around every corner is another opportunity...or surprise

When we bought the house, we knew of a few oddities, and the lower patio was one of them.  The concrete was uneven and patched.  There was a drain grate in the middle-presumably for the water that comes down from the ground level to the below grade area...

3" higher than the door sill

...so I went down to clear out the drain grate and make sure the drain works.  I pulled up two grates (one siliconed to the concrete) and an odd piece of cut up PVC to find that the drain tile was gone and all that remained was mud.  The drain heads straight for the family room and I presumed that the pipe went under the family room to the sump (in the laundry room on the other side of the family room).

I called a plumber and he said that he couldn't get a camera down the hole because of all of the rubble.

So I rented a jack hammer and started to tear out the patio-taking care not to damage the drain.

This is all that was left of the drain...

The 'up' side is that it doesn't go under the house...and we'll get that paver patio a little quicker than we planned.

I also cut down a crab apple tree that was inviting more bugs to the yard via the nasty apples dropped all over the ground.