(Un)employment news

[pyesetz]

Globe & Mail:

Statistics Canada said virtually every major metropolitan area in the country experienced an increase in the number of regular [employment insurance] beneficiaries over the last year.

“The largest increases between January 2008 and January 2009 occurred in Southwestern Ontario, where the manufacturing sector in particular experienced heavy layoffs,” Statscan said.

In Windsor, which has experienced deep job losses as a result of layoffs in the auto sector, the number of regular beneficiaries rose 81.6 per cent to 10,600, Statscan said.

The cities of London, Kitchener and Hamilton were also hard hit by the manufacturing downturn.

Thankfully, my job seems secure for the moment.  In fact, I just got a nice raise starting next month!  Maybe this year I'll finally be able to get a sump pump for my basement.  I got an estimate on Friday: $500 for parts, almost $500 for labour—ouch!

Comments

[xolo.livejournal.com]

I'll finally be able to get a sump pump for my basement. I got an estimate on Friday: $500 for parts, almost $500 for labour

Dude - is your basement a hundred feet deep or something? I paid roughly $125 for my last sump pump, and installed it myself, in about an hour.

[pyesetz]

My basement is about 4 feet below ground level.  It is apparently one of the deeper basements in the area.  Much of the year, the water table is only an inch or two below my dirt-and-paving-stone floor.  During snow melts or heavy rains, it is an inch *above* the floor in spots.

This house is 138 years old and has never had a sump pump.  A chunk of the labour is for digging the sump and inserting a pit liner to let the water in but keep the sand out (this area is called "The Sandhills" but the soil seems to be mostly clay).

It is now forbidden to attach sump pumps to the municipal sewage system.  Most people around here just dump their sump-water outside the house, where it drains through the soil and back to the sump in an infinite loop of electricity-usage.  I have an old well with a pipe into my basement, but it is forbidden to dump sump-water into that to avoid contaminating the aquifer (filtered by ~30 feet of soil) with sump-water (only ~6 feet of soil-filtering).  I would like the water to go to the backyard, which slopes away from the house, but that might require 20 feet or more of pipe.

Yeah, the pump itself is only $100 or so.