Hot water heater decided 7 years was enough

Now am out looking for an affordable replacement

Another joy to house ownership

Something is always breaking or about to, this time the washing machine decided not to finish the laundry. In the old days you would turn the dial to drain, have the water pump out, then start over. New machines are computerized, so where they are and where they think they are can be different. It's about unplugging and rebooting. The use of a boat siphon pump took the water out of the machine. Having the water not drain lead to the possibility that the line between the house and the septic system may be frozen. A little digging, some new insulation (original was all rotted), 

a new heater cable 

and a lot of tracked in mud found the line was clear but now all the warming systems were new. Watching the machine as it worked through the various modes of washing laundry determined that the cold fill water would run for about 10 seconds then the valve would close allowing water to drip instead of flow. Switching the machine to hot water allowed the entire system to run correctly. I came up with the idea to take the back of the machine apart, swap the hot and cold water valves and buy a new valve. 

Doug suggested it would be easier and cheaper just to swap the incoming lines. 

So the machine is now set to run hot water, the hot water valve is working fine, but the feed line is cold water. All is well and it involved no disassembly or replacement parts. Sometimes you over look easy for complicated when you actually need working instead of replaced. 
If money weren't so tight, I would have gone the other way.

The second floor - South room

So, the new shelving has all been removed and the floor is underway.

The underlayment has been placed and the doors removed from the entrance and the closets which will need to be trimmed for clearance so they will work after the new floor is in place. 

The south room is done for underlayment and once I get the blade to cut the laminate. (very fine tooth), that will be installed.

A friend came over to help out and will be there when the new floor goes down. Pete just laid laminate in the house he is restoring so he decided to help out.

The Pergo Gold goes down fast and easy, and although the stuff is better to kneel on than the wood floor, by the end of install my knees were still unhappy with me.

That's Pete making sure he isn't in the photo.

Ready for laminate

Well, Well, Well...

A couple of days ago the waterpump for the well decided to start turning on every hour and run for a few minutes, then it slowly started to get more often. Shutting the water off after the pump and shutting down the pump allowed me to watch the pressure in the line drop. We just replaced the foot-valve last year (actually May 2014) Seemed like it was only last year. 

Having the back and knees I have, lifting the concrete Well cover and crawling down in the pit is not something I aspired to, so I called the boys from Tomaszek Plumbing. 

Finding water at the elbows indicated the foot-valve was probably alright, so was it the hoses or fittings between the house and the well-top or the well-top to the valve. A pressure test found the pipes to the house were fine, this is good as it would have required getting a backhoe and breaking the wallet. Pulling the hoses out of the pit revealed a pin hole in one of the hoses. 

So time to replace both old hoses.

It may have been one of the smallest parts on the system that caused the issue. The pressure switch feed fitting was plugged. This had the pump running at a higher than normal pressure before shutting off, instead of 60lbs it was running to almost 100lbs.

The new floor is in the dining room.

Unfortunately that means it still all has to be carried upstairs where it will be installed.

 Today I will pick up the Pergo Gold underlayment. I was advised to use this because where most material comes by the roll and wants to keep rolling back, Gold is flat fold out sheets. Each box covers 100 square feet.

Floor and lights

The wall board for the cubby hole in the attic has been replaced, this was torn out when the house suffered a water leak (twice). The Contractors chased the leak and found it was along the north wall of the north dormer at the flashing. 

The floor for the south room on the second floor has been ordered and should be arriving on the 25th. Pergo

Removed the power outlet at the bottom of the basement stairs ceiling. Wired in a LED light. The house was originally wired with a single incandescent bulb outlet. Later that was removed and the outlet placed so a hanging fluorescent light could be installed. 

A step back a bit and across the stairwell to the other room

The plan was to have sanded the floor and sealed it as it is, sort of a plain pine board floor. But I ran into an issue with that, first, while doing the sanding I had a few splinters come up off the board edges. These, if you were walking with bare feet would be anywhere from 2 to 5 inch spears in the bottom of a foot. this would probably be undesirable. Second, the flooring doesn't exactly meet, some boards are right up against each other, others have gaps. A couple of these gaps were about a 1/4 wide, so anything spilled on that floor (game room, something sooner or later will spill), would end up staining the ceiling below.  So it looks like I will be placing some sort of inexpensive under laying and floor, probably vinyl roll style. Since  I have no cash for that at present I have decided to leave it alone and move on. I am moving the shelves back in and securing them. This will allow me to get boxes of DVDs and games out of the den on the first floor and on the shelves out of the way.