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Well the weather was with us, and we had our supplies ready to go. So when Friday rolled around we headed back to finish the building of the outhouse. What we weren’t counting on was the sheer volume of black-flies and their hunger for human flesh.

These things were just plain awful, attacking in numbers to high to count. Whenever you’d stop to hold a piece of wood, or attempted to screw two pieces together they were all over you. Needless to say while up shingling the roof I was a sitting duck. By the end of the day Saturday my arms were covered in bites. My ears were swollen and bright red causing them to stick out, not unlike the Mad magazine “What me worry” guy.

Despite it all we did get somethings accomplished, but did not manage to complete the project. We got the roof on, the door hung, solar light installed, trim and screened vents in place. We started work on the bench, but had to pack it in when the rain started on Sunday.

Till next weekend…

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Well with the collapse of the outhouse at our cottage last summer it was time to build a new one. We chose a location and started digging, after striking several unmovable rocks we gave up…

The next weekend we set out to dig in a new location, while we didn’t hit any large rocks we did encounter several difficult layers. The first 7 inches was dirt and roots. Then we hit about a foot of grey material that was like digging in a litter box. Next came a dark rusty layer that was harder than hell and had to be busted apart with a steel bar. This layer also brought ground water which started seeping into the hole.

Every inch after the rusty layer for over the next foot or more consisted of hard packed sandy rocks. This layer was so tightly packed we had to use the steel bar to break it up before we could shovel it. We couldn’t stop digging at this point as water continued to come into the hole.

In the end we where exhausted but managed to sink a plastic barrel into the hole to keep the hole from collapsing.

That was it for that weekend, next weekend it was time to build. We got some concrete footers and a pile of lumber based on the plans in our heads and set to work. The black flies were out in full force, and there wasn’t any wind to blow them away, but we kept going. After two days of working from morning to sun down we managed to get everything up and sheeted before the weekend was gone and the rain started.

We still need to install the door, shingle the roof, build the bench, add trim and paint. Next weekend…

See all the posts, from start to finish.

My mother owns a house just up the street from out family cottage. Which works out well as our cottage does not have running water. However as the house was closed up over the winter we ran into some problems. Mainly the sump pump burned out and the basement flooded with water. On top of this the platform holding the water pump finally rotted away and collapsed leaving everything dangling from a single pipe.

We bought a new sump pump and drained the basement and set to work removing all of the years of crap plumbing and stuck together bits in an effort to remove as many of the future potential leaks as possible. We also installed a number of shut off valves as any that were down there either went to some long ago piece of pipe that no longer exists or where so badly corroded they refused to move. Some did both and just slowly dripped showing their age.

I failed to get any before pictures but grabbed some after everything was redone.

I should also mention that I did all of the solder connections and didn’t have a single leak. Not bad for a guy who’s only training was soldering electronics and DIY shows on TV.