This is the fourth and final installment on recent house projects.

The heating system install finally finished in January. When the guys ripped out the old system they discovered a crack in the furnace (can you say carbon monoxide leak), this meant it not only needed to be replaced, it had to be replaced. Now with the old furnace gone, there is a tremendous amount of space in the basement. Harry and I will need to fill in the concrete were the furnace and water heater were. We’ll probably do that this spring.

In a previous post I complained about the boiler going out just before we went on vacation. This was due to a design flaw (or poor manufacture’s recommendations), either way Agway came out this week and we discuss possible remedies for the problem. … Read More »

This is installment three of four.

Once the old heating system had been removed from the basement, I had a clear shot at installing some new lights. The first light was going near the breaker panel and the light switch was going to be at the end of the loop. I came up with a creative solution for leaving the switch at the end of the run, and beginning with the light by the breaker panel. It involved using a combination of 12/3 + ground and 12/2 + ground wire. Harry is a master electrician, so I ran my idea by him first. It turns out being creative and thinking outside the box (while good in my day job) is not such a good idea when doing electrical work. He was concerned with it being … Read More »

This is installment two of four on recent house projects.

Oddly enough, the return loop from the second floor that caused us to make a hole in the closet wall also generated a need for us to access the crawl space under the small addition. It had been closed up by the home owner, and despite repeated attempts to learn why, we couldn’t get it out of him. Well once we broke through his silence became immediately obvious. One of the foundation walls is caving in.

It appears there is a drainage problem and water is saturating the ground outside the wall freezing and unfreezing. This is causing too much pressure on the wall, which is causing it to push inward. Fortunately, this is a small addition, and it is the only thing support by this wall. … Read More »

This is a first post in a series of four dealing with the various house projects that fell out of having the heating system re-done.

To get heat to the second floor we had to run a 3/4″ pipe up the wall in the living room (the feed side), and to get the loop back to the boiler we have to run a 3/4″ pipe down through the small addition on the back of the house. In order to do this there was a section of house that had no access that we need to get in. Harry and I cut a hole in the wall to gain access to the space. Later we added a door to make it look like it’s always been there. I say we, but in truth Harry did the bulk of … Read More »

We were all in the back room playing cards. The birds were screaming and going crazy for no apparent reason. Then we heard the front door open and someone walking across the house. He said, “Have you heard about it?” “Kind of,” I said, as he walked into the room. “Well he’s dead; you know that?”, “No,” I said, straining to get the word out.

The room was silent; and everyone turned and looked at him. Finally someone spoke, “How did it happen?” He said,

I saw some people at Industrial; someone told me they saw an ambulance coming from my grandparent’s house. So I got a ride to their house. The whole way there I just kept saying to myself, “God don’t let anything happen to them.” When we finally got … Read More »

It has been almost a year since I started blogging, and I thought I would commemorate the occasion with a new website design (and name for that matter).

Welcome to stratus nine.

I’ve added a couple of content modules — on the left side you’ll find WOTD (word of the day), and a random image pulled from the photo album. On the right side there is a shout box. If you want to give a shout out then click the (randomly changing) title in the shout box, and a form will appear so you can enter a message.

I have also included links to my amazon.com and buy.com wish lists, so if you ever have a hankerin’ to buy me something, this would be a good place to start.

I hope everyone enjoys the new design.

Go here http://members.evansville.net/randolph/wreck/. This is an interesting set of events that happened to a friend of mine, told with photographs and commentary.

I first met her when I was a freshman in high school; we both had geometry together. She was a couple of years older than me, and I figured I didn’t stand a chance. I was the model for self-esteem back then, not that much has changed over the years.

Her name was Aimee, she was an Annabel, and a girl I thought was cute. However, it never went any further than that; at least not for three and a half more years.

Come to think of it, I’m not even sure how it happened — I think it was at a party at Gabe’s house.

Gabe and I go way back; we met in the third grade. It was our first year at Sacred Heart, and neither of us really knew anyone. Somehow we realized that we … Read More »