Little projects around the house are no problem—mostly thanks to YouTube and now AI. A few weeks ago we had some ice forming at the bottom of our freezer; I diagnosed the issue, pulled out the fridge (vacuumed behind there like a responsible adult), and cleared the duckbill valve, which had some gunk restricting air flow. Worth noting that I also learned what a duckbill valve is.

When things veer more mechanical or electrical, like a broken dryer belt, I’ll ask my father-in-law, who owns several shirts and hats that say “Mr. Fix It” on them. When something is beyond his scope, I’ll ask my dad. I’m very lucky to have a dad who is 30 years into running a residential construction company.

He is great, but he doesn’t like that I won’t stop saying, “Have you considered clearing the duckbill valve?” anytime he talks about anything that’s not going well at work.

Owning a home is amazing for a lot of reasons. For example, in one year we had to get our garage doors replaced, install a french drain to address the water in our crawl space, and replace our 30 year old furnace (well, that’s what the very convincing furnace salesmen talked me into doing).

It is amazing for other (real) reasons too. My point here is that, unlike renting, having a home means dealing with the shit that goes wrong with your home on a semi-frequent basis. When that happens, you have three options:

Quick backstory: my wife and I are sauna people. Snooty, sweaty, "eVeR heARd oF hEAt sHocK pRoTEinS", sauna people. So, when we moved into our current house, we wanted to put a sauna in the backyard.

That meant getting 240 volts about 40 feet out from our house. According to the building code, we had to dig a trench. And unless you want to spend a week digging, excavation machinery is required for that kind of trenchery. Besides several trowels and shovels, I’m a bit light on excavation machinery. So we decided to get some quotes.

The first guy to come quote our trench (just so we’re all clear, we’re talking about a hole that is 3in wide, 40ft long, and about 18 inches deep), would not shut the fuck up about how honest and hardworking he was. I mean he went on and on about how he was all about doing right by his customers.

The project—a long, skinny hole, the digging of which is the sole purpose of a machine called a trencher—was not the only thing being sized up during our exchange.

He decided I was a rube (true) and used a tactic I will never forget. The interaction went like this:

He did one of those big movements where he leaned back with hands in his pockets, taking a big breath in while scanning the yard, as if he were appraising some sprawling ranch in Montana. "I'd say we’re looking at about… oh, let's say, for everything… $22,000."

“Get the fuck out of my yard,” is what, if I’d had my wits about me, I might’ve said. But instead, my brain short-circuited.

"$22,000? Um, okay. Wow, well, I'll have to think about that."

He smiled (the sinister kind). "Haha, just kidding."

"What?"

"Yeah, we could probably get this done for about $4,400."

"Oh," I said, suddenly thinking that $4,400 for a long, skinny hole didn’t seem too bad—which was exactly the point. I told him I’d think about it.

I’ll spare you the details, but after some correspondence with my old man (“don’t hire that guy”), I pursued other options. In fact, I decided not to get any more quotes and take it in-house. How hard could it be? It’s a long, skinny hole!

I picked up a trencher from Home Depot ($125 per day), my dad came over, and we knocked it out. Err, sort of.

It took us an hour to figure out how to turn the thing on. Then, 1 foot into the operation, we hit the water main (yes, we had done a utility locate and somehow they missed the big one). I remember thinking, “why is the soil down there so… wet?” Well, we only nicked it, but that little mistake required a total shut off of the water right before bath time. My wife was thrilled. One $300 bill from a very generous plumber who came out on incredibly short notice later, bath time was saved.

The work picked up the next day with the help of my father-in-law.

I’ll note that this sort of task is good for our relationship, me and my father-in-law. It gives us the opportunity to spend time together with very little talking. We can show off our respective strengths: his handyman ability and my ability to do an unending amount of manual labor so that he doesn’t think less of me.

After about 8 hours of hard work, split across two days, we had our trench. And for only $550. Splendid.

There was one catch.

In order to be “up to code,” a trench that runs a 240 volt line must be 18 inches deep.

Did the trencher get us to the 18 inch depth required for sign off by the inspector? Of course not. It got us to a depth of… 17 inches. So I grabbed the trowel and spent about 4 hours hand digging another inch (for 40 feet). Not glorious, but you throw a podcast in and it goes by fast enough.

He walked the trench, poked around a bit, and signed off. As he was writing something on his clipboard, he asked if we ran into any issues.

"It was pretty smooth," I said, lying. "Trencher only got us to 17 inches though. Had to hand dig the last inch."

He looked up. "Oh yeah, that happens a lot with those rental trenchers."

"Really?"

"Yeah, but there's actually an easy fix for that."

“Oh? What is it?”

"You probably just needed to clear the duckbill valve."

The end.

Thanks for reading! Hope you laughed. See you in two weeks.

-Will

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