This weekend we started cleaning up the debris from a winter of snow, ice and sloth. (When I announced this, The Big Boy informed me he had to spend a couple of hours "working on our finances." I told the kids...I give him 30 minutes before he comes and asks where we bank.)
W
e picked up trash and rearranged piles and hauled stuff around. And in the midst of the afternoon, I cut back some shrubs and found these pipes sticking out of the ground at the northeast corner of the house. About a foot from the foundation. They are embedded in concrete. No caps.
I asked. No one knew. I peered down into the depths and there wasn't anything but water. We theorized. You pour bug killer down them and it seeps into the foundation? You tie a rope to them and repel down the backyard? They hold torches?
MY theory, and it's still the best one, is that they vent radon. We've never checked for radon around The Institution; I'm pretty sure there's no such thing and it's just a way for Lowe's to get you to come into the store so that you have to walk through the garden center and all that stuff can jump into your cart. But since I have a project in mind for this portion of the yard, I really needed to know what the pipes are for. I took the picture, being careful not to breathe when I got close, to send to knowledgeable friends.
Television antenna tower.
Back in the day? Before DirecTV and such? Television antennas mounted as high as was feasible were the norm. (If you are of a certain age, you remember one kid going outside and turning the antenna, while the other stood inside and yelled, "A little more, a little more...no back! Back!" Until the signal was just right. You also remember when the remote? Was you. Nothing for a napping parent to yell for a kid in another part of the house to "Come here." And when you got there? "Put that on Channel 19." Child abuse.)
But the three pipes are what's left of a really high television antenna, mounted at the back of the house halfway up the hillside. To think...I was working on evacuation plans and all along...it was bad memory.
I'm so proud ;)
W
e picked up trash and rearranged piles and hauled stuff around. And in the midst of the afternoon, I cut back some shrubs and found these pipes sticking out of the ground at the northeast corner of the house. About a foot from the foundation. They are embedded in concrete. No caps.I asked. No one knew. I peered down into the depths and there wasn't anything but water. We theorized. You pour bug killer down them and it seeps into the foundation? You tie a rope to them and repel down the backyard? They hold torches?
MY theory, and it's still the best one, is that they vent radon. We've never checked for radon around The Institution; I'm pretty sure there's no such thing and it's just a way for Lowe's to get you to come into the store so that you have to walk through the garden center and all that stuff can jump into your cart. But since I have a project in mind for this portion of the yard, I really needed to know what the pipes are for. I took the picture, being careful not to breathe when I got close, to send to knowledgeable friends.
Television antenna tower.
Back in the day? Before DirecTV and such? Television antennas mounted as high as was feasible were the norm. (If you are of a certain age, you remember one kid going outside and turning the antenna, while the other stood inside and yelled, "A little more, a little more...no back! Back!" Until the signal was just right. You also remember when the remote? Was you. Nothing for a napping parent to yell for a kid in another part of the house to "Come here." And when you got there? "Put that on Channel 19." Child abuse.)
But the three pipes are what's left of a really high television antenna, mounted at the back of the house halfway up the hillside. To think...I was working on evacuation plans and all along...it was bad memory.
I'm so proud ;)
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