Sep 29 - missed opportunities

There are so many things that I should have done yesterday -- taken some pictures of the fall colours, gone for a bike ride ... I don't know, perhaps some other things too ... but now it's raining. You cannot do everything ... we did have a great day.

Back to yesterday and what we did do ...

The dehumidifier fit through the basement door ... just. At 23" wide (in the box) with the door at the same width it scraped its way through. The sliding door latch 6" off the ground intrudes into the space 1/2" but since I was pulling cardboard through the opening the cardboard just gouged a bit as it went through. Getting it down to the basement was not a problem either since I just used the hand truck to bring it down the slope outside from the garage.

I spent the next couple of hours installing it, create space in the utility room, glue pvc drain pipe -- those were the easy tasks. The hardest part was venting it -- cutting a hole in the wall for the intake and feeding the flexible, insulation-bound 8" exhaust pipe through a gap in the floor joists out of the utility room. I'm sure that you can visualize an 8" flexible pipe, right ? Think of those pipes for the dryer exhaust only twice as large. If that's what you visualize you don't have it right. This pipe is 8" in diameter on the inside, then comes plastic sheathing, then spiral wire, then fiberglass insulation, then a string mesh, then plastic outer. The diameter of this stuff is close to 12" -- it's huge ! Feeding it through the floor joists was going to be impossible until I hit upon putting some cardboard up into the cavity to stop this stuff from catching on the staples that come through the floor above that hold the wire mesh from the floor tiles.

Anyway, it's done. If I don't open the utility room door I have to put my hand down at the intake (where the small dehumidifier used to be) to feel the air flow to even know that it's running. It's almost silent ! Great ! Water is running out the drain and the air flow is tremendous.

Next I have to get some more flexible pipe or square furnace ducting to route the exhaust into the area by the games room. I want the exhaust as far from the intake as possible so that we get proper dispersion -- even better would be a setup that splits the flow among the games room, the work room and the bedroom. I might consider that approach. Of course the other thing that I could do would be to route the exhaust ducting back into the furnace cold air return which then disperses the dried air throughout the house. The ultimate approach would be two damper controlled ducts that I could switch between whole house and basement only. When the fireplace is running during the winter the last thing we need is drier air upstairs. During the summer, when it's really humid outside, closing the windows and doing whole-house dehumidification would be an alternative or an adjunct to running the A/C. In the winter we run a big humidifier upstairs.

Anyhow ... that took most of the morning. I also emptied the car rooftop of its load and went into town for mail, milk, hunting license, duck license ... Alex is coming up October 10th and we'll chase some ducks. We don't actually hit anything but we have a good time in the fall weather. This year perhaps we'll do some fishing and of course if it's raining we'll play pool.

I dropped by to see Jim and Bonnie Matthews. They were not expecting us back until the end of the week and would have missed us because they leave today for Barrie to stay with Pam and then fly to Newfoundland tomorrow morning at 7:30 a.m. They'll be gone for 18 days. I'll keep an eye on their place while they are gone and they will be bringing a plant over today for us to water -- they did the same for us while we were away except that our plants were too large to transport so they came over and did the watering.

Jim's got their place all ready for winter -- boat out of the water, eves trough (gutters) removed etc. I've been to their place many times during the winter and had never noticed that he removes the gutters ... ours are not removable, unfortunately -- that might have been a better solution than all that heater cable ... hmmm ... but that doesn't deal with the runoff issue ... hmmm ...

Stan, next door to Jim, has his well mostly installed now with heater cables in place etc. but still some inside plumbing to be finished. It looks like the Sherars are still in -- Ken and Doris -- and that's all the lake news that I've garnered so far.

What else did I do ? -- I watched the stock market gyrations. I have a long term view of the market but you cannot help but be concerned. There is no way to steer clear if the entire financial system collapses. When I got tired of that I watched some Stargate Atlantis. It's not quite as good as SG1 but I'm gradually getting into it. It's all about the characters and they are not as likable.

Sandy did some house cleaning -- bathrooms etc. -- and put the new duvet covers in place that she had made in Florida. Yes, she got some use out of her sewing machine by cutting a king-sized cover in two so that everything matches whether the room is setup as two twin beds or one king-sized bed. This is the room where Kylie and Lauren sleep that is mostly setup as twins. The king duvet cover did not come in a twin size.

Back to the weather -- it was glorious yesterday -- sunny with wonderful fall colours. Last year we went to the U.K. and Amsterdam at the end of September and mostly missed the fall colours. This year I was determined to be here. We saw some great colour through the Poconos coming north from Philly and will see more all the way to Hemingford and down to Lake George tomorrow. I really have to get out and take some pictures ... some of the best colours are on 522 going to Loring where there are fewer pine trees and lots of maples.

For dinner we had tuna that had been in the freezer and was quite good. Along with the tuna we had carrots from the garden, potatoes and swiss chard. The carrots and potatoes were baked in the oven and were excellent but the swiss chard was almost inedible. The stems/veins were so tough you needed a steak knife -- this was definitely a veggie that should have been boiled to mush instead of sautéed ... oh well, can't win them all. The leafy part tasted OK but if I cannot cut a vegetable with a knife I'm not going to try and eat it ... nor did I put the extra down the garburetor -- that would have been a mess !

David called to say that he's not sure that he will make it here at Christmas after their trip to Cancun and definitely will not make it to Florida. I'm not surprised since all those trips add up dollar-wise. I think that they are planning a full family trip to the cottage next summer -- that would be good. I'm hoping that we can get Arlene and Philip here next summer too so we can do a "reunion".

I'm not sure what we'll do today. That depends on how long the rain lasts. Tomorrow morning we'll head to Hemingford. Friday night we'll be back.

Time for breakfast for me and Abby.