You just might have something there...

Anyone who has weathered the snows in Ohio (I know, I know, it was much worse in Boston...) has probably had to watch the slow death by melting that has taken place along your driveways, sidewalks, local mall parking lots, and maybe across the broad expanse of fairways and greens on your favorite golf course. The first ones are just a part of the season and will happen regardless of what we want.  However, the melting of snow and ice on golf course greens and fairways gives us hope, a renewed sense of a better life ahead.

And even though it seems that this melting takes its good old time to be completed, and the ground takes its good old time thawing more than an inch deep so all this water can be soaked up, it seems that there will always be hold out areas that just seem to take longer to get with it.  Well, such a place is my driveway area and the culvert pipe that goes under the driveway.  It seems that snow lasts there longer than anywhere else.  It also freezes more there blocking the natural flow of water from my neighbor's yard to our pond. 

I tried to take the spud bar (I think you have to be from a rural area to know what a spud bar is.) and break out the ice, but the backed up water was too deep and I really didn't want to get soaked in such a futile attempt.  But I had to do something -- the water was clear down to my neighbor's driveway, and almost up to his house (this picture doesn't show how bad the water was backed up).  His front yard looked more like a pond than my pond does (which, by the way, is still ice covered !!!).

I kinda screwed up and didn't take the pictures at the beginning of my adventure.  But the water was clear back to his mailbox (across from the small pine) and covered the grass all the way up to his trees on the left.  I was worried that the grass would all suffocate and his whole yard would be browned out.  So, I tried another approach.  Didn't know if it would work, but thought it should.

I got my back-up sump pump out of the basement and took it out to the water. There is a deep area near my culvert so the water will naturally pool up there and it gave me a place to put the pump so it would be submerged.

This worked pretty well.  I used it for a while and then took it out and checked for any grass or "stuff" it might have sucked up into the bottom of the pump.  I took part of the pump hose across the driveway and shot out the water thru my yard down toward the pond.

Those of you who live in the country know that we usually have drop-offs  from the roads to our yards and then the yards usually grade back up toward the house so the water will run away from the foundations.  So natural waterways are common.  However, it seems that if one neighbor clogs up the system, everything gets out of synch.  So I was not surprised when a couple of the other guys down the road stopped and looked at what I was doing.  I was even less surprised when I saw them using their pump system to clear out their "yardponds."

If nothing else, I did discover something in my system -- I had a small hole in one of the flex hoses.  Glad I noticed this now instead of later when it might have been shooting water where it could have done some damage.

I have always said that having the right tool makes all the difference.  I could have whacked away with a shovel, stood in icy water trying to break out the clog in the culvert, and gotten nowhere.  This pump idea worked out fine.  Sometimes I even surprise myself!!


No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you're keeping the man-child alive.(John Cassavetes)

Hooah