We had a lot of rain in Colorado last week, and the ground on the left side of our house settled a bit. It was just enough to break the PVC sprinkler pipe off the end of the copper water supply pipe, and the whole side of our house (outside) flooded. It took two whole days to shift the stones from on top of the weed barrier sheet, pull up the sheet, dig down to fix the pipe, and then pack the soil down using dirt I obtained from the building site across the road. The ground had sunk 4-6 inches in total.
Earlier this year, we found we had an 18 pCi/l (pico Curies per litre) reading of radon in our house. The EPA recommended limit is 4 pCi/l. For those who don’t know, radon is a colourless, odourless radioactive gas that comes from the ground and can increase the risk of getting lung cancer. A few weeks ago we had an extractor fan hooked up to the basement sump (like a moat going around the perimeter of the house for water to drain away). Here are the results:
Yay, no horrible slow death by cancer!
We have a new addition to the family – take a look:
His name is Scooby and he likes chasing cats and nice clean floors. Our kitchen floor accumulates cat hairs at a tremendous rate, and I am terribly allergic to them. So, when I saw him in Target for half price, I had to have him! “He” is an iRobot Scooba, in case you want one too.
The Scooba managed to clean the floor far better than we can. The proof was in the sheer amount of grime it got off the floor just days after we manually mopped it.