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Sun 11 Feb, 2007 11:12 pm
I've been remodeling this old house, built sometime in the late 1800's, and one of the problems I've encountered was an archaic, monstrous, octopus furnace.
I had to remove the furnace and replace it with a new one, but the asbestos-laden ductwork which snaked out from the behemoth posed a problem regarding cost that I was not ready to deal with.
The cost of properly disposing of asbestos is, to say the least, substantial, and I wasn't ready to pay such exorbitant fees to the asbestos people I talked to, simply because it would have thrown my budget into a tailspin.
I pondered the situation and came up with a remarkably simple and effective solution.
The house is fairly close to the Mississippi River and the river, at the present time, is frozen.
I simply loaded the stuff into my truck (Boy! that stuff itches!) and transported it to the river. I did this at three in the morning so as to not arouse suspicion from the various walkers, cross-country skiers, and fishermen.
I approached the river with my lights turned off and coasted down the hill between the deserted factories until I reached the bank. Then I chopped a hole in the ice and poured the contents into the water where it was whisked away like magic.
Problem solved. No cost.
Once the stuff has dissipated in the water I'm sure there will be no ill effects suffered by man nor beast.
I suppose a passing perch may have suffered somewhat from ingesting the initial cloud of dust, but, really, I am willing to sacrifice a stupid fish if it is going to save me a few bucks.
The reason I pass this story along to you is in case you ever encounter a similar problem.
I would suggest that this only works in norther climates, however, and only in the winter time when the ice covering offers a suitable cover to hide your nefarious activities.
If you simply dumped the asbestos in a free-flowing summer river, the evidence would be quite visible and the authorities alerted.
Thanks for the helpful hints Gus! I may be facing a similar problem with a house I am buying. I am not near a river but the Pacific Ocean is right there so I will dump the contents into the ocean as the tide is starting to go out!
I'm here to help, Nick. Say, is the new house on a cliff? Perhaps simply dumping the contents over the edge and letting the prevailing winds do their work would be an effective solution.
About once each month the family and I...all 86 of us...trek down to the river for various activities. It's a full day of family fun, which includes such things as swimming, bathing, laundry and the disposal of used motor oil. Not that any of us have a car, just that uncle Nester uses motor oil in his nightly female wrestling matches. After a months worth of being rassled in, the oil gets a might fishy smellin, and pouring it in the river seemed to be the logical choice. Don't worry, we do our laundry and bathing upstream from the oil dumping....just a bit downstream of the port-a-potty emptying.
Today just happened to be that special day.....now, we don't use any kind of fancy time keeping device to let us know when the big day is upon us, we simply use grannies tried and true "rat clock". What is a rat clock...well, I'm glad you asked. You see, every day around noon you take a rat and wedge it in-up-n-under grannies underarm, if the rat is able to kick his legs three times, the rat is then removed and placed back in the crib for the babies to play with. On the day that the rat can only give two kicks, cousin Vex blows the family trumpet....which is actually Vex's fist, because he sold the trumpet to settle up with the pet store during his snake handling foray. His fist doesn't really make a good trumpet, but since all that poison from the snake bites afflicted his brain, we try to humor him. So Vex blows his trumpet...fist...and we pack up and head down to the mighty Miss to do our thing.
An odd thing happened today, a fibrous substance came a floatin by, so I scooped up a handful and tasted it and spit it right out....phooey. But not wanting something free to get away, I scooped up another handful and tasted it again, wasn't so bad that time...I found out later that I tore off all my taste buds with the first mouthful....but we all began to pack our pockets full of the river dust, and carried it home. While cooking supper, my wife used hers to stuff the opossum because we were fresh out of skunk, and I used my share to fill all the holes in the babies crib so the rats can't escape so good.
So, thank you Gus for making a special day even more special than normal.
Oh yeah, we don't let the rat from the rat clock go to waste either, one of the gals fixes em up real nice in a box lunch, then us fellers compete in a booger flickin contest to see which of us gets to devour the little critter. We tried to market the box lunch to the public once...but MFR, Missouri Fried Rat just didn't catch the eye of the consumer as Uncle Zed {Colonel Zed, as he likes to be called} had figured it to.
If'n you dont have a new fangled flowing disposal system like Gus
a bonfire does the same thing.
Kinda smelly, but at least that asbestos is turned into small shiny, oily rocks.
They make pretty table pieces.
Burning styrofoam puts out a delightful heat if you don't want to pay the price of fireplace logs.
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