A Post About a Post

I mentioned that I was running out of ideas for blog posts and Ryan suggested, "How about a post about a post?" That made me laugh, so that's what I'm writing about today.

Ryan has this white vinyl fence around his property, a remnant from the previous owners who had dogs that needed to be contained. There's nothing wrong with the fence aside from a few missing balusters that we'll replace once we're done working on some projects. Soon after he moved in, we had to remove a big section of fence so they could bring his new shed in. 

His shed is the yellow and green one on the left and we had to take out the whole front section with the gate and a section on the side for access. The posts are set in concrete so we dug out one of them, but after much digging, John ended up cutting the other two off at the ground. He put a sturdy piece of wood back inside, slipped the cut-off posts over them, and screwed them back together. All the posts are now re-installed and sturdier than they were before.

But that is on the right side of the house. There is another project that we've started on the left side of the house that also involves a post.

Last year he got about eight inches of rain within a few hours and his basement flooded. We got things remedied in short order with three shop vacs and fans, but then we had to figure out how to prevent this in the future. After talking to several neighbors, the ones that had installed a second sump pump didn't have any flooding. So we did have a second sump pump installed, but the drainage from the original one was also a problem. It was only pumping water out a couple of feet away from the house and the sump pump drain is also at a low spot. Last Sunday we went over, cut off another post (you can see the white square at the bottom right of the photo above), and removed a couple sections of fence. 

Then we (and this is the "royal we" because I was not personally digging) dug a 30-foot trench from the house down toward the front yard. 

Then we laid pipe from the sump pump outlet in the trench and filled it in. 

Phase 1 of the project was completed on Sunday and it looks pretty good. Phase 2 begins on Thursday when we are having seven cubic yards of topsoil delivered. This will have to be spread over the side lawn to help create a better slope down towards the street and aid drainage away from the house. I didn't have to dig the trench but I suspect that I will be shoveling and raking topsoil on Thursday and Friday. (And then maybe I'll write another post about a post when we fix this fence post and finally complete the project.)