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Fun, Fun, Fun
Well, most of ya'll have heard about the snow and ice that came through the South. The sub-zero tempratures led us on a voyage of discovery under the house.
Okay: Friday, the 24th, we find out that schools are closed. Okay, fine, not a problem. What *is* a problem is when we find out at 8:39 that our pipes are frozen, even though we switched the under-the-house heat lamps on. Ebon goes and crawls under the house (discovering the seriously unsquared pile of cinderblocks with a brick on top that is doing its best to keep the house up in the process, as well as the pile of field stone doing the same thing) and finds the heat lamp off and cold.
He brings it into the house to test the bulb and the socket . . . *thing* it was screwed into. The heat lamp works, the socket works, when pluggen into a kitchen outlet, they work together. So Ebon goes back under the house to follow the cord that the socket was plugged into. He follows it all the way to the other side of the house, where the (seriously frayed, cracking, and losing its insulation at this point) cord curves up and along the leaking water intake pipe. He sends Warin around outside the house, and with much jiggiling of cords, they find where it comes up out of the ground into a pile of old and dying electrical spaghetti that is half buried and frozen to the ground.
When Warin finally found the end of the extension cord, he discovered that the damned thing wasn't plugged into anything. Which, BTW, was probably just as well, because the cord was in such bad condition that both Ebon and Warin spent a while cringing at the mere thought of trying to run current through it.
There is an external floodlight fairly close to where the guys unburied the cord. There was a jury-rigged adaptor screwed into it, designed to allow a cord to plug into it. Warin pulled the mess out, flinched yet again, and screwed a lightbulb into the socket. He then went and flipped the switch just inside the back door labeled 'Heat Lamps'. Lo and behold, the light came on.
The heat lamps in this house have never been plugged in, and therefore, have never been on, for the entire time we have lived here.
Warin wound up clearing out the cabinet under the bathroom sink, (discovering that the hole in the floor that the pipe went through had been cut *properly*, oh my goddess!) drilling a hole through the bottom of the cabinet and through the floor, and running a cord through that, up the back of the sink, tying it around the neck of the porcelin pig wall fixture (don't ask; you try having a porcelin pig stare at you while you're on the toilet) and plugging the other end of it to a (brand-new, and outside rated) socket with the heat lamp bulb screwed into it, ad setting it up so that it pointed at the pertinent pipes.
Ebon says that they did the wiring on the first 6-pack, the plumbing on the second, sobered up just enough to do something *right* (which, of course, resulted in Warin's subsequent jury-rigging of a solution to be made that much more difficult, he was intending to run the cord next to the drain-pipe, and there wasn't any room), finished off two kegs, and then did all the under the house work.
Warin thinks that the house is a sentient deathtrap, and that it has been actively countering all our attmepts to move out so it can spend more time toying with us before it kills us.
I'm not sure if either of them were joking or not.
In any case, we have running water back, and we *really* want the new house now. Louis and Dragon are already going to be forgoing any semblance of rent in favor of making the house survivable for themselves as it is.
I hope that they can find out a way to get 'Net access out at Sanctuary; it would make for more frequent updates.
Okay: Friday, the 24th, we find out that schools are closed. Okay, fine, not a problem. What *is* a problem is when we find out at 8:39 that our pipes are frozen, even though we switched the under-the-house heat lamps on. Ebon goes and crawls under the house (discovering the seriously unsquared pile of cinderblocks with a brick on top that is doing its best to keep the house up in the process, as well as the pile of field stone doing the same thing) and finds the heat lamp off and cold.
He brings it into the house to test the bulb and the socket . . . *thing* it was screwed into. The heat lamp works, the socket works, when pluggen into a kitchen outlet, they work together. So Ebon goes back under the house to follow the cord that the socket was plugged into. He follows it all the way to the other side of the house, where the (seriously frayed, cracking, and losing its insulation at this point) cord curves up and along the leaking water intake pipe. He sends Warin around outside the house, and with much jiggiling of cords, they find where it comes up out of the ground into a pile of old and dying electrical spaghetti that is half buried and frozen to the ground.
When Warin finally found the end of the extension cord, he discovered that the damned thing wasn't plugged into anything. Which, BTW, was probably just as well, because the cord was in such bad condition that both Ebon and Warin spent a while cringing at the mere thought of trying to run current through it.
There is an external floodlight fairly close to where the guys unburied the cord. There was a jury-rigged adaptor screwed into it, designed to allow a cord to plug into it. Warin pulled the mess out, flinched yet again, and screwed a lightbulb into the socket. He then went and flipped the switch just inside the back door labeled 'Heat Lamps'. Lo and behold, the light came on.
The heat lamps in this house have never been plugged in, and therefore, have never been on, for the entire time we have lived here.
Warin wound up clearing out the cabinet under the bathroom sink, (discovering that the hole in the floor that the pipe went through had been cut *properly*, oh my goddess!) drilling a hole through the bottom of the cabinet and through the floor, and running a cord through that, up the back of the sink, tying it around the neck of the porcelin pig wall fixture (don't ask; you try having a porcelin pig stare at you while you're on the toilet) and plugging the other end of it to a (brand-new, and outside rated) socket with the heat lamp bulb screwed into it, ad setting it up so that it pointed at the pertinent pipes.
Ebon says that they did the wiring on the first 6-pack, the plumbing on the second, sobered up just enough to do something *right* (which, of course, resulted in Warin's subsequent jury-rigging of a solution to be made that much more difficult, he was intending to run the cord next to the drain-pipe, and there wasn't any room), finished off two kegs, and then did all the under the house work.
Warin thinks that the house is a sentient deathtrap, and that it has been actively countering all our attmepts to move out so it can spend more time toying with us before it kills us.
I'm not sure if either of them were joking or not.
In any case, we have running water back, and we *really* want the new house now. Louis and Dragon are already going to be forgoing any semblance of rent in favor of making the house survivable for themselves as it is.
I hope that they can find out a way to get 'Net access out at Sanctuary; it would make for more frequent updates.
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That is what rent is going to be, for us. Repairing the house with what would normally go towards rent or mortgage, instead. When we eventually vacate the house in favor of some other abode, the next person can pick up where we leave off at. *g*
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I especially hope you get internet soon ...