What you see

[papaof2]

ain't always what you think it is ;-)

The better half asks me "Can you check the shutters on the garage? It looks like the new paint is peeling."

I went out and checked and, yes, the shutters look bad. However, from two feet away it's obvious that what she was seeing is the difference between light/medium green shutters covered with pine pollen (barely noticed last year) and black shutters covered with pine pollen (so thick in places it looks like paint flaking off - but the underlayer would have been last year's green, not a scratchable off-white).

I pointed her to the 100 feet of hose on the reel stand (remember, I'm the guy going for back pain relief injections on a regular basis and the heaviest thing I'm picking up is a laptop) and she came back inside a little later. That hose is connected to the only outside hydrant that's at street pressure (80PSI or so) so you can get good distance from the hose nozzle.

[biggkidd]

Wow I've never seen water with that kind of pressure. When we were in the city it was 40-45 and the same on a well before that. Again here 40-45.

[papaof2]

County Water covers a lot of square miles so the mains pressure is that high (they also plan maintenance well - the mains were replaced about 10 years ago as they approached age 40). The house has a pressure regulator that's set well below 80psi, but the hydrant nearest the service entrance for water goes to a tee on the service pipe (other side of tee feeds the pressure regulator for the rest of the house). Nice to be able to cover a lot of space at a time when watering newly seeded lawn ;-)

I'll guess the builder did that as soon as the foundation was in so the build crew would have convenient running water. A previous owner used the extra space around that hydrant's hole in the brick wall to bring out a copper line for a natural gas grill. That owner had mounted a NG grill on a pipe set in concrete but neglected to clean up the mess when the grill died or the pipe rusted out. I had the fun of digging that out when I started to level the ground in that area for a 5 X 8 grill patio (sand base, pressure treated sleepers around it, 12" x 12" pavers). That copper line is still in place but its connection to the gas line in the basement was used to feed the gas logs in the fireplace - one of the few things I've paid a plumber to do and he shortcut that job, using a nipple 1/2" too short because he didn't want to make another trip to Lowes. I smelled gas when I turned on the shutoff valve for that piping the next winter. Did some nosing around with an electronic "sniffer" and traced the leak to one connection on that nipple - it needed enough additional thread for one more turn of an elbow. I did make the trip to buy that slightly longer nipple and there's been no scent of leaking gas since. I'm about as good at shadetree plumber as I am at shadetree electrician ;-)

If you don't know the history of odorless natural gas getting its current bit of "skunk perfume", search for elementary school natural gas explosion texas history