World(-ish) Traveller

On the road again.

Right now I'm writing from Beth (Ellen's sister) and Don's house in Iowa. I spent the day dealing with some minor repairs to mom's house that were demanded by the FHA inspector.

• Add a tube to 6" from the floor to the relief value of the hot water heater -- got the tube made for that purpose from Lowe's, and then I just needed to borrow a hacksaw from Don to cut it to length


• Loose wire ends in basement need to be terminated and put into a wiring box -- well, I could tell right away that the reason these wires were loose is that they were disconnected FROM the main panel, so they certainly didn't have live AC to them. But, to be fully compliant, I added wirenuts and a box to contain them.


• Garage door doesn't reverse when met with resistance when going down -- This is sort of the trickiest one. If I lower the down pressure too much, the door doesn't go down at all. Increase it to get the door to go down and resistance doesn't reverse the door. I think I have it adjusted now where it needs to be. We'll see if it passes the next inspection. If it doesn't the opener may need to be replaced, and I really don't want to have to pay for that. The opener is probably 25 years old, and it's 1/3 horsepower when it may really have needed a 1/2 hp opener. This is the item I'm not going to be 100% certain is finished by the time I leave.


• Flaking paint on garage door and back stairs needs to be scraped and re-painted -- done and done-ish. Scraping was pretty easy, and I still had the shop vac at the house so I could clean up the chips. A coat of white paint is on. I'm conflicted about putting on another coat. If it was going to be my house I probably would, but as it won't be my house by the end of the week I'd rather be lazy. I'll see what it looks like tomorrow after the paint has dried (and I can see it again in daylight). If it looks bad I'll go ahead and give it another coat

And, while I'm here I got the sale papers signed and ready to take to Bob to sign. The house closing is now tentatively set for Friday.

Tonight, Beth, Don and I went to Famous Dave's for dinner and relaxed for a while.

Tomorrow, I need to finish loading stuff for the last stuff to take back home, and I'll sweep the garage real quick. Maybe paint. The rest of the house is ready. Then, drive back home.

Monday morning I fly to Ottawa for a week, which I guess I'll talk about later. Tomorrow??