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Jan. 18th, 2009 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickThe thrilling conclusion, in which bear is killed, skinned, butchered, and eaten. Also, new bear sighted.
I went in to work today. I took apart the porch ceiling at 216 so that I could look at the pipes for the sink in #2, another frequent freezer location. I couldn't see shit. I took the entire ceiling down and inspected the pipe and nothing looked wrong with it. Nothing. But, no water in ye olde spigots. Fuck. After about half an hour of standing in the cold and looking at pipes with my thumb up my ass, I shut off the water and took a pipe cutter and cut the fucking pipes (hot and cold were both frozen.) at a conveniently workable location before the elbow parts. There was some water from the pressure end, which I thought was good, and then there were pencil-shaped ice sticks protruding from the ends of the pipes. In a fit of clear thinking, I popped back in the basement and turned the water on a wee bit, then off. All the pencil-shaped ice sticks were now out of the pipe. Huzzah.
I went up under the sink and cut the pipes at a workable location there, too. They fell down in little L shapes onto the porch. I picked them up and took them away and ran them under hot water until they were thawed. It took a while. They still held air, though, so I figured they were OK. I pieced the pipe in the porch ceiling with the push-fit jobbies and pvc cemented the ones in the sink cupboard. (Had to buy new PVC cement b/c mine had frozen.) Then I put the porch ceiling back together (note: there will be a redesign of this come summer so that I have access to it for pipe repair.) and left the pvc to cure for two hours while I investigated the hot water faucet problem at 351.
I shut water off. (You only forget this step one time.) I took the hot water faucet apart, looked at the pieces, and put everything back together to see if that would help. It did not. I was out of ideas, so I took the old sink faucet thing out. I bought a new sink faucet thing. I installed the new sink faucet thing. Everything was fine. All I can figure is that the freezing of the hot water fucked up the faucet somehow. No clue. Anyway, new sink faucet thing fixored and it wasn't hard to replace because the old one was about six months old. They're hard on faucets at 351.
With that done, I went back to 216 and turned the water on. The meter spun. I turned the water off. I talked to the tenant who said "Yeah, water comes out the faucets really well now." She hadn't turned the faucets off. Oh. Right. I shut the faucets off and went back down and retested the water. Everything held. Yay. F1x0r3d! PH33R M4H L33T Sk1llz!
I went to 633 to see how that was doing. It was fine. I put two more cans of fuel into the furnace and (after I shut off the water) emptied lots of water out of the pressure tank for the furnace while blowing air into it. I didn't have a hose, but I stood on a bucket and blew air into the tank. Yes, with my lips. Germs are for other people. (If you saw what the insides of your water supply pipes looked like, you'd never fucking shower let alone drink the stuff.) That seemed to fix the furnace's drippy problem. I turned the water back on and went to La's house way too late for juevos rancheros (Sunday morning breakfast) but never too late for coffee. (It is never too late for coffee at La's house.)
So. I was at La's house and drinking my coffee and whatnot when my cell rang. The reason my cell phone was ringing?
What is that? Not sure yet? Here's another view.
\
That is shit in the woods.
A bear did it.
Fucking bears. I'm gonna kill 'em all... but today is not the day to kill this bear.
That is not my car. It is not the car of a summer person. It is the car of my cousin Jon's girlfriend. Nobody was hurt. No other vehicles were involved. The road is not obstructed.
Apparently, what happened was that Jon's girlfriend was driving out the road, slid a bit, backed up to have another go, and wound up in the ditch on the right side of the road. Jon came to help pull her out, the which he did, but the car was still in neutral and unexpectedly slid off the other side of the road backward, coming to rest as shown in the pictures. The pictures were taken by me standing on the road.
This is rather beyond my ability to save. I told Jon that probably his best bet would be to call a tow service. He did. The tow people came to look at it, but allowed as how the road was too icy to get a rollback down there. I agree with the tow people. It's the same ice as when Dad left on Saturday morning, we've had no measureable precip since then, but the frozen slush incidents remain. There's stone down, quite a bit of it, and I've been going in and out in 2wd with the pickup yesterday and today. I don't think the road is particularly bad. Jon said he's been having no trouble getting in or out. (I think the girlfriend was probably just unfamiliar with the road and unused to driving on slick dirt roads and the combination got her in trouble in the first place.) The tow people suggested waiting a week, though with temperatures what they are, I'm not sure that's going to help enough.
I wish I knew what we'd be getting for the next two weeks and I hope like hell it doesn't snow before we get the road melted out or my life is going to get REAL damn interesting in a hurry. *sigh*
I went in to work today. I took apart the porch ceiling at 216 so that I could look at the pipes for the sink in #2, another frequent freezer location. I couldn't see shit. I took the entire ceiling down and inspected the pipe and nothing looked wrong with it. Nothing. But, no water in ye olde spigots. Fuck. After about half an hour of standing in the cold and looking at pipes with my thumb up my ass, I shut off the water and took a pipe cutter and cut the fucking pipes (hot and cold were both frozen.) at a conveniently workable location before the elbow parts. There was some water from the pressure end, which I thought was good, and then there were pencil-shaped ice sticks protruding from the ends of the pipes. In a fit of clear thinking, I popped back in the basement and turned the water on a wee bit, then off. All the pencil-shaped ice sticks were now out of the pipe. Huzzah.
I went up under the sink and cut the pipes at a workable location there, too. They fell down in little L shapes onto the porch. I picked them up and took them away and ran them under hot water until they were thawed. It took a while. They still held air, though, so I figured they were OK. I pieced the pipe in the porch ceiling with the push-fit jobbies and pvc cemented the ones in the sink cupboard. (Had to buy new PVC cement b/c mine had frozen.) Then I put the porch ceiling back together (note: there will be a redesign of this come summer so that I have access to it for pipe repair.) and left the pvc to cure for two hours while I investigated the hot water faucet problem at 351.
I shut water off. (You only forget this step one time.) I took the hot water faucet apart, looked at the pieces, and put everything back together to see if that would help. It did not. I was out of ideas, so I took the old sink faucet thing out. I bought a new sink faucet thing. I installed the new sink faucet thing. Everything was fine. All I can figure is that the freezing of the hot water fucked up the faucet somehow. No clue. Anyway, new sink faucet thing fixored and it wasn't hard to replace because the old one was about six months old. They're hard on faucets at 351.
With that done, I went back to 216 and turned the water on. The meter spun. I turned the water off. I talked to the tenant who said "Yeah, water comes out the faucets really well now." She hadn't turned the faucets off. Oh. Right. I shut the faucets off and went back down and retested the water. Everything held. Yay. F1x0r3d! PH33R M4H L33T Sk1llz!
I went to 633 to see how that was doing. It was fine. I put two more cans of fuel into the furnace and (after I shut off the water) emptied lots of water out of the pressure tank for the furnace while blowing air into it. I didn't have a hose, but I stood on a bucket and blew air into the tank. Yes, with my lips. Germs are for other people. (If you saw what the insides of your water supply pipes looked like, you'd never fucking shower let alone drink the stuff.) That seemed to fix the furnace's drippy problem. I turned the water back on and went to La's house way too late for juevos rancheros (Sunday morning breakfast) but never too late for coffee. (It is never too late for coffee at La's house.)
So. I was at La's house and drinking my coffee and whatnot when my cell rang. The reason my cell phone was ringing?
What is that? Not sure yet? Here's another view.
\
That is shit in the woods.
A bear did it.
Fucking bears. I'm gonna kill 'em all... but today is not the day to kill this bear.
That is not my car. It is not the car of a summer person. It is the car of my cousin Jon's girlfriend. Nobody was hurt. No other vehicles were involved. The road is not obstructed.
Apparently, what happened was that Jon's girlfriend was driving out the road, slid a bit, backed up to have another go, and wound up in the ditch on the right side of the road. Jon came to help pull her out, the which he did, but the car was still in neutral and unexpectedly slid off the other side of the road backward, coming to rest as shown in the pictures. The pictures were taken by me standing on the road.
This is rather beyond my ability to save. I told Jon that probably his best bet would be to call a tow service. He did. The tow people came to look at it, but allowed as how the road was too icy to get a rollback down there. I agree with the tow people. It's the same ice as when Dad left on Saturday morning, we've had no measureable precip since then, but the frozen slush incidents remain. There's stone down, quite a bit of it, and I've been going in and out in 2wd with the pickup yesterday and today. I don't think the road is particularly bad. Jon said he's been having no trouble getting in or out. (I think the girlfriend was probably just unfamiliar with the road and unused to driving on slick dirt roads and the combination got her in trouble in the first place.) The tow people suggested waiting a week, though with temperatures what they are, I'm not sure that's going to help enough.
I wish I knew what we'd be getting for the next two weeks and I hope like hell it doesn't snow before we get the road melted out or my life is going to get REAL damn interesting in a hurry. *sigh*
