62%

Tiff's been complaining about the fact that our back yard turns into a swamp every time she does a load of laundry, and I wasn't too thrilled about it myself. Today, I decided it was time to fix it. The current situation was a 2 1/2 inch elbow coming out of the wall with a pipe going down to the ground and an elbow shooting the water out into the yard. I told Jasson, our helper, that he could start digging a ditch, because we would lay new pipe to take the water out to the treeline. I went to work in the library until the battery on my laptop ran out. I came back and got Jasson and we went to VJ Cruz hardware store. They said they didn't have any 2.5" PVC, only 3". So we jumped back in the car and went to Northern hardware store. I told them I needed 2.5" PVC. The guy asked me blue or black. I was, like, I don't care; it's going to be underground. Apparently, though, the color corresponds to the quality. All they had in 2.5" was blue which was going to be more than $1 per foot and I needed about 40 feet. There wasn't much option though, so I told them I'd take it. "I need 3 couplings," I said. A little research revealed that they didn't have any. The proprietor's wife said I should use 3" for drainage anyhow. Again, I didn't have much choice, so I went for the 3" pipe. Fortunately, it was available in black--much cheaper. And they had the elbow that I needed. Eventually, we were back at campus with everything we needed. The only tricky part was trying to wedge the 3" pipe under the elbow barely protruding out of the wall. It just wasn't budging. I thought the elbow was metal (why I would think this, I have no idea). I tried prying it out a little with a crowbar. Of course, it was PVC and it shattered. So now, I just had a 2.5" hole in the wall. I got the boys' monitor there to help. He decided we could melt the end of a 2.5" pipe, stick it in the hole and attach an elbow to drain into the 3" pipe. So, we were running back and forth to the kitchen, melting pipe over the stove and going back outside to try to cram it in the hole. I think it's going to work. We'll see on Tiff's first big laundry day.