Faucet Inspection and Boiler Inspection

I got under the kitchen sink today to see if I could figure out how to improve the water pressure. The first thing I did after removing all the stuff that was in the way was to disconnect the hot water line of the faucet from the hot water in valve. I attached a short hose that I was able to direct into a bucket and turned on the valve.

The water pressure was quite strong, much better than what the faucet delivers. 

And it only took about thirty seconds for the water to turn hot.

Obviously, we are replacing the faucet. We will go to the Depot or some place and see what we can find. However, before I open up the new faucet and install it, I'm going to closely inspect the old faucet and see if there are limiters in the hoses that keep the water pressure at such a useless force.

So, stand by cuz this is not resolved.

In Boiler news, Element Air hired an electrician to come in and install an outlet in the wall next to where they hung the new boiler. Apparently, the electrician pulled a permit. 

Other than our re-roofing project a few years ago, there has not been a permit used on this property for anything we have done.

Because the electrician pulled a permit, the inspector told me that Element Air needed a permit to install the boiler. 

So, after some wrangling around, we now have a permit for the boiler, and I guess the inspector will be calling on Monday to arrange the inspection. 

Because I have done all the wiring down in the basement, I'm just a little worried about getting the inspection. My plan is to show the inspector as little of the basement as possible.

I guess that would include any access to this Blog.

Tankless Success

I have just completed my first tankless hot water shower. It was lovely. The water was hot for the whole shower, and it took about the same amount of time for the water to get hot in the shower.

Our kitchen sink is another matter. I just timed it and it took over three minutes before the water was hot.

We have had an issue with the kitchen sink since the remodel. There is not a lot of pressure in the water flow which adds to the time it takes for the hot water to get to the sink.

I'm considering buying another faucet to see if that solves the water pressure problem. Another fix for the hot water delay is to buy and install an under sink hot water tank. It's a small one-gallon tank that will serve the kitchen sink only. 

We have resisted doing this because we did not want to lose the space the small water heater will take up. I'm investigating the possibility of installing the small tank in the basement.

Boiler Installation - Finally

The days are getting shorter and the night are getting cooler. So, it is perfect timing that the guys from Element Air have started installing our new boiler yesterday. They got the new boiler unit hung and vented.

Remember this?!

This is how it looks at the moment. 

Quite a difference.

We have so much more room down in that space. We are thinking of purchasing some nice, sturdy shelving racks that we can place down there. In the meantime, they have a lot of work to do.

Zane has just told me they won’t get it done today because their suppler is out of a crucial part.

One of my projects for today was to put away all our air conditioners for the season. We have one in the kitchen and one in each of the big bedrooms upstairs.

It turned out to be a fairly easy job. The most difficult part was getting the kitchen a.c. upstairs to be stored. I’m not supposed to lift anything that heavy even though it is well within my capabilities. But Susan won’t let me.

So, we carried it up together. It went very well and everything is packed away for 2026.

Now all we need is a furnace.

Wedding Report

The wedding is in the books and the best thing we can say about it is, “IT IS OVER!”

Everything went very well. The weather was just right. Not too hot and not too cool and no rain.

We had right around 50 people and it was all very manageable. Susan and Mark did the bulk of the work concerning getting all the food prepared, out, and cleaned up. Well, lots of people helped with the cleanup.

As I said earlier, it is over and we have decided we will never do it again.  The people that have wedding venues and operate them definitely earn their money.

Here are some pictures.

First Mow

It's been about two months since the new lawn was installed. It received its first mowing yesterday. It looks pretty good. Here is a before and after picture but it's thrown off by the amount of sun in the first picture.

We are approaching the big wedding weekend, which is only a few days away. The stress factor is arising.

Good-Bye Dead Patch

 Today was another step forward in some major yard work. I have been fighting with my Wall Street Parking Strip for over 20 years. Despite my intense efforts to water this strip, the grass refuses to stay green.

Here is how it looked as of this morning.

And here it is how it looks now.

We chose this low maintenance alternative after talking to various neighbors and seeing the results from our previous landscaping where we laid smaller gravel around the garage and Carriage House.

With the help of our neighbors, Fred and Cole Anderson, we have transformed that patch of dead grass to this low maintenance strip of rock.

Here are some pictures of the process.

I'm quite pleased with the aftermath of this project. I'm waiting to see if there is any backlash. Generally, those of us who live around the park prefer green space but technically, this little strip is not "on the park".

Water Bill

I have been dreading this day.

The bill from the city utilities department finally showed up and as expected, it was quite high. It was, in fact, about double our usual bill of $125.00.

I have been watering the new lawn twice a day since they laid the sod. Plus, I've been trying to keep up with my regular watering schedule for the front and east yards. The east yard, hidden in the back by arbor vitae, looks great. The front yard, the one anyone driving by can see, looks pretty sad. It has tints of green to it, but many other shades of brownish-green and bare spots where no grass grows.

Year of the Yard

It's been a busy month here at the house and I have yet to post any of the improvements.

Let's start with the new deck. We hired Shawn to build us a deck in front of the Carriage house. Here is the photo progression from start to finish.

Isn't that awesome?! It's our new favorite place.

Let's move on to the west side yard. It started out looking like this.

And now,

We are loving this new yard. I've been watering the hell out of it since it was laid in on the 13th. I am not looking forward to seeing our next water bill. After dropping $10K on this project, I'll be okay with a high water bill.

We also laid some sod in the other back yard by the new deck. We also completed the little area where I've been burning the hell out of that damn tree trunk root. We repainted the arbor that blocks the junk space between the garage and Carriage House.

So, here's how that looks.

The last thing we had to do was build a gate for that little opening there. Also, Susan has been prepping the garage for some touch up paint.

And there we have it. We're pretty happy with the whole thing. Stand by there's even more to come.

BiCenQuinQuagenary

 In the news, they refer to this year's Fourth of July as the Semi Quincentennial. That's half of 500 years. I prefer BiCenQuinnQuagenary because it's more mellifluent. At least, it is to me.

We spent the day doing little stuff around the yard, culminating in a visit to our neighbors, Tammy and Lou, who have a pool. We had a great dinner and a nice visit.

We were pretty full afterward and we weren't sure we wanted to go down and see the fireworks downtown. But fireworks won out.

We drove downtown and pulled into this parking garage right by the park. We drove to the top floor and there were already a bunch of families up there.

Susan was apprehensive about going there but the gates were open, so we didn't have to pay, and it was a pretty good place to watch the fun. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if the lights in the garage had been turned out. 

So Happy Birthday, America. I'm awfully glad I live here.

Stump Planter

What a busy day! I'm quite spent.

First of all, it's my mom's birthday. She would have been 93 today. She probably would have hated that.

It's been five years since she died and today, we finally got around to spreading her ashes. We put them in the Little Spokane River from the Bridge out at the Robinson property.

But prior to that adventure, we had a crew from A-1 Tree Service come to clean up our maple tree.

Here's before and after.

They took out a lot of dead branches and ones that were getting near the house. From looking at the pictures, it doesn't look like that much of a difference. They pulled out a lot of dead stuff

We also had the guy level off the top of the stump in the back of the house.

Now it is ready for me to create a little planter out of it.

I used my router to carve out the initial circle and now I'm going to start drilling some holes and hopefully carve out a space we can place a pot full of flowers.

In the process of doing all that, I have really worn myself out. It's great to be in shape.

Also, progress was made today on the Carriage House Deck.

Last Day of June

We had a very productive day.

Susan has zeroed in on a new area of the house to paint so the scraping has begun,

I wasn't really planning on it, but I found myself smack dap in the middle of the arbor project.

Here's the arbor as of the start of the month.

Here it is after todays' toil.

I am for the most part, pleased with the results. Moreover, I'm happy it is almost complete. The only thing remaining is a gate on the open side.

The old lattice was getting pretty ratty and cracked. We pulled it off and Susan repainted the frame. 

I then got to work replacing the lattice. The new stuff was a much tighter weave which better helps hide the crap stored behind it.

I will admit here that I made one rookie mistake putting up the lattice but I'm not going to say what it is. As you can see from the pictures, it looks pretty damn good!

For the sake of reference, here is a picture of the label from the lattice we purchased at Lowe's Home Center.

Root Eradication

My main project today was to make some progress on that damn root.

Here is how it looked a few days ago.

Here is how it looked at the end of today.

I am fairly happy with the results, but I still have a lot of work to do. You can see I have a large section of it cut out. That is primarily thanks to Mr. Sawzall.

I started the day with another fire. I was dowsing the root with charcoal lighter fluid when I thought of a new plan of attack.

I got a log and placed it on top of some carefully laid kindling on the side of the root. My hope was, it would burn for a while, creating some hot coals on the root that would smolder for a while.

It kind of worked but not as completely as I was hoping for.

By now, I've burned enough of it away to cut through with a long course blade on the Sawzall.

Tomorrow, I hope to work on the section next to the sidewalk but I'm going to let that burn a little more.

Productive Friday

 I had a bunch of little tasks I wanted to get done today. 

The first one was to clean up a wiring project from about 20 years ago. I just did a sloppy job back when I did some wiring and I've been wanting to finish it. The project in the boiler room spurred me on to make it all good. So, that's done.

Starting back on June 6th, I started a project of eliminating this giant root from my life.

I've been going out every so often and throwing lighter fluid on the chunk of root and trying to burn it away. The picture above is from my first day back on June 6th.

Here is where I am as of today. You might think it looks like I'm making pretty good progress. You would be mistaken.

I tried digging into the root today and I came to realize that this thing is huge. I'll bet it's 10 inches thick. I'm maybe a quarter of the way burned through parts of it. 

However, I am not deterred. I will continue to make little fires as often as I can.

Also today, I mowed the front lawn, tidied up the Carriage House a bit, and got some left-over stuff from our yard sale over to a yard sale at Mark's. My old bike is gone and I'm fifty dollars richer.

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.