Maintenance victory, of a sort

Problem: Venerable Patton High Velocity Air Circulator (henceforth referred to as "fan") stopped working. Took it apart, cleaned off years of dust. Showed the kids the copper coils that generate the electromagnetic field that causes the disc to rotate so that the blades turn. Diagnosed that, for tribological reasons I can't determine, the generated EM field is no longer strong enough to overcome the initial inertia of the disc, even after applying lubricant.

Solution: keep a screwdriver handy to give the fan a little push, and it will keep the blades moving after that.

Poor customer service + Little-known state regulations + Honest company = Big fat check?!

Our neighborhood was built on solid rock; my understanding is that our lot was a swampy part of a farm that was drained (60's and 70's-era wetlands management, bay-bee!), and what they found under the muck was solid rock, but anyways, that means we don't have a basement, and we aren't hooked up to city gas, so even though we live in Vermont's equivalent of a major metropolitan area, our house has a big tank of #2 fuel oil for heating and a smaller tank of propane for the oven and range -- the previous owners had a propane-fueled heating stove that they used as an alternative to the fuel oil-powered baseboard heat, but they really wanted to take the stove with them, so we actually use very little propane.

So, at some point not too long ago, our propane provider began charging us a rental fee for the tank**. More recently, they were bought by Amerigas, and changed our account number... after they had sent out the yearly bill for the tank rental, so of course they misfiled our payment -- it was accepted and cashed, they just didn't credit our account -- and after I called and they admitted their mistake and said they would straighten it out, of course they didn't, and that's when we looked for a replacement and found Patterson Fuels, who are awesome.

Amerigas was then supposed to pick up their crappy old tank and go away, but of course they didn't get around to it for nearly a month***.  They were crazy-makers, but we were done with them.  Or so we thought, until we received this letter:

This is the most hilariously unexpected correspondence we've ever received.  I've blacked out the amounts, but let's just say that given how little propane we use, all our cooking fuel needs and tank rental fees for the time we were Blue Flame / Amerigas customers were effectively free. 


** This was when we should have started shopping around for another fuel provider, but for some reason we didn't. 

*** and when they finally did pick it up, they filled up Patterson Fuels' tank, which is a big no-no.  We complained to them about it, but I still don't have the full story on how that ended

Saving a call to the repairman (Bosch washing machine edition)

We have a front loading Bosch 300 or something (I don't see the number anywhere on the machine itself, and the manual is, of course, for a whole line of machines).  It's great, given us no trouble until this morning's second load returned E:13.  Too many suds?  No.  Drain hose blocked?  No.  Time to turn to google.

This post on appliantology got me started in the right direction, because in the end, it turned out to be a blocked drain pump, but the posted instructions on how to get at the drain pump weren't right for my machine.

I wanted this video to have all the answers, but while the drain pump is, in fact, located in the front lower right of my machine, I don't have handy-dandy flip-down access to it on my machine.  

Fortunately, the manual does provide instructions on how to access the washer pump.  I couldn't understand the instructions (much cursing ensued), and the process is utterly ridiculous given the simplicity of access shown on the model in the video (more cursing ensued), until the 6th picture in the manual showed enough from my POV that I could figure out how to remove the panel, unscrew the pump cover, and remove a heavily damaged and stinky sock.

Inspired by the work of Kaja and Phil Foglio

The stairs are painted with chalkboard paint, and then decorated with the kind of text that Lucrezia Mongfish has on the steps leading out of her lab.   

A minor moving project

We pulled everything off the shelves in the (family?) room and pushed the shelves a little closer to the wall.  We no longer needed the extra space behind the shelves because we were moving the TV & stereo equipment to another location.  They were being moved because we needed to move the couch and chair in order to make room for...

... the "new" piano.  It's a very well maintained 1976 Yamaha GH 1.  The previous owners' kids are grown up, and now ours will learn on it.  Yay!

And then we suddenly had room for *more* books once the TV was moved! 

The Purple Powder Room Project

We hate wallpaper.  The penultimate bit of exposed wallpaper in our house came down over the weekend, in favor of a nice coat of fresh purple paint.



(Picasa album here)

Repainting the bedroom

I need to find a "before" picture, but this is another triumph for Sarahmac the colormaster.

The great bathroom remodeling saga

[note: I originally meant to post this in October 2011, when the project was complete.  I'm finally posting it now on 6/14/2012, but backdating it to 10/28/2011]


From the design phase in December 2010 to the final sign-off, we spent most of a year on a remodel of the 3/4 master bath.  The room is about 5'x8', which is not much space to begin with, and the original bathroom wasted a lot of that space, so our primary goal was to reclaim as much space as possible, and make it open, light, and clean-lined.  The photo montage doesn't quite do it justice, but I think Sarah's new design is brilliant, and over 6 months later, I still love being in that bathroom.

Spores! Spores! Spores!

In the attic!

Multiple choice quiz!

Referring to the images, do they depict:

A) An explosively growing colony of mold, first discovered last week, and just about the last thing you want to discover in your attic;

B) Pictures from *our* attic;
C) Something thankfully not affecting the air quality in the living space of the house;
D) Something first discovered when discussing a bathroom remodel with the contractor (the bathroom ceiling abuts the attic);
E) A problem we thought had been contained years ago when we hired a roofer with experience in problem attics and fixed the bathroom fans so they vented to the outside rather than directly into the attic; 

F) Something that thankfully should be solvable with money, and thankfully it looks like our homeowner's coverage with Vermont Mutual should cover most of it.

G) All of the above.

If you guessed (G), give yourself a gold star!  I'd have another multiple choice quiz asking who spent several hours this weekend hauling carboard boxes out of the attic and to the dump this past weekend, but that would be too easy.  I also learned, after all these years, that "Toys in the Attic" is an Aerosmith song.  I first heard (and prefer) the R.E.M. cover on Dead Letter Office.  

Don't Fear the Reaper

No, seriously, don't.  It's just me with my package in the mail from Perry, Maine!  Let's lay the contents out...

Heeding all the warning labels...

Next assemble the snath with wood glue, wait half an hour, and affix the blade (cover on, for the moment, because it's sharp)

Now we're ready to cut some weeds!

I've been thinking about getting a scythe for a few years and couldn't find a place in VT that made them.  Scythe Supply in Maine helped me with blade selection (I've got a 24" ditch blade) and got me set up with an outfit.  After a short test run with the scythe, I'm in love with this tool.  Much better than a string trimmer at cutting down the thicker weeds, in addition to being quieter and requiring less effort to wield (the scythe is light and only requires that you be able to turn at the waist in order to cut).  If I improve my form, it might eventually replace the reel mower.

Honey, I know, I know, I know times are changin'

It's time we all reach out for something new, that means you too.
[the wall of children art and cork board is looking a little scraggly.  time to clean up in time for the new school year and all the new stuff they'll be bringing home]

If you know what I'm singin' about up here, come on raise your hand
[that's metallic paint we've put on the wall, to go underneath the final coat of...]

Purple wall, purple wall

I only want to see you hanging on the purple wall
[the metallic paint allows us to get rid of the cork board and use magnets to affix everything, except Chat Noir which still hangs on a nail, to the wall]

This wall is incredibly energizing to look at.  For three days now I've been purposefully walking into the kitchen during the workday just to say "Wow!"  Kudos to Sarahmac for (A) realizing that something needed to be done with that wall, and (B) finding the right color for it.

Home heating and pellet boilers

A little history: when our house was built in the early/mid-70's, it had forced air electric heating.  In the mid-90's, when the Burlington Electric Department was busy trying to keep electric usage in Burlington down, they offered incentives to switch away from electric heating and the homeowners switched to baseboard heat with a fuel oil boiler.  In the 9 years since we've bought the house, we've seen #2 fuel oil prices fluctuate from $1.21/gallon to to $4.50/gallon; it's hovering just under $3.00/gallon lately, and I'm betting it'll be higher than that next winter.  Very roughly, we burn 850 gallons per year for home heating and hot water.


Now there are incentives to start moving away from fuel oil, but our neighborhood is not hooked up for natural gas (we'd have to have it delivered to a tank on-site), we have trees on our south side that we're not willing to cut down in order to do solar hot water, and our lot is all ledge so a geothermal heat pump is out.  So... how about wood pellets?


Around here, wood pellet stoves have become fairly popular, but these are not really replacements for your boiler, and some of the early pellet boilers require you to manually feed the boiler hopper ever So far, we've found the following leads:

• Building Energy VT sells the Fröling P4 boiler 
• Blodgett Supply sells the Woodpecker boiler 
• Maine Energy Systems imports and distributes the Oekofen boiler
• Pellergy makes a converter to retrofit the existing boiler
• Stove & Flag Works sells Harman boilers 

There are also lots of options for what the set-up could be like, from installer a pellet boiler alongside the existing oil boiler so that we have a backup (we don't really have room for this in the garage) to removing the oil boiler and oil tank and having pellet storage in a silo just outside the garage (which I actually kinda like because we'd be able to reclaim the space the oil tank takes up in the garage).

Perhaps more as the summer progresses.

Dead shrub

I don't really like to destroy the vegetation in our yard-- check that.  I *love* getting out the tools and working on removing dead/dying bushes.  But it's sad to see them go.  We had a large bush that used to produce these beautiful white puffball flowers in June, but a few years ago it got some kind of fungus that kills all the leaves every spring (picture below from 3 years ago; sadly, I have no pictures of it in bloom).  The bush would gamely produce more leaves, but these too quickly brown and die.  It's sad, but that bush is in one of the few sunny spots in the yard, so we finally decided it had to go.




After a call to Dig Safe and the requisite waiting period (turns out only the water line runs right under that spot, but the water department claimed the pipes are 5 feet under, so no problem), out came the lopper, 36" bow saw, maul, shovel, and pick, and soon:

Our neighbors have raspberry shoots they're willing to donate to the open spot.  I'm thinking some easily accessible August raspberries will be awesome with two kids.

Propety Tax Assessment Follies

When we bought our house, the old siding was in bad shape, and the housing inspector said we had a few years, but would really need to replace it.  Four years later, we've done our research and have chosen fiber cement over vinyl because the materials cost a little more but is more fireproof, environmentally friendly, and might require less maintenance over the years.  Fast forward to earlier this year, when the city Assessor's office finally got around to reassessing the value of our house and determined that replacing our rotting wood composite siding with fiber cement corresponds to a 5% increase in the value of the house -- and this increase is based entirely on the "extra" value of choosing fiber cement over vinyl, for fiber cement is apparently considered some fancy upper crusty product and not for people who just want to deal with less siding maintenance.  The city's proposed increase is far more than the difference between the cost of fiber cement vs. vinyl, so they'll be out again to do a more thorough reappraisal.