Category: Home repair

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December 1st ????

This year has flown by!

Pretty soon it’s going to be snowy again.

I guess it’s not really surprising. Time seems to slip by faster as we get older. (At least I’ve noticed it more.) I’ve had a lot on my mind and been working through a bunch more emotional stuff. With those kinds of distractions it was easy for the time to slip  away.

On the plus side of things, Over the past week or so, I’ve been feeling lighter,  while I’m still unsure about a lot of things I don’t feel as weighted down or crushed as I have for the past year.

This isn’t just because we’re in the “Festive Season”. I haven’t even decided if I’m going to do the tree thing this year or not. It’s just me and the dog and Santa isn’t likely to come down my chimney.

I think there’s been enough time pass that there’s distance between Jerry’s passing and right here, right now. I miss him but it’s not the sharp dagger that it was. 

I make no guarantees about how I’ll feel mid January. But this first year of holidays and seasons changing has been hard. Two more to go and I’ll have survived them all. 

I’m not trying to rush the season, but I feel like making it to mid January is a milestone and somehow after that, I’ll be less burdened or sad. I have no proof that will be the case but it “Feels” that way.

It’s time to bust out the Die Hard Franchise, and Lethal Weapon just because they’re Christmassy I know Bruce Willis would disagree but Die Hard has been such a tradition for years I can’t resist.

It’s getting easier for me to toss things in the trash. It sounds stupid but after spending years worrying if I was throwing something of the other half’s away that was important. I was having a tough time getting over the habit. Nothing of his is important to him anymore, the only important any of it has is that which I assign to it.

I’m noticed I’m happier because the house looks less cluttered. There’s still a long way to go but it’s better and improves my general outlook on life too. 

I’m moving in the direction that I want to go. Whether I keep this place, or pack everything up and move, I’ll still need to be free of tons of useless stuff. Long range, my plan is to clear enough of the garage out that I can move my stuff from a storage facility up here. That will save me some cash monthly, and allow me to sort, sell, or trash stuff I don’t want or need.

If I’m going to move, I want the moving truck to be as small as possible.

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Disadvantage of being out of a city

Well, there are actually remarkably few. The trouble is, when something happens it’s “big” and a royal pain in the butt.

It’s a disadvantage to be so far from shopping centers if you need or want something. Even the nearest Home Depot is 30 minutes away. The Lowes is 45 minutes away.

It’s tough to find people to do work on the house, especially people that know what they’re doing in this particular climate. For their additional knowledge, they’re more expensive. Meh, that’s how capitalism is supposed to work.

The biggest issue, is the septic tank. Sigh, it looks like that’s going to be the Thanksgiving and Christmas expense this year. 

(As an aside, I admire this picture of a septic tank and the model doing her level best to make it look at least a little sexy. Good Job! To the model and the company, thanks for making me smile about it.)

44510 750 Side Image 1024x768 2885845250

My septic tank is old. Really old. When the house was rebuilt in 2008, the builder didn’t think about replacing the tank at that time. I guess there was no real need, so why would the lazy jackass do something proactive?

The house was originally built in 1992 presumably that’s when the septic system was installed. At the time the house burned and was rebuilt, the septic system was 16 years old. The system wasn’t in use for a year while the house was rebuilt, but the tank itself is iron and rust never sleeps.

So here we are with a septic system that is 30 years old, and it’s failing. The tank was pumped out about a year and a half ago and at the time the guys said it should be replaced. I decided to wait because I was unemployed and didn’t have 7K to toss at that bill. That decision was at the time against my better judgement because I like to stay out ahead of maintaining things if possible. However given the circumstances it was a viable decision, even if it wasn’t the preferred one.

I suppose this is why the solar panels have been a thorn in my side. They represent an investment that will likely pay off over the next few years or at least break even. (Even though they still haven’t produced one usable KW of energy yet, Thanks Edison!) Even as the other half was wanting to move forward with the panels, I was asking, “What about the septic system?” Warm summer days would have been an opportune time to have that taken care of, in preparation for the Winter.

To be fair, installation of the solar panels had a defined expiration date. If we’d waited any longer, we wouldn’t have be eligible to lock Edison into paying us a fair price for the excess power we generated. The septic system was a ticking time bomb with no precise date of expiration. 

Hey, you put your money on the table and roll the dice! Sometimes you roll a winner, and sometimes you crap out.

(Yes I used that analogy with intent.)

Well, the septic system has, (oh hell I can’t resist,) crapped out. Fortunately, the weather is fairly mild and we have no winter storms in the forecast for at least a week or two. That means that the replacement can go ahead without fighting a foot of snow. Unfortunately, It’s not known due to the supply chain issues and all of that when we can get a new tank put in.

Additionally, with the insanity of gas prices and the cost of diesel, it’s gonna cost more. Yeah, the excessively high diesel prices will affect the cost. Figure it’s gonna cost more for the pump truck to come up the mountain, and the truck to bring a new tank up, the backhoe to dig out the old tank, the long distance transport of the tank from where ever it’s manufactured etc, etc.

This is one of those few times when I wish I lived in a city. If I did, I’d be connected to s sewer system and wouldn’t have to worry about much other than the cost of a plumber to occasionally snake the main pipes that lead to the sewer.

Ah well, we’ll be paying for this for a long assed time. Especially when you consider the interest rates on credit cards. 

These are all the things I was thinking while outside digging a cat hole to bury some waste that had been expelled from the pressure relief pipe at the front of the house. At least the plants next to the hole will be well fertilized come Springtime.

A plumber is coming up today he’s going to see if there’s some blockage. (it’s possible, not likely, but possible). I’ve also got calls in to a couple of different septic tank folks. I’m hoping we can have the existing one pumped out, maybe Wednesday. That should get us through Thanksgiving. Today I’m taking the water softener offline, which will reduce the amount of waste water going into the system. My hope is that we will not have to decamp to a hotel waiting for the tank to be replaced. The dog is the issue there. He freaks out in closed rooms.

Once I get a schedule for the tank being replaced, I’m going to be digging up the sprinkler system. Me & my trenching tool got some work to do. Yes, the sprinkler line crosses the yard in such a way that when the backhoe gets here it’s gonna tear up that line, if I don’t expose it, and remove it. I’m figuring that I’ll cut that section out, set it aside then temporarily cap the loose end. Come Springtime, I’ll finish the repair and reset the line and sprinkler heads.

Nothing living in the mountains is ever easy or straight forward. On the plus side, at least my knees may be completely up to the challenge by then. In a strange way I kinda look forward to being a shirtless redneck with a shovel sweating my ass off in the sun. I do not look forward to being a freezing redneck bundled up in 30° weather digging up the sprinkler line in the coming weeks, but you play the hand left deals ya.

I suppose I could have a portapotty delivered. Now that’s super redneck! Bundling up in the middle of the night to go take a leak really takes me back to my roots. Showers would be a problem in that case, but I suppose I could go out to the truck stop nearby and rent a shower there.

All I can say is Happy Thanksgiving.

Update: Well, it looks like the problem was some kind of blockage going from the house to the septic system. The plumber who is a godsend cleared it in about 10 minutes. There’s a reason we’ve been using this particular plumber for years. He’s on time, (calls with an updated ETA, if he gets stuck on a job,) has fair prices and does great work.

The ticking time bomb of the septic system ticks on, but at least we can plan for that expense instead of having to do it as an emergency.

So that’s what I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving. 

Whew, dodged a bullet for now, here’s hoping that things hold together until Spring. It will just be a lot more convenient to deal with this when it’s warmer.

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I’m over it! 3 months and not 1 usable watt generated.

The other half decided to have solar panels installed on the roof.

Panels

Their reasoning was that Edison and PGE were trying to work out some B.S. where they would no longer have to buy any excess Kilowatts from homeowners whose solar panels generated power in excess of their usage during the day.

To my way of thinking this is blatant theft. Even if Edison or PG&E wanted to put free panels on my roof, I’d still charge them space rental based on SqFt. I’m sure we could work out some arrangement where they paid for the usage of my roof space in electricity. That being said I’m equally sure they’d find a way to make the power so expensive that the space rental would be negligible.

Simultaneously, Edison has been raising rates and re jiggering their Tier rates such that the only time you’re not paying the most expensive Tier is early in the morning and very late at night. Basically it’s like they’re doing everything in their power to screw their customers.

This is happening throughout the year but it’s especially annoying because the only high usage appliances we have are the refrigerator, the A/C unit, dishwasher, and the washer. The Fridge we can’t do too much about. The A/C is rarely on, the washer and dishwasher are only used with full loads.

More often than not we hand wash the dishes.

Every single light in this house is LED, or fluorescent. The lights are only on in the room we occupy. Even our ceiling fans are EneryStar Compliant at the highest level we could purchase. We’ve dialed our power consumption down to bare minimum and yet the Electric bill kept going up. I was all set to put padlocks on all the external wall sockets because we were wondering if someone was stealing power from the house. It wasn’t until I started running comparisons between bills that I realized that wasn’t happening. Our power consumption is very constant and predictable.

Our path lights and even the exterior Christmas lights, (In season) are solar powered.

I’d sort of given up on Solar panels on the house because snow on those panels in the wintertime coupled with the general overcast would make the panels useless for 3 to 4 months a year. The other half pointed out that much of the rest of the year, if we could put enough panels on the roof we’d bank the excess power during the Summer and possibly not have to pay much of an electric bill during the Winter.

I saw the merit of this logic and agreed that panels could potentially do us some good. Because the panels were installed prior to the date Edison and PG&E were going to implement their nefarious plan, we got in under the wire and will be banking our excess and Edison will have to pay us prevailing rates according to their own Tier schedule.

So we went ahead with the installation. The panels were installed in June.  Edison will have to pay us prevailing rates according to their own Tier schedule. You can bet your ass, we’ll be calling them out on any discrepancies or delinquent credits or payments. After all essentially, we’re an independent power company now…

You’d think all of this would be great. It would if everything was actually connected. Here we are in September and the panels are still not producing power for household use. The panels have the potential and god knows they’re getting tons of light during the day but this installation and interconnect to our house circuits is still not complete.

Some electricians were out today to install a subpanel.

Now we find that we’re going to have to wait 3 to 4 weeks for Edison to get off their asses and inspect / approve the actual connection. Before we can turn the damn things on.

That’s annoying, so is the hole in the exterior wall where these connections were added.

Apparently, the installation company is going to send out carpenters to patch the hole and pretty things up. Great! More waiting!

By the time these panels are online, it’s going to be Winter. So they’ll do very little good. Perhaps we’ll start to see a return on the investment by Spring of 2023, if we’re lucky. At this rate, I’m beginning to think we’re not going to have these things online until next Summer.

I don’t want to install backup batteries until we know the panels are working as expected and that the power distribution is so automatic that we don’t notice the changeover from Solar to Edison at night. Only then will I consider backup batteries, so that when the inevitable rolling blackouts hit California, we’ll be able to keep running. I’m looking at UPS (Uninterruptible Power System) systems now for the more delicate electronics.

I just saw the guy up the street Tesla on the back of a tow truck again. That has become at least a monthly event. I think it’s being towed to a charging station.  If he follows the normal routine, the car will be driving back up to the guy’s house in a couple of hours.

I don’t know why the car doesn’t charge at his house, but obviously something isn’t working right. Perhaps he should consider buying a new house in a new neighborhood where the power infrastructure can handle his car? His house was built in the 1950s it may be that the place just can’t handle to power requirements. Alternatively, he could just go buy a gas powered vehicle.

Perhaps I could point out that I’ve got some solar panels on the roof that aren’t doing anybody any good? Nah, I’d probably have to have the electricians back out to install another panel specifically for his car. God knows what kind of inspection process that would entail.

Then there’s the risk of his Tesla deciding to ignite some of its batteries in my driveway. Yeah, not interested.

The really weird thing about having solar panels up here is that people are always asking if our house is off the grid. When I say “no, we don’t have the battery backup option and are still reliant on Edison when the sun goes down,” I get this blank look.

Then I have to explain that the panels only generate power they don’t store it. This is usually followed by a blank look and them repeating the question. I’m constantly astounded at how little people understand about simple science.

The next person who puts me through this I’m going to clamp jumper cables to their nipples and connect ‘em to the solar panels. At least that would be a test proving that the panels are actually working. Yeah, I still don’t know if they’re working.