Boiler Project - Day 1

Say good-bye to our old boiler. It is going the way of the Doodoo starting today. 

The new boiler is a combo unit that will run the heating system as well as instant-on hot water. It will hang on the wall just behind the present boiler.

You might note all the boxes and crap stored around the boiler. We have since cleaned that all out and now it looks like this.

Much better.

The guys who are removing the boiler showed up at 8:00 this morning and are currently getting set up. They are hanging visquine all around the room to create a protective barrier to contain the asbestos. Apparently, the little asbestos fibers will start flying as they cut this boiler into many smaller pieces.

I will update here as the day progresses.

12:38 PM: Not much has been happening down in the Boiler Room as far as loud noises. They have the room sealed up which I understand takes some time. Rick told me he expected this to take two days. So, I don't have much to share at this point. Standing by!

3:00 PM: I've been hearing some noise down there. What surprises me is the noises they are making are not very loud. I figured it would take a lot of noise to get that boiler out of there.

4:17 PM: Rick is finished for the day. The asbestos is abated.

I was not expecting this. They pealed all the asbestos off the casing of the boiler. I just figured they would cut the whole thing into pieces, bag it up and haul it away.

So, he'll be back tomorrow to do the cutting into pieces part.

Yard Sale

Today was the Annual Corbin Park Neighborhood Yard Sale. I don't know how long this thing has been going on but it's been happening since we moved in over 21 years ago.

It has been the tradition that we pick the rainiest day to have the yard sale on. This year, we blew it. It was a nice sunny day.

We had a few things we wanted to unload so we participated. It went from 9 to 2:30. We ended up making about $120.00. I wanted to sell my old bicycle and my white-water canoe but no such luck. I'm going to have to post them on-line and sell them that way.

Plugging the Boiler

The new boiler is going to be installed by Element Air. Zane is the guy I've been dealing with. I think he's one of the owners if not the man, himself.

Zane stopped by last week and felt that the valve was closing properly and it would take just a little more time for the thing to stop draining. 

It continued unabated for the next couple of days. Finally, I turned off the main water for the house and it finally stopped draining after about an hour.

Today, he returned and found the valve was not closing down completely. So, he just broke the line and capped it off.

It finally stopped draining pretty quick. There continues to be a steady dripping from one of the pipes he cut, and I have to keep an eye on that and change out the bucket as needed.

Anyway, I think we have handled the drainage problem.

Fire Root and Assorted Projects

I have now taken two truckloads of cement chunks to the recycling place. We took the first one last Wednesday and then Mark and I took the second one today.

The next load is going to be much smaller. Smaller chunks and lots of small rocks. I'm not sure yet when I'll be taking it. I would like to get another load but I'm not sure I can get it done this week.

There is a whole bunch happening this week and next. The deck material is being delivered on Wednesday. We are hosting Thirsty Thursday on Thursday. The Corbin Park Neighborhood Yard Sale is on Saturday. And the guy who is dismantling the boiler is coming Monday.

We have a bunch of clean-up we need to do down in the boiler room before then.

I have been working on removing this giant root from the Cement Slab area and I have chosen to do it with fire.

It's actually going pretty well. It's not going to happen overnight but I'm not in a hurry. A little fire every day and soon, it will be a memory.

Susan is progressing with her work on her painting projects. Here is what she's got going on. The first one is the back side of the house, and the second one is the Carriage House.

I also power washed the side of our neighbor's garage. We plan to paint a mural there some day but first, we need to repaint the white on it. We're kind of preparing our canvas.

Finally, we need to replace the lattice on this frame that hides all the crap between the Carriage House and Garage.

It's pretty old and beat up. The other problem is that the lattice pattern is too open. We are going to replace it with a tighter pattern. That way, it does a little better job of concealing the crap. So, I removed it yesterday and then power washed the frame today.

It's going to look awesome.

Hammer Time

I woke up this morning, which is always a good thing, and drove to A to Z Rental to get a Jack Hammer.

We have this situation in the backyard that needs to go away.

Because of my medical issues, I was not able to have the fun of operating the Jack Hammer. We enlisted Mark to that job. And a hell of a fine job he did. It took us a while to figure out the jack hammer operation. It's not just hitting a button. It seems you need to really lay into it to get it going.

Anyway, we figured it out and Mark abused himself for about an hour. That's all it took to get to this as shown below. We have already hauled one load of cement chunks to the recycler and have another load ready to go.

So, after twenty years of looking at that broken up slab, we have made some progress.

We owe Mark a crap load of beer and dinners for doing this job for us. We cannot thank him enough.

The Beginning of the End

Yesterday, I shut down our old boiler for the last time. I turned it off at the thermostat, I cut off the gas, and I began draining the whole radiator system of water.

Twenty-four hours later, the water is still draining. I'm not sure what is going wrong. It seems the water supply is shut off but the water just keeps coming. 

I'm going to call my Boiler guy tomorrow and see if he can help me

In the meantime, we still have a lot of work to do to get ready for its removal on the 15th of June.

We have to clear out all the boxes we've been storing under and around it. There is also a shelf of stuff we have to relocate. We also need to clear a clean path to the basement door so the guy can get it out in the several pieces he's going to cut it up into.

Memorial Weekend Fun

Susan has been working in the garden the past couple of days getting our front flower beds all spruced up. Wait! There's no spruce in there. She's been getting the flower beds all flowered up.

We're starting to look like respectable members of the neighborhood.

I have been working on cleaning up the front porch. I blew it off, hosed it down, mopped it off, and got it all prepped for furniture.

 

Plenitudinous Abundance

It’s only 10:00 but we’ve already been very productive. I’m pretty much calling it a day.

Our neighborhood council has an annual dump day where everyone who wants to can bring a wide variety of garbage and yard waste to a nearby site and offload it into huge dumpsters for free. Today is that day.

Mark helped us load many bushels of bags of leaves and grass into the back of my truck yesterday. This morning, I hauled them over to the site, about three blocks away and they even had people there to help unload.

I came home and went back with a beat up old Traeger grill and some other scrap metal. So, I feel like I’ve been pretty productive today. Which means I can coast for the rest of it.

Boiler Project - Phase One

We are proceeding with our project to replace the boiler, our main source of heat for the house. We started looking into this project a year ago but held off until we knew what was happening with all the heart transplant talk.

With that resolved, we are ready to move forward.

I just met with Zane from Element Air. They were the cheapest bid that we got, and it seems the cost is about the same as last year, about $20,000.00

I have a guy coming in just a while to look at removing the old boiler. That quote given to us last year appears to still be good, around $6,000.00.

Susan and I have a lot of work to do to get the area ready. It's loaded with boxes, luggage, and a bunch of storage. The guy that's coming will tell us how much of the area we need to have cleared out.

So, that's going to be our main focus for a bit.

Wednesday Goals

10:48 AM: My primary goal for today is to power wash the deck. It hasn't been done in a couple of years and is truly in need of a deep cleaning. Last year, I just gave it a rinse and called it good.

Because of my issues with stamina, it's going to be a project of a couple of hours. I'm in no hurry and I have nothing pressing to prevent me from getting this done...save the impending myocardia infarction. I have completed about one quarter of the deck in about half an hour and now it is time to rest. Or to type...which is similar to rest.

You can see from the pictures above how badly this task is needed.

I should probably do this on the front porch too and it is still possible I will. But not today.

Okay, enough of a rest. Time to get back to it.

12:52 PM: It is complete. And I am ready for a nap. It's not that tough of a job but you have to be meticulous in order to hit every inch of every board on the deck.

So, with that job in my rear-view mirror, I'm going to take a little break and see if I can muster up a bike ride in my forward-view mirror.

Shrubbery Maintenance

 A beautiful day here as April winds down. I got out on a nice bike ride and I accomplished a little yard project.

I've been wanting to cut back this shrub for a while now and today, I finally did it. I don't think we've ever really tended to it so it was waaaaay past time.

I broke out my crappy little electric hedge clippers along with a set of loppers to get the large stems the clippers can't. Everything went pretty well and I am happy with the results.

I'm going to do it again as soon as some vegetation grows into the side and fills it in.

The Kessel Run

For the third year in a row, Susan and I have won the costume contest at the annual Hub Tavern Fun Run. Every year there is a theme and the costumes are based on the theme. 

Our first win was several years back when the theme was Jurassic Jog. We dressed up as Cave peoples.

Three years ago the theme was "The Big Jogbowski". We dressed up as Kaluha and Cream.

Last year was the "One-zy Runzy". We dressed up like Ralphie from "A Christmas Story" in Bunny Suits. It was the first time we purchased our outfits rather than made them.

This year, the theme was based on Star Wars. They called it "The Kessel Run". We made our outfit and dressed up as...well, check out the video.

So, once again we are the big winners.

Three years in a row. We really did not expect to win this year. We didn't think the idea was all that great and somebody would come up with something really good. I guess we were rewarded for our effort more than anything else. That and the 70 bucks we spent on build this thing.

Arbor Vitae Revitalization Day

We are spending a chunk of change today.

Every couple of years we have a pruning company come in to clean up and trim our Arbor Vitae. Today is that day.

It's one of the reasons we were out earlier this week raking up all the crap under the shrubbery.

I didn't manage to get a before picture, but we are happy with the after.

Rather than see it as an expense of $900.00 we prefer to look at it as an investment in the long term care of this treasured feature of our yard.

Early Spring Yard Work

We got a start on some yard clean up today.

Susan did the bulk of the work. My stamina is so crappy now that I really don’t even have the energy to do sustained raking. So I use the leaf blower.

I also got a fire going in the fire pit and burned up a bunch of sticks we collected from the yard.

It’s the second day of really nice weather. It got into the 70’s yesterday for the first time in 2026. It’s a bit cooler today but not so much that we couldn’t work in the yard or go on a bike ride.

So that’s the early Spring update.