Roots, you say... Early last year the washing machine standpipe overflowed, a sufficiently routine occurance that I'd had the sense to leave a catch basin under it (which is still there I hasten to add), but causing me to call Yama the Plumber to clean out the pipe. He finished the job, ran the washing machine a couple of cycles to prove it was now draining properly.. which it was. I stepped out of the computer room (maybe that's it - I should stay in there)... and into a pond in the downstairs hall outside the downstairs bathroom, which was flooded. Turned out all that water that didn't come back out the standpipe when the plumber checked the washer had come back up every drain in the bathroom... Yeech... This was a bit outside his scope so we called someone else to clear the outside drain. After various alarums and excursions (there is one drain service I will never, ever, have anything whatsoever to do with), it turned out that not only did the sewer pipe run out to the alley right past the magnolia tree on the parkstrip, but whoever built the original housing development had used clay pipe.
You probably can figure the rest of that story - I wound up having the whole sewer pipe from the house to the city system replaced with something roots don't grow through, for a hefty sum. Naturally it didn't help that our pool, put in by the previous inhabitants, has the Concrete Deck from Hell (that thing will still be there when Los Angeles has withered away) and the line ran under it. So we hired someone with a hydraulic system that just rams the new pipe, liner and all, through the old pipe. And I need to put in a new side hedge this fall (last year I planted tomatoes in the strip they dug up, but I really do need something to defend that side of the house from overly careless drivers, and a nice dense hedge beats a fence any day.) If it isn't one thing it's another...
Hmm.. Speaking of hedges, anybody got a plant they'd recommend? I'd use rosemary bushes, but my daughter can't stand the smell and it'd be right under her bedroom window (she's on the second story, but still...) I'm considering just going for boxwood - the one that came with the house tends to get too leggy.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zaluzianskya and ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
skylark_photos
no subject
Date: 2005-08-18 09:35 pm (UTC)You probably can figure the rest of that story - I wound up having the whole sewer pipe from the house to the city system replaced with something roots don't grow through, for a hefty sum. Naturally it didn't help that our pool, put in by the previous inhabitants, has the Concrete Deck from Hell (that thing will still be there when Los Angeles has withered away) and the line ran under it. So we hired someone with a hydraulic system that just rams the new pipe, liner and all, through the old pipe. And I need to put in a new side hedge this fall (last year I planted tomatoes in the strip they dug up, but I really do need something to defend that side of the house from overly careless drivers, and a nice dense hedge beats a fence any day.) If it isn't one thing it's another...
Hmm.. Speaking of hedges, anybody got a plant they'd recommend? I'd use rosemary bushes, but my daughter can't stand the smell and it'd be right under her bedroom window (she's on the second story, but still...) I'm considering just going for boxwood - the one that came with the house tends to get too leggy.