Fall blues

[BillyJack]

Time to prepare for winter. Yards to rack, gutters to clean, touchups around the house and change those furnace filters.

 

It's that time boys and girls. ..

 

 

[Mark J]

Smoke detector batteries.

[Chestnut]

I cleaned my gutters, repositioned my roof de-icing heat cord that got moved from something, painted the man door on my garage that got neglected in may of 2020 when I painted the house, winterized the sprinkler system, applied rust prevention to my pickup, restacked my firewood box, loaded up half a cord on my trailers for disposal, and went for a walk yesterday. It was a busy day but got a lot of boxes checked for winter. I just need to do oil changes in the mower and pickup.

[BillyJack]

I still need to add a blow out to my sprinkler system. I repaired all but one valve. Has become so expensivecinnOdessa, nobody ran there’s this year during the drought.

My daughter runs theirs on a yearly plan and runs hers all season..

[Chestnut]

I have sand soils and a self draining system. It's really nice, winterizing it is just shutting off the water feed valve and draining the pressure from the system.

I run my system manually. I am too lazy to modify the schedule, even though it's really easy to do so. It's just super easy to run the zones that need water right before bed.

[BillyJack]

I changed mine to manual from automatic. I’ll put air nozzles on mine and blow the system out. It hasn’t ran in a month or so , so I doubt any water is in the system to work about.. my valves are all in one area versus in the yard. I put input in myself about 17 years ago..

[pkinneb]

I wish mine worked like that! I did have to change my controller this year and the new one has an app so at least I can manage from my phone vs running to the shop for every zone. I have a large air compressor but it still takes about 6 min between zones to fill the tank so with 15 zones it takes a while.

[BillyJack]

One side 9f my gutters is completely clogged. Not one drop came out of the spout. Not sure if it's the gutter coming down or the gutters on the roof. I've got a cherry on that side and must be clogging it up..

[JohnG]

I enjoy living somewhere that sprinklers aren’t needed 

[BonPacific]

On 10/25/2022 at 2:51 PM, JohnG said:

I enjoy living somewhere that sprinklers aren’t needed 

I just let my grass/clover go brown in the summer. Never understood the big green lawn thing, even if it did keep food on the table growing up.

[BillyJack]

It depends on what’s important to you. Both my neighbors have large vehicles for no apparent reason. I laugh each time they complain about the price of gas..

[JohnG]

On 10/25/2022 at 6:58 PM, BonPacific said:

I just let my grass/clover go brown in the summer. Never understood the big green lawn thing, even if it did keep food on the table growing up.

I wish mine would go brown in the summer, then I wouldn’t have to mow it so much! 

On the green lawn thing, I have the advantage that nobody can see my lawn until they come well onto my property. So there’s no concern about my lawn standing out from the neighbors in any regard. I keep my lawn on the long side, usually cutting it at 4”, and letting it get maybe 8” before I cut it. 

[Chestnut]

13 hours ago, BonPacific said:

I just let my grass/clover go brown in the summer. Never understood the big green lawn thing, even if it did keep food on the table growing up.

Well in western Washington I'm not sure if your familiar with this concept but some times in some places it doesn't rain for months at a time.... . I water at the bare minimum to keep the grass alive. Mine goes dormant typically from the end of June till the middle of august. Due to road construction the front 2 zones of my system were out of order. I had about 100 SF of grass die that I missed with hose watering.

I also mow at my mowers highest setting to keep the roots as shaded as possible. I never bag leaves and mulch them in to the ground. A lot of this helps keep moisture in. I actually use my yard as a compost pile. I just throw garden waste on the grass and hit everything with the mower. I just applied that to tomato plants this year. Mower turned them in to dust quite easily.

[BonPacific]

On 10/26/2022 at 6:20 AM, Chestnut said:

Well in western Washington I'm not sure if your familiar with this concept but some times in some places it doesn't rain for months at a time.... .

We actually get less rain than our reputation would imply, especially in and around Seattle (37 inches of rain per year, not that far from Minneapolis at 32 and well behind other major cities like New York at 46). Particularly in recent years we've got quite dry summers (didn't rain from early august through mid-october). Long wet, dark, winters though.

[Chestnut]

1 hour ago, BonPacific said:

We actually get less rain than our reputation would imply, especially in and around Seattle (37 inches of rain per year, not that far from Minneapolis at 32 and well behind other major cities like New York at 46). Particularly in recent years we've got quite dry summers (didn't rain from early august through mid-october). Long wet, dark, winters though.

That's 32" of moisture and a good portion of that drops as snow and melts in the spring maybe 6-12"... I don't expect you to know that. Our average is closer to 29" of precip per year still pretty close. However this year .....

The climate data on Wikipedia for MSP is very misleading the precip should include the moisture content of the snow.

My house probably got even less than what is depicted above. Rainfall this summer was very weird some places got way more than normal. 80 miles west of here.

And then 80 miles east. Both had some even distribution of rainfall.

Sorry to nerd out on this. Rainfall plays a large part of my job at times..... the climate trends are interesting but it has a difficult impact when people don't understand why their field that was dry their entire childhood is now a lake. Or in the past 2 years are going  "Why is the lake level 8 feet low! You are blocking my water!"

[Mark J]

where are you getting those NOAA charts from?

[Chestnut]

16 hours ago, Mark J said:

where are you getting those NOAA charts from?

Um NOAA .... .

Go here (https://www.weather.gov/wrh/climate?wfo=lot) and click on accumulation graphs and click go.

To get here in other regions, go to the forecast page for where you want the data and scroll down to the Additional Information box.

Look for something about local historical weather or past weather etc. It's different for every NWS office.

The graphs I included are under the Local Records tab, but it appears Chicago doesn't prepare those.

Typically if you use the international airport for your area the data should go back a LONG way. I think they have records in MSP back to the 1870s? It can be cumbersome to find the old stuff though.

[BillyJack]

I got on the roof and looked for blockage on the gutter. There wasnothing in the drain and the gutters weren't that bad to shut it off at the drain. I think that corner of the gutter is just too low and won't release the water fast enough to get to the far drain. I may have some asphalt build up for the shigles causing a dam. I tried to clear as much as I could. ..