Chirp! Chirp!"

 

Anyone else out there have smoke detectors in their house? 

My house, which was built in 2006, came with six smoke detectors. They are hardwired with battery backup. They've been acting up lately with a "chirp! chirp!" Yes, I know what that means. They're going bad.

The last time I had a problem with one was about ten years ago. It was the one in my bedroom, which is right around the corner from my kitchen. That damn "chirp! chirp!" sound would wake me up intermittently at night. At first I didn't know what it was. When I mentioned it to Bill, he said it needed a new battery. He put in a new battery. Then six months later, again that damn "chirp! chirp!" would wake me up. We replaced the battery again. 

Another several months go by and again....."chirp! chirp!" What the hell? Why was it only the smoke detector in my bedroom? Bill did some more checking and discovered that the hard wired part wasn't connecting with the smoke detector in my bedroom. Bill, who was an electrician by trade, fixed it. Viola! No more "chirp! chirp!" to disturb my beauty sleep at night. 

Months go by. Years go by. Peace. No "chirp! chirp!" That all ended last week. 

At first I thought I was imagining things Maybe it was the birds outside. But at night in the dark? Hardly. That "chirp! chirp!" was relentless. No amount of denial or rationalization on my part could stop the inevitably of that annoying sound.

I did my research (AI) and found out that most smoke detectors only have a lifespan of ten years! Mine are twenty years old. What to do?

My research also advised to replace them all. More expense. Oh how I miss having a live in electrician. All those years Bill and I were together, I got free electrical service. No more. 

In the meantime that "chirp! chirp!" continued. I had to stop it. My tranquility was being serious disturbed. So I get out my ladder and climb the heights of my ten foot ceilings to figure out how to stop that infernal noise. 

I'm not good on ladders. That's all I need to do is fall.  But I had to stop that sound. 

I figured it out. Yes I did. Me, the non-electrician. The non mechanically inclined (I'm a natural cook and gardener) figured out how to disable that damn smoke detector. 

Once I had disabled it I decided not to call an electrician because the rest of my smoke detectors were still working. I would probably be gone before another one went bad. Save some money which I am continually trying to do these days on my reduced household income and in this age of Trump inflation. 

So yesterday, while I was amusing myself at my computer scrolling through Threads looking at the cat videos what do I hear? "CHIRP! CHIRP!"

Yes Virginia, another smoke detector was preparing to go to the Promised Land. 

I called my local electrician yesterday. He's going to e-mail me a quote for replacing all six of my smoke detectors. 

No Heat In The House!

 

Propane gas leak on my furnace

Yesterday I had my annual service call for my furnace. 

Bad news!

I have to replace the furnace.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Damn! 

This is the second furnace I've had to replace since I moved here in 2006.

The service company I use will be here tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM and I'm told they will be finished by 2:30 PM. 

There goes that day.

Well, at least they're not coming today in the rain. Yes, it is raining now. 

Well, at least it's not snowing. That's what I always think and say when I have bad news:

"It could be worse!"

The reason my furnace has to be replace is a propane gas leak. Check out the photo above. 

For my own safety the serviceman had to turn off my furnace thus I am sitting here right now typing this blog entry next to my space heater. 

My whole house is cold! 

It could be worse!

At least the really cold temperatures of the past month are gone. Still cold though, about thirty-five degrees outside and sixty degrees here in my house.

There is other news. I hate to conflate subject matter on my blog posts but I have to share the latest update about Pat's tiny house approval here at Casa Tipton-Kelly.

Yesterday I called my HOA president (who coincidentally moved here from Canada - what are the odds?) and it seems my HOA bylaws have to change for Pat to place his tiny home. I have to write a request and give it to the HOA board. They in turn will review my request and submit it to a vote of the homeowners in my development. If I get a two thirds vote then the bylaws are changed and Pat can place his tiny home here in my backyard. Fortunately our annual HOA meeting is going to be held (via Zoom)

Hey folks! The heat is back on!

The service guys finishing up putting my new furnace in this afternoon. An all day job.

I've been without heat for two days and nights. That's enough!

The service guys came early (7 AM) this morning. The left abut 3 o'clock. I now have a new furnace and it is beautiful and warm!

The heat is back on and I love it!

More about this latest drama in my life in a future blog post. I'm too tired now. I didn't get my daily nap. Ig is 6:20 PM now and I'm falling asleep but I can't go to  bed now because I'll be up at 2 AM tomorrow morning. My schedule may be disrupted but I have heat at Casa Tipton-Kelly again. 

Ah, warm heat. 

Thanksgiving 2023 - A Test of My Limits

The "pan" that collects the toilet matter and pumps it up the pipe out to our septic tank. The paper towels are there to soak up the overflow when the ball didn't work. Ugh.

Well folks, we had quite a Thanksgiving day here.

As in many Thanksgiving days in the past, I assumed this one would also be quiet and peaceful.

Alas, it did start out that way. A sunny and brisk 55 degrees outside, just perfect for laying several wheelbarrows of mulch. That's the way it started.

As I was outside in our driveway shoveling my second wheelbarrow full of mulch I heard what sounded like Bill shouting inside the house.

At first I dismissed the sounds, my imagination. 

But they didn't stop. Then I thought "Maybe something happened to Bill. Maybe this is IT." 

I've been prepared for "It" ever since Bill came home from the rehab facility in March of 2021, recovering from his multiple strokes.

I put down my shovel and walk inside our house. I don't do the "movie thing" of running, besides I can't run anyway.

I hear Bill downstairs hollering "Ron!! Ron!!" in his stroke addled accent. He's in his bathroom. 

I gently go down the thirteen steps to his bathroom and am confronted with a backed up toilet bowl with fecal (shit) and toilet paper. 

UGH!

Backed up toilets, toilets "matter" up to the brim, is the main thing I hated about my hotel job. God knows I've encountered enough of them during my twenty some years of hotel front desk employment.

Bill didn't know what happened. Of course my first impulse is to blame him.......but for what?

I try to flush the toilet again and it only fills up to the brim again. Yes, some had overflowed on to my recently cleaned tile and grout floor. 

I had absolutely NO IDEA what the problem was.

Okay........I call Service Today. And yes, this was on THANKSGIVING DAY. 

Did you ever call a plumber on a holiday for service?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

What to do? I called anyway. Of course they were none to happy about me calling them on Thanksgiving Day but they were professional. Took awhile to get through though. I'm sure I pull someone away from their family gathering.

"Steve", who I talked to, tried to walk me through several options. Of course I couldn't find the things he was asking me to look for. 

This is the basement bathroom. The toilet works by pumping UP the toilet stuff. 

I asked him if he could do FaceTime so I could show him what I was seeing on the equipment. He couldn't do that but could receive some pictures that I sent to him. He determined that the "ball" wasn't working.

This "ball" is similar to the ball in the back of your regular toilet. Once all the toilet fecal matter builds up in the "pan" below the floor, the "ball" activate the pump. Apparently the ball wasn't working.

"Steve" then asked if I "could hold off" until Monday  or Friday to send one of his service people out. Well, not really. I politely asked if he could send someone out now. Not only was I dealing with a malfunctioning toilet but I had to deal with Bill. Anything that disrupts his routine totally confuses him. And he uses that bathroom often during the day to take a pee and an occasional small poop. Especially several times at night. I could just imagine him overflowing the toilet again while I'm trying to get some sleep. And then the mess, and smell. As it was he had already taken some poop out of the toilet and put it in the trashcan. He tried to hide it but my sniffer is infallible. Of course he thought he did something wrong, which he didn't. Poor Bill, he tries to so hard to do the right thing and not cause me any more stress. But stressed out I was.

Just think of it, there's not much worse than having an overflowing toilet on THANKSGIVING DAY. Of course what I do in these Anus Horrible Days is to tell myself "It could be a lot worse." I could be in Gaza. No running water, food, fuel and the Israeli IDF bombing the shit out of them. But I digress.

Steve said he would send someone over.  A few hours later "Isiah" arrived.  He wasn't happy but he was professional. I apologized for interrupting his Thanksgiving holiday but their company is called Service Today. I've been using them eve since we moved down here to Delaware in 2006 and they always come the same day. I have several annual service agreements with them. Plumbing, electrical, and HVAC. They're expensive (they all are expensive) but they're good and I get a 15% discount because I have a service agreement with them. Remember just recently I had a several hundred dollar bill with them to replace some parts to my heating system and I had a new filtration system installed. The filtration system is good, because I don't have those sneezing and runny nose episodes I used to have from allergies. 

Isiah (I didn't ask him to take his shoes off upon entering Casa Tipton-Kelly like I usually do, I didn't want to add insult to injury) came into our house and made the descent down the thirteen steps to Bill's bathroom. Yep, that was the problem. The ball in the pump system failed. 

Now he gave me my options. He could replace the ball but he couldn't guarantee it would work more than a week. "It could work a week or a year" he said. But if I got a NEW pump system, they could guarantee it. Oh well, WTF. I just put out another $972 last week for new brake pads and rotors on my 2010 Red Subaru Forester that only has 97,000 miles on it. 

So now the question.......how much? Isiah said he had to go out to his truck and do some calculations. He came back and the price was $2,795 and change. 

OUCH! 

Oh well, this is what I have savings for. But man oh man, the hits just keep coming this year. One big unexpected bill after another. Sure would be nice to save some money. But again, I have to remind my self I'm not trapped under rubble in Gaza or even worse, in the situation that my neighbor Harvey was in last year when his whole house burned down when his electric golf cart charger set off those propane gas tanks he had in his garage. Harvey, his daughter and two guests lost everything, barely getting out of their house before the explosions. And here I am fretting over the cost of replacing a pump for my basement toilet.

So I gave Isiah the go ahead. Then he told me, "There might be a problem when we can fix it." The supply store is closed today and will also be closed tomorrow and the next two days are the weekend. We probably can't get to it until next Monday."

Whatever, whatever; just fix it. He said they would try to get it fixed as soon as possible. And today I did get a call they they're coming out tomorrow. Actually they left a message on my iPhone because I was taking my afternoon nap.

Now the problem was to tell Bill where he could pee and poop. He could still use his bathroom but he couldn't flush the toilet. We would have to wait for "the pan" to fill up and I could manually flick on the power switch to pump the waster matter up the sewage pipe out to our twin septic tanks. Yes, in this out year of 2123 we're still using septic tanks. Not hooked up to a municipal sewage system. I have to arrange to have the septic tanks pumped out at least once a year. I try to pick cool days to have that task performed. One year I called the Clean Delaware septic tank guys on a hot and muggy summer day. Yes, you can imagine that smell as all our, uh......shit was pumped out in the 90 degree temps. I vowed never to do that again.

It took several explanations to Bill to "just don't flush the toilet when you go." Half an hour later he's asking me "What do I do?" Like I said, any deviation from our normal routine, Bill get confused. As a matter of fact, just a few minutes ago he came in here to say "goodbye" to me for the night and asked me AGAIN "What do I do?"  I said (again), "Just don't flush the toilet." God, I don't want him scooping his poop out of the toilet and putting it in the trash can. Sorry to be so graphic folks but this is my life now. All your former and present caregivers know what I'm talking doubt. Poop is a big part of caregiving. Poop is what caused me and my brothers to decide to move our mother to Brother John's house in South Carolina. At her house in Pennsylvania she had poop in her bedroom closet, under the bed and on TOP of the toilet seat (I discovered that "gem" once when I stayed there overnight. Folks, I am poop adverse. But I try to remind myself what my friend Glenn M. told me when he was caring for his late partner/husband Mike, "Ron, it's only shit." And he's right. It can be cleaned up but the smell. Oh well, that's my problem. I'm just too squishy. As I told my friend Don McK this morning on FaceTime and who is in the hospital now, "I could never be a nurse Don." Folks, I'm a glitter kind of guy. Send me a glitter Christmas card and I'm a happy camper. 

Well, I didn't plan to do a long story again but here I am. Tell you what folks, I'm ready for a long stretch of DULL AND BORING. 

The hits, they just keep coming.

MORE MICE!

Dryer exhaust hose, hole is on the bottom where you can't see it 

 Where are these mice coming from? 

Since my last post I've caught TWO more mice in my Victor super duper traps. TWO MORE MICE! 

WTF? Where are them coming from? 

I've checked the usual entry points (the garage) and set traps along their usual route. No mice caught. Yet another one got in last night that I promptly sent to Mouse Heaven. The night before I caught another mouse, a pregnant female! The one I caught last night was also a female. Mouse Heaven baby.

So I was in a predicament? How are these mice getting into our house. This morning my good blogger friend "Woody in Ohio" provided the answer. They're getting in though my dryer vent! DAMN!

He said he had mice getting in though his dryer vent. When I read that I pulled out my dryer and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I went out side to check the outside vent, yep that's an easy entry point. When I got back inside I decided to clean out all the muck on the floor (fourteen years of accumulated dust and dryer lint) and just on the off chance I placed my right hand around the metallic four inch house and viola! There was a HOLE on the bottom of the hose, not visible by my newly cataract corrected yes. So that's how the little buggers are getting into our house. Well, I'll take care of that.

I called Scott K., my local handyman who helps us out (for a fee of course) when the job is beyond my ability. I do a lot more handyman work since Bill can't do it anymore but sometimes it pays to hire a professional and Scott is very good and reasonable. 

I called him and he answered right away. Phew! Sometimes he's on a big job and not available for a while and I have to keep following up with him but once I get him, he's good. But that's me, I'm a bit of a "Karen" when I need something done. I expect people to drop everything and take care of my needs. But that's me, to know me is to love me and most do get by that minor flaw in my character.

Lots going on around here. I've been preoccupied with this mouse problem and haven't shared some of my other daily challenges which I will do as soon as I get this mouse situation straightened out. 

Thanks again Woody! 

Last night's catch

A House Without A Mouse

 

Ah yes, now I can sleep well tonight. Last night my invited mouse guest met his/her end. 

When I woke up this morning and rounded the corner from my bedroom to my kitchen I opened the first pantry closet door and was pleasantly surprise (and relieved) that Mr./Mrs. Mouse met a quick end with my new and improved Victor Mouse Trap. This is the same mouse trap that Mousey has twice before managed to set off and escaped its neck braking bar.

After breakfast I next emptied out the floor of both pantry closets (yes, I have two, one I got as an extra add-on when I had this house built because I tend to accumulate packaged food, a bad habit that I'm trying to break myself from). I cleared the floors of both closets out in order to throughly clean the floors of those nasty little mouse turds and any mouse urine. Oh how I hate doing this. Cleaning floors is especially hard for me now because I have trouble getting up because of my weak legs. Old man here. 

Clean the floors I did and I spent the rest of the day content in the knowledge that I am no longer sharing our kitchen with a smelly, nasty rodent. And I have to admit I have a totally new understanding of my friend Spo who lives in Phoenix Arizona who is often surprised by his Uninvited Guests . . . SCORPIONS!  Oh my, I can just image opening  up my utensil drawer or putting new sheets on my bed and revealing one of those little monsters with the curly cue stingy tail. I don't blame him for dispatching those critters forthrightly. 

Basement Wall Leak Fixed!

Viola! Today I finally had our basement wall leak fixed.

Three years ago I first noticed ground water after a heavy rain was seeping in our basement wall. The culprit was a defective sealant around the sewer pipe exiting our basement wall. "Sewer", no one wants to hear anything with those two words:

SEWER

LEAK

Apparently, when the builder applied sealant around the sewer pipe when our house was built in 2006, didn't do it properly. It held for many years but in 2019 I noticed a musty smell coming from our finished media room. Our wall to wall carpeted media room.

I investigated and found on the other side of the dry wall of the media room a puddle of standing water. I traced that to a leak coming from behind the insulation on the narrow passage between the media room drywall and our poured concrete basement.

I had to tear up all the carpeting of our media room and have new carpeting installed. Of course my homeowner's insurance didn't cover it. "ground water" is not covered I was informed. So my perfect record of my whole adult life never using my homeowner's insurance continued. For the total amount of premiums I've paid for homeowner's insurance over the years I could buy a small house. Really, I could. Probably not a water view but a nice small house in a quiet red state town. But I digress.

Bill fixed the leak the last time in 2019. But this year it gave away. "Water will always find a way" so the saying goes. The wall behind our media room was crying tears of groundwater again after a rain. A heavy rain brought puddles. Lucky us.

Since December I've been trying to have it fixed. COVID interfered. The guy who was going to fix it contacted COVID then his family got it (or maybe it was the other way around). Whatever, there was one delay after another and Bill was driving me crazy with "When is he going to do it?" I trusted this guy so I had no doubt he was going to fix it. Today was the day.

Now for the next rain storm. 

Fingers crossed!

My Second Favorite Room

This is a picture of my sunroom that I took a few minutes ago. This is my second favorite place in my Delaware home. I’ll post my favorite room tomorrow.



I thrive on light. When I first saw this model house three years ago I was immediately impressed with the wall of windows. This is what sold me on this model, the Springbrook.



The whole backside of my house is windows. I paid extra for all of those windows. It was well worth it. Every day, no matter how down I am, the light that flows through those windows uplifts my spirits.



We have a living room but we rarely sit in it. In fact, I don’t remember the last time we sat in the living room, which is also called the Great Room. Even when we have company we sit in the sun room. I think it is force of habit to have a living room in the house. Just in case we have company. Actually, the living room is just there for decoration.



As big as our house was in Pennsylvania, I didn’t have a favorite room. My bedroom wasn’t even my favorite. Right now I’m in my home office. This room is formally designated as one of the bedrooms but I use it as a home office. This is my third favorite room.



I like all the rooms in this house. There is no room that I don’t like in this house.  This is one happy retiree very comfortable in his dream home.