It all started out so innocently. I needed to water my upstairs plants and finish planting my starts for Christmas presents. This meant that I needed to plug in my expandable water hose for watering the breeze porch. Now I had a kerfuffle a couple of weeks ago and the hose leaked causing a significant amount of water to leak out onto the floor. It took me four shower towels to absorb it all and clean up the mess. This time I worked on repotting plants and watering all of my plants and totally ignoring my hose connection in the bathroom. Forty five minutes after I started working on the porch I finished and went into the bathroom to shut off the water. Yep, I should have checked the water in the first five minutes of using it. It took me seven towels (all the unused ones we had left in the cupboard), two rugs and two hand towels to get all of the water cleaned up. There was so much water I had to get a garbage sack to hold the towels so I could carry them down to the washing machine without making a water mess all through the house. On the plus side, when we installed the upstairs bathroom tile floor we used a waterproofing paint on treatment and then used a pool synthetic grout to create a space that would hold water in case the toilet overflowed. Well the toilet has not overflowed a single time but I have flooded the room twice so far.
I fired up the washing machine and about 20 minutes later the machine started to make funny noises. We have been having some issues with the machine not being evenly balanced when it spins. I have been sitting on the machine when it spins to counteract this effect. So as I am sitting on the washing machine I notice the sound getting louder and a weird smell emanating from the machine, almost a burnt smell. The washer died about five minutes later. Of course the machine is half full of water and soap. I fished out the towels and placed them outside over our fence. My hope was they would lose about half the water out of them before they froze solid. So now we have no washing machine. I will call for a repair on Monday but with the holidays I am sure there will be some delay.
The heating company fixed our drain pump again. There is a new condensate pump and there is now a waterproof tray around the pump with a water sensor. So if the pump fails or leaks the water sensor turns off the entire heating system. I am tired of repairing the craft room ceiling after the pump leaks. I have the repair on my list for first thing next year.
Hopefully, the chicken wire will go up soon enclosing the entire chicken yard in a metal protective mesh. One could hypothesize that the area will be predator proof but there is no real such area. It will be predator resistant.
It has been cold lately and the alpaca have finally come in off the hill and are now hanging around the cars and eating on the large bale of alfalfa. Annmarie keeps treats for them in the trunk of her car so when she pulls up to the house they all come running for “alpaca cookies”.
Stewart Creek Somethings 