They said yes!

The water association meeting with our neighbors last night went very well, we've been approved to add a second connection to the main water line so that we can irrigate our orchard. We had a nice discussion over pie and coffee, and agreed (wholeheartedly) to sign something to the effect that this connection can't be used in the future to supply a whole additional house. Current county zoning laws forbid a second house on our parcel, but zoning laws change, and even though we'd never try to push through a lot division or anything, if we ever sold the property who knows what could happen. So now we can start buying & planting fruit trees! We won't actually put in the connection until spring, but knowing that we have the permission we could go ahead and start planting now - no irrigation will be needed over the winter months, that's for sure!

In fact, some of you might be wondering why I'm so concerned about irrigation at all, given that we live in soggy whatcom county. True, it's wet most of the year, but sometimes we have long, dry summers (like last year) and especially in the first few years trees need to be watered regularly so they can get established. Grapes and berries, with their shallower root systems, will need water in dry years even after they are established. We won't need a lot of water, but when we do need some it will be crucial to have it available.

It was nice to see all our neighbors and visit a little about what everyone's been up to. We always wave when we pass on the driveway, but it's not really the same as a visit. Of course, everyone is excited about Conan's upcoming arrival. Our neighbor Florence really stole the show by giving us this beautiful baby sweater she knit for him. It's simply gorgeous:
I can hardly wait to see him wearing it!

Fall

Fall is definitely here. The days are shorter, the mornings are frosty, and the leaves are falling. Somehow it doesn't seem like it should be here yet, but on the other hand October is almost over... how did that happen? It seemed like just the other day that my due date was a long way off, and now it's just around the corner. Aiigghhh!

Pregnancy continues to be a lot more tiring than I ever expected. On my midwife's orders I've cut back my work week to only 4 days now, which feels a lot better, but is still exhausting. In November I'll probably cut my work hours down even more. Everything just takes so much more energy with this big belly - getting up out of a chair, climbing stairs, getting in & out of the car, getting dressed - things I always just took for granted would be easy, aren't. And baby's still got 7 weeks to grow!

In other news, tomorrow we're having the neighborhood water association over for a meeting to discuss getting a second hookup to the main water line so we can irrigate our (future) orchard. I'm a little nervous, but I'm hopefull we can convince everyone to grant us this favor. There's 7 parcels in our association, and each has 1 connection currently, leaving 2 "extra" connections. So in theory at least, there should be no problem in granting us one of the extras. Of course, if we get an extra one then there will only be 1 left, not enough to go around... but also the way the properties are layed out, ours is the only one which is divided by a stream in such a way that it would be really difficult to run water to all parts of it from just one connection point. So, fingers crossed. I'm planning on serving fresh-baked apple pie still warm from the oven, that can't hurt!

Shiny New Propane Tank

We finally have a 500 gallon propane tank! We had an old 250 gallon tank before, and while it was plenty big when it was just supplying the shop heater, it was too small to keep the house supplied with enough pressure, especially when the weather got really cold.

The new tank is much prettier than the old one too, all shiny white and new. Besides good looks, the split to the two supply lines was done in a much more permanent way, on the old tank the second supply line was just stuck on and the lid couldn't be closed. It was supposed to be a temporary thing, but for whatever reason we couldn't seem to get the old propane company to come back and give us a bigger tank with a permanent two-line hookup. We switched our propane company to Whatcom Farmers Coop, and they have given us great service so far.
Here's to not having to fill this monster very often!

At long, long last...

We have DSL! Let me say that again, for emphasis: We. Have. DSL. And it only took 3 months...

This is the first-ever post entered from the comfort of my home office. And although I am sitting at the desk to type this, if I wanted, I could take the laptop and go out on the porch, or sit in front of the fire, or upstairs to the bedroom and type it from there, 'cuz we gots the wireless conectivity, oh yeah. It's all hooked up, and it's all working*! Woooooo! Finally.

This here 21st century gadgetry is pretty cool. We're frickin' lucky, people. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go mix myself a celebretory gin & tonic...

*actually, I don't know if the crossed wires thing ever got resolved, so maybe its not all working. But MORE of it is working!

More Verizon Wierdness

Here's the latest bizarre twist in our ongoing quest to get phone and DSL service to our house: when we get a phone call, it also rings at the neighbor's house. Yep. Bo called me on my cell phone the other night, thinking he had the wrong phone number for our land line, because every time he called it our neighbor Lori (Her house is about a quarter-mile east of ours) was answering. So I tried calling it myself, from the cell phone, and sure enough, after 4 rings her son Allen picked up the phone! Our calls ring in both houses. I guess there must really be some wires crossed somewhere.

Cary talked to the neighbors about it, and it's especially wierd since it turns out that they don't even have Verizon phone service. They have Verizon DSL and digital/internet phone service. But, their DSL has been down since last week sometime, so they haven't been getting ANY phone calls... except of course for ours.

Anyhow, Cary called Verizon about the whole crossed lines thing and someone is supposed to come out and fix it tomorrow. In the meantime, if you call us and you get Lori or Allen instead, just say HI and tell them we're sorry for all the trouble!

Oh, and on the DSL front - our service has been turned on, but we couldn't get the connection to work. I was on the phone with tech support for an hour last night going through a million and one trouble-shooting steps, and in the end they decided that the modem they sent us was just defective. So now we're just waiting for the replacement modem to arrive, and hopefully then we will be online from home. fingers crossed!

Fun with Verizon: DSL edition

First the good news: I think we're actually going to get DSL hooked up on Monday! Yay!

The bad news is that this required me to spend another hour-and-a-half (I timed it) on the phone friday, speaking to NINE (yep, I counted) different CSRs and various techs in myriad departments and continents to get it. Also, we have to change our phone number. Which might not seem like such a big deal, except that the reason [for the full saga, click here] that it took us a full month just to get voice service was that we wanted to keep our old phone number. You know, for convenience. Sadly however, it seems that it just was not meant to be...

We had originally ordered DSL at the same time as we ordered the voice service, back in, oh, December. Verizon's DSL department won't even begin to process a service order until the voice line is up and working (and given our expirience, this is a sensible policy) so it wasn't until February 1st that they begin to work on hooking us up. Our Service Ready Date (SRD) was supposed to be 2/7, but nothing happened. So, I called in to find out what was going on, and was told that our order had been cancelled. But Good News! our service order had already been re-issued and our new SRD would be 2/12. Yeeahh, great news.

I wasn't able to get any kind of clear answer about WHY our order had been cancelled, or by whom, and the very chipper CSR seemed completely mystified at my preoccupation with it. She also didn't seem to understand why I didn't have much confidence that we'd actually get hooked up on the 12th. She did finally let me in on the secret that before service could be completed, we had to receive a package with some gadgets and gizmos from Verizon. If we didn't receive the package a couple of days before our SRD, then we would know that it wasn't going to be hooked up after all. Genius!

Well, on Friday I called again to find out what was going on, because I had not, after all, received the package. Aparently, our line was failing the automatic signal tests that their system does before it completes the DSL set up. It does three of these tests, and then automatically cancels the order. (Ah-ha!) I went through at least a half a dozen Verizon CSRs before I got anyone who could do anything more than just read my file back to me (and by then, I could recite it right along with them). No one could tell me WHY my line was failing, or what could be done about it. Which was frustrating, but the very worst was the CSR who put me on hold for a while, then came back and told me that actually there was no problem with my line, it was all fine, and in fact the package had been shipped and would be delivered to me that afternoon, and that she would transfer me to the person who could give me the UPS tracking number. Wow, that sounded good! Except that the person she transfered me to had NO IDEA about tracking numbers, and again told me that my account showed that the line had failed the signal test and my order would almost certainly be cancelled again. I love it when they lie to me in order to get me off the phone.

Things seemed pretty grim at that point (Nooooo, not dial-up!). But I called back one more time, and reached Karen, The Best Verizon CSR ever. (I hope she finds a better job, 'cuz they don't deserve her!) She not only listened to my entire tale of woe, she actually looked into it and suggested a solution. It seems that in keeping our old phone number, several "porting overrides" had been tacked onto our number. Basically as I understand it, our calls would go first to the main bellingham 676 switchboard, and then get forwarded out to the county 966 switch, and then from there to our house. Also, our number was not originally a "Verizon series" number, it was a Qwest number. Between our number not being a local switch native, and/or it not being an original verizon series number, the DSL system couldn't or wouldn't make the connection.

Karen suggested switching our phone number to a local 966 number, and seeing if the DSL order could then be processed without trouble. She admitted that it was possible it still wouldn't work, but I was ready to try anything that didn't involve blood loss or broken bones. A new phone number it was! The switch was almost instant. As soon as it was done, a new DSL order was entered. Our new SRD is 2/27.

Since we weren't sure that changing the phone number would actually fix the DSL problem, I didn't inform anyone of the change until today. If it hadn't worked, we'd have just changed back, no-one the wiser. But today I got a sign: a UPS tracking number. [angels singing] Yes, the package has shipped! We will have the gizmo soon! The new line apparently passed all the signal tests, and it looks like we'll actually be using the internet from home by March!

It's a good thing I am such a patient person.

Phone Hook-up Update

Cary just called - the Verizon truck just pulled up! Fingers crossed that his next call will be made on our house line, not the cell phone...

Maybe ranting on the blog gets better results than I thought!

12:15 update: Well, we have a phone, but it's about the scratchiest, static-y bad connection imaginable. The guy is going to check the connections and hopefully that will clear it up.

Final update (Thursday Morning): WE HAVE A PHONE! The connection may not be the best ever (no pin dropping, please) but it's a huge improvement over the cell phone. Except that apparently telemarketers were waiting patiently to be able to call our phone again. Last night we got 2 telemarketing calls, 1 survey, 1 wrong number, and a robo-call from verizon to congratulate us on choosing their service. Sheesh.

Why I Hate Verizon

So, once again the designated day for phone hook-up passed without the phone actually getting hooked up. Needless to say, I am getting pretty frustrated with Verizon and their whole buggy process. If only there was some sort of choice of phone service providers... but there isn't. Here's a quick recap:

Dec 27: I call to set up new service at the new house. They have to actually send out a technician to connect the burried phone cable to the house wiring, so I realize it's going to take a little extra time, and I am prepared to wait. I go through every frickin' option, give them all my personal data, and all in all spend about 40 minutes getting everything set up. The CSR asks if I'd like to keep our old phone number. It seems like a good idea at the time... even though it will add a few more days of processing. January 17th is the date I'm told we'll be hooked up.

Jan 17: Nothing happens.

Jan 18: I call to find out why we still don't have a phone. I'm told it's because the switching of the old phone number from our old service provider (Qwest) to Verizon requires Independant Third Party Verification. (They've been trying to reach me... yeah, how? by phone?) So I get transferred to the Third Party Verification, and am recorded saying, essentially "I, Addie Pobst, being of sound mind and body, Do hereby want to transfer my phone number from Qwest to Verizon."

Later that same day: I call back to make SURE that everything is all set up, 100%, no more hang-ups, they'll come hook up the phone now. I am assured that everything is A-OK, and the technician will come the next day.

Jan 19: Nothing happens.

Jan 22: (the following monday - there's no cust service avail on the weekend) Call again to find out why we still have no phone. Am told that Some Paperwork required to switch the phone number from Qwest to Verizon hadn't yet been filed for our account. And it takes 5 days to process, no matter what. There is no answer as to why this wasn't done, or why it wasn't mentioned, say, the last time I called and specifically asked if there was anything that still needed to be done so I could get the phone hooked up. I am told that it will now be Jan 29th that our phone will be hooked up. (Incidentally, I asked how long it would be if we just scrapped the old phone number - and was told that a new number could be hooked up on Jan 26th. I decide that since I've waited this long, I might as well wait another weekend for the old number. I can be very stubborn.)

Jan 29: Nothing happens.

Jan 30: Cary calls to find out why we still have no phone, and is told that they are still, you know, processing stuff, and that the technician will come tomorrow and hook up the phone. You'll forgive me if I don't hold my breath...

Oh, and DSL? We can't even start the process of getting DSL hooked up until after the phone service is confirmed. Which means that once we actually get the phone, it'll be at least 10 MORE days before we have DSL. Apparently they aren't capable of running both processes through their system at the same time. Grrrrrrr.

Munchkin & Rinnai in the house

The Rinnai on-demand (aka tankless) hot water heater was intalled yesterday, as was the Munchkin boiler for the radiant floor. Both run on propane and are super efficient. It costs more up front to install these types of appliances, but the energy efficiency will be worth it in the long run. There is a little further hook-up still to be done, as you can see in this picture, the water hasn't been connected yet to the Rinnai:

Here's the Munchkin and its associates, various pressure gages, nozzles, valves, tanks and vents. I'm not sure what all the parts do yet, but at some point I'll get somebody from Barron Heating to go over the whole system with me, because not only am I curious but I figure as a homeowner I should know which valves to turn and other maintenence tidbits. There are still some wiring and other connections to make with this as well.
Here it is with the cover opened, so you can see all the "guts".
On the inside, the mudding and taping has begun, which looks like this:
Fortunatley the weather has continued warm, so the mudders aren't suffering any fall chilling while the heating system is being completed.

Friday - Doors!

Last Friday the front door and the sunroom door were installed. They are still in their protective cardboard and plastic wrappers, and there are no knobs yet, but it's still neat to see them in place. Here's the front door: You can just make out the design of the window, it has three panes. All three exterior doors (front, sunroom & mechanical room) are Codel Smooth Fiberglass.

Here's a veiw from the kitchen, you can see that the sunroom door is in place. It has one large window in it, nearly the whole upper half of the door, but you can't see it yet.
Also, the sliding glass door between the kitchen has been flipped around so that the opening is on the correct side. I don't know if I mentioned it here on the blog before, but the framers had inadvertantly installed the two sliders in the wrong spots. One opens to the right, and one opens to the left, so with them switched both openings were on the wrong side. We've been aware of it for a while, but it hadn't really been a priority to switch them, yet. It's nice to have it done now though. :)

The other thing that was done on Friday is the phone, cable and propane tubing were laid in the utility ditch. It's a good thing too, because it rained Friday night and Saturday morning, re-filling the ditch with water. The water pipe still has to be laid in the ditch, and everything still needs to be connected up. It's starting to feel like we better get these ditches closed up soon, before the weather really changes for the season. Hopefully later this week that will happen.

We had visitors again this weekend, Cary's cousin Andre and his wife Trudel came down from North Vancouver on Saturday and checked out the house. Andre was interested in seeing the pond, so he and Cary bush-whacked through the swamp while Trudel and I looked around the house. We also picked and ate blackberries from our resident blackberry tangle. Yum. Then on Sunday Cary's parents and Grandma Marjorie came out and met us at the site, so we could do the guided tour this time. I sure do love showing off the place. :)

Electrical Inspection Passed

See that? It's the happy sticker that the inspector left on the inside of the electrical panel to show that we passed. There will be additional inspections, of course, but this is still a milestone. Now we can cover over the walls and fill in the ditch (well, once the other ditch dries out - more on that below).

Below is the whole fuse box, you can see the little green sticker in the middle of the door. You can also see the nice neat labeling of each circut on the door. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think I've ever seen a fuse box that was clearly labeled like this before. It's a thing of rare beauty... In my experience, there's usually a bunch of indecipherable chicken scratch and crossed out bits - and that's when you're lucky enough to find labels at all. Most of the time, you just have to flip the switches one at a time and then go see if the lights are still on or not. :)
And here's the outside of the fuse box, with another official inspection/permit document taped to it. The cardboard sign reads "Caution, panel is HOT!!"
'nuff said.

Steve has nearly finished shingling the eastern porch wall. Just one more course along the top will do it, but that will probably need to wait until the soffits have been sheeted. The stain really does give them the appearance of naturally aged cedar. It really looks great with the trim around the windows and everything.
The utility ditch for everything other than the electricity is still holding a lot of water, so nothing has been layed in it yet. Even after a week of dry weather in the 80's, there's still 6-8" of murkey water in the bottom of the trench. Maybe by next week it will have dried out enough - if not, we're going to have to bring in a pump or somebody's going to have to get really muddy. My soil is so clay-ey... it literally holds water like a bucket. Brian Bird, the potter, actually made me some flower pots with our clay. I see many, many years of soil amendments in my gardening future.

Clawfeet

This weekend we got a chance to use Ross's sandblasting chamber to clean the rust off the clawfeet for the tub. It was amazing. In about an hour, they went from this:

To this:
Thanks are due to Ross, for letting us use his nifty machine, and to Cary for actually running the noisy bugger while I sat and chatted with Ross and Keron over a beer in the garden. :)

Electrical wiring continues at the house, but it turns out to be a really boring thing to take pictures of, even by my house-obsessed standards. Once they get the fuse box and all the switchplates and fixture backs in, I promise I'll put up some pictures.

More window framing went up yesterday, and should continue today. Utility connection lines for the cable, phone and propane are scheduled to go into the ditch today.

Ditches Dug

Lee the Equipment Guy came yesterday and dug all the utility ditches with the backhoe. There are two ditches, one from the NW corner of the property for the water, phone, cable and propane (all up by the shop) and one from the SW corner for the electric (down by the septic mound). The one up by the shop is where the leaky water pipe was found, so it is a muddy mess for the first 50' or so, as you can see: That little black box peeking out from behind the telephone upright is the new water shut-off and meter box.

Speaking of the water pipe, here's the new 'T' conection where the house line will attach.
The other ditch for the electricity was much drier, as you can see:
Those "wet" looking places are actually just spots where the hard-pan blue clay was scraped smooth by the hoe. Really, it's dry. I swear.

Here's another exciting thing- Steven got started putting the trim up on the windows. I decided we didn't need an exterior sill, so it's just a really simple frame, with a little overshot on the top peice to dress it up a tiny bit. I think they look great. :)
Inside, Frank's hard at work putting the electrical wiring in place, although things slowed down a little because Andy's wife delivered a baby boy (I think it was on Friady), and he's quite understandably taking a few days off work. Congratulations! :)

Utility Madness

On Friday Cary and I met Mark out at the site in the afternoon to go over the connections for the utilities, as well as some other items. Bruce, my neighbor and the head of the Water Association, also came over to see if he could help solve the big mystery: where the #@$&% IS the water line? You see, we have a faucet in the shop, but we've never been able to locate a shut-off or meter or any other clue as to how the pipe was laid that conncets that faucet to the main water association line. The main water association line follows the driveway, which goes along the north edge of our property, then turns south and runs along the west edge. Since the shop is located in the NW corner of the property, the connection line could come either from the north or from the west... or for extra fun, it might zig zag or run diagonally. There are NO records, and although I've hunted around in all the bushes many times over the last few years, we've never found ANYTHING to indicate where the water line was buried.

Locating the water line recently became a bit more urgent, and not just because we need to connect into it for the house supply. The real problem was that we planned to ditch through the area by the shop to collect the phone, cable, and propane supply lines, and it'd be a real bummer to find the water line by breaking it with a backhoe. Especially considering that without a shut-off valve, we'd have to shut down water to the whole neighborhood while we fixed it.

Well, we all walked around on Friday, and still had no idea where the line was. Mark and Cary even dug a hole where we found an old stake in the ground which might have marked something - nothing. So I volunteered myself and Cary to dig around by hand on Saturday and try to find it.

We started by digging about 20 feet away from the west wall of the shop, where the phone and electric lines were marked by the locator. Our reasoning was that if somebody was going to hook up multiple ulilities, they'd use as few ditches as possible. Also, the faucet inside the shop is right next to the phone jack. We found the phone line almost immediately, about 1' down. We kept going but the clay was hard and wet, looked like it had never been disturbed, and to top it off our hole started to fill up with water. Then the handle of the post hole digger broke. Gaah.

We widened our trench and continued digging, bailing the water out, but it was getting pretty miserable. We felt certain we'd gone down 24" (the standard depth for electric lines) but we'd found nothing. I started to doubt that the electrical line was where it had been marked. Not knowing where the water line is bad, but not knowing where the electrical line is worse.

So, we changed tactics. We moved over to side of the shop, right outside from where the phone, faucet, and fuse box are on the inside. The reason we didn't start digging there in the first place is that the shop is build on a 1-2 foot thick pad of pit run, and we'd thought that it would be more difficult to dig through all the rocks than it would be in the clay. However, we were pleasantly surprised to find that a combination of pitchfork and shovel made relatively quick work of the pit run - and we found not only the electrical line but also the water line! Hooray! Now we just had to establish that the water ran straight west, and didn't turn and head north 5 or 10 feet from the building. Back to that first, nasty, water filled hole. Cary said "I guess this is what makes us homeowners, and not renters, huh?"
Well, down about another 6 inches, and yessiree, there was the water and the electric line. The water was coming in fast, flowing right down the pipe. I had a bad feeling about that, but mostly I was just happy we'd found it...
And sure enough, Mark called this morning from the site, where they had expanded the utility ditch and found the crappy shut-off that somebody jerry-rigged with a regular faucet valve and then buried. Apparently it's leaking pretty badly, due to the fact that it's not the sort of valve that you are supposed to use as a shut-off or bury in the ground at all, let alone for 15+ years. We have to put in a new valve and a meter anyway, so it's not going to cause any additional expense, I'm just glad we found it now and not sometime next year!