Lime Pit cleanup

Post date: Oct 14, 2015 1:15:38 AM

Per environmental regulations and the architect specifications, we built and lined a ‘lime pit’ to hold left-over concrete, plaster, and mortar washing. We cleaned up one pit and built another. That one filled and, before we built a third, the plasters overfilled the pit with left-over plaster and wash water from their mixer and tools. In addition, the plasters left splotches of stucco plaster everywhere outside the house.

I have been cleaning this up gradually. Every time I walk around the house I pick up bits of stucco (basically concrete), which is easy to distinguish from rocks (which are smooth) and soil (which crumbles). Yesterday I tackled where the waste had run into the culvert that crosses under the road. I removed about four 5-gallon buckets of white, layered, hardened soil and lime waste.

Today I tackled the immediate area around the pit liner and the area beneath the water hydrant. (The easy way to wash tools before I cracked down was to turn on the hydrant and wash them under the water stream. Of course this polluted stream of water soaked into the rocks and soil under the hydrant.) I broke the rocks free, chipped the lime off them, and extracted the matrix of hardened lime, plaster, sand, and soil. All this on hands and knees for three hours.

Now we wash in buckets, pour the wash water into the new lime pit (where it evaporates) and rinse paint brushes in the sink, where the waste water goes to the sewage treatment plant. Much better, and there is liquid soap to help the cleanup.

The painters came to stain the last windows and the front door, which required different treatment inside (which is smooth) and outside (which is rough-sawn). They also puttied many of the screw holes and should finish tomorrow. Then we can hang the doors — at least the front door to keep the temperature inside more uniform. I also fixed a stain job that I had botched (by trying to be cheap the first time) on the posts between the sun porch doors.