3rd Flood of March 2010

Hi All

Well the water is back again. The last rain storm on Monday-Wednesday (3-28 to 3-31-10) brought more water into my basement after I cleaned it up, wet vacuum and mop clean with bleach and dry. Last night I had to put a third pump right on the floor in the basement. I have two other sump pumps below the floor in sump holes. It’s a finished family room but everything had been lifted up on boxes and shelves. Minimal damage. But need to dry it all out again with open widows and fans and more bleach and mop.

I heard on the news today that we have broken the all time record for the wettest month ever in Boston since they have kept records from the late 1800s.

The water table in my neighborhood is almost at ground level now since the Shawsheen River went passed flood stage last night. All the houses in the neighborhood have pumps going with hoses out to the street and drains.

The Shawsheen River is down the street from me and has washed out the road and bridge. Several houses down near the river are flooded with water up to the first floor.

You can see some photos and video at the web site below.

Flicker.com - Photos, Shawsheen River, Flooding, 3-31-10
http://www.flickr.com/photos/48847342@N03/?saved=1

They say the sun will be out tomorrow and it may be near 80 degrees on Sunday.
Happy Easter . They say Easter is a day of rebirth. Let’s hope so.

Mark

The Great Flood of March 2010

The Great Flood of March 2010 – (Water, Pumps and Generators)
The weather has certainly been extreme this year. Snow and ice this winter all across the country and now spring flooding in the Midwest, rain in Florida and heavy rain in the Northeast. Is it just a change in weather patterns or is it Global Warming?

Well it’s another rain event today and tomorrow in my neighborhood. The weather stations are predicting up to 3 inches more where I live in the Wilmington, MA. Maybe we will be lucky and the ground will absorb most of it.

“I spoke too soon. Although it rained last night, it stopped this morning and my basement was dry when I started writing this article. However, on Tuesday afternoon the water started coming up through the basement floor again and unfortunately they are predicting more rain tonight.”

When the local rivers flooded last week, we got about 8 inches of rain and as a result the water table went up and I could see large water puddles accumulating in my neighbor’s back yards. That is an indication that the water table is near ground level and basement flooding is eminent.

The Shawsheen River is located at the end of my street and broke a high water record last week of 10.8 feet. After the river floods, it usually takes another day for the water table to rise and nearby basements to flood. It then takes about a week for the water to recede and basements to dry out again.

Although I had two sump pumps going continuously since the rain last week, I still got a couple inches of water on the basement floor. Since the basement is partially finished I put all the furniture up on blocks and did not sustain any permanent damage.

After a week, the water table went down and I used a wet-vacuum to suck up all the excess water and dry the floor. Next I washed the floor with a 20% mix of bleach and water with a mop to kill any mold that might grow. You need to do this in a well ventilated basement with fans going and windows open. (I guess I will have to do it again in a couple of days.)

As I talked with neighbors along my street there are some who had a lot of water in their basements and some with no water. Some houses are built higher up and others lower but there seems to be no connection to whether or not they get water. Mother Nature just does whatever she wants.

Besides the height of the water table, it must also be the composition of the underground soil that will either absorb or divert the ground water flow toward or away from your house. I guess you need to know if your house is built on ground which is mostly sand, clay, an old peat bog or solid granite.

Most houses in my area have sump pumps installed in their basements to pump water from under the basement floor and out of the house. This usually keeps most basements dry most of the time except in extreme situations like this one. The outlet pipe from the sump pump should then be connected to a long hose or pipe that leads to the street sewer system or a drainage catch basin so that water is carried safely away from your property.

Some people will have their sump pump drop the water outside their basement window or in their backyard where it enters the ground again and goes right back into their basement to start over again. Although that seems to be just common sense, sometimes people have to learn by their mistakes.

Another problem is to determine where the water is coming from. Is it surface water that is coming off your house roof during heavy rain or from the street or a local stream and then pouring into your basement from above ground? Or is it ground water rising up through the basement floor from a high water table? If its surface water, you can install drain gutters and down spouts to take the water away from the foundation. You can also have the soil next to the house graded and sloped away from your foundation.

Although most good sump pumps will take care of the basement water, you also have to worry about an electric power outage. In a storm, trees may topple and pull down power lines and cut off your electric power. Without electricity your sump pumps won’t work.

That is when you need to have a backup battery on the pump or a gasoline operated generator which will provide power for the pump or even the entire house. A battery will only last about 12 hours and then needs to be recharged. If the power is out longer than that, you will need a generator.

A few years ago I bought a gasoline operated generator and had an electrician wire it to my house and put it on a separate circuit breaker box. It is not automatic so I have to manually switch the power over from the electric company to the generator when needed.

I keep the generator outside near a tool shed. During a power outage lasting more than a few hours, I start the generator outside where heat and gas fumes are well ventilated. I then turn off the main circuit breaker panel in my basement and turn on the generator circuit breaker panel. In an instant I now have generator electric power for the sump pumps as well as most of the appliances in my house. Although I test the generator periodically I have never had to use it. I guess I have some luck.

“Rain, Rain Go Away. Come Again On A Dry Summer Day.”

Comments : email markryan82@comcast.net

A Picture Is A Thousand Words

After I retired several years ago I began thinking about my life and all the milestones that are fixed in my memory, those special events that are a link to my past history. As I thought more about the neighborhood in which I grew up, I wondered what it might look like now and how it has changed. That got me to look at some old family albums and photos from my childhood. Although the photos focused on a particular person, I looked at the background in the photo to figure out where it was taken and the surroundings.

In one photo, I was sitting on the front steps of the house in which I was born. I was eating a fudgicle that probably cost a nickel or less at the corner store. The house was located at 21 Chestnut St. in Chelsea, Massachusetts. It was only a few streets away from the ocean looking out to Boston Harbor.

There was no date on the photo but I was about five years old in the photo so it must have been 1948, since I was born in 1943. The steps were made of solid granite and there was a double door in the background. The door was dark wood with a brass kick plate at the bottom. The house was a three-decker wood frame with a basement and attic apartment. It was physically joined to another duplicate apartment building with five apartments on each side or ten altogether. I still remember all the families that lived in each apartment. They were like one big family.

My mind was now flooded with memories all triggered by that one photo. I began thinking about all the activities surrounding those front steps. The double wide steps became a meeting place for all the kids in the neighborhood. We met there each day to play or begin whatever adventure we dreamed up. I remember playing ball against the steps. I remember sitting on the steps on a hot summer night with the other kids from the neighborhood holding a burning citronella punk to keep the mosquitoes away. I remember pitching pennies against the steps. I remember my sister playing jump rope and playing hop scotch on the side walk. I remember riding my first tricycle and later my first bike.

As the seasons changed the snow piled up against the steps and we made snowmen on the sidewalk. We dug tunnels in the mounds of snow piled against the sidewalk and imagined we were Eskimos living in igloos. One year the street was partially cleaned of snow but still had a solid layer of ice on it good enough to skate. The boys all got their hockey skates, stick and puck and we played Hockey on the dead-end street.

As the seasons changed again to spring we played games after dinner using the front steps as the starting point. We played hide and seek and even used flashlights after dark to guide us through the dark alleys and back yards.

Its sure is funny how one picture can bring back so many memories. As I grew older I left the neighborhood to visit my school friends who lived over a few streets and even across the city. The city of Chelsea was only a few miles wide and I walked everywhere. First to grade school a few blocks away and then to high school which was almost a mile away. I went to church a mile away and then to the local YMCA or the football stadium. My world got bigger as I grew older.

Recently I wondered what the neighborhood might look like and discovered that I could use Google Maps to zero in on any street in “Satellite Aerial View Mode” and see a birds-eye view of the street and all the houses along the way. These were actual aerial photos keyed to the street maps. On some streets I could actually move down to street level as if I was driving in a car and look left and right at the front of a house or store or school. Sitting at my home desk and using a computer I was able to virtually fly over any city and then down to street level to take a closer look.

Using Google Maps and the Aerial View I took tons of photos with my computer by using the “Screen Capture Mode” and then saved the picture as a JPEG image. I took photos of all the neighborhoods that I played in , some of my fiends houses, the schools that I attended, the church that I went to, the places that I worked and got my first jobs as a teenager. The house on the right of the photo at the left is 21 Chestnut St. today. It is still an apartment building but has been sided and fixed up. The house is over 100 years old.

Technology has certainly expanded my world view and allowed me to trigger my memory through pictures from the first black and white photos taken with my Kodak Brownie Box Camera to high definition color photos taken with my fancy new computer.
A picture certainly does reveal a thousand words of memory and even more.

Tax Dilemna

Hi All

A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum said Marco. The tax collectors were all sitting on their thrones gathering the tithe that the emperor had declared, “a pound of flesh from every living being in my kingdom”. Times certainly have not changed since ancient Rome. We now just drop our hard earned coins into the Federal Withholding coffer.

It’s Tax Time again and like everyone else, you get all your files and receipts ready to do the calculations yourself or bring them to the tax man. I generally do my own tax calculations and filing. Sometimes its pretty simple and if I have all the data I can do it in an hour. However, there is always a glitch in the system.

I use the short form 1040A since I can’t accumulate enough deductions to itemize so consequently I take the Standard Deduction for Married Filing Jointly. You can also get a little more than the standard deduction if you pay Real Estate Taxes and also bought a New Car in 2009. Instead of the $11,400 Standard Deduction, I could get a $14,600 Standard Deduction.

I then figured my adjusted gross income and read the tax from the tax table and was surprised. I owed about $700 more than what was taken out in my Federal Tax Withholding. Normally I break even. I was confused. What happened?

I discovered that as a result of the Federal Stimulus Act for 2009, less Federal Tax was taken out of weekly or monthly paychecks to give more money to citizens to use weekly rather than give them a bonus $200 check at the end of the year as was done previously. For me I had less Federal Withholding in 2009 than I had in 2008, 2007, or 2006 even though I had more income. I would rather have more withholding during the year and then get a refund than have to pay.

If this new rate of Federal Tax Withholding continues next year, I will have to have more money deducted from either my state pension or Social Security Benefits just to break even or more to get a refund.

To double check my calculations I then tried Turbo Tax online which is free for Federal Taxes and about $19 more for State Taxes and they will E-file for you. After inputting all the data in Turbo Tax online I ended up with the same dilemma and still owed Federal Taxes.

I also tried to get some energy credits since I put insulation in my attic and spent about $800 for materials. I did all the work myself. This included the insulation, air baffles, eave vents, staples, special staple hammer tool, attic fan with thermostat, electric wiring and switches. However, you need a special form to take an energy credit (Form 5695). I downloaded the form from the IRS web site and filled it out and learned I could only take 30% of the total cost of the insulation job which amounted to $240 which is 30% of $800. This was not much help since it only reduced my taxes by $45 on the Tax Table. I also discovered that to get an energy credit you have to Itemize Deductions instead of taking the Standard Deduction. However, next year you can take the energy credit right on your 2010 tax form instead of using a special form. Why am I always a day late and a dollar short?

Maybe I can apply for some Federal Bailout money. Well its only $700. But I will have to make some adjustments. Maybe I won’t go out to eat as much to make up the difference. The average cost for a Romeo Lunch is about $35.00. That would be about 20 lunches. However, I could do it in half the time if I used the advice that I got in a Plugger Cartoon. See attached.

See you soon. Anyone want to be my lunch buddy?

Mark

End Of Year Summary - 2009

End of Year Summary 2009

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Short Stories Listed Below Moved To New Blog : click -
http://marksshorts.blogspot.com/

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Adventures of the Romeo Gang - "The Marblehead Heist ... Short Stories 12/15/09

Adventures of the Romeo Gang - "Climate Manipulators ... Short Stories 12/7/09

Adventures of the Romeo Gang - "Bagdad Time Machine ... Short Stories 11/29/09

Adventures of the Romeo Gang - "The Freedom Trail"... Short Stories 11/22/09

Adventures of The Romeo Gang - "Ancestral Seeds" …Short Stories 11/14/09

Adventures of the Romeo Gang - "The H1N1 Assignment ... Short Stories 11/6/09

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General Info Essays Listed Below Are At The Following Blog: click - http://opennutshell.blogspot.com/

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Frost On The Pumpkin Garden 10/13/09

Romeo Fishing Trip Fishing 9/15/09

The Ghost of the Black Widow - On George's Island Boating 8/17/09

Bikes for the Grandkids Bikes 8/8/09

Zucchini & Meat Casserole and Other Tall Tails Garden 7/27/09

Garden “Signs” Garden 6/23/09

Strawberries Garden 6/14/09

A Camping - "Staycation" Camping 6/6/09

Time To Get The Vegetable Garden Ready Garden 5/4/09

Getting The Yard Ready (Spring Is Here !) Yard Work 4/25/09

Libraries – The Last Treasure Education 4/7/09

Learning Life Skills Through Science Fair Projects... Education 3/22/09

Sailing the Ocean Blue Boating 3/10/09

Homemade Escarole Soup (ZUPPA DI SCAROLA) Food 2/18/09

Snow Job? Weather 2/3/09

Shipwrecks – Boston's North Shore Suba Diving 1/29/09

Pirate Treasure Buried In Wilmington Imagination 1/25/09

Teeth Whitening (Less than $ 1.00) Health 1/18/09

Chicken Soup & The Common Cold Health

Frost On The Pumpkin

Well we finally got the freezing frost this week. The temperature has plummeted pretty quickly. It was 28 degrees outside my door this morning and I had to scrape the ice off the car windows and use the defroster-heater.

The first signs of frost mean its time to take in all the late vegetables from the garden. Even though there may be some warm days in the 50’s, the cold nights below 32 will certainly kill most plants.

As I checked my garden, I could see the frost glistening on the tops of all the melon heads (watermelon, pumpkin and squash). Although the crop wasn’t spectacular I got my share for a small garden. Out of 3 pumpkin plants I got 17 small pumpkins. Two were hybrid crosses with squash which most people call SQUMPKINS. I also got some early fall vegetables like broccoli, carrots, egg plant and giant sunflowers.

My biggest squmpkin was 15 inches across and weighed 50 pounds. You can see photos of my pumpkins at the link below … http://picasaweb.google.com/markryan312/PumpkinBlog101309

You can also see an article and some photos of the giant pumpkins at the Topsfield Fair. The winner this year weighed 1471 pounds. See the link at …. http://multimedia.boston.com/m/26704718/giant-pumpkin-winner.htm?q=giant+pumpkin&index=1&seek=3.879

The world’s largest pumpkin was recorded at 1725 pounds by a woman in Ohio. See the story at the link below …. http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/dpgo_Ohio_Woman_Grows_Worlds_Largest_Pumpkin_mb_20091006_3900624

I grew the pumpkins from seed and then transplanted them to an area adjacent to my neighbor’s yard. We now call this the community garden. I normally use the area for a compost pile but lately it has overgrown with an invasive plant called American Bamboo. I prepared the area by cutting out all the bamboo trees and removing as many bamboo roots as possible. One tiny piece of root will propagate to a full bamboo tree. I then roto tiled the area and planted 8 tomato plants, 3 cucumber, 3 squash, 3 watermelon and 3 pumpkin.

The plants grew like wildfire in the composted soil and quickly choked out the bamboo. Everything was going great until the tomato blight attacked. Most of the tomato plants had 2 inch green tomatoes until the leaves turned black and shriveled up. Shortly after, the tomatoes all rotted on the vine. Needless to say, I didn’t get any good tomatoes from this garden area but did get some cherry tomatoes from another garden area about 100 feet away.

At the end of the garden season I generally pull out most plants and then mulch them with a lawn mower and after compost everything with the roto tiller. However, this year I pulled out the black tomato plants separately and put them in the trash. Maybe this will get rid of some of the tomato blight and maybe I will find a cure for this garden disease before next season.

Although the garden pests, bugs, rodents, mildew and blights certainly decrease the garden harvest, it becomes a challenge to plan a counter attack and reap some rewards. The battle with Mother Nature has always been one of man’s biggest obstacles but maybe the battle will be a little easier next year.

Comments are always welcome. Send email to markryan82@comcast.net

Romeo Fishing Trip

Some of the Romeo gang (Retired Old Men Eating Out) decided to go deep sea fishing a few weeks ago and asked Paul Girard to find some possible fishing charters out of Gloucester, MA. Paul has had great success planning other trips and suggested the Sandy B Fishing Charters. You can see the web site at the link …… http://www.captbluefin.com/index.htm Paul emailed the info and five Romeos signed up to take the trip: Paul Girard, Jim Terlizzi, Joe Pignatiello, Joe Lapiana and Mark Ryan.

We booked the trip for September 15, 2009 and we all met at Solomon Dock in Gloucester. This would be a 4 hour trip from 8 AM to Noon. We all had high hopes of catching a ton of fish and I brought a cooler and some bags to “lug” home the heavy load.
If you have ever been fishing, you know that there are good and bad days where you catch more than you can use or nothing at all. With great anticipation, I told some of my family and neighbors about the trip and even promised them some. After, we would have a big “Fish Fry”. You can see photos of the trip at the link ….
http://picasaweb.google.com/markryan312/FishTrip91509#

It was a beautiful day with blue skies and a few wispy clouds. We met the boat near the Heritage Maritime Museum and Solomon Dock at 7:45AM and were soon on our way out of Gloucester Harbor. There was already activity in the harbor with fishing boats, a rowing team and the Coast Guard moving out. Along the way we observed the shore line with all the beautiful homes, some hotels and Hammond Castle. We also saw the Twin Lighthouses, lobster buoys, sea gulls and cormorants.

We first stopped about a ¼ mile off of Hammond Castle around a small rocky island and cast our lines with herring bait near the rocks. After 30 minutes and no bites we moved on to deeper water. The captain navigated out between the buoys to an area about 80 feet deep. Although there was no sign of fish on the electronic fish finder, we again cast out our baited lines. With no bites we moved to another location and dropped anchor. The boat swung around into the current as the anchor grabbed the bottom. Again we had no luck and decided to pull up anchor and try some trolling as the bout moved along at about 5 mph.

The mate, Paul Gaddis, changed rods and attached big lures to the fishing lines to get ready for trolling. Only two fishing rigs could be used at a time while we trolled, so there would be no tangling of lines and less confusion. As we trolled the lines out, we threw out some chum over the stern to attract any fish in our wake. Chum is just a soupy mix of chopped up fish bait.

At about 11 AM one pole bent over and Joe Lapiana started to work the catch by pulling up and then reeling in. At the same time the other rod caught another fish and Mark Ryan worked that rod. Within a few minutes we had both caught a Blue Fish. The captain helped net the fish and brought them on board. The mate unhooked the Blues and put them both in a catch box. Both fish measured about 10 pounds and about 30 inch in length. At least we caught something. There are good days and bad days. Although fishing does take experience and boat captain know how, the fish are not always in the spots that you are looking.

Although we continued trolling, we got no further bites and decided to head in. On the way in, the mate Paul put on rubber pants and filleted the fish. Like an expert, he cut off the head and tail and sliced some fillets off each side of the fish. He also removed some of the dark red arteries that ran down along the fish sides. Paul then put a few fillets in several plastic bags so we could all take some home.

We tied up at the dock about 12:15 PM and said good bye and thanked the captain and mate for a relatively good day. Being hungry, we decided to stop for lunch at the Causeway Restaurant on Rte. 133. The food was great, the placed packed and the company terrific. Life Is Good!