Day 2 of Flash August Fiction. Thanks for reading, listening, sharing, restacking and telling everyone about my August Flash Fiction Marathon. You’re the best. If you want to share your Flash Fiction in my discord channel, where I read to a live audience, DM me here in Substack. So long Spotify, enjoy your warmongering. If I find out Substack has joined the dark side, I don’t know what I’m going to do.
“The pressure release valve is set so when the rain barrels fill close to the top, it will release into the storage tank. Otherwise, we use that water for irrigation and whatnot.”
Jack Simpson is explaining to a couple of neighbors how he uses the rain barrels to divert the water from ruining his basement. It has been seeping in and weakening the foundation for years, now he can control how it re-enters the water table, and simultaneously save his house.
“You’d be surprised how much these barrels rise in the morning, just from the dew off the roof. Since we put on the metal roof. Some days it’s over a gallon.”
A neighbor asks him about the laws regarding rain collection.
“One of the retarded people from the local government office of whatever, came over here to tell me I’d be fined if I didn’t remove them. They said I was ‘diverting the normal flow of something, and that I was disrupting the ecosystem’ or some complete nonsense like that. The water is flowing better now than ever, it’s coming off of a metal roof, into the barrels and then irrigating my gardens and lawn. It’s going directly into the system now, rather than seeping into my basement where it can’t go anywhere and where all it does is grow mold and mildew and erode my foundation. Then I told him to get off my property because I didn’t want the stupid to rub off on me. I told him that if I get any notices that I’d see him in court, where I’ll be happy to embarrass him. I never saw him or heard from him again.”
Jack invites them over to his greenhouse, which is attached to the house, next to the kitchen.
“The greenhouse gets pretty hot, and it can, even in the cooler months, so in the cooler months I divert some of the warm air in here into the house with those little vents. In those months, if the temp gets up to about 85 degrees in here, the thermostat switch kicks on a couple of computer fans, and they move that air into the house. That’s perfect, oxygen rich air. It smells nice.”
“That’s another reason I’m glad that I’ve solved the basement problem. The cost of the new roof was less than excavating to seal the basement. I can’t believe people do that. So anyway, I’ve dried out the basement, and currently running and ozone machine and ionizer to clear out the mold and mildew. Once that’s done, I can repair the walls and seal up the walls on the inside. I’ll have some usable, sanitized space down there. Then I can move the cool air from the basement into the upper part of the house in the warmer months. So in the cooler months, move in warm air from the greenhouse, and in the warmer months, move in cool air from the basement.”
Jack and the neighbors go through the greenhouse door into the kitchen, where Jack brews some tea and fixes some omelets with fresh vegetables and herbs, right from the greenhouse. They talk, and discuss the things that they each can do to make their places more integrated with the natural processes.
The End543 Words
