Getting Some Little Things Done

 

Batteries put in the smoke alarms and the motion-sensor light at the top of the steep back stairs. Grey foam wrap slipped around the water pipes in the crawl space (where the miracle of the hot water heater is still holding. I check often throughout the day, breath held, and offer prayers of gratitude each time). Rec room vacuumed. And I’ve fashioned a big pillow of plastic sheeting, pink insulation, and two-sided tape, to block the one gothic window where we’ve removed the stained glass. (There’s still fibreglass on the outside to keep the damp out.)

The eavestroughs are filled with maple leaves and water is still spilling onto the foundations. I really don’t want the expense of adding gutter guards, and I’m not convinced their designs are any good anyway, Leaves still can land on the flat surfaces and clog the tiny holes in them, and our ones on our city house have been pried apart and inhabited by birds. So we’ve been trying to think of an alternative.

My amazing, problem-solving husband decided what we really need instead of eavestroughs is a French drain, something that will collect and funnel water out without clogging no matter how many leaves pile on top. So he bought 160 feet of corrugated, perforated black plastic irrigation pipe and rolls of thin black wire. Our contractor will come in the next couple of days to clean out the troughs and then lay the pipe in the eavestrough. The pipes are 4” wide and the troughs are 5”, tapering at the bottom, so the pipes will lie snugly in them with only a bit poking above the edge but leaving a free channel in the bottom where the round pipe curves away from the squarish eavestrough. Where the troughs are held to the roof by clips, the pipe will either be cut (and butted up against each side of the clip) or---the solution I think is better---we can cut a 1” notch in the bottom side of the pipe to fit snugly over the clip but leave a bridging piece on top to keep leaves out. The theory is that rain water running off the roof will be able to get into the trough via the corrugations in the pipe, collect in the bottom in the triangular channels formed between the round pipe and the square trough, percolate through the perforations in the pipe, and run merrily down to the downspout regardless of how many leaves pile on top of the round pipe. Voila! A French drain suspended twenty-five feet in the air. We’ll anchor it here and there with twists of black wire encircling the pipe and the eavestrough.

I can’t wait to see if this inexpensive and innovative idea works. I really think we’re onto something. And the nice thing is, it can be installed in our old, battered troughs without having to replace them, and if we ever do replace them, the pipes can easily be transferred over.

I have an increased respect for water, a newly deep awareness of the role it plays in both sustaining life and breaking objects down. A house can do without many things, but it has to be water-tight.