Category: House

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Idiot Homeowners Pt. 3

A weeknight wound down. I was drifting into pleasant unconsciousness, in an uncharacteristic moment of mental serenity. The mind was not stressing over the next day’s hellscape, nor the kid’s academic performance, nor whatever unfortunate event would drain my finances next before I had sufficient time to replenish them. Liz sensed this, and mentioned, in such a casual tone, that oh yeah! – something’s leaking in the basement.

To date, here’s what’s leaked in the basement:

  • The aquarium, x3: powerhead wiggled off its mount and sprayed water out of the tank; gasket on the filter cracked; gasket on the CO2 diffuser wore out.
  • Crappy former homeowner repair on the kitchen sink drain.
  • Wash machine drain backing up.
  • I overflowed the coffee pot.

Each of these resulted in varying degrees of water damage. Ergo, to determine the level of severity and therefore the immediacy of action required, I asked some pointed questions, such as: “Where?” and “What?”. To which I received vague and somewhat unconcerned answers.

All right then, everyone out of bed! Trifle not with leaks.

Of course, nothing at that moment was leaking, so I performed a cursory inspection of the usual suspects. The aquarium was being good, and I’m happy to say that my kitchen sink plumbing repair was still in working order. So, I started turning on faucets.

Eventually, a small drip appeared in the laundry room. Following the path of gravity, which is generally straightforward, I was led here:

This was the copper drain line from the kitchen sink. At least it was unpressurized gray-water. But why would it start leaking now? The answer, as you might guess, was once again attributed to some dumbass thing a prior homeowner must have done.

This cross-beam joist support had apparently become detached, and someone partially hammered in extra nails to keep it from falling – not that it was doing anything at that point anyway. If there’s no lateral pressure from the joists, then it serves no function and should have just been pulled down when it separated. Instead, a barbarian with a hammer decided upon a more violent approach. Which led to…

…a punctured pipe.

I’m guessing that the only reason we’re seeing the leak now is that the nails had previously corroded to form a seal, but have now eventually corroded to the point where that seal is broken. I think I’ll pull the nails out and attach a rubber seal with a hose clamp, since there’s really no way to access the pipe for soldering without total disassembly. Then maybe someone else will complain about my own haphazard repair, but that will be minor in comparison to this boneheaded lack of attention to detail.

And maybe, this type of matter might be brought to my attention during waking hours in the future. Hmmmm……?

–Simon

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Hoard a Cord (pt.2)

Development has continued on the firewood holder, weather permitting. And of course, my own physical health permitting. So it’s been slow, but still progressing.

Hoard a Cord

Adding a roof was critical to the project. Keeping the wood off the ground and neatly stacked was the main goal, but keeping it dry and free of falling debris would negate the panicked run to restock the patio supply prior to a rain prediction. Plus, it’d look nicer. So, here I would learn how to build trusses.

I attached some 2x4s at a 10 degree angle – which seemed like a happy medium. It’s apparently the minimum grade for shingled roofs, and while I plan to attach leftover metal paneling from the house roof, it give me a little extra buffer.

Next, I added some decking planks as rafters to support the roof. Fairly straightforward:

Finally, some externally-rated OSB:

Unfortunately, the weather turned sour and halted work. I had hoped to get to the metal portion sooner rather than later, as the moisture is starting to warp the OSB. If that poses a problem, I might swap it out in favor of more deck boards. But that’s TBD.

In the meantime, it does conceptually work as intended. The wood, for the most part, is shielded from precipitation. Once I have a dry day I’ll get the metal on and finally be done with this.

–Simon

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Hoard a Cord

Or two!

…which is the most aggravating unit of measure. A cord of stacked firewood, which measures 4’x4’x8′, does not conveniently fit within any structure made of lumber, whose standard dimensions come in 4′ or 8′. Because the internal dimensions necessitate the outer frame to be longer, otherwise the wood cannot be overlapped in order to attach screws. What I needed was 4′,4″ and 8′,6″ boards, but they’re not sold in those lengths. So I had to buy 10′ versions, which was more expensive and generated a lot of waste.

But dammit, I would not be deterred. The accumulating piles of wood from my trees, due to easement reclamation, fungal disease, hurricanes, and general pruning, has left me with quite the back-logs (ha!). I wanted to finally process it all, and I wanted to stack firewood in exacting measurements, as well as be sure that future firewood providers were being truthful. So 10′ boards it would have to be, cut down to give me those exacting lengths.

Taking a cue from my previously-built tomato trellis, which is still firmly standing 5 years later, I opted for 4x4s, stuck 2 feet deep. That’s the maximum depth I can get post diggers down to, and historically that’s been sufficient to stay below the frost line. I doubt that with the weight of the wood that frozen ground pushing my posts out would be a problem anyway, but I’d rather not have to build this again. The rocky soil was certainly a pain, but fortunately I had supplemental manual labor to employ.

A bad design of engineering is to rely upon connecting hardware for load-bearing applications, so the supporting boards, which would hold the firewood off the ground, were rested upon sunken 2x4s, screwed into the outer frame. The goal being, the vertical support would rest directly upon the ground, rather than relying upon the main structure.

But not all firewood is cut to the same length, so in order to prevent smaller pieces from touching the ground, I installed fencing wire to shore up the gaps.

One cord down, I added a second identical section.

There are plans for a roof, using leftover metal sheeting from the house roof. I’m hoping it will match nicely, but the more pressing matter was to get the wood split and stacked for the changing seasons. And with the help of a newly-purchased splitter, it only took several weeks! Damn was that a lot of wood!

I’m glad that’s done. The wood situation needed addressing and I had been planning a storage solution for years. More pics to come once the roof is installed, but I’ll need some more time off for that. Hoping to wrap this up for 2025!

–Simon

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The Roof, the Roof, the Roof…

…is unlikely to catch fire, as it is now constructed of “Galvalume® coated steel with Sherwin-Williams Weather XL finish”, which is “cold-rolled steel that is hot-dipped in aluminum and zinc alloys”. So it’s unlikely to rust as well.

Fire and water – that’s two of the elements.

It’s also “typically rated for wind speeds of 120–160 mph — equivalent to EF-2 tornadoes (111–135 mph)”.

There’s wind.

And, it’s UL 2218 class 4 rated, which “means the roof can withstand a 2-inch steel ball dropped from 20 feet without cracking, splitting, or losing structural integrity.”

That counts as earth.

Yes – our roof is now likely the strongest part of the house.

Like most of the house, the existing roof was old and subjected to poor maintenance and former “repairs”. It’s always been a point of confusion to me that shingles are attached to the sheathing with nails that are over an inch longer than the boards are thick. The industry standard is apparently to waterproof a roof by punching thousands of holes in it, while simultaneously creating a hazard to many a cranium that dare to stand up too far in the attic. But I’m not a roofer, obviously. There must be a reason.

As for the prior homeowner, he had disconnected the attic fan, resulting in extreme temperature fluctuations which led to dry rot. The shingles were bent and shedding sand, and water intrusion was beginning. A full overhaul was needed, lest I fall through the roof and finally be freed of this mortal coil.

But first I needed to spend all my money. Leave nothing behind upon death, right? Isn’t that the Boomer credo?

And fortunately that wasn’t hard to do, especially not when selecting premium materials. It’s a pity I’ll have to strip the nice roof out and replace it with crappy shingles when we finally have to move out. Because, leave nothing of value to the next home-buyers, right? Isn’t that the home-seller’s credo?

But for the meantime, we’ll have a nice roof to enjoy.

Working with sales people is always a mixed bag. I had much experience with this when shopping for an HVAC replacement.

Aire de Vita

Sometimes they’re old people with no sense of humor. Sometimes they’re young people who haven’t acquired sufficient knowledge to talk about their products. Sometimes it’s obvious they’re trying to pull a psychological evaluation on me to bleed me dry (I’m not filling out a questionnaire on my feelings behind the purchase). In this instance, however, they appeared both mathematically-challenged and, shall we say, pushy on certain products, like a used car salesman. I initially asked about metal roofing, and was immediately dissuaded because of its high cost.

So we spent the remainder of the consultation looking at traditional asphalt shingles, colors, and cost. And when done with our selections, received a quote. Then we had a brief couples’ financial discussion. Then, before committing, I asked, for curiosity’s sake, what the metal roof quote would be. It turned out be about 10% more – which was perfectly doable. Rather than indulge potential buyers for a sales quote on a requested product, they had sized us up and steered us towards a more budget-friendly product. Which we rejected, because we wanted the metal. And that wasted us all a lot of damn time.

What followed was a confusing purgatory of delays and no-contact from the parent company. Bad weather, underestimated timelines of backlogged contracts, and failure to call and leave messages despite their protestations to the contrary, which left us impatient and annoyed. But eventually, they committed to a date.

Fortunately, the people actually doing the labor were far more competent than their administrative counterparts. Open to requests and forthcoming with information, only a few minor complains impacted the operation – which they willingly fixed.

I have yet to climb up there, mostly out of fear. Those standing seams look difficult to navigate, and I want it perfectly dry before I do any adventuring of my own. I anticipate gutter-cleaning and light-hanging to be somewhat more difficult, but at least the roof won’t need any further attention for what should be the remainder of our natural lifespans.

Oh, and we’re the first ones in the neighborhood to get a metal roof. Ha!

–Simon

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Your Beast of Burden

You can take away a man’s dignity but you can’t work his fields and cows.

Family legend has it that the old family farm, which my grandparents ultimately sold (yet another example of the ongoing death of all small family farms), was an original land grant plot parceled out as government payment to a veteran of the Continental Army.

My grandparents didn’t inherit this property. They acquired it sometime in the late 1950s, after my father had been born. I haven’t dug that deeply into the Moorheads’ lineage, so I don’t know offhand the level of our involvement in the American Revolutionary War. “Moorhead” – head of the moors – is Scottish by origin, hailing from the lowlands – Glasgow region. (That might explain something about my family’s temperament.) And the Lowland Scots immigrated in the 1700s, so it’s possible. And that group supposedly immigrated voluntarily to New England cities, and were supposedly of the more professional and merchant classes. Dunno why my family ended up farming. I assume it was more lucrative back then.

But it checks out with my own genetics test, which pinpoints a high percentage of my bloodline coming through Pennsylvania. And Philadelphia is a specific city called out in the Lowland Scots’ immigration paths. So this all aligns roughly: At some point when the country was young, the Moorheads came to Pennsylvania and migrated west to Ohio.

Anyway, back to the farm.

When the farm was acquired, it included some items with the property. The specific item of note for the purpose of this post is an ox yoke. It’s very old, naturally. Remember, the plot of land was very old, and always used for agriculture, and presumably it dated back to the original owners. That part’s oral history. Like so much of family history, it can’t definitively be verified. But if it’s true, it’s a cool story.

The yoke always hung in the farmhouse, then my grandparents’ retirement house, then it passed to dad. And just recently, he granted me stewardship. As the last blood-born male heir to the Moorhead line, it needed to be honored appropriately. And I had just the spot for it.

Thanks to the AirBnB movement, there are a lot of rustic-themed mounting options. For this application, I chose an iron pipe with applicable fittings. The idea was to compensate for the ceiling joists not being centered over the archway.

Ta-daa!

Since my grandfather refinished it, any monetary value it might have is strictly personal. But that’s all right with me, since it fits the nostalgia bill properly, like the old farmhouse shotgun.

May it survive to pass to the next generation.

–Simon