WILL A WALL KEEP OUT THE DIRT? I THINK I KNOW.

THIS  SHOWS TWO PEOPLE SITTING OUT ON THE LANAI. BEHIND THE SETTEE IS WHERE THE DIRT CAME IN.

 

 This was personal for me. I had a problem with dirt blowing in through the screens into my lanai. For those of you who don’t live in Florida or Hawaii, that’s usually an outdoor area that has a roof and one or two walls and screens instead of walls.

It’s lovely to sit outside, but be inside at the same time.

So. If you go back quite a few posts, you will see me railing against the dirt that blows in from the screens and comes out of the concrete blocks around the pool.

It's now painted blue,  And that's not my floor.

 

I decided that to keep out the dirt, I’d build a small, but, inexpensive wall.

 

HYPOTHESIS:

If you have an area that is bordered by dirt, the dirt will come over the border.

EXPERIMENTAL METHOD:

Building a wall and objectively measuring the dirt that comes in, compared to the dirt that came in before the wall.

 

Description of experiment.

Okay. I didn’t measure the dirt. I eyeballed in and know after years, about how much comes in.

I built a two story Styrofoam Wall that is about 9” high and covers the entire area in question.

Digression. The building of said wall was delayed due to Hurricane Matthew.

 

The wall was completed in good time. Furniture moved around and some decorations put up to cover the wall which is plain (read as ugly).

 As was expected, less dirt blew in from outside. That would be a win.

EXTRANEOUS VARIABLES:

For those of you who are not scientists, that means, stuff you can’t predict beforehand.

Just a little piece of I think, cigar paper.

In my case, my husband taking up cigar smoking. The occurrence may or may not have coincided with the wall, but was definitely  related to having a nice place to sit and smoke cigars and not be in the house.

 I now have “new dirt” from an unexpected source.

crushes in ashes on the rug.

 

CONCLUSION:

Over the millennia people have attempted to combat dirt by cleaning. As those of us who clean know, it always comes back.

In this case, it had changed form.  Therefore, although the hypothesis was correct about the dirt being blocked by the wall, the dirt found another way in. It always has and it always will.

 

I am tempted to make a joke. Like, I’d like to hire someone to clean up the dirt, but if the Big Wall goes up, where will I find someone to hire?

But I wouldn’t say that so I didn’t.

 

Thanks for reading.       

 

PS. My husband will tell you the story about us driving in the car and me yelling at him for making dirt from breakfast. I pointed to the dirt, and he said, "That tiny crumb?"

We have very different ideas about dirt. Just to be fair.