While on the boat and anticipating the return to home, I
imagined the comforts of real showers, easy transportation, heat or air
conditioning as required, my own washing machine---you name it. The reality has turned out to be a little
different.
Firstly, the hot water heater wouldn’t fire up. The pilot would light but the main burner
stubbornly refused to co-operate. We got
a so-called “plumber” out to our house on Thursday. He scratched his head a bit and then phoned
the “expert”. What he told me was that
if the hot water heater had been turned off for more than 35 days, the burner
would never re-ignite. (I read the
manual and there is no mention of this feature.) He claimed he would get in
touch with the manufacturer to get information about the correct part. He would phone by the end of the day. On Friday morning, having heard nothing, I
called the company. After some time they
called back to say that the plumber hadn’t heard back from the manufacturer and
would call me when he did! Still
waiting... Meanwhile, on Sunday, I
chatted with my brothers during a birthday party (lovely event at my nephew’s
house). They thought the problem would
be the thermocouple that sits in the pilot flame and allows the main burner to
light. They came up on Monday to attempt
the repair. The pilot assembly didn’t
look much like the standard thing and thermocouple was either absent or was a
combination igniter/thermocouple.... Sad to say, we had to resort to ordering a
new burner part that should arrive on Friday.
Thankfully, Paul brought up a clean, unused garden sprayer, so I’m back
to boat style showers. Better than an
all-over wash using the sink and wash-cloth, but, not quite what I expected
from home....
Then, sadly, calamity
Jane tried to do a load of laundry. A
few days after I got home I did a load containing some items that where left
from our visit home in January and a few articles of clothing. All was well.
When I ran a small load yesterday, the spin cycle seemed to fail. I set the selector to another spin cycle but
the clothes were still soaking. I hung
those outside and when they were mostly dry, I finished them off in the
dryer. Then in a fit of total stupidity,
I thought, maybe the problem was the tiny load!
So, I tore the fleece sheets off the bed and set the washer. Sure enough, two soaking wet, king-sized
fleece sheets! Holy cow! Fleece sheets can hold on to a massive amount
of water. I threw one over the drying
rack outside. By morning it was still
pretty darn wet at the edges. Now I’ve
got the second one outside...
Rather than continue this rant in techni-color detail, let
me just mention some other problem areas: the car registration, the heating
upstairs, the mice I’ve been trying to trap. Holy mackerel, we are going to
spend the entire summer getting all this stuff fixed.
Gloria
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