Sheilajeanne

When I moved to this town, I'd been on well water for quite a few years. The smell of the chlorine in the water here just turned my stomach. I bought a water cooler, and at first was using spring water. Then, I found the Home Hardware store sold water without any chemicals in it and it was only .98 cents to fill a 5 gallon/18 l. jug! You could also clean your jug at the time you refilled it! Someone told me that the water I was getting from them was exactly the same as what the Coca-Cola company sells under the Dasani brand name, charging $1.98 for half a liter! (That's half a quart, for you non-metric folks.) Bottled water has to be the world's biggest ripoff, unless you're travelling somewhere where the local water isn't safe to drink.

Well, that's good news! A heating tech can do the same thing here, but only if the problem is bad enough to be a danger. I can see an unscrupulous HVAC person doing it to force you to buy a new system, but I knew when I hired this guy that he was a good person. He replaced a furnace for very little cost for someone whose furnace was totally broken and not repairable. Conditions in the home were so filthy that he told me he burned his clothing when the job was done. Other heating techs who had been to the home had refused to work there due to the unsanitary conditions. A community group had a fundraiser to help pay him for the work he did. Darren, the condensation drain hose for my furnace was clogged up. The furnace guy fixed that on his first visit. My allergies have 90% vanished since he did that! I can't explain it - may be the problem was mould, not dust!

What a lovely gift, Darren! And glad to know we have another LOTR fan here! From the sound of it, Chuck, the pressure switch not working was causing condensation to back up in the drain, and that could be why the circuit board got damaged. Anyway, even if the second stage burner isn't kicking in, I'm still nice and toasty again. Another problem was although the furnace is only 3 years old, the AC system is ancient. The condenser coils were mucked up with dust, dirt and pet hair, and he said this was also causing back-pressure on the system. He took a brush to them, and that's when I started noticing the mouldy smell. Sooo, this is where things might get really expensive. The condenser coils may need replacing. And on an AC this old, that might not be possible. The AC is running on freon, which is no longer legal, and there will be a hefty environmental fee for disposing of it, in addition to the cost of a new system. I'm probably looking at $5,000 if that happens. But hey, AC season is quite a few months down the road still. Going to cross that bridge when we come to it! I miss the hot water radiator system our house had when I was a kid. I'm allergic to house dust, and every year when I have to turn the heat on, my allergies go nuts. I had the ducts cleaned when the new furnace was put in, but it didn't help at all. With the old rads, you didn't have that problem, plus they were a great place for drying wet socks and mitts! Older, simpler times... When I was really young, Dad had our furnace converted from coal to oil. I still remember the wooden partitions on the basement floor that held the coal after they shovelled it through a window in the furnace room. I also remember looking into the furnace and seeing the red fire of the burning coal.

FURNACE IS FIXED!! I e-mailed my furnace guy this morning, and he got back to me and asked if I'd be home late in the day. He came at 5:30 and was there until 7, as it turned out the problem wasn't as simple as just replacing the pressure switch. He says water got into the furnace at some point and damaged the circuit board, so the second stage of the burner doesn't work. But at least now the temperature in the house is the same as the temperature the thermostat is set at! SO nice to be warm! I imagine the circuit board is going to need replacing, plus there's a strong mouldy smell in the air that is coming from the furnace, so we're not quite out of the woods yet!

Darren, I've seen a few episodes of Star Trek where they resorted to using Morse when other methods of communication were down or being blocked by an enemy! Chuck, are you talking about gas furnaces in general? Or just the newer ones? This is the first time I've had a problem with them, and I've lived in quite a few houses that had gas furnaces. One thing I do hate are those modern thermostats, you know, the energy efficient ones where you can program them to set the temperature back at night? The one I had in my previous house was run by a battery. When the battery dies, guess what? The furnace shuts off! I do like to set the thermostat back at night, but with this particular piece of junk, you had to press a button numerous times to get it to the number of degrees you wanted. And pressing the button didn't always work - sometimes the temperature would change, sometimes it wouldn't. Plus, I had to be wearing my glasses in order to read it. As I kept irregular hours, I didn't WANT the thermostat to set the temperature back automatically - I much preferred to do it myself, so resetting it was a nightly thing. That house had a leaky basement in the spring, and the sump pump didn't always kick in when it flooded. It was a very old house, well over 100 years old. You had to access the basement by a trap door and a very uneven set of steps. You also had to remember to duck your head to avoid the support beams as you descended. Needless to say, I didn't visit the basement very often, which is why the fan got wet and died. Anyway, when the furnace fan had to be replaced, I asked the repair man to replace the thermostat with an old analog model, where it took just a nudge on the temperature setting lever to move the needle to the desired spot. And I was able to read the damn dial WITHOUT my glasses!! This is what the access to the basement stairs looked like. There were actually two trap doors, a big one and a small one. To the left of the stairs is a shelf which was used for storing all sorts stuff (glue bottle, box of floor tiles, kitchen pots and pans that were rarely used, etc.) And this is what the outside of the house looked like. They called it 'the Owl House, due to the round windows! I really hate what the new owner has done. He removed the lovely antique stained glass transoms that were above the front door and the front window and replaced them with plain glass. He also removed the 'widow's walk' (mini balcony) that many of these old houses have. The house didn't have AC, so I would leave that door open in the summer to get better air circulation. (Yes, it had a screen door to keep the bugs out.) He also wanted to cut down the beautiful maple tree that was on the front lawn! Fortunately, the tree is on township property, so he couldn't touch it! In addition to turning a beautiful colour in the fall, it also helped to keep the house cool in the summer!

Northmount, YES!! That's exactly the problem I was having! Too much water in the condensation drainage line, and the pressure sensor wasn't working properly! Maybe it's a design flaw that's common to a certain make of furnace. The furnace is only about 2 years old, and replaced the oil furnace which was installed when the house was built in the late 1960's. Anyway, he's order a new pressure switch. Hoping that will fix things... I can only get the temperature up to around 18 C. I can live with that, but I have to bundle up. The night it was really bad, it was extremely cold and windy outside, which made the temperature inside the house drop quite low.

LOL, Chuck and HS! Lent is coming this week, so I stole this off of FB: A protestant moved into a community that was almost entirely Catholic. When Lent rolled around, the Catholics were upset when nearly every Friday their new resident would barbecue himself a lovely steak, instead of eating fish as the Catholics do during Lent. A number of the men got together to discuss the problem. "Listen," one of them said, "I've talked to him, and he definitely is a Christian. Why don't we see if we can get him to convert to Catholicism?" The all agreed that sounded like an excellent idea, so they nominated one of their group to approach him. Much to their delight, he agreed! So, the following Sunday, they arranged with their priest to do a short conversion ceremony. The priest sprinkled him with Holy Water and said, "I baptise you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit! Behold, you are no longer a Protestant - You are now a Catholic." But the following Friday, when dinner time rolled around, once again they smelled the tantalizing odour of barbecued beef coming from the man's backyard. They went over to his house, and were just in time to see him put a steak on the BBQ grill. He sprinkled it with water, and said, "In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you are no longer a steak - you are now a fillet of fish!"

Wow, that really IS ridiculous! I've been dealing with hearing aid batteries since I was in Grade 8, and the only thing I find annoying is some hearing aids make it ridiculously hard to get the battery in and out of the battery slot. My cochlear implant has made battery removal a snap, though. I just use the magnet on the receiver's headpiece, place it over the battery - mission accomplished. Canada still uses the dial packs for batteries, which make it almost TOO easy to remove a battery from the pack. Have had a few wind up on the floor while changing batteries while driving. (Yeah, probably shouldn't do that...) I would reallyreallyreally be P.O'd if Canada switches to the system you describe, Chuck. It sounds like the blister packs they use here for larger button style batteries, like the ones that go in garage or auto remote controls or the SNARK guitar tuners. I've said a few nasty words getting THOSE critters out of the packages, believe me! Darren, those are beautiful! Well done for a first attempt! We are having unbelievably cold weather here, and I do worry about putting the dog out and forgetting about her. I have done that now and then, and with these cold temps, she could easily suffer frostbite. Last night, it got down to -25 C/-14 F! Maybe I need to start setting a timer, too. My memory isn't quite what it used to be... Oh, and did I mention my furnace STILL isn't working right?? The furnace guy was out again the day after I called him, and diagnosed the problem, but he had to order a part to fix it. Meanwhile with these very cold temperatures, I've got so many blankets on my bed that it's hard to turn over!

Tsunkasapa, when I originally saw your thread last night, I found I couldn't respond, as it cut too close to the bone, even though my husband died in 2004. I know what it's like to stand by and watch a loved one fade away from cancer. Time softens the pain, but it never completely leaves. I am so sorry for your loss. And I hope that getting back into leatherwork will help you get your life back and help with the pain. I wish you all the best! Jane

Any James Bond fans on the board?? This is priceless!

Posting this in honour of Burns Night:

Fred, thought this would especially interest you, as they came from your part of the world!

Uh-oh!

LOL, Fred! My father's mother kept a pair of geese in the fenced in front yard of her farmhouse. You had to walk through the yard to get to the door. They were definitely her 'watch geese'. My mom would take me by the hand, and admonish me to 'watch out for the geese' as we hurried to get through the yard to the front door. One of my aunts kept guinea hens. They wouldn't attack, but they certainly made a lot of noise, alerting the people in the house that someone was outside. Edit: my late husband's name was Roger. Other kids teased him by calling him Roger the dodger, and Roger the lodger. Thought that might help you remember the rhyme. Apparently, both of those rhymes have some not very nice meanings, though he never explained them to me. But Rodger the dodger might fit with this guy not being able to dodge the goose...

Fascinating bit of history! The gloves were made from the skin of unborn calves. The stitching was extremely fine - 32 stitches to the inch! https://limerickslife.com/limerick-gloves/?fbclid=IwY2xjawPffeJleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFpWGNPdkZadGxEMDUxQUJNc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHpjhkY4VkujaZbZBxHD_F-wk-QmRrvpSSdjtY6mlOLb_SbQgXo4CkygvN7Me_aem_p9tNbWgEBS2Yl2smZs-1MQ