Did Monsieur Enjoy His Last Meal?

One of the blocks of rat poison we left out is about 1/4 eaten!

I have no idea how much of a block it needs to consume to meet Rat Jeebus, but this is a good sign we got the right poison! 

The Future?

Our lawn mower died.  Rather, it will not start.

It doesn't seem to have compression.

It's about... um...  11 years old.

I think that's a good run.

I've been wrenching on it for the past five to avoid replacing it. 

We replaced it with a Ryobi 40v 20" mower.  Battery powered.

I kinda feel dirty, but it was still $100 cheaper than the equivalent gas model.

Something I can do with the battery powered model that I can't with a gas one is store it folded up and standing on its end.  No gas to leak out while vertical.

I was surprise at how normal it sounds.  Most of what I think of as lawnmower noise is apparently the blade spinning. 

Gen Set

Thanks to all who've made helpful comments about getting a generator.

We already have one!

It's just not worth digging out for a couple hours inconvenience.

Generally, by the time it'd be up and running the power company would have service restored.

A house sized UPS is prolly more what we want, but batts on that scale are still a bit spendy.

Maybe once we've paid off the house and AC work... 

New AC For The Inlaws

First off, FUCK YOU Joe Biden and your AIM act!

Fuck all you congress creatures who suck greenie cock.

A $3,000 compressor and air handler is now $8,700 because mixing R32 with something else is better for the environment or something.

Better for some chemical company's bottom line.

It's a good thing I have good credit, because we're financing this shit.

Should even be zero cost out of MY pocket because the inlaws are going to be making the payments.

Their old system still had R22 in it, and it wasn't new when we got their place in 2019. 

Almost A Good Deal

Harvey found a oscillating fan to replace the dying Lasko on the back porch for half-off at $10.

While it wasn't the sturdiest design, it would have served just fine.

Until I broke it trying to adjust the height.

I didn't have the collet unscrewed far enough to let the shaft slide freely and should not have forced it.

Well, we now have a $32 Lasko fan... 

Shitty Afternoon

Spent the evening with a badly backed up shitter and having to pay a plumber to snake it.

$600 that we didn't think we'd be having to spend.

Turns out, it wasn't even the brown trout that caused the issue, but decades of grease accumulation in the drain past the kitchen sink.

It would have been $350 if we'd been able to remember where to dig to find our cleanout.

The good news is, we have found it... now.  Too late to save the money.

On the plus side, I have a brand new wax ring on the garage bathroom now and it's shimmed level perfectly! 

Zap!

The heating element in the oven decided to arc and die.

Happily, we noticed one spot glowing yellow when the rest of it was orange and ordered a replacement element a few weeks ago.

This is the third such element we've gone through.

The quality of replacements just isn't as good as the original, sadly.

The Chinese made items we can get from Amazon last about five years. 

I noticed that I might have mounted the previous one a bit low, there's a lot of space in the slots, and that might have affected longevity. 

What A Difference

Got the agitator dogs replaced in the Kenmore today.

What a difference!

The Boy's bed linens actually smell clean now.

I rewashed a load of my own clothes and the water was very gray during agitation.

I think it's safe to say that the washer ain't been washin' very well for a while.  I have no idea how long the dogs were not ratcheting.

Also the new clutch lets the drum really spin, so the clothes are coming out drier before they go into the dryer.

Clutches And Dogs

The washing machine was making a screeching noise in spin cycle.

No es bueno.

We hired the local appliance place to come diagnose and repair it.

It was very close to the same price as getting a different washer, but we LIKE our old Kenmore direct drive.

They're serviceable.

Repairable.

Nigh immortal.

The part that needed replaced was the clutch for the drum.

The repair guy mentioned our agitator dogs were out too, cheap fix and simple to perform.  He even said, "I can see your tool box, you can do this!"

That made me feel good.

He might even have seen me changing the hatch struts on Alice too. 

Cooling

At our last AC service I asked what speed the air handler's fan was set to and they told me "Medium."

They'd moved it down from "High" when they installed our spiffy new non-leaking ducts and the main bedroom has had abysmal air flow ever since.

This has pissed us off since the install because, despite dumping half the cooled air into the attic, the bedroom was never uncomfortable with the old duct work.  Even with the door closed

The manager/owner's only suggestion was to leave the door open or to get an additional air return installed in the bedroom.

I don't see where they'd put it, and I'm not rearranging the stuff I have against the walls to suit this additional charge to fix what I feel they broke.

In the meantime, I have baby gates over the bedroom door to keep Beeper and Shadow separated.

I've also had a fan on the floor blowing into the bedroom, hoping to pull the correct temperature air from the rest of the house into the bedroom.  Which does work, but the bedroom is always closer to the outside temp than the rest of the house.  Usually warmer.

Today, thinking about that air return idea, I turned the fan around.

That little extra flow out of the room has really helped air come out of the duct and keep it at the proper temp.  Though I fretted a but because that triggered the AC to run more often for a little while as things in the bedroom shed heat.

Eyes crossed that this will work. 

Measure Twice Cut Thrice

I have baby gates across the bedroom door to keep Shadow separated from Beeper.

The bottom two gates are swing-out style and have two lugs on the door-frame that accept pins on the door.

The top gate has always been difficult to get closed, but the bottom one has always been fine.

I used the provided template to place the lugs, so I assumed it was some kind of tolerance stack-up problem with the gates themselves.

Swapping them top to bottom helped a lot.  The bottom one was noticeably tighter, but still worked correctly.  The top one got looser, but still bound up on the top lug.

So I measured the fit between the lugs and pins on the bottom gate and replicated that on the top.

It amounted to lowering the top lug about 1/8".

Then I measured between the lugs and they now match!

Somehow I got the top lug 1/8" too high when I mounted them initially.

Worse, I replicated this mistake when I lowered the top gate to narrow the gap to allow it to become the middle gate.

Flap Flap Drip Drip

When it gets cold, my toilet starts dripping.

It's no surprise that this will be visible on the water bill.

So I, finally, replaced the flapper.

The new one is soft and pliable.

The old one was misshapen, hard and brittle.

Procrastination...

I had the replacement part for months.

Burner Baby Burner!

Got my burners replaced! 

No idea how much I saved doing it myself instead of calling an appliance repairman.

I do know a brand new glass-top range is about $500 (plus taxes and shipping) if I install it myself.

This was a mere $145 total.

Amazon screwed up and their packing allowed the ceramic terminal block to get broken, luckily, one of the old burner's block was intact and I reused it.

I'm too lazy and apathetic to demand a return.

All Electrical All The Time

Our motion light on the garage side of the house decided to become a disco light show instead of staying on.

Lots of clicking from the unit like it was a bad relay or something.

It's only been up there for... uh... years.

Got the new one up and it's passed all the daylight tests.

Waiting for it to get dark enough for a night test of the motion detector. 

Update: It has passed nighttime testing. 

Arcing

Went to boil some water to make some cup-o-noodles and I got rewarded with arching from the burner!

Got a couple of cool Jacob's ladder style arcs off the pan before I got the switch shut off.

DAMMIT!

The stove top is original to the house and dates back to 1969.

And you can still get parts!

While in the process of finding the model number of the stove, I found the ceramic insulator/isolator block around the leads to the OTHER 8" burner had broken somehow.

That puts the big burners out of service until parts arrive.

So I'm getting two 8" burners for it.  $65 each.

The 6" burners are $50 and we're deferring replacement because the do many fewer miles than the big burners.

Life happened and, hours later, I decided to finish making my cup-o-noodle and the rear burners weren't working.

Turns out the fuse on one leg of the oven/range circuit had done it's job when the burner arced!

In the process of troubleshooting this I discovered that the 20 amp fuse under the stove is for a 110v plug that runs on one leg of the range/stove circuit.  I checked it because turning on the rear burner restored current to the plug.

I replaced the fuse and ordered more.  The smallest pack of the 40 amp fuses I can order is a 10 pack.  SIGH.  Lifetime supply, I guess. 

Smedley On Duty

Got Smedley, the Grim Reaper, all set up and placed!

We're quite proud of this decoration.

Once Harvey got it draped to her liking, Marv came by and sewed some tacks to keep it in place. 

Split Times

Not gun contented.

I made four logs into firewood yesterday.

Made much easier with the cheap hand-pumped hydraulic log-splitter Marv bought us, but still an exercise event.

I dunno what size log it was intended for, but I don't think we've ever found it.

Mostly we end up with too short for the ram to do the job.

Still easier than with a wedge-hammer! 

Decoratin'

Got the Halloween decorations down and many of them placed.

Gotta fix Smedley the Grim Reaper we're making.  It's a process. 

Halloween Nears

The Lovely Harvey and I consider Halloween our Christmas in terms of decorating and having fun.

This year She wanted to put a Grim Reaper in our annual graveyard.

After seeing that a life sized reaper is $300...

Off to YouTube!

I think we're still under $50 at this point:

That's a 3/4" PVC frame and a couple of canvas painter's drop cloths with some skeletal hands stolen from a broken decoration.

She's going to paint the canvas and we're looking for better hands.

I'm making a scythe. 

 

Baby Gate Update

Stuffing a pillow in the gap between the gates prevents Beeper from using it as an entry.

The gap, with the pillow removed, lets Harvey pretend I'm a prisoner and pass food through the slot.  We're easily amused. 

The gates with a small fan running in the peak of the afternoon does let the bedroom match the rest of the house temperature.

I'm still peeved at the AC company and have no forgiveness in my heart.

Especially after the finance company called asking about the scathing review we left for Graham Heating and Cooling.  Apparently Graham tried to dissemble to the finance company and that they did everything they were contracted to do...

Fine, I will accept that you did everything in the contract.  We fucked up by signing it when you appeared to be verbally confirming you understood what we wanted done.

The first clue we should have gotten that we weren't speaking the same language with this company should have been the job going from $1,000 total to $1,000 per register.

We talked to them about that estimate three times and never once got the impression that it was going to be per vent in the ceiling.

Now we know better.

I know I am sick of them saying we need to add yet another thing to the system every time they come out to do the annual maintenance that came with installation of the air handler and compressor.

Isn't it odd that we need a UV light in the air handler now that the duct work is done?

We've compared notes with friends and they're getting the same lines from their companies too.  Need new ducts, need a UV light, etc...

I need to add that Graham Heating and Cooling isn't actually the company that installed the air handler and compressor.  That was Crystal HVAC.  Crystal went under and Graham inherited their customers when they bought them out.

When we got the new system I asked the Crystal installers about the provisions for the UV lamp in the manual he'd left laying around for me to thumb through.  I was told, then, that if I just used the expensive air filters, I shouldn't need a UV light.

The OEM light assembly is just $200 from Amazon and looks like it will take all of half an hour to install.  A far cry from the $1,000 for the part and $1,200 for installation Graham offered me.  Though the tech did mention that there's $50 lights that work just as good, they just burn out more often than the OEM. 

PS: I notice that HVAC is ANOTHER barrier to entry license required career here in Florida.  Hmmmmmmmm.