The Doorbell

Sometime during the attic demolition the front doorbell quit working. Fixing it was low on my priority list, obviously (it's been at least a year since it last worked...).

So that's my excuse if you stopped by and we didn't answer the door.  It was nothing personal.  ;-)

My lack of motivation to fix it can also be attributed to the mess of wires in the picture.  I just wasn't looking forward to figuring out which ones were for the doorbell.  They all seemed to be connected to the bell's transformer in one way or another.

And other wires were too.

I think over time there were a number of "clever" people who connected various things together to make noise with as little wire as possible.

Doorbells.  Phones. Switches/buttons in various rooms to summon "The Help".

Splices everywhere.

Partially visible wires that eventually disappear into a wall or ceiling.

3 hours of tracing wire just to get back to where I started the day: with the back doorbell working after I removed as much wire as I thought prudent.

Then 2 more hours tracing the front doorbell wiring, trying to determine where all the splices are going.

Finally I just gave up and cut the splices.  Wherever they were going wasn't working anyway...

But the front doorbell is working again.

All Boilers Leak

At least that's what the dude said when he came to look at the leak.

Note the water stains around the boiler pad.  Compare with the picture in this post. Note the lack of water stains and that none of this has ever leaked as long as we've been in the house.

I'd gone down to check the pressure in to the system before burping the radiators for the winter and noticed some dripping around the air-valve to the right of the pump (in the old picture).  I also noticed that the pressure gauge read zero.  Interesting since I'd never seen that before; it always had at least 5 or 10 pounds in it.

So of course I started to fill it.

The more water I added, the faster the drip became.

Hence the call to the boiler company.

And the dud(e) shows up.

"They all leak," he says.  "And it's leaking because there's no pressure."

No dude.  There's no pressure because the darn thing is leaking!

So after he added a thousand gallons of water, the gauge still read zero, and there was a bigger puddle on the floor, there was a call to the boiler company to send someone who had a clue.

And he arrived the next day.  Which is why there's now a new, working pressure gauge.  And a working air-valve that's properly located.  And a new spiral valve where the old air-valve was.  And an extra shutoff valve that isolates the boiler so we don't have to drain the entire system next time.

And that first guy is not coming anywhere near this house again...

The Fence

When we got the landscaping plan, the designer thought we should put a fence along the driveway.  It was low on our priority list; we wanted to do a number of other things in the yard first.

Well, this was the first year we really didn't do anything in the yard; the bulk of the landscaping plan has already been executed.  I've already dug enough holes to last a lifetime...

These arborvitae looked pretty good when we moved in, but the rabbits have really taken the bottom few feet apart over the past couple of winters.  So it seemed like this fall would be a good time to finally pull the trigger on the fence.

Here's another "before" view from halfway down the driveway.

And a final one from the end of the driveway to give perspective.

I was busy with other things, both work and house projects, so we got bids from several fence companies.  It also took a while to get things hammered out with the Historic Preservation Commission.  Eventually everyone was happy with the design.

It didn't take them long once they got started.  One crew did the layout, dug the holes, and set the posts in a day.

A different crew then built the fence over the next two days.  The bottom, "solid" part of the fence is roughly 4-feet high.

The lattice at the top is 16-inches high or so.  So the fence as a whole is not overly tall.  The post caps add a little decorative touch.

Here's a shot from halfway down the driveway.  The lattice-work stops part-way down the fence line.

And the final shot from the end of the driveway.  The fence ends behind the front facades of both our house and the neighbors.  It's what we'd planned anyway, but is also required by the HPC.

It turned out really well.

I just wish it would still smell like this  a year from now...

And Part 2 of Big Trees:

All the leaves are finally off the trees this fall.  We spent a day last weekend raking the lawn for the second and last time.  Today I finished all the flower and perennial beds.  We ended up taking about 30 60-gallon bags of shredded leaves to the county compost site.  The last couple are visible on the lower right of the last picture.

A few years ago when I was travelling on business, SWMBO raked the leaves with the kids.  They didn't know how to use the shredder and ended up with 90 bags.

That's right, 90 bags.