MadModder
The Breakroom => The Water Cooler => Topic started by: vtsteam on March 22, 2026, 06:56:15 PM
-
We often get frost heaves here in early spring. The expanding thawing earth moves into ridges and sometimes sinkholes while last winter's snow melts. This can run overground or under a heaved layer of ice as deep as 4 feet. The water doesn't absorb into the ground but stays on or near the surface, on top of a lower layer of ice, creating lots of mud. We call this time of year Mud season.
Unfortunately, this year the height of my shop's concrete floor is below the recently heaved earth around it, so the spring snow runoff has entered, flooded the concrete floor and alternately freezes on cold nights and thaws during the day. March rains have added even more water.
This should all subside once truly warm weather gets here and the base ice in the earth thaws. At which point the shop floor will again be above the normal ground level. But for now, my shop is unusable.
Just waiting for warm weather.... :(
-
At times like this, I guess Florida starts to look attractive as a place to live...
-
Heh, Ade, you know it! We actually just got back from a family vacation to New Orleans. Ate seafood, heard jazz, fished, and canoed. Saw alligator, ibises, etc. Back to the frozen mud was kind of a letdown. But two weeks from now and the ice and snow will all be just memory. :beer:
-
This just confirms my belief that despite the current political chanigans the UK remains basically a good place to live. No major climate excursions or geophysical extremes such as you describe. I listen to my sons stories of extreme heat in Houston and constant air conditioning running and sit back and enjoy what I have. Spring is just begining - first lawn cut today - and the birds are chirping away. Calendar says our lambs are due starting tomorrow and the cycle of life keeps turning.
I hope that you get sorted Steve.
-
I loved my 3 months living in UK back during winter 1969, and can confirm it is a good place to live! :beer:
-
No major climate excursions
True... but 3 months of nearly continuous rain & windy days is just as tortuous. Mind you, rain = time spent in sheds = why we invented so much stuff!
-
Never fear Ade the rain will have stopped just in time for the Water Board to implement another hosepipe ban!
Southern Water has a massive trunk main (1.4 mtre diam I understand) laid in the later years of WW2 joining a local(ish) reservoir to the Hastings Treatment Work. It's sprung a serious leak at the edge of the village but due to subsequent housing developments in the last ten years they can't get big enouth plant at it to effect a direct repair and have had to lay an access track over a mile long from the A21 though a neighbours field. Must be hugely expensive - full length is in metal plates heavy enought to take biggish diggers and lorries delivering materials. Apparently the pipe sections are joined with a rubber section that were not installed corectly all those years ago.