MARCH 16 UPDATE: Draining a wetland

We didn't know we had lakefront property!

Spring brings many blessings, but I wouldn't count a large puddle in front of our front door as one of them. It's been warm enough for several days now that the large snow piles in the yard are melting, and unfortunately, quite a bit of water is pooling where we don't want it. Hopefully there's no breach in the foundation that we don't know about letting water in to soak the insulation that's under the floor, but Dave says he's not worried — yet. The plastic he put down over the foundation should be keeping any dampness that might be wicking up from getting to that insulation — but, he says, if there was a 3- or 4-inch rain now, we might have a problem.

Bringing in fill dirt is the long-term plan, but in the short term, Dave and Dad tried several other tricks to get it drier over there. On Saturday afternoon, first they dug a few narrow trenches from the puddle to the lower ground behind the house with a maddock and hoe. Water started flowing, but it moved pretty slowly. They tried using a hose-suction trick — Dad explained how it would work, with the water going downhill pulling more water behind it, once they got the suction going — but they didn't get it to work.

On Sunday afternoon, we looked at the problem again. Dave thought about their hose trick and saw that the problem was that they never got enough water in the hose to get the suction flowing, so he took the hose to the sauna, filled it with water and carefully carried it back into place. I lowered one end under water in the puddle, Dave sucked a little on the end of the hose (he didn't get any in his mouth, that I noticed!) and lowered it, and behold, water started to flow! We were pretty proud of ourselves.

Of course, our work looked pretty paltry compared to what Dad had in mind.


No matter how well it's flowing, not too much water flows through a garden hose. Dad got out his sump pump, which I forgot he had, and he and Dave pumped quite a bit of water later on Sunday afternoon. (You can see the water flowing through the hose above.) The lake was much smaller by the time they quit for the evening. It was a nice night, though, and the lake may have grown bigger again by now with new snow melt.


... In between all that wetland draining (which, ironically, Dave says is what he spends most of his day at work telling people they can't do), Dave got quite a bit of drywall work done! The ceiling in the addition is now drywalled, with the help of Dave's new drywal lift.

He won't get much work done today, though, since he's got the annual township tax equalization meeting to go to tonight. I also have a meeting to go to tonight — Frederick Forward's monthly meeting — so we're wondering what to do with the kids. Sofi would have more room to play at Dave's meeting in the church basement, but we'd all eat at my meeting, since we are having a St. Urho's Day celebratory meal before it.

What, you've never heard of St. Urho's Day?! Well, you can be forgiven: Read up on this tongue-in-cheek Minnesota-Finn festival here.