17-08-2011 08:45 Water removal from a flooded backyard. Pumping this water away before it creates a flooded basement. Previous year this water flooded higher and flooded this homes basement and also flooded 2 cars. 2 Flygt pumps are being used. One is a Ready 4 flygt pump and the otrher is a modified 1.7hp flygt pump that is very powerfull. Using 2 of these sump pumps I pumped away approximatly 20000 gallons of water from this backyard. Carpet cleaning extraction hose and layflat discharge hose were used to get the maximum flow of water 100 feet away from the flooded backyard. The home owner was very concerned that the rising water was going to flood the basement in his home and wanted the water removed. I started the job at 3:00 AM in the morning. For Quick service in MA and NH, Please CALL 1-978-392-1895 AAA Flood Dryng aaaflooddrying.com
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Water Removal, Flooded Home, Flygt pump Massachusetts - Video
15-01-2012 12:48 After seven years of restoration, carried out by technicians from the Yanks Air Museum, a Lockheed EC-121T Warning Star (military version of the Super Constellation) has been put in flight from Camarillo to Chino, California (USA), where the museum is known for being the Mecca of warbirds in the United States. This aircraft had Top-Secret capabilities and monitored the skies for hostile aircraft for over 44 years during the height of the Cold War often flying missions 24 hours a day. It served over the Pacific as well as Taiwan, South Korea and Iceland during the Cuban Missile Crisis. You need only to take a look inside to see the massive electronic and technological capabilities of this aircraft.
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Lockheed EC-121 Super Constellation Coming Home To Yanks Air Museum - Video
COMPOUND INTEREST: The oldest of eight siblings, Gran Semmes moved to the Irish Channel from the West Bank in the early 1970s when his father bought a collection of shotgun doubles at First and Tchoupitoulas streets. The old houses and historic neighborhood made a life-changing impression on Semmes, then in his 20s, and helped to inspire his passion for architecture, design, art and history.
"That was the starting point of my affliction," he said. "My wife calls me a serial renovator."
Since then, Semmes has been involved in dozens of real estate projects, but his most cherished may be the townhouse, slave quarter and cottage at Race and Religious streets, a successor of sorts to his family's Irish Channel compound.
"I started with just the Creole cottage on Religious Street back in the '70s -- I bought it to keep it from being torn down," Semmes said. "Then in 2003 we bought the townhouse and its slave quarter and connected all the courtyards."
Gran, Billie and Elsie Semmes (the couple's youngest daughter) were living in the cottage when Hurricane Katrina forced them to suspend their renovation of the townhouse and decamp to Colorado, where the family's elder daughter lives (a son, Granville IV, lives here in New Orleans).
But eventually the townhouse renovation project got back on track.
"My brother Paul and I literally renovated the cottage ourselves," Semmes said. "I didn't borrow any money to do it but worked on it when I had the resources. Years later, the townhouse was a collaboration of three of us: me, Paul and Steve Richardson, a wonderful painter and cabinetmaker. He can figure out all the intricate details."
PERSONAL SPACE
THE HOUSES: Two early 19th-century treasures, one a Creole cottage and the other a townhouse, sharing courtyards in the Lower Garden District
THE OWNERS: Gran and Billie Semmes
THE SPACE: The ground floor of the townhouse, where the living room, kitchen and entry foyer flow seamlessly into one another
WHY THEY LOVE IT: 'This was a working man's house, not a fancy place,' Gran Semmes said. 'We wanted to bring it back without changing its nature.'
Semmes said that he and his team would meet at the kitchen table in the cottage each morning and talk about the townhouse, then proceed with whatever ideas and solutions they hatched that morning. What risked becoming a helter-skelter amalgamation of disparate visions became instead a harmonious composition, an outcome that Semmes attributes to the talents of his two partners. For the intriguing atmosphere of the building's interior, Semmes credits his wife, Billie, and her unerring sense of taste, with pulling it all together.
"Billie has corrected many a mistake before I made them," Semmes said. "She has a great eye."
FURNISHINGS: The couple has traveled the world together and likes to seek out elements to incorporate into their home wherever they go.
From Buenos Aires, they brought back the wrought-iron gates to the courtyard on Race Street, as well as the tall stained-glass doors found throughout the compound. From Afghanistan and Iran came multisized geometric patterned rugs, now scattered across the townhouse's clay tile floors.
Other artifacts, especially the ubiquitous religious objects, come from anywhere Semmes finds them, including a front porch in Waveland, Miss. Fine antiques such as the Renaissance-era trestle table in the townhouse kitchen are used casually, rather than showcased.
The effect is a visually arresting and refined environment that manages to be comfortable and unpretentious.
With all offspring well out of the house, Gran and Billie Semmes now spend more time at their Slidell home than their city roost. Set on more than 100 acres, the house they occupy was built according to a plan by Frank Lloyd Wright. No Renaissance kitchen tables or 200-year-old French hospital tiles at the Slidell house; the couple has furnished it in mid-century modern.
Billie's parents live across a bog connected to the Semmes house by bridges, constituting yet a third family compound. When Gran and Billie come in from Slidell, they stay at their "city house" at Race and Religious, but when they aren't there, they rent it out as an event venue.
REACHING BACK: Semmes says that what attracted him to the Lower Garden District 30 years ago stills holds him there today.
"When I started looking around here, there were many more old houses and warehouses than there are today, but it was clear change was coming," he said, citing the expansion of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and establishment of the truck route as two factors that resulted in sweeping changes to the once-quiet area.
"There was just this feeling that you wanted to reach back and hold on to it before it slipped away."
The same reverence for and instinct to protect the city's architectural and cultural heritage is expressed in various artworks found throughout the compound, especially in the townhouse kitchen mural painted by Richardson at Semmes' request.
Both Elsie Semmes and Richardson contributed smaller, framed pieces that appear in the townhouse, slave quarter and cottage. Mixed in are a few contemporary works, as well as oils that resemble Old Master portraits. Some paintings rest on mantels, but others hang on the sumptuously weathered walls that Semmes took care not to make too perfect.
"It's always tricky when you're renovating to make only the improvements that need to be made and to avoid erasing the place's past by smoothing out all the dents and imperfections," Semmes said.
"Those are the things that connect you to the people who lived here before you, and you want to keep those."
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Restoration at Race and Religious streets is a family affair
16-01-2012 16:45 CANTON (KYTX) - After years of planning and restoration, a Vietnam era fighter jet has finally arrived at it's new home - the intersection of highway 243 and highway 19 in Canton. People of Van Zandt county say the jet means the world to the community, especially to it's veterans. Carter Clark designed the Van Zandt County Veteran's Memorial, which now includes a fully restored FD Phantom fighter jet. He says, -Almost tears, from it being finished. It's taken so long! I was not able to serve in the military service and I decided this is something I could give back to our veterans.- He says it's the veteran's who seemed the most proud to have the plane on their home soil. -You talk to certain ones,- Carter says, -and tears come in their eyes.- Veteran Ronald -Red- Montgomery helped plan the jet's homecoming. Now that it's finally home he says, -It's unbelievable. So many things have happened, it's just unbelievable.- Clark and many other dedicated community members worked together to restore the jet. Field McConnell flew the fighter jet for 13 years. He says restoring and getting the plane to Van Zandt was the work of many dedicated community members. He says, -There's a whole lot of people all around us that not only support this Veteran's Memorial, but also the United States of America and it's just a real pleasure, it's my privilege to be here today.- He describes the special plane that will always be a part of him. -This airplane was at the North Dakota International ...
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Canton, Texas - After years of planning and restoration, a Vietnam era fighter jet finds a home. - Video