Tag: house

Fresh Leak Hell

We have an appointment to have a new tankless water heater installed tomorrow morning. I still have a bucket under the leaky pipe in the current water heater and it’s kept the floor dry for a week now.

Or has it.

(insert ominous music here)

My wetvac is falling apart. Whole chunks of it have fallen off. It still works, and I could probably change the filter and all would be well, but now…

I emptied the drip bucket by stickin’ the wetvac hose into the bucket and sucking it all up. I’ve been doing that for a week now. Today, a few hours after emptying the bucket, I went downstairs for laundry reasons and saw water on the floor. WHAT THE HELL?

A little investigating has lead me to believe that the wetvac is actually leaking now. The water this time was next to the wetvac but a little down hill. I cleaned it up, knowing how goofy it is to use the source as it’s own fix, which clearly will have to be done again later tonight.

Oh well. I will be spending some time down there tonight to clean out the storage area where the folks will be working tomorrow and while I’m there I will empty the bucket and the wetvac and hopefully that will be the end of it. When the bucket gets emptied some time tomorrow, the water heater will have been replaced.

Fingers eternally crossed. I am so sick of having water issues in my cellar. It’s enough to make me want to move into a house that doesn’t have a basement. Houses in San Diego generally don’t have cellars, do they? If that’s the case, let’s go!

HVAC

One week ago I gave the details on the very ugly HVAC situation in our cellar. It’s one of many ugly situations in our cellar, but for now it’s the one that’s being worked on.

They looked over the ducts in the cellar and said they needed to come back another day to actually fix things. Today is that day. They gave us an estimate and let’s just say I won’t be buying myself a guitar for my 50th birthday… and maybe not for 51-60 either. In the immortal words of Austin Powers, ouch, babie.

Jen sent me a message about an hour ago. They are there. They are working. They are loud. One them wasn’t wearing a mask. Insert very frustrated non-science denying sigh here.

This whole thing has me very nervous. Central air is one of the highlights of our house. I don’t want to de-evolve to a state where we have fans and air conditioners in the windows. I want to be snooty high society with my air conditioned house. I am also very happy that progress is being made as this has been weighing on me like you wouldn’t believe.

I just want it done and I also want it done right so that we never have to worry about it again. Specifically I want it done right so that I never have to worry about a 10 foot section of duct falling on my head again. Ouch, babie.

Big Things

Two big things going on in our world today. One I will write about. The other I won’t.

I haven’t written about this before (I don’t share everything with you, oh my readers and only friends*, even if I do share WAY too much) and I don’t think I took any pictures so I can’t remember exactly when it happened. I was down cellar and for whatever reason I needed to look for something in the little closet under our stairs. Harry Potter’s bedroom, if you will. I noticed that the HVAC duct was hanging a little low at that spot. We’ve had issues with the ducts before and at some point we had someone come in and sure** it up a little. It hangs off of the ceiling in the cellar and normally the only problem is that I have to duck when I walk under it.

On this particular day though, it was hanging a little low in front of the closet under the stairs. I couldn’t quite see this before the events unfolded, but it was actually partially resting on the ever so slightly ajar closet door. When I opened the door…

A 15 foot long section of duct fell on my head. As I stood there in a mental state that was 50% shock and 50% utter panic, a second, smaller section that connected to the fallen duct also fell off the ceiling.

I don’t remember exactly when this was, but it was probably around Christmas decorating time. There are actually two ducts. Best I can tell, considering I have no idea what I’m talking about, one duct is heat and the other is air conditioning. We did some testing with the thermostat and determined that the fallen duct was on the air conditioning side. That was lucky, given that there was a pandemic and we likely wouldn’t be needing AC for months to come.

Well, here we are in April and it’s getting close to the time we’ll need air conditioning. Fortunately, the three of us are all vaccinated now, and the forth family member will be fully vaccinated by the time she comes home from college, and we can start taking care of all of the crap that has gone wrong in our house over the last year. The HVAC folks are coming this afternoon. Please please please please please let them be able to put the duct back together and secure the whole works because I can’t have this stuff falling on me again. We need our AC to work so that we don’t melt in the summer, but there are also two college tuitions to pay for and we can’t afford to be replacing the whole duct system in the cellar. That would be a nightmare.

Please please please please please let the HVAC situation be resolved today. Please please please please please.

*Yes, I paraphrase that line from A Clockwork Orange too often. You’re just going to have to deal with it.

**There is no way that “sure” is the correct spelling for this usage of the word. I totally used the wrong homonym, right?

Double Whammy

This morning one of our smoke detectors gave us the “please change my battery, you friggin’ savage” alarm. I went through the maze of alarm locations in the house trying to figure out which one was yelling at us. I found it in the mud room. They are kinda a pain to take off the ceiling but I got it down. They are kinda a pain to open up but I got it open. They are kinda a pain to pop out the batteries but I got them out. They are kinda a pain to re-hang on the ceiling but I got it back up.

I made the mistake of pressing the test button. When you do that it doesn’t just test the one you’re holding in your hand, it tests every single alarm in the house. The noise is overwhelming, which is good when there’s a fire but really painful when you just woke up.

None of this is the actual story though.

When the shockingly loud, house-wide test was complete and the smoke detector was hung on the ceiling again……….

…………the smoke detector in Harry’s room started giving the “please change my battery, you friggin’ savage” alarm.

Muthapussbucket

10 Years Ago Today

10 years ago today we bought a house. September 29, 2010 was closing and moving day. Right smack dab in the middle of the biggest economic down turn since The Great Depression we did our part to help our nation recover by sinking great big gobs of money into our home. With the exception of our wedding day, it was the biggest thing I’ve ever been a part of.

10 years ago today, this place was a house. Today it’s a home. Thanks to the friggin coronavirus, it’s also two offices and a couple of classrooms, but mostly it’s a home. Our home. I love it.

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