Happy Halloween!

 Well I had a much scarier post planned, as alluded to in my last update a month ago, but I got a perfect picture of our Halloween decorations and the beautiful fall foliage outside so I'll leave you with this for now--stay tuned for my next post, which will also be spooky. And happy Halloween!

Dark and Loud and Stinky and Spooky

 

As if on queue for Halloween, our house decided to become haunted. Or at least act like it was. First, the boiler started making really scary sounds, like an engine turning over. It started doing that a little bit last spring, and we only had just turned it on--apparently the problem got worse. It sounded dreadful and definitely like we should immediately turn off the system, which is what we did.

Even though we turned it off right away, the basement started to smell like oil. I was downstairs doing a workout so I noticed and got quite uncomfortable (and also a little nauseous). I brought down our air quality monitor (long story, was planning to write about it in a different, future post - just roll with it). It did indeed reflect something gross in the air, since this number is usually in the single digits.

We had someone come out and look at it today and he said that either the top (gray) box or the bottom (black) box is busted. We have to remember to go down there next time it makes that grinding motor sound and figure out which it is, and then he can come by and immediately replace it. So that's good, I guess.

During that same workout, just 10 minutes later, we heard a pop and the lights went out. Some transformer evidently had blown down the block. I guess I'm glad it was a sunny day because this was how I spent the last 20 minutes or so of my workout. At first I was afraid it was related to the boiler, but then I realized that didn't really make sense. Fortunately the power came back within a couple of hours, but I did have to spend 20 minutes in the basement where, the night before, I had seen but failed to kill a spider cricket.

Spooky!

Now let's just hope we can sort out that boiler.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from our spooky motion-sensor spider:

Seriously this guy just will not go away and sends us cute little "hey, I'm still here" emails from our camera every 20 minutes all night long. At least in late October it is seasonally appropriate.

And we found a temporary use for our former-tree mulch pile:

Good place to store a body. Or parts of a body.

Have a spooky day (and night)!

Haunted

Good title for a post around Halloween, right? Well for a few weeks we really were starting to think we had ghosts in our house. Earlier this month during the evening, we heard a loud, short burst of bass. Like a loud, vibration. It lasted for about 3 or 4 seconds and went away. Throughout the evening, we heard it a few more times - each time we would run around the house trying to figure out where the sound originated. At one point, we thought it was coming from our AC unit outside the dining room window. By standing near an AC vent, we realized that the short bursts of sound (varying from about 3 to 10 seconds) were accompanied by air coming through the ventilation. But the AC unit outside wasn't the source. At about the time we figured this out, the sounds stopped completely.

The thermostat was set to run the AC if the house got above 80, but the temperature inside was only about 75, so the AC shouldn't have been clicking on at all. But just to be safe, we turned the thermostat to "off."

Then late one night a few days later, I woke up to the loud, vibrationy whoosh sound again. This time from our bedroom, it sounded a lot louder than downstairs in the dining room. We realized it might be the blower, which lives in the attic eaves behind our bedroom. The sound haunted us a few more times that night, even though the thermostat was off. D crawled back to the blower and found a physical switch to kill the power - it completely turned the thermostat off and also the blower itself. Finally, no more noise.

I guess if there were an ideal time for a part of an AC system to break, October would qualify.

We called our heating guy (the same company who came half a dozen times a year ago to fix our heating problems). They came out a few days ago to diagnose the situation and found a fried relay in our circuit board. Of course they didn't have the part they needed, so they promised to order it and come back later. Fortunately, "later" turned out to be a few hours after their first visit - they were able to find the part they needed locally. $300 later, we have exorcised the ghosts from our AC system - it is on and behaving. We also got to keep the fried circuit board to take pictures because, you know, that's what we do here on Brave New Home:

Hello Stranger!

Before I tell you about the great peep-hole we installed, I thought I'd give you an update on my experience with solar panel holiday lights. You may remember that I could not get any light out of the Halloween set I put up and was about to give up on solar lighting. Lo and behold:

A little button in the back that could either be set to "auto" or "off." Apparently even though the box said that the lights automatically turned on at dark, the default setting in the back was "off" and I had to switch it before anything would happen. So I am stupid and now I know better. The solar panel does appear to work. The light set was jumbled up on our floor for days before D noticed the switch and turned it to "auto." And, like magic, we had little orange lights. A few days late, but at least we know they're worth storing for next October.

(Trust me, there's a button under the red arrow. It was hard to get a shot in focus without the flash, but I wanted you to see the orange glow.)

Now to the task at hand--telling you about the peep hole we (and, as usual, by "we" I mean D) installed. It was scary because it involved drilling a hole in our door. But it worked and now we can see who is knocking before we open up. I feel much safer.

The first step was a pilot hole. The instructions said to drill a pilot hole on both sides and then go right to the big, 1/2'' drill bit. Well the door was so strong, we had to drill two sets of pilot holes to work our way up to 1/2''. The tiniest one, which I think was 1/8'' (this was a few weeks ago--it might have been even 1/16'') and the first one to actually be able to make it through the door:

Then round two, which took off a little bit of the edges as well:

 And then round 3, the giant 1/2''. Scary stuff!

The final hole. Fortunately the bigger bit carved out most of the edges that got all wonky with the middle bit.

Here's the finished door. You can see the tiny chip at about 2:00--we filled it in with a marker and I doubt anyone will ever know:

I see you!

BOO!

Halloween has come and gone and, all told, we got about two dozen trick-or-treaters. More than last year but still not a very impressive turnout. At least this time around, they were all appropriately young and cute and in costume.

I also tried my hand at decorating, but that was less than impressive too. The plastic Target pumpkins in the window were cute enough and the cat helped set the mood (pity he isn't completely black):

But the lights left a lot to be desired. See, we don't have any outdoor electrical socket, so we can't use lights that need to be plugged in. The closest plug is in our breezeway, which would require running the cord under the door and also having to actually go out there to turn everything on and off. So I decided last year, while shopping the after-Halloween sales, to try out solar-powered lights. D laughed at me. And, apparently, rightly so.

Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. After stringing the cute little orange LEDs around our light post and staking the panel into the ground, making sure that it wasn't covered with grass, I expected at least a dim glow. But even after moving the panel around on various days to test different spots, we got no results.

We have a lot of trees in our neighborhood, so even though our house faces south and we have had some sunny weather, maybe there's just too much shade to power up the lights? But the instructions say that even shade and cloudy weather will charge the lights. So the question is, are we doomed to never use solar-powered decorations or did I just buy a dud?

Either way, Happy November!

(Oh, and don't forget to take this poll from last week!!!)

Candy anyone?

We live in a pretty cute neighborhood and had been told at settlement to expect quite a few trick-or-treaters. The count? 3 small groups of appropriately-aged children and 1 group of teenagers (who didn't even have the decency to wear costumes). We have a lot of leftover candy...