Tank final cleaning..

Today was the day which we have been finally putting off and off. I called around and inquired about having our concrete catchment tank cleaned but couldn't find anyone who would return my calls or interested in the job. So we rented a very good (made in Germany) vacuum which is ideally suited for sucking up water. The whole task was a challenge. We hired a guy who was helping our flashing people and lives in the neighbourhood as an extra hand. My dad was vacuuming in the basement, George was handing up the vacuum to me who lifted it out of the whole and dumped it out. We got lots of crud out and got it almost completely dry. The saw dust from all the formwork we were cutting out was still down there, as well as all the cement residue when we poured the top of the slab.

The cockroaches were not really present anymore, they don't seem to like the place anymore. I guess there are no more places to hide. Plus we had kept the access ports closed completely as well as the tank access door. So there were no places for new ones to come in.

After many loads of dumping out sludge and dirty water from our vacuum came the next step. Power washing! This proves to be a challenge for many reasons:

• we don't have a large supply of water to feed a power washer
• water pressure can only provided by a electric sump pump
• we used 2x 50 gallon drums of water
• working in 3 1/2 feet (106cm) of space is difficult
• power washer hose needs to reach to all edges of tank since its gas powered and can't be inside tank
• working with a light and the high power of the power washer is problematic
• your glasses always fog up while working in the tank since the humidity is 99% down there makes any work difficult
• as you spray the ceiling, walls and floor the water turns into a fine mist and the air is then 100% humid and it looks like your working in a fog cutting visibility to near zero
• there are probably 100 other reasons why this job was totally unpleasant

So all in all we had a successful day. Episodes of the tv series on Discovery channel called Dirty Jobs came to mind several times.