Broiler Project - Day 3

11:15 AM: Rick and his brother showed up around 9ish this morning and got to work on the last section of the boiler. I just went down to take a picture.

There are a lot of sparks coming off that blade. I'll tell you one thing. These guys are earning their every penny of the five grand he quoted me.

4:00 PM: They are finishing up. I just helped them load a very heavy section of the main boiler into the trailer.

Here are the pictures that a worth a thousand words.

Boiler Project - Day 2

8:45 AM: The guys who are removing the boiler are down there and we are just waiting around for the sound of loud saws cutting it up into small, removable pieces. I shall again be chronicling their progress as they fill up the trailer currently parked in the driveway.

I kind of have to hang around and be on hand in case these guys need something from me. So, I'm looking around for things to do while they work.

 

I have decided to work on my whitewater canoe. We had it in the yard sale on Saturday. It got lots of looks but no takers. I'm going to post it online and see if I can get a sale that way. I'm asking $500.00 and I'm pretty firm on that. There is a little wiggle room because one of the air bags in it, used to displace water, has a leak. I found one of the leaks but either it is not holding or there is another.

I tried selling this thing a couple of years ago and got no takers then too. I had it sitting in the back yard and a squirrel ran over it and put a hole in the airbag. I've tried a couple of times to repair it but I'm really going to tear into it today and see if I can solve this issue.

I'm not having a lot of luck finding the leak. I've been out there flooding it with water, looking for air bubbles and I'm not having any success.

My next step is to take it over to the pool and get it under water to look for the leak.

11:49 AM: They are making progress, but it looks like it's slow going. Here's the latest photographic evidence.

Rick told me he plans to be finished today. That remains to be seen.

1:15 PM: It's coming along. They have to run out and get a cutting wheel because they can't cut through the network of pipes on the inside of the boiler. Here is another picture.

That group of tubing in the middle of the casing is what they are having trouble cutting through. It's really a mess down there right now.

2:43 PM: I finally found the second leak in my airbag. This is a huge victory for me. I took the bag across the street to the pool and dunked it every way I could think and couldn't find any bubbles. So, I brought it back home and filled it up with as much air as I could get into it.

I took it back to the pool and found the leak almost immediately.

The bag is currently sitting in the Carriage House with a patch in place and curing. I'll give it another coat of glue in a bit and then re-install the airbag into the bow of the canoe tomorrow. 

I really feel good about completing this task that has hung over me for two years.

I should point out that the second leak is in a place that I don't think was caused by a squirrel. It's close to a seam near the bow of the boat, way up under cover. So, what I'm saying is, I'm not sure how that leak got there. AND I hope it's the only other one.

4:57 PM: They are done for the day down there but not finished. They will be back in the morning for what they hope will be half a day.

 

All that's remaining is the main vessel. They still have to cut it up.

That's a good day's work.

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.