Back view of our house

Here's how the back of our house looked when we moved in, as seen from the west edge of the property.

The Concussionator

Here you can see the south side of the garage, with what appears to be a flowerbed but is actually a bunch of cement pavers overgrown with grass.  Also a boarded-up dog door with a funny awning that Jessie nicknamed "The Concussionator" because our Realtor smacked his head on it so hard he was disoriented for days.  I've since removed it.

Ben mows the lawn with a reel mower

My landlady in Fairfield had an old rusty reel mower in the garage, and I tried using it once before giving up -- it just wouldn't cut worth a darn, so I assumed it was dull, and I asked around to see if anyone would sharpen it, but no one would.  But then just before I left Fairfield, a friend told me that he used a reel mower, and he was the first person I'd ever met who did, so I asked him how he sharpened it.  He said, "You don't need to sharpen it.  You just adjust it right, and it sharpens itself."  Well, that got me intrigued, so I tinkered with the thing until I figured it out, and it did an OK job.  I wouldn't want to use it on a lawn the size of the one I had in Fairfield, but for one the size we were buying in Emporia, it was just the thing, so I asked my landlady if I could buy it from her, and she gave it to me for free!

During the summer and fall, I had plenty of time to think about what I was doing.  In no particular order, here's a partial list of top ten Reasons to Use a Reel Mower:

1. Never use two horses to do what a quarter of a horse can do.
2. Gas-powered mowers are noisy and smelly, and electric ones are expensive.
3. No really, how many quiet evenings have been ruined because your neighbors were mowing their lawns?  Do you want to be that obnoxious to them?
   
4. Power mowers are dangerous.  Why does a blade have to go so fast just to cut grass?  You might as well keep a chainsaw in your kitchen to open cans.
5. It's great whole-body, aerobic exercise.
6. It will make you seriously wonder why you have so much grass.  Even if you have hardly any to start with.
7. It will make you see the virtues of crab grass, which is succulent and easy to cut, over zoysia, which is stringy and tough.
8. The way it throws clippings into the air, it's like marching in your own ticker-tape parade.
9. Mulching mowers are back in style.  This mower was mulching before mulching was cool.
10. It slows traffic in your neighborhood.

I hope I can convince some of you to give a reel mower a try.  It's not for everyone... at least not yet!

Giant gopher, or Possibly Sandworm, Burrows Through Emporia lawn

It's really amazing how much damage four men and a backhoe can do in a day, even if that's not their intent.

We had expected that the new sewer line would be put in by Ditch Witch, but no, it was so deep (7-9 feet) that a man had to fit fully down in the trench, which meant a full-size backhoe had to maneuver in our back yard.  The clay -- and our subsoil is nothing but 100% clay -- was piled all over the yard and sidewalk, and then the rain started, and now there is slippery, sticky mud on everything. 

The backhoe driver was very skillful and did what he could to get the clay piled back on top of the trench, but it is piled there, about 2 feet high.  The plumber said if we put a soaker hose on it, it should go down pretty quickly, but he cautioned against removing any of the soil because it is sure to settle.

Oh, and because the new pipe has two extra bends in it that the old one didn't have, and only 5 inches of rise to make the sewage flow, the plumber is so sure we will get clogs in the line that he put a 3' high "cleanout" at each bend, right next to the back steps.  Very scenic.  We'll have to plant a bush or something.

*But* the good news is that the new pipe is in place now.  Tomorrow they'll return to hook it up, fill in the hole under the back porch, and plug the floor drain in the garage (which goes to the old pipe).  God willing, we won't have to have the back yard torn up again anytime soon!

I can't wait to see the bill.

Oh! It's an frigging huge backhoe! In the back yard!

Then one day, there came a big yellow caterpillar.

They started digging at the sewer main, at the back of the lot.

Our new sewer line attaches to the main

The new pipe is PVC, not clay, thank you very much.  Whose idea was it to make the old sewer line out of clay, and then plop down a garage on top of it?  Bad move.

Next, the giant caterpillar attacked the house.

excavating next to the house

the new sewer pipe from under the house

Here you can get an idea of how steep the walls of the trench were.  Apparently our soil has not heard of an "angle of repose."

The gopher burrow, looking west.

It doesn't look so big in the picture, but this is a pile of clay 50 feet long, four feet wide, and two feet high.  That's a lot of clay.

The gopher burrow, looking east.

The basement is clean!

The cleaner came yesterday and sanitized the basement from floor to windows with steam and microbicide.  Then he brought in a small army of dehumidifiers and fans -- enough to make the electric meter spin faster than I'd ever seen it -- and in a matter of hours the humidity was down to 50% again, where our own dehumidifier could take over.  Now the basement smells fresh and clean.  We have to resist the urge to put all kinds of stuff down there -- the floor will still get wet during heavy rains.  But it's a big step, and very satisfying, and our insurance paid for it!  :-)

a family of air-drying equipment takes up residence in the basement

The cleaner came on a Friday to clean our ducts and sanitize the basement, so the drying equipment was in our basement all weekend.  They wound up billing us for this extra time (though they had said they wouldn't), but fortunately the insurance company paid for it.

The plumbing is finally fixed

The plumbing is fixed after just over 24 hours of water and sewer shut off, 2.5 days of plumbers working, and a big hole in our back porch...

They had to cut out the floor of the porch in order to get to the pipes that needed fixing...unfortunately the pipe that connects us to the sewer is cracked and the plumbers will be back to dig up our yard and fix it. They will have to dig up a trench from the back of our house into the alley. This cannot be done right away because it is very very rainy this week. And the plumbers are very hard to pin down so it will take awhile to get it done.

So now we can get the basement and ducts cleaned, the basement painted and soon a new floor on the back porch.

Old sewer pipes in the basement

Three problems with this setup: there's no automatic flapper valve to prevent backflow; the manual shutoff for the toilet (right) is rusted solid, and the floor drain (left) is downstream from the shutoff valve (or rather, upstream if the sewer backs up again).  The new setup runs the floor drain the long way around to the right of the shutoff valve, which is now a plunger/knife type instead of a wheel, and there's an automatic flapper valve right beside the plunger with a cap on it so we can clean it out if it gets clogged.

Removing the porch floor

In the process of repairing the basement sewer pipes, the sewer line that leaves the house cracked.  A hole had to be dug under the porch, which meant removing the floor of the porch.

Widening the hole in the porch floor

The plumbers decided the hole in the floor was not big enough for their comfort, so they made it wider.  Just as well, it turned out, since the joists needed to be replaced anyhow.  The shirt says, "Win or lose, we'll still booze."

Inept floor construction under the back porch

OK, whose idea was it to only attach the floor joists on one end, and not the other?  And they're only toenailed on the one end.  No wonder it felt squishy.  We're lucky nobody fell through!

Plumber digging a hole beneath the back porch

The hole wound up being about 7 feet deep, and only about 3 feet across.  This clay is amazing stuff, structurally.

Floor joists removed

We called a handyman to replace the floor of the back porch, and the first thing he did was to remove the old floor joists and put them over the scary, 7-foot-deep hole!

Installing the new back porch floor

Here's the handyman installing the new floor joists.  The new floor is very solid, and it has a trap door in case we need to get under there again!

Bathroom

It's hard to get a good picture of a small room without a fisheye lens.  We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the shower head and the quiet vent fan.

the U-Haul truck and trailer parked outside our house

We rented a truck in Iowa for my stuff, and a trailer in Omaha for Jessie's.  Loading them took a total of about 6 hours (32 person-hours); unloading them took about two (12 person hours)!

Location

Kitchen, featuring sink

The kitchen features a double sink with garbage disposal, window to the back porch, and task light; plentiful cabinets including a lazy susan, and of course red walls.

Kitchen, featuring stove

The stove is electric and takes some getting used to.  The previous owners removed all the shelves and other wall coverings, leaving lots of holes.  We're hoping to get the paint from them so we can touch up.

Living and dining rooms

The living and dining rooms are painted in two slightly different colors, each of which looks different in different types of light.  Both rooms are about 50% bigger than we're accustomed to!

Unpacking the Office

Jessie and I specifically looked for a 3-bedroom house so that I could have an office and she could have a studio.  The idea was not only to have our own personal space in an otherwise shared household, but to keep me focused on my work during working hours and allow me to leave it behind at the end of the workday.

The office turned out to be the middle bedroom, which has purple walls with a stripe of princess-themed wallpaper.  I'm planning to cover much of that paper with a wall mural, and a 6-foot span of the opposite wall is newly covered in shelves.  I love wall shelves: they hold a massive amount of stuff and you don't have to move them to vacuum under them.  But finding 6-foot shelves was a challenge; we had to go to the lumberyard and did not, in the end, get a very good deal, but they are up, and the stuff is off the floor, and that's what's important.

The plan was, we would spend the first week of residency getting Jessie ready to start her job, then make sure I could do mine.  That was complicated by the unexpected necessity of spending two days cleaning the basement.  In the process of getting Jessie ready, an awful lot of stuff wound up in my office that did not strictly belong there, and the task of digging it back out, on top of everything else, was daunting, so the rocking chair in the living room became my office for a while.

At last, exactly 3 weeks after we moved into the house, I moved into my office.  In practice, of course, here I am at 10:00 on a workday posting to my blog.  :-)  There are still plenty of distractions, both on- and offline, like sorting all of that stuff that's now on the shelves.

For another thing, I'm not used to using my laptop as my primary computer.  Most of my files (aside from the ones that are online) are on the desktop computer we're now using for a media center (its original purpose).  If I moved them onto my laptop, the disk would fill up, adding to its low memory problems.  Plus, it turns out not to be fully compatible with my external monitor (newly liberated from the media center by the purchase of a bigger LCD TV), so a new laptop is now (back) on the wish list.  None of that really interferes with getting my work done, except that it distracts me.

Something else distracting?  The Missing Box.  There is exactly one box that did not arrive.  I know some of the things that were in it because I've noticed their absence: a VGA cable, an S-video cable, all the manuals that came with my computers (I had the forethought to copy the CDs), some other miscellaneous computer parts, a bunch of old CD-ROMs I had planned to make into an art project, and my collection of wrapping & shipping supplies (including a brand new package of CD mailers).  These were among the last things to be packed, and I remember sticking them into a box ... but I don't remember which one it was or what else was already in it, let alone what the heck happened to it during the move.

Anyway, back to work.

Ben's Office

The room that I'm using for an office was a young girl's bedroom.  It has purple wallpaper with a pink stripe of princess-themed paper.  I'm planning to put a wall mural over this part.

Ben and Jessie on the porch on moving day

Here we are on the front porch, with the moving van still parked in the driveway.

Location

Jessie on the front porch, with plants

My parents were impressed that we put plants on the porch first thing, but the truth is they were the last things to go into the truck, so we had to get them out along with the cats.  We moved them inside later.

Date: 

August 5, 2008

Jessie's studio, empty

Jessie's studio is the bedroom in the northwest corner of the house.  It gets excellent light.

Electricity Consumption

Here is the electricity consumption of each of our appliances, measured by Kill A Watt unless otherwise noted.  "Typical usage" indicates how much power a device uses when we use it the way we usually do; cost per year assumes we use the device that way every day.  In reality, of course, we don't run any of these devices in any of these modes all day, every day, or even all year.  Costs are estimated based on $0.124 / kWh, which includes all our utility's fees and charges.

It's hard to classify the operating states of some electronics... for the purposes of this chart, "off" means no lights are showing and a power switch or button is required to turn it on; "standby" means a light is on and/or the device can be awakened by a button other than the power button; "idle" means it is fully turned on but not doing anything; and "on" or "running" means it is doing its main function.  Some devices do not turn off unless they are unplugged; others have both an off and standby mode; some consume the same amount of power whether running or idle; others save power while idle. Very low numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, since the Kill A Watt meter itself (as its name might imply) consumes a Watt!

Remaining to be measured:

• Air conditioner
• Cell phone charger (Jessie's)
• Dishwasher:
• Furnace (blower)
• Microwave oven (high power)
• Microwave oven (standby)
• Printer, inkjet (printing)
• Printer/copier/scanner (printing)
• Printer/copier/scanner (copying)
• Printer/copier/scanner (scanning)
• Stove:
• VCR (running)
• VCR/DVD, bedroom (playing VCR)
• VCR/DVD, bedroom (playing DVD)
• VCR/DVD, office (playing VCR)
• VCR/DVD, office (playing DVD)

Implications:

1. The most room for improvement is in the basement -- pretty much any means to reduce the amount of time the dehumidifier runs would pay for itself, from replacing the windows to running box fans.
2. The second biggest improvement would be to reduce the amount of time the media center is turned on.  Since it tends to turn itself on, this means unplugging it when no recordings are scheduled.
3. The refrigerator is almost 7x more efficient than the dehumidifier, and so is not a candidate for early replacement, despite being one of the least efficient models on the market 9 years ago.
   
4. Even on its lowest backlight setting, the LCD TV uses 50% more power than the CRT. (It also has more than twice as much screen area.)
5. The LCD TV and cell phone chargers use less than one Watt while on standby.
   
6. The media center uses nearly as much power while turned off as it does on standby, so we may want to consider unplugging it when it is not due to record a TV show.
7. The crock pot does not reduce its power consumption after it reaches peak temperature (boiling).  We may want to put it on a timer so it can cool off by dinnertime.
8. The handheld vacuum cleaner is a real bargain, whenever we can use it in place of either of the other vacuum cleaners.
9. The clock radio and stereo speakers do not use measurably more power when on than off, but the surround-sound speakers use more than 5 times as much.
10. The 17" LCD monitor uses more power than the Dell or Apple notebooks, even though the notebooks have their own 13" LCD screens (admittedly, half the screen area)
    
11. Leaving the Wii on standby all day consumes more power than playing a game and then unplugging it.  Even leaving it turned off (but plugged in) all day consumes nearly as much as playing a game and unplugging after.
12. Jessie's Gateway laptop uses more than twice as much power as Ben's Dell or Apple notebooks, despite being 8 years newer than the Dell and having only 1.5 times the screen area of either of them.  It's not a huge expense or anything, but it's an interesting fact.
13. The percolator uses almost twice as much power as the washing machine in the same amount of time, and a tenth as much as the dryer.

Side Yard Trench

Around 7 AM one Friday morning, I woke to the sound of heavy rain, and I woke enough to wander downstairs to see if there was any water in the basement.  I found that rainwater was gushing in through the cracks in the south wall, and around the edges of the windows on that side.  Now fully awake, I ran outside and grabbed a shovel and started digging.  I was completely soaked through in no time, but in about 45 minutes I had dug a trench that pretty well drained the side yard.  Previous owners had taken out the grass in favor of gravel, but the grass had returned and was impeding the flow of water.

The trench ends about halfway between the house and the sidewalk, because at that point the water soaks harmlessly into the lawn.  I didn't want to encourage the water to flow into the sidewalk; away from the house is fine.  Maybe one day we'll put a pond at that spot!