dropping her at the kennel. I avoided a day of jack hammering to dig up the floor around the basement walls.Today there is piping in the trench. The white is a waterproof coating for the inside walls.

This is the new sump pump. The picture shows the original "flower pot" walls which are over 90 years old and the original water proofing has failed. The blocks are made of clay similar to a flower pot and were originally sealed on the outside. The copper pipe is the cold water return to the boiler.


On the outside wall, the sump pump looks like this, with the downspout from the roof on the left.

The outside walls now have piping like this. The walls were covered with tar and plastic, which forms a trough in which the pipe is laid. The pipe connects to the downspout drain. This is where work has stopped for now.

The back yard is a storage area. Buckets were used
as a bucket brigade for removing broken concrete from the floor. I hear it weighed about 2 tons. They
are also used to bring gravel into the house to fill part of the trenches. So far only the sump pump has gravel around it.


 Everything in the basement was disrupted. I can't wash or dry clothes until this is over. It even disrupted my kitchen, because they unscrewed a small breaker box from the wall and shut it off.to do that No light over the sink, no dishwasher, no disposal. I fixed that for now, by turning on the breaker.

Dear grandson Vitor is home from college. He's now 20 years old and we celebrated his birthday. Of course, I knit him more socks. My Mystery Sock patter is doing well on Ravelry, with over 500 people downloading it so far. The only problem was a bad symbol definition. I had found the error, but not put the corrected version into the pattern. All is fixed now. I had anticipated more problems, because of the unusual stitches I used. So far, so good. 

I ended the day by cooking some Poblano Chicken Chowder. I failed to correctly read the instructions and only added 3 cups of chicken broth instead of 3 quarts! A trip to the grocery store was made and it now looks like soup. I thought that chowder contained potatoes, but this one doesn't.