Two years ago.
So, two years ago, around two in the afternoon, my home caught fire. Folks who have been following me already know what happened then. Today is the closeout of any new claims on the insurance on the house. There haven't been, but I have been procrastinating on the final signoff until last week just in case. That was signed off my mom last week and sent in.
This should trigger the last payments on the claim. If the insurance company runs true to form, they will drag their feet as long as possible on mailing the check, making it payable to multiple parties to further slow down our ability to actually deposit it and get the money.
There are a few things on the punch list for the contractor, but the main one is painting the repaired exterior to match the existing paint, that had to wait until the weather warms up in the spring. there are a couple of interior issues but they are mostly pretty minor. Hopefully this will happen in the next few weeks and we can pay them their final payment.
This leaves us with a large construction loan which hopefully this last insurance payment will knock a big chunk off, and the payments on the loan will be a much higher percentage of principal than the interest then they have been up to now.
Mom and I are living in the house, and slowly getting things set up. Mom turned 90 this month, so she is unable to do much, and I have turned into a near full time caregiver. She needs help dressing and undressing, anything more difficult than making a cup of tea someone has to do for her. We have meals on wheels bringing her lunch weekdays, and I make the rest of the meals, and setup the keurig machine for her midmorning cup of coffee. I still work full time, but taking care of her and getting the house setup consumes pretty much my entire life.
This last set of noreasters were difficult. First one didn't affect us much. Second one whammmed us good. Two feet of heavy wet sticky snow. We had two trees down across the driveway, several more down on our street, which knocked out the power, and several large branches around the yard and blocking the front walk. Fortunately my older brother was not trapped in his house, and was able to purchase a chainsaw and come to the house to help clear the wood. My cousin also showed up in this process with his plow truck, and not only plowed the driveway, but used his truck to pull the partly fallen tree, that had partly snapped off 20 feet up, away from the house. so when we cut it down, it didn't hit the house. Third and fourth didn't bother us much.
I also pulled out my generator and tried starting it up. It turns out that when a wet rag is dangling up against the air intake, it keeps the generator from starting and running. Once I figured this out, it started right up like it should have. From now on, propane powered emergency generators. I am convinced. Ran some extension cords in through a basement window and around the house. Powered up the fios, phone, fridge, mom's stair lift and one of my LED tapelights from the reconstruction. For future reference, one 20 lb tank of propane lasts about twelve hours. Burned about 80 bucks worth of propane total. Considering getting one of those automatic changeover valve things so I can hook up two tanks at once, so I can change out a tank at my convenience, instead whenever the tank happens to run out.
This day of unexpected physical labor left me sweaty and feeling disgusting, so I decided to shower that night, despite the furnace having been off since early in the morning. Fully expecting the water to be lukewarm at most, I was pleasantly surprised that it was still very hot. Even more surprised that it was still hot in the morning. The improved insulation in the house was also keeping the interior much warmer than I expected. While it had cooled off some, it was still quite comfortable the next day. Went into work the second day, and brought home the materials needed to hook the furnace to the generator temporarily. So added furnace to the load on the generator, but that only gave us hot water and heat in the basement. Which worked out okay. Power was restored about 40 hours after it went out, and I returned the house to normal operation.
I resolved to put in some generator cutover circuits for the furnace and the air handler for the first floor. Adding that air handler to the previous loads is gonna pretty much max out the generators capacity. Since the fridge, furnace and air handler are all intermittent loads, as long as they don't all start up at the same time, it should be fine. Found some single circuit cutover boxes on amazon that were ETL listed, ordered a pair of them. Once they came in, went down to pull an electrical permit. thirty bucks for the permit. Installed them next to the power panel, which was kind of a pain, because I had to install a backer board for them to screw into. Shitbird electrician only put in a backer board just exactly big enough for the panel. Anyway, put them in and inspector came out, spent five minutes looking at them, and half an hour yakking with him. Turns out he used to work for my dad years ago. Small world. I should do a trial run of these on the generator before I put it away. Just to make sure I don't blow up the generator because I miswired them or misunderstood the directions.
So that's the state of the Dale.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth.
This should trigger the last payments on the claim. If the insurance company runs true to form, they will drag their feet as long as possible on mailing the check, making it payable to multiple parties to further slow down our ability to actually deposit it and get the money.
There are a few things on the punch list for the contractor, but the main one is painting the repaired exterior to match the existing paint, that had to wait until the weather warms up in the spring. there are a couple of interior issues but they are mostly pretty minor. Hopefully this will happen in the next few weeks and we can pay them their final payment.
This leaves us with a large construction loan which hopefully this last insurance payment will knock a big chunk off, and the payments on the loan will be a much higher percentage of principal than the interest then they have been up to now.
Mom and I are living in the house, and slowly getting things set up. Mom turned 90 this month, so she is unable to do much, and I have turned into a near full time caregiver. She needs help dressing and undressing, anything more difficult than making a cup of tea someone has to do for her. We have meals on wheels bringing her lunch weekdays, and I make the rest of the meals, and setup the keurig machine for her midmorning cup of coffee. I still work full time, but taking care of her and getting the house setup consumes pretty much my entire life.
This last set of noreasters were difficult. First one didn't affect us much. Second one whammmed us good. Two feet of heavy wet sticky snow. We had two trees down across the driveway, several more down on our street, which knocked out the power, and several large branches around the yard and blocking the front walk. Fortunately my older brother was not trapped in his house, and was able to purchase a chainsaw and come to the house to help clear the wood. My cousin also showed up in this process with his plow truck, and not only plowed the driveway, but used his truck to pull the partly fallen tree, that had partly snapped off 20 feet up, away from the house. so when we cut it down, it didn't hit the house. Third and fourth didn't bother us much.
I also pulled out my generator and tried starting it up. It turns out that when a wet rag is dangling up against the air intake, it keeps the generator from starting and running. Once I figured this out, it started right up like it should have. From now on, propane powered emergency generators. I am convinced. Ran some extension cords in through a basement window and around the house. Powered up the fios, phone, fridge, mom's stair lift and one of my LED tapelights from the reconstruction. For future reference, one 20 lb tank of propane lasts about twelve hours. Burned about 80 bucks worth of propane total. Considering getting one of those automatic changeover valve things so I can hook up two tanks at once, so I can change out a tank at my convenience, instead whenever the tank happens to run out.
This day of unexpected physical labor left me sweaty and feeling disgusting, so I decided to shower that night, despite the furnace having been off since early in the morning. Fully expecting the water to be lukewarm at most, I was pleasantly surprised that it was still very hot. Even more surprised that it was still hot in the morning. The improved insulation in the house was also keeping the interior much warmer than I expected. While it had cooled off some, it was still quite comfortable the next day. Went into work the second day, and brought home the materials needed to hook the furnace to the generator temporarily. So added furnace to the load on the generator, but that only gave us hot water and heat in the basement. Which worked out okay. Power was restored about 40 hours after it went out, and I returned the house to normal operation.
I resolved to put in some generator cutover circuits for the furnace and the air handler for the first floor. Adding that air handler to the previous loads is gonna pretty much max out the generators capacity. Since the fridge, furnace and air handler are all intermittent loads, as long as they don't all start up at the same time, it should be fine. Found some single circuit cutover boxes on amazon that were ETL listed, ordered a pair of them. Once they came in, went down to pull an electrical permit. thirty bucks for the permit. Installed them next to the power panel, which was kind of a pain, because I had to install a backer board for them to screw into. Shitbird electrician only put in a backer board just exactly big enough for the panel. Anyway, put them in and inspector came out, spent five minutes looking at them, and half an hour yakking with him. Turns out he used to work for my dad years ago. Small world. I should do a trial run of these on the generator before I put it away. Just to make sure I don't blow up the generator because I miswired them or misunderstood the directions.
So that's the state of the Dale.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth.