Ah, five days at the cottage.

It was bizarrely warm (more than 8°C), perfect for getting some work done.

First, I installed the duplex outlet beside the kitchen stove that has been a blank cover plate for several years. Now Mark can charge his cell phone. It was a beautiful installation, I stole the cable from the lake water pump that hasn't been used in 15 years, and was quite pleased that when I drilled the hole up from the crawl space, it did not end up in the middle of the kitchen floor. After all was finished, there was a small problem that the outlet had no power, but I eventually figured out that the mysterious extra switch below the hot water heater switch controlled the power to this circuit (so I bypassed and removed the switch).

Then I put in a nice wall-mounted thermostat in the boys' room, so there's no need to try to set the baseboard heater thermostat behind the bed anymore (that thermostat is now disconnected). I struggled with the aesthetics for a while, and even tried consulting Karyn, but decided mounting it at the same height as the wall switch, but on the side of the door frame closer to the heater was best.

While crawling around under the cottage, I noticed (to the right of the dead mouse) the white #6 AWG neutral wire from the main breaker clamped to the water pipe. This is a common way to get a good ground, since copper is a great conductor, and a long run underground from the water main on the street would provide a great ground connection.

It struck me that (at least for a very long time, if not always) the cottage's water line from the street is plastic, so this wouldn't ground anything. And if there was a ground fault, maybe we could electrocute anyone touching a water faucet.

A visit to the cottage's main disconnect shows the 200-amp white neutral wire coming in from the top, and another 200-amp neutral wire going down to the left, feeding the circuit breaker panel. Of the three smaller neutral conductors connected in the middle (between the two 200-amp cartridge fuses); the smaller white wire going down and off to the left ends up grounding the enclosure, the smaller one going down is the one clamped to the copper water pipe, which leaves a slightly heavier one also going down somewhere.

Here you can see the new buried service from the street transformer coming up into the meter. I've always wondered what that vertical 2"×4" at the left below the siding is. I thought it supported the siding. More sleuthing in the crawl space, and digging around the 2"×4" showed that it has a vertical channel routed down the back of it, concealing that heavier neutral wire, hopefully going to a ground rod.

The summary is, no cause for alarm, the cottage is properly grounded.

This might be cause for alarm though. It is a beam holding up the floor joists. That crack could be considered a structural problem.

Here's the beam beside it, it is three 2"×10". As you can see, the end of the near 2"×10" is rotted (you can stick your finger into the wood, which crumbles away). Hal Grossman repaired this several years ago by jacking up the beams and putting some pieces of 2"×6" below to fill in for the disintegrated wood (this caused the middle 2"×10" to crack, as you can see below, about a foot from the wall).

As Dad's eaves trough and caulking has kept the water away from this area, this hasn't got any worse (and wasn't damp when I took these pictures, even though it was raining at the time), but perhaps we should put some extra supports in for these beams.

The attractive white NMD cable coming out to the left of the right electrical box goes to the new thermostat, the mildewy one coming out the top goes to the baseboard heater.

I also noticed that it was much too warm under the new section of the cottage, and decided that the thermostat could be set a bit lower still, without actually turning it off.

On to the next project.

I noticed that the ground under the cottage was very damp, almost wet. Also, that there was a huge amount of water beside the driveway – almost a foot deep. Perhaps the cottage is on bedrock, and the water used to drain east, but when the driveway was put in it prevented the drainage, so the water north of the cottage has to drain to the lake by going under the cottage.

I decided we needed to let the water drain across the driveway.

I made Grayson into a ditch digger, and we got to work. We needed the pickaxe to get through the frozen earth, then used a shovel and hoe. We dug a beeeautiful 2'-deep trench, and I had already called the lumber yard for pricing on the corrugated plastic piping (you can get it with or without the sock which keeps the little holes in the pipe from clogging with sand) I was going to put into the trench, and then back-fill the dirt back into it. I had initially thought the trench should angle towards the lake (and this would have been a 65' run), but did some test digging and discovered that there is only about 6" of dirt – not enough to ensure that cars won't collapse the pipe). So, I decided the shortest path was the best, and made the trench directly across the driveway.

Just when we had the trench dug got almost all the way across the driveway, we discovered there is already a drainage pipe under the driveway. It is an 8" corruged plastic pipe (you can see it where we had to angle the new trench).

Much extrapolating and digging were needed to find the ends of the pipe. It is run on an angle between the new trench and where I initially wanted to run the trench. I cleared the dirt away from both ends.

This gorgeous vista looks across the driveway, with the septic bed in the distance, and the new trench on the right.

There were about 3' of mud and roots in the pipe, but I was able to clear this out.

Here's the entrance to the existing pipe. There are two problems:

• Firstly, it is a few inches too high to completely drain the water.
• But worse than that, it is clogged with mud for at least the first 6'. I finished digging the new trench beside it to drain the water, so I could try pulling this mud out. I could get some water through, but at least the bottom half of the pipe is still clogged. Even if I could get this mud out, it would just get clogged again. It is possible that if the mud was kept clear of the front of the pipe, it would not get clogged again.

Also, both the cottage's water line, and the new buried power line are really close to this (I noticed that at least a short section of the power line farther towards the street is exposed, even though it is supposed to be buried at least a foot – maybe there was an impassable boulder there). I spent much time peering closely at thick roots before chopping them with the pickaxe.

I also spent much time with a shovel and hoe getting the water to drain from beside the septic bed (some of the muck looked suspiciously like the septic bed had a leak – maybe it was just very well composted leaves).

The whole goal of this is to both get rid of the standing water (so those west nile mosquitos have nowhere to stash their larvae), and see if this gets rid of the dampness below the cottage. I did see that draining the water to the other side of the driveway created a big pool of standing water there – hopefully this would soak into the ground in the summer.

I don't know if it is necessary to dig the trench even lower to get this water to drain completely (given that any pipe will have a bit of sand along its bottom), or if this bit of water would evaporate in the summer. I don't know if the existing pipe cleared out is all that is needed, or if a smooth PVC pipe in the new trench would be easier to clean out (but this would need the trench to be straight, so either the end of the existing pipe would need to be cut off, or the trench would need to be dug again). Maybe a bundle of thinner pipes in the new trench could be more easily cleared out with a garden hose.

After two or three days of this digging, I temporarily filled in the trench with firewood (hopefully so someone driving over the trench won't get stuck), put up some pails as a warning marker, and left it for the spring.

I think the next project after this should be to use sheet metal to cover the holes chewed in the garbage bin (so animals can't get into it and tear up the garbage bags). There's just no end to the relaxing at the cottage.