Now that our guests are gone, the house is very quiet again. While Ramie and I don’t mind so much, it always takes Skye a while to get used to not having the extra people around to give her attention. She is kind of a little bug when she wants to play but we’re busy working or doing other things. She doesn’t let us forget that she’s around, and she’s always pushing the “play” and “scratches” buttons, and nudging my arm while I’m working at my computer, asking for attention. She was a bit exhausted from it all, though, and took some long naps while we were staying busy.
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| What an exhausting couple of weeks. |
Wednesday 8/27- Those tides just really aren’t cooperating this year, so Ramie was up at midnight for another turtle walk. Tonight’s walk certainly wasn't as exciting as last week, but they did find a few nests. When he got home after 2am he only got a couple more hours of sleep before he had to get up to go help Randall at the warehouse. Ramie had a full day of work at the warehouse and didn’t get home until around 3pm. Let me tell you, he was ready to go to bed early tonight!
Thursday 8/28- There would be no rest for Ramie again because of the tides. Tonight their team decided to walk at 8pm before high tide instead of in the middle of the night after high tide. This seemed like a better option because at least when he gets home he’ll still be able to get a decent night of sleep. Unfortunately it was only a walk on the beach in the dark for them and there were no turtles or nests.
Friday 8/29- After a busy week and getting to bed late last night, Ramie didn't do much today. He just wanted to rest while I worked a normal day. We would be dog sitting this weekend, Randall and his wife Jessica dropped Molly off around 5pm. Randall had to make a delivery to Guanacaste, which is about 7 hours one-way, so he and Jessica are going to make a weekend trip out of it. Skye was excited to have Molly here for a play-date and they wore each other out chasing each other and playing. At least this was something to keep Skye distracted a little bit now that Taylor & Dylan have left.
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| I'll just stand here and hold this for you. |
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| I'm safe in here! |
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| Come out and play! |
Saturday 8/30- Today was really just a catch-up day for us. Now that our guests have left, there are lots of things around the house that need to be taken care of, cleaning, chores, and projects with all of the things that Taylor & Dylan delivered for us. Ramie also had to meet with contractors that were bidding some work at our house and for Josh’s houses.
For our house, we are getting a 2nd quote for that extended patio and grilling area project. For Josh’s house it is to do some remodeling of the kitchen counters and adding cabinets to replace the open shelving currently in the kitchen. It didn't take too long to meet with the contractor, so it was back to house chores and some pool time after they left.
Sunday 8/31- Today it was time to buckle down and get caught up on the blog. There is always so much to write about, and trying to write based only on our notes that might be weeks or even months old can be difficult sometimes. The goal is always to get “caught up” but somehow, that just doesn’t happen. Every weekend I’m always asking Ramie “what did you do this week” so I can at least write the notes, even if we can’t write the whole blog about it. More often than not he gives me a blank stare, tells me “I don’t know” and usually has to look back in his pictures on his phone or text messages with people for help to figure it out. I can tell you what I did… I worked… but none of you want to hear about that! Today was also another odds and ends around the house day, and Ramie decided that he was going to smoke some more meat for some upcoming meals, so we threw a pork loin and some chicken on.
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| Prepped and waiting for the smoker. |
While the meat was in the smoker, Ramie finally took the time to wash the truck. It's the rainy season and is always getting muddy, but in addition to that, while he was working on the gates project from a few blogs ago, he was grinding the metal towards the truck. This caused some of the metal dust to stick to the paint and you could see those little specks now getting rusty. The truth is, he should have known better because he did this to my car back in MN a few years ago too. He hadn’t
had any time to clean this up yet, but he knew that he really had to get it taken care of. He tried rubbing compound to get it out first, and it was working, but excruciatingly slow. Then he remembered that he had a clay bar that he brought down with him, so he gave that a try. Fortunately, this worked much better! This stuff takes all the “bad stuff” off the paint, not just the metal shavings, and when you rub your hand across the paint, I feels so smooth now! He was thrilled! He started with the side
that was facing the grinding and had the most metal shavings on it, but still has to do the other side. This project is a lot of work and he’ll get to the rest of the truck in due time, there’s no rush to finish!
The smoker was done around 2pm, but it wasn’t time to dig in quite yet, as it has to “rest” for an hour. It smelled so good that we really didn’t want to wait until our normal dinner time to eat and ended up having our dinner at about 3pm when it was ready. We were really excited to taste
it, because we were using a new type of wood that we had never used back in the US: Coffee wood!! Let me tell you, it had such a smooth flavor, it was delicious and was quite unlike other woods that we have used before, and no, it didn’t taste like coffee!
The Official Casa Costa Breeze end of August rainfall total was 22.29 inches Monday 9/1- Labor day- As I’ve mentioned so many times before, I really like getting the US holidays off. While we don’t really ever do anything “special”, I spend the day just like I spend my weekend days. Sometimes, it’s nice, though, to have a week-day off in case we have to go anywhere that is closed or unusually busy on the weekends.
Since it’s a regular workday here in Costa Rica, today the work got started on digging our new septic tank and drain field. You’re probably wondering why do we need a new septic system, the house is only 3.5 years old!? Well... even though our house is still pretty new in the grand scheme of things, we’ve been noticing a trend… our builder took shortcuts and didn’t do things quite right or like we asked when it was being built.
ðŸ˜
About a month ago when we had to have our septic tank pumped for the
2nd time in less than a year and then realized later that same week that
after we ran the washing machine our septic tank filled completely up
again, we knew that the problem was more than just a “slightly
undersized system”. When the septic company came to look at our setup
they told us that the tank was “severely undersized” for our capacity
and the drain field was pretty much a short single pipe with small leech
holes that are likely now full of dirt and/or grass roots. This system
was absolutely not set up for a household, even a small household of 2
people, and, by the sounds of it, it’s very surprising that we’ve gotten
by for 3 years without having more problems more often. At this point,
the system that is currently in-place is more or less useless.
The work that the company would be doing this week would drastically change that! In addition to the “undersized tank” that we currently had, they would be adding 2 much larger tanks, and a drain field that was made of 24 inch concrete culverts underground, likely holding somewhere in the vicinity of thousands of gallons of wastewater, and surrounded by rock instead of the thick clay that is the typical soil in our area, so that it could drain like a septic system drain field is supposed to. Truthfully, this system should never fill up!
Three guys showed up today to start digging. This whole new system would be dug by hand, which is pretty much the standard down here. While it would be infinitely faster to have a small excavator come in and dig this out, that isn’t typically how they do it here, not to mention, with the way our yard is set up, we would literally have to take down a fence and remove plants and bushes for them to be able to get the excavator to where they were digging. The guys that they sent to do this work were not young men, either. Two of them, I would guess, were probably in their 60s and still doing this very hard manual labor. They would work on digging all day today, and for the next several days, until the trench was large enough and deep enough for proper tanks and drain field to be installed.
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| After 1 full day of digging. This is 6 meters long and only about 2' deep. Lots more to go. |
That cement cover is to our current septic tank. That square hole with black in it, well that's a hole they dug to find out how far below the surface the drain field was. As you can see, its only a few inches below the surface our our yard. Not good! We should have zero black water that close to the surface!
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| These two holes will be for the new septic tanks |
Today Ramie also had Ivan, a contractor that we’ve worked with before on some small jobs, come out and take a look at some work that needed to be done at Josh & Steph’s houses as well as the patio expansion/grilling area that we might want to do at our house. He was out here just last week, but today he brought out one of the guys on his crew to take a look at the job to get a better idea and to also take measurements for the cabinets and other wood work at the other houses.
Tuesday 9/2- Day 2 of the septic digging, nothing exciting to show you but they did drop off the material today. The hole is dug and tomorrow they will be getting ready to start installing it.
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| Some of this is for the tanks themselves, the rest is for the drain field. |
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| That's a big 'ol pile of rocks |
Wednesday 9/3- Ramie is right in the heart of turtle season, and this morning he had an early morning walk where his team discovered 7 nests. With this many nests, the walk took longer than the typical just-under 2 hour time frame, so when he got finished with that, he didn’t have much time before he had to head to Randall’s to help him with a job.
Fortunately this wasn’t an all-day job, and he was finished by early afternoon, because later in the afternoon Ramie had to meet with a guy who would be taking care of cleaning up the trees in Josh and Steph’s property. While I will agree that having nice big trees in your yard is great, when the jungle takes over and there is too much vegetation, the vines take over and the sun can’t even get through to the yard to help the grass grow, it’s time to do some cleaning up. The vines that the previous owner planted have taken over the treetops and are choking out the good trees, and even jumping over and growing heavily on the power lines. This had to be taken care of, and Ramie knew just the guy for the job, the same guy that did some tree trimming at our house. They met this afternoon to set a game plan and make this back yard usable and healthier. Now he just had to wait for the quote for the work. Once he received that he would have to wait to see what Josh and Steph wanted to do.
Day 3 of septic-
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| The hole is now 8' deep, there is a layer of large rock, small rock and the large tubes are the drain field tubes, that will connect to the tanks. |
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| Unfortunately, a set back! Because of the poor soil conditions part of the hole caved in. This means more digging |
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| Both septic tanks are now installed. |
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| This is our old grey water tank, they will be eliminating that tank completely and tying directly into the new tanks. |
Thursday 9/4- Day 4 of Septic, The guys are making good progress, but unfortunately they’ve had some setbacks. The hole that they have to dig for the drain field is about 8 feet deep, yes, all dug by hand, and since it’s been so wet lately, the sides have caved in a few times along the way. This meant they have to, once again, clear out the same space that has “refilled: itself. I give the Ticos credit, they sure do work hard for the money that they earn and you never really hear them complain.
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Time to start the process of cutting the pipes from the house and connect to the new tanks. Today it will only be the black water tank.
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Saturday 9/6- Day 6 of Septic Yes, they work on Saturdays too! These guys work damn hard and get very little time off. Today they did the tie-in to the old tank and eliminated the old drain field. Even though the new drain field isn’t quite finished yet, there is no way that we will fill the two new tanks and the existing old tank in just the couple of days it would take them to finish. They also started removing the huge pile of dirt and putting the yard back to the way it was.
Sunday 9/7- At least they get Sundays off, so we had the yard to ourselves without construction guys. I will say that Skye has been very well behaved this past week while they’ve been working.
She normally doesn’t like people in our yard that she doesn’t know, and that's a good thing for security, but she’s been mostly ok with these guys working here! This past week we’ve also had to leave the gate open so that the workers could bring supplies in and out from the street. Even with the neighborhood dogs wandering around and coming to our gate, Skye has stayed in the yard. She will sit about halfway down the driveway and monitor what is happening in the street, but she will not go beyond the gate. We were a little worried that we would have to keep her in the house during the work, but she just walks around the yard, checking on the guys (occasionally barking at them if they talk to her), basically acting like a little foreman.
Monday 9/8- Day 7 of Septic, Today they finished the last tie in from our old system that handles all the grey water (kitchen and bathroom sinks, showers and laundry), and finished the drain field.
Tuesday 9/9- Finally finished Septic! Today was basically a cleanup day for the crew. While two of the guys worked on putting our yard back to the way it was, the remaining guys had to remove all of that dirt and clay from the pile that built up next to the hole that they dug. Wheel barrow by wheel barrow from the back yard to the street to dump it in piles. Ramie arranged for a backhoe and dump truck come load it up and haul it away.
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| That's still a lot of rock left, but we own it. What to do with it? |
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| Its hard to tell from this picture, but this is about 12 yards of dirt (or a full dump truck). |
They also worked to smooth out the dirt that they had previously thrown over the hill to the lower property to make it look nice and more flat. They were finished with all of this by the early afternoon, and Ramie asked them if they were glad to be done with this project. While yes, this was a big one, I guess the next one was bigger/worse, and they were really not looking forward to that one. So how much does a new septic system cost? Well, for a week of all this manual labor, typically from 4-6 guys working per day, and all the materials it cost us about $5,000.
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| That large tube that was in the middle of our yard is now a small access cover. |
Now that everything is said and done, we have 3 tanks: the original plastic one (which was our old septic tank) is now the grey water tank now, one large concrete tank for the black water, and one large concrete tank for the mix of the two before they go to the drain field. The drain field, as mentioned earlier, is made of 24” concrete tubes totaling about 20 feet long, surrounded by rock on all sides. This system is massive compared to what we had before, and honestly, its probably much bigger than it would have to be. Because of all of this “overkill”, we are hoping that we never have to pump it while continue to live here.
Wed 9/10- Ramie met with the company that will be hauling away all of that extra the dirt and rock this morning. It was indeed a full dump truck load of clay, but thankfully they didn’t have to haul it far because a neighbor that had another property nearby wanted it as fill for her land. Before they took away the rock pile, Ramie picked through it to find some nice stones to re-do the drain from our carport roof/gutter to make it larger and deeper, and accommodate more of the heavy rain that we get. The rest of the rock got moved by backhoe to a nearby low area just on the other side of our fence. If Ramie ever needs more rock, now he can just go there and grab what he needs from the relocated rock pile. While there is still more work to be done to repair the yard, but that can all be done in time. The bulk of this big project is done, and we are glad for it!
Pura Vida!
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