Juicy Details

One of the first projects on our home when we moved in four years ago was making the sump pump under the house operable. The pump had been replaced as part of the home purchase, but the knucklehead who installed it must have had too much to drink before or during the installation.

For those of you who don't know, a sump is a low spot or hole where water collects where a pump is placed to remove the water when it reaches a certain level.

The work I did involved digging a whole in wet clay under the house where the crawlspace is less than four feet tall. Imagine trying to use a shovel in those conditions! The hole was dug, a large plastic pot with holes in the bottom placed in it and surrounded with gravel. The sump pump was placed in the pot making sure the float switch could move up and down without catching, the previous failure. To this day operation of the pump has been very good. During one big storm the pump was removing at least 100 gallons of water a day from under our house!

Tonight I went under the house to retrieve the Christmas tree. The pump is immediately next to the crawlspace access, so I reassess it's condition every time I go down there. Anyway, I was surprised when I looked inside the sump pot to see an enormous Jerusalem cricket, drowned, floating on the surface of the water. I thought you all would like to know about that...

Ruth put up the Christmas tree tonight! We will decorate it tomorrow for family home evening.