New Year Off To A Very Bad Start
Actually, the last two weeks of 2017 and the first three weeks (so far) of 2018 have been exceptionally lousy but this is giving me a very uneasy feeling about this new year.
In our case, it seems that things are constantly breaking. If it is not one thing, it is another. Touch this... it breaks. Look at something else... it breaks. Fix something... turn around and there are two other things broken. The list is so long at this point that I can't even remember everything that has broken in the past four weeks!
The first two problems I can remember four weeks ago were related to our electrical and our furnace.
Our electronics were all acting a bit odd and quirky. Things were shutting down on their own. Other things weren't working correctly. After a couple of hours of troubleshooting with an electronics tester, I found myself at our circuit-breaker panel with the cover off testing the monster main lines coming into the house (something I'd prefer to avoid)... the voltage coming into the house tested at only 108 volts rather than 120 volts. This would explain our electronics acting up. It also meant that the electrical problem was not in our house... a sort of good news/bad news sort of thing. Now I know that I need better protection for all our electronics... something I must fix before we fry electronics throughout the house.
Around this same time, our furnace stopped working. I started with troubleshooting all the logical and easy stuff and then moved on to more complicated and costly options. I decided to try to bleed the fuel line which can get messy since our furnace is an in-the-wall type unit in our hallway. I grabbed all the necessary tools and tall glass for bled fuel... out came frosty, frothy fuel. This meant that our fuel line between the oil tank outdoors and the furnace indoors was freezing. After bleeding the line of all of its frosty frothiness, Sheila and I headed down to the nearest gas station to buy a few bottles of diesel fuel line antifreeze. I poured two bottles into our ice-encased oil tank next to the house and that seemed to resolve the frozen fuel line issue.
During a short period of exceptionally warm weather, it was pouring rain... and we quickly noticed a small waterfall in our hallway cascading down the wall opposite the furnace. We pulled out buckets and towels until I could get up on the roof when it was dry outside. On the first dry day, I was on the roof with some roofing cement patching our flue and that section of roofing. Thankfully, this eliminated our indoor waterfall.
Then, as if all of this stuff wasn't enough, we had something fall on a plumbing supply pipe next to one of our toilets... that fall ended up snapping the supply pipe inside the wall. Fortunately, I noticed a significant drop in water pressure within about five minutes. A quick inspection of all our fixtures showed some water coming from one of the walls. When I touched the pipe protruding from the wall, I could feel it was broken. I quickly turned off the water to the house at our whole house water filter. This all happened late at night but by 5:30am, I had quickly and roughly cut open a rough hole in the wall to gain access to the problem and then temporarily repaired the plumbing and had restored water to the entire house. It is no longer leaking but I still need to install a more permanent fix and repair the large, rough hole in the wall.
We had a bunch of heavy snow over the course of a few days but I didn't realize just how heavy the snow was and how damaging it had become. Up until this point, all of our snow this year had been light and fluffy so this heavy snow caught me by surprise. As I was raking the snow off our roof, our roof rake broke... and I later found that our front gutter was ripped off the house by snow and ice. I temporarily fixed our roof rake (with frozen fingers) but I must purchase newer, stronger one soon. (I need to remember to do this before we have much more snow!) The gutters won't be fixed until Spring.
After raking the snow off our roof that day, I found that we no longer have any usable snow shovels. They are now broken and cracked to uselessness. We need to purchase a couple of good snow shovels. I know that finding a good snow shovel at this point in the season will be difficult but maybe we'll get lucky with this.
My desktop computer started to show signs of impending failure. I made sure the computer was backed up (I have an online service for backing up all my photos and videos so this was relatively painless) and spent hours running scans and repairing things. This computer is about four and a half years old... and I really abuse my computers with heavy graphics and video editing use so I knew that my time with this desktop computer was limited. Three years is typically about the limit considering my use so I needed to find a new computer soon.
While I was searching for a new computer, my Surface tablet started acting up and then some ransomware appeared. It really was rather lame and I can't help but wonder if this is how everyone experiences ransomware because, as I said, it was rather lame and easy to fix. Fortunately, I resolved that issue by the end of the day but the timing was terrible and this was yet another added frustration to the beginning of 2018.
I found a new desktop computer to replace my aging and failing desktop computer... chose all my specific components geared toward my computer usage... ordered it... it arrived within three days... spent 24 hours installing Windows Updates and all my programs... the following morning, the power button on this beautiful, fast desktop was stuck and the computer would not power up. The manufacturer immediately started the ball rolling for me to exchange the computer for a new one. Unfortunately, we are now into a long holiday weekend which means I probably will not have the new computer until later this week. This problem was a bit frustrating and I'm not looking forward to installing all my programs again on another new computer. That was time consuming and very tedious. I am, however, looking forward to working on a lightning fast new 4K computer.
Amid the computer problems, our oven decided to just stop working as it was preheating one evening. Some things were working, other things were not. This led me down a diagnostic path that was misleading. Eventually, some of the things that were still working were no longer working which narrowed down our problem significantly. I found the parts online and ordered them. The parts arrived a couple of days later... I then had to do some electrical adaptations on the part to make it fit our range... installed it... re-assembled the oven... after about five days with no oven, we now have a working oven again.
I have to say that, at this point, I am close to being at my wit's end. My health has been rather lousy. Sheila's health isn't much better... just different than mine. And these problems seem to just pile on and pile on as my to-do list gets longer and longer. I feel as though we are barely keeping our heads above water.
This is not the way to begin a new year especially after a rather lousy year!
In our case, it seems that things are constantly breaking. If it is not one thing, it is another. Touch this... it breaks. Look at something else... it breaks. Fix something... turn around and there are two other things broken. The list is so long at this point that I can't even remember everything that has broken in the past four weeks!
The first two problems I can remember four weeks ago were related to our electrical and our furnace.
Our electronics were all acting a bit odd and quirky. Things were shutting down on their own. Other things weren't working correctly. After a couple of hours of troubleshooting with an electronics tester, I found myself at our circuit-breaker panel with the cover off testing the monster main lines coming into the house (something I'd prefer to avoid)... the voltage coming into the house tested at only 108 volts rather than 120 volts. This would explain our electronics acting up. It also meant that the electrical problem was not in our house... a sort of good news/bad news sort of thing. Now I know that I need better protection for all our electronics... something I must fix before we fry electronics throughout the house.
Around this same time, our furnace stopped working. I started with troubleshooting all the logical and easy stuff and then moved on to more complicated and costly options. I decided to try to bleed the fuel line which can get messy since our furnace is an in-the-wall type unit in our hallway. I grabbed all the necessary tools and tall glass for bled fuel... out came frosty, frothy fuel. This meant that our fuel line between the oil tank outdoors and the furnace indoors was freezing. After bleeding the line of all of its frosty frothiness, Sheila and I headed down to the nearest gas station to buy a few bottles of diesel fuel line antifreeze. I poured two bottles into our ice-encased oil tank next to the house and that seemed to resolve the frozen fuel line issue.
During a short period of exceptionally warm weather, it was pouring rain... and we quickly noticed a small waterfall in our hallway cascading down the wall opposite the furnace. We pulled out buckets and towels until I could get up on the roof when it was dry outside. On the first dry day, I was on the roof with some roofing cement patching our flue and that section of roofing. Thankfully, this eliminated our indoor waterfall.
Then, as if all of this stuff wasn't enough, we had something fall on a plumbing supply pipe next to one of our toilets... that fall ended up snapping the supply pipe inside the wall. Fortunately, I noticed a significant drop in water pressure within about five minutes. A quick inspection of all our fixtures showed some water coming from one of the walls. When I touched the pipe protruding from the wall, I could feel it was broken. I quickly turned off the water to the house at our whole house water filter. This all happened late at night but by 5:30am, I had quickly and roughly cut open a rough hole in the wall to gain access to the problem and then temporarily repaired the plumbing and had restored water to the entire house. It is no longer leaking but I still need to install a more permanent fix and repair the large, rough hole in the wall.
We had a bunch of heavy snow over the course of a few days but I didn't realize just how heavy the snow was and how damaging it had become. Up until this point, all of our snow this year had been light and fluffy so this heavy snow caught me by surprise. As I was raking the snow off our roof, our roof rake broke... and I later found that our front gutter was ripped off the house by snow and ice. I temporarily fixed our roof rake (with frozen fingers) but I must purchase newer, stronger one soon. (I need to remember to do this before we have much more snow!) The gutters won't be fixed until Spring.
After raking the snow off our roof that day, I found that we no longer have any usable snow shovels. They are now broken and cracked to uselessness. We need to purchase a couple of good snow shovels. I know that finding a good snow shovel at this point in the season will be difficult but maybe we'll get lucky with this.
My desktop computer started to show signs of impending failure. I made sure the computer was backed up (I have an online service for backing up all my photos and videos so this was relatively painless) and spent hours running scans and repairing things. This computer is about four and a half years old... and I really abuse my computers with heavy graphics and video editing use so I knew that my time with this desktop computer was limited. Three years is typically about the limit considering my use so I needed to find a new computer soon.
While I was searching for a new computer, my Surface tablet started acting up and then some ransomware appeared. It really was rather lame and I can't help but wonder if this is how everyone experiences ransomware because, as I said, it was rather lame and easy to fix. Fortunately, I resolved that issue by the end of the day but the timing was terrible and this was yet another added frustration to the beginning of 2018.
 |
| Our disassembled oven... |
I found a new desktop computer to replace my aging and failing desktop computer... chose all my specific components geared toward my computer usage... ordered it... it arrived within three days... spent 24 hours installing Windows Updates and all my programs... the following morning, the power button on this beautiful, fast desktop was stuck and the computer would not power up. The manufacturer immediately started the ball rolling for me to exchange the computer for a new one. Unfortunately, we are now into a long holiday weekend which means I probably will not have the new computer until later this week. This problem was a bit frustrating and I'm not looking forward to installing all my programs again on another new computer. That was time consuming and very tedious. I am, however, looking forward to working on a lightning fast new 4K computer.
 |
| After removing the drip pan and a heavy heat shield, I had access to the bad part... the ignitor. |
Amid the computer problems, our oven decided to just stop working as it was preheating one evening. Some things were working, other things were not. This led me down a diagnostic path that was misleading. Eventually, some of the things that were still working were no longer working which narrowed down our problem significantly. I found the parts online and ordered them. The parts arrived a couple of days later... I then had to do some electrical adaptations on the part to make it fit our range... installed it... re-assembled the oven... after about five days with no oven, we now have a working oven again.
I have to say that, at this point, I am close to being at my wit's end. My health has been rather lousy. Sheila's health isn't much better... just different than mine. And these problems seem to just pile on and pile on as my to-do list gets longer and longer. I feel as though we are barely keeping our heads above water.
This is not the way to begin a new year especially after a rather lousy year!
Comments
Post a Comment