Joe and Jamie's Blog

Ok here it is, finally posting this.

Miami Beach lived up to its reputation of having a crazy night light and HOT. Every day we were down there the temperature was above 85 degrees, no matter what time of the day. Nothing cools off Miami, not even the rain they get everyday. It was so beautiful down there, clear water and skies to enjoy, perfect beaches, tons of tourists, bars and clubs. One downfall for all this perfection is the prices. Boy was I not prepared at all for crazy markups on everyday items. I would have to say everything was generally 2 or 3 times more expensive then here at home. Not a real biggie, just an eye opener at first.

We spent most of the days on the beach or walking around taking in the sites and art deco style buildings they are also famous for. Scouting places to eat was fun since there are so many choices. There are a few main roads to go down on South Beach where everything is, Ocean Drive with all the clubs, bars, and restaurants, Lincoln Road which is the nice pedestrian mall, Collins Ave which many hotels and shops are, and Washington Ave which is even more shops and businesses. Most of our nights were spent walking up and down Ocean Drive picking out a place to eat/drink. I thought it was really cool how the whole street had tables on the sidewalk so as you walked down the street you were essentially walking through each restaurant and bombarded by hostesses asking you to look at the menus. After awhile it got to be annoying but we were pros at just ignoring them after a few days.

One part that did suck on this trip was the location of our hotel. The Fontainebleau is an awesome hotel, but its 30+ blocks from South Beach so we took a cab each day to get down there. That ate into our fun budget a bit too which ticked me off a bit at first. We never did go north of our hotel, we just kind of ran out of days really. Besides the partial nude beach up there, not sure if there was anything else we missed out on. I guess we’ll just have to go back.

Ok, back to Ocean Drive. The restaurants on there are average. They all sell about the same stuff for about the same price. Nothing really stood out. Eating down there is great because you get to watch all the different kinds of people walking by. Thousands of people walk by at night time, so you can just imagine how amusing it can get. Typically we would walk along the beach after stuffing our faces and then stroll back over and find a place to have some drinks and enjoy the Miami night life. We stopped at places like the Clevelander and Ocean’s 10. We also ate at some spectacular places like Emeril’s (yup, the bam guy), Gotham Steak, and Texas de Brazil (an awesome Brazillian steak house). I don’t think I have ever eaten in such fancy places before. All three had over the top service and the atmosphere was spectacular. If you go to Miami Beach, eat at all three places.

Our first full day there we went on a duck boat tour. I figured it was a good way to figure out where everything was. The best part of the tour was when we went into Biscayne Bay and saw all the islands. On these man made islands are all the famous people’s houses like Hulk Hogan’s house he lost in the divorce (ouch!), Puff Daddy, the Scarface house, the CSI Miami house (from the first season, they don’t even film in Miami anymore!), the Miami Vice house, Steffi Graph’s house, and some really rich guy that built a $50 million dollar mansion with only 3 bedrooms, each about 4,000 square feet, isn’t that nuts?. Back on land we learned where the Miami Ink tattoo shop was, the old boxing club that Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, and George Foreman all trained in (it’s a damn bank now, don’t see how a place with that reputation would go out of business), and the regular old convention center where Muhammad Ali won his first Heavyweight Championship of the World title in 1964 and President Nixon gave his acceptance speech (blame the tour guide if I’m wrong). I’m glad we went on this tour because we would have never traveled to the Bay to see those houses, I didn’t even know they were out there! As you can tell I pretty much just booked a trip to Miami without bothering to do any research because hey, it’s Miami, how can I go wrong?

There is a bunch of pictures to choose from, but I tried to choose the best ones to show all of you. Hope you enjoy them!

Friday I was able to break through the second concrete slab and dig out the hole. It was tough breaking through concrete while alreay in a hole, there isn’t much room to swing a hammer. It was even tougher digging down the 22 inches we needed to get to due to all the rain making the hole mud. Mud is not fun to dig unless you are a kid with a Tonka truck messing up your good clothes.

It rained all weekend and we didn’t purchase the basin until today, so there was nothing we were able to do all weekend except watch the water level rise in the hole. Tonight my father purchased the basin, cover, and rocks to refill the hole. By the time I got home from work he had the basin fitted in the hole and was starting to fill it with the rocks. I helped fill in the hole and then we mixed some concrete patch to finish it off. We used Sakrete Fast Setting Cement Patcher for this job, sets in only 20 minutes. Smoothed it over and looks like we drilled a nice smooth hole in the ground.

Unfortunately the sump pump was previously used and the label is corroded so I don’t have a manufacturer or model number to look up and tell you about. I do know that we tested it and it can empty a 5 gallon pail of water in roughly 2-3 seconds. The sump pump does have a check valve to stop the water from flowing back into the hole when the pump turns off. It also has a float so it will automatically turn on and off. It isn’t a manual on/off model like a smaller one we also have.

Now we just wait for the cement patch to fully harden and figure out where and how we are going to run the drain pipe. We have a few ideas and started to think it over today. Not sure exactly when we will start on that part of the project.

After dinner tonight my father told me he had a job in the basement for me. My mother said he was drilling something down there so I figured it was a shelf or new workbench he bought on the way home or something. Well I was wrong. I came down and turned the corner and saw the post hole digger, figured that wasn’t used for a shelf. First some back story.

Last year was the first time ever that the water table actually came above the basement floor and into a few low spots in the basement. It was after a four day non-stop heavy rain storm that really flooded many areas. I remember the nice wake up call of my mother yelling to get out of the bed the basement was flooding. I rushed downstairs thinking there was a few inches of water to find medium sized puddles around the basement. I called my father to see if he had any suggestions since the wet-vac I had could only fight so much, I would have been there all day turning it on a off, you just can’t beat mother nature sometimes. He told me he had a sump pump sitting in a box somewhere. I scrambled to find the hose and get it all hooked up and threw it in a low spot that was large enough to cover the bottom half of the pump so it would work and not overheat. That allowed us to gain control of the water until it stopped raining later on that evening.

Ever since then, we have talked about digging the hole to install the sump pump and discussed where it should go. I guess since it has been raining on and off for the past week the idea popped back into his head. While I was still at work he drilled some holes and busted out the concrete to make an 18 inch hole. When I came down I helped by digging out the dirt, got about 7-9 inches down and we hit a snag. Apparently there is an entire slab under the first slab…go figure. Everything in this house was built very strangely by previous owners, I don’t think they knew what they were doing at all with all the uneven floors and crooked walls. So the project for tomorrow is to drill through slab number two and dig some more. Can’t friggin’ believe there’s another slab. My theory is hopefully there was no sewer piping when the house was built in the 1920’s so they laid down the pipes and just poured a new slab over the old one, otherwise I am really baffled.

For the type of system we’re putting in we need to go down 22 inches. This 18 x 22 inch hole will fit the basin that sump pump will go into. From there we just go straight out the wall to the left for the drain pipe, only about 3-4 feet away. It’s not a very large system at all because we really don’t get any flooding. Our main use of the system will be to keep the table lower below the basement floor to improve dampness. The basement is very damp and we need to run a dehumidifier constantly throughout the summer. The electricity cost from that thing for two months is more than the refrigerator for almost the whole year.

I’ll post more and maybe grab the manufacturer and model of the sump pump tomorrow when we continue the project. Right now I don’t even know where it is. If you want to read more on sump pumps and how they work, here is the Wikipedia article.

Hole for sump pump

On a side note but related, my friend Paul over at the Homeowner’s blog has an excellent dry basement system that he had installed last year. If you flood often you should read his posts and consider this system, he hasn’t had any flooding since! Read them in order and enjoy!

http://www.catskillhouse.us/blog/fixing-the-basement-drainage-problems
http://www.catskillhouse.us/blog/basement-contractors
http://www.catskillhouse.us/blog/the-basement-water-proofing-prep-work
http://www.catskillhouse.us/blog/how-to-water-proof-a-basement-from-the-inside-out-part-i
http://www.catskillhouse.us/blog/how-to-water-proof-a-basement-part-ii
http://www.catskillhouse.us/blog/basement-wet-or-basement-dry
http://www.catskillhouse.us/blog/putting-the-american-dry-basement-system-to-the-test
http://www.catskillhouse.us/blog/basement-not-flooding