20,000 Little Problems

I think I'm the single biggest threat to the house's survival, not to mention improvement. Public enemy number one.

I arrived at the house yesterday to find a bit of an ad-hoc sprinkler set up in the back yard. I had left the hose on, and it spontaneously burst open. A quick look at the water meter revealed that about 2,000 gallons had escaped. A closer, more acurate look with the decimal point in the right place, showed 20,000 gallons, or about two swimming pools of water. The leak was about 400 gallons per hour, which means that the hose must have burst open pretty much just after we left two days ago.

And what would a house story be without water in the basement? Puddles and flows on the floor formed models of every geographic configuration imaginable. We had continents, peninsulas, islands, sounds, inlets. Reservoirs turned into mudslides and tidal floods as tools and wires were moved to higher ground. Fault lines rumbled as we shifted tectonic pressures stepping from content to continent.

I turned on the dehumidifier and left. It's typhoon season, hopefully followed by a apocalyptic drought.

Spidey

So, of the many spiders that cohabitate the house, the largest (so far) appear to be of the “wolf spider” variety. Wikipedia declares their bite harmless, but painful, a contradiction I hope to never understand.

If I ever see one with the auto-spawning mechanized death sack upgrade pictured here, I will probably burn the house down in self-defense.

Today was not a good day in new-old-house-land.

Upon arrival, I went to turn on the new kitchen lights. I mistakenly flipped the switch for the garbage disposal—that’s going to take some getting used to—but it didn’t turn on anyways. And neither did the lights.

A little electrical super-sleuthing and I had my culprit: I have bad electrical karma. I knew that even considering leaving a splice without a junction box the other day would get me intro trouble. I did take the extra time to avoid it, but the mere consideration was damaging enough. I will never again contemplate the necessity of 300.13 (A) “Splices or taps are prohibited within raceways unless the raceways are equipped with hinged or removable covers,” for my problem is tucked away within an ill-advised junction box, hidden inside a wall, behind a cabinet, its sole purpose being to torture me.

But that was just the beginning.

Trips to the basement revealed a vinyl window that, left open in the wind, had nearly torn from its frame (Is re-replace a word?), my first sighting of a live mouse in the house, another gigantic spider lurking in my tools, which for the first time, I killed (premeditated and in cold blood), and water.

The water came in two varieties. That which was already there (of which there was plenty), and that which arrived while I was present. It arrived via two main vectors: a sort of Niagara Falls down the bulkhead door steps, and a squirt gun effect out of the walls (seriously—like shooting out a foot from the wall). Let's just say the trouble-spots have revealed themselves.