There were a lot of angry skies last week, but we thankfully did not get much rain. Just a lot of thunder. My creek is actually starting to look like summer.
The first nice day was Wednesday. Since Fedex screwed up though, my meals arrived a day late (they are supposed to be delivered on Tuesday), and the ice packs were not up to the task for an extra day of transit. A couple of them near the ice pack in the middle (the only one that was below room temperature still) were salvageable, but I ended up chucking over half the box. Thankfully they didn't give me any trouble and I got a full refund for the week. I still ended up making an unplanned grocery run on Wednesday though.
One perk of the back not being mowed is that it is now tall enough that wildlife seems to think they are in cover and come out during the day. Three times this week I have seen deer when cooking dinner or whatever, and turkeys twice, gobbling up all my ticks. The bugs have been really bad this year with all the moisture, but I have only had one tick on me all year, which I picked up in the driveway of all places.
My temporary AC solution has been a bit lackluster, so I decided to try keeping it drained. Most portable AC units have ways to evaporate the water off, but it drops their efficiency and frequently their BTU output to do so. So I made a trip to Harbor Freight and came up with a solution. I had to put the AC up on blocks to get the drain pan underneath it.
But it worked, kinda (more on that in a second).
Saturday I had yet another AC failure. This one decided to eat its blower, which is a shame because it frankly worked better of the two. I woke up Saturday morning to the fan sounding unhealthy, and a couple hours later it started going into a reboot loop.
This kind of threw my Saturday plans for a loop. I already didn't have
enough cooling capacity. So I made some calls, emailed a bunch of guys
and found one. This one is a tiny bit larger (10k BTU instead of 8k),
so I decided to move the one ineffectively cooling the living room into
the bedroom, and put the bigger one in the living room. This time I
installed the ducts with foam, which hopefully works better.
Thankfully the weather on Saturday wasn't excruciatingly hot, because I learned that my drain pan solution was leaking. The o-ring in the cap wasn't installed properly (only the finest from Harbor Freight). It made a huge mess. I noticed that the blocks the living room unit was on were wet when I went to move it. It filled three towels, and even with my big box fan, still took the rest of the day to dry up. Ugh.
I got the o-ring fixed and tested it. It is now water tight.
I didn't wait for everything to finish drying to set up the other one, I will just need to readjust everything later today.
I couldn't find my door snake (I probably chucked it), so I took some scrap corner bracing and a board to hold it down to reduce the draft. I could feel hot air being pulled into the living room.
It was supposed to storm in the afternoon Saturday, so I was originally planning on doing the mowing Saturday before everything moved in. The AC destroyed those plans, and I ended up driving through all the storms to pick up the new unit. The storm cell however missed Sullivan in a bit of unusual freak luck, so I was able to do all my mowing on Sunday instead.
It didn't start off well, the Troy Bilt runs worse each time I fire it up. Even though it started with almost a quarter tank (I don't fill it because it leaks if you forget to close the shutoff), I only got two loops before it started coughing and sputtering. It was almost out of gas, which admittedly makes me wonder how it managed to burn a quarter tank in two passes when a quarter tank used to do the whole yard.
After running into town to get more gas, I did manage to coax it to run long enough finish the front yard.
I also ran it up to the shed, and discovered that the tarp that was covering my snowblower was wrapped around a tree and no longer over the snowblower. Ugh. I just pinned it under the grading blade for now; I need to take the three point snowblower off the tractor soon anyways.
I didn't grab a picture, but I also did most of the back with the pushmower.
I came back in to my smoke alarms going off, which is never fun, and I think I might smash these damn things and get a different set. These ones just go off when the battery is low (most normal ones chirp), and I just replaced the batteries three months ago. And I put Energizer batteries in them, not cheapo garbage ones from work. Since they are also wired into AC, batteries shouldn't be going bad until they expire. For now I just ripped them all down, any that were showing low battery. I still have two in the house.
I got the freezer set up that I brought home. It still works. Very very well I might add, it railed my thermometer at 0F.
I noticed when I was doing laundry that my laundry room has apparently become a bee graveyard. I keep the door closed (minimize the area to cool) which is probably why they haven't been seen in the house, but I am not sure where they are coming in from. There were three dead ones on the floor, and I swept up a bunch of carcasses a couple of weeks ago.
One thought is that there is a small leak around the doorframe somewhere that because the trim is peeling from the humidity, is now accessible. I didn't have a single bee get in last year though. I think this is happening because of the humidity; the trim, which is just pressboard, is absorbing moisture and expanding too much, causing it to pop off the wall. This door is actually two pieces of trim just sitting on top of each other, a standard flat trim, and then the interior decorative trim.
Maybe I am just noticing it because of the AC troubles and have an indoor and outdoor monitor now, but it feels like the humidity this year is the worst I have ever seen. To the point where I even have seen condensation inside the house, and if you walk into the rooms I have closed off (which I did when I first bought the house and only had the window units) you can smell the musty and the smell wet wood makes. In addition to the few pieces of trim that have popped off I noted above. The lowest humidity I have seen in the house is 78% for the last month or two.
Even though I didn't make any progress on the checklist over the weekend, the mowing was waaaaaay overdue. This was only the second mowing for most of the yard, only the section of front between the septic tank and leech field has been mowed three times. The far back still hasn't been done, nor has the side where the other drainage ditch is. The side I don't think I can mow now; I can't see the ditch anymore to make sure I don't end up in it. I have started loading stuff into the car camper, and now it makes a lot of noise when driving so I have started putting stuff in totes and whatnot. I still need to test it.
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