Some Breeze in our Way

Last summer's pre-appraisal breezeway clean-up stuck with us. First, we never wanted to deal with mice droppings and that much grossness again. Second, we actually liked being able to see a lovely little sitting area from our kitchen. We don't use the space much, but we like having everything in its place and the room looking inviting. Not that it has stayed spotless. It got cluttered again this spring as we focused on gardening, but not to the extent that it was before. And a garden party last month kicked us into gear for cleaning it until it sparkled and for putting some pretty lights.

There was just one problem. This ugly monstrosity:

It wasn't just that it was old and ugly. It also shook and spun whenever the fan was on, making whoever happened to be in the breezeway fear for their lives. Needless to say, we didn't turn it on very often.

We've been "saving up" electrical projects for an electrician and we decided now was the time to work on this project too. That way if we took the fan down and were surprised with what we found up there (you know how the wiring in old houses can be), we'd be within a week or two of professional help.

We decided on the Hunter Allegheny outdoor fan from Lowes, tempted by their free two-day shipping and the cool, industrial-looking light fixture.

 Old fan down! Ew - probably should have dusted up there occasionally...

 Fortunately, the wiring looked ok. No weird surprises here.

We did, however, finally learn the difference between pre-assembled ceiling fans (they say they are 90% assembled already), which I guess is what we installed in our master bedroom, and one that arrives completely in pieces. There were a lot of pieces. We didn't take a picture of all the screws, bolts, blades, and casings. Mostly because we were too busy putting everything together. Attaching the hardware to the fan blades and then those to the base took far more time than the actual electrical stuff. The worse part - the most suspenseful part - was that we had to do all of that before we could turn the darn thing on to see if the wiring was right.

Thank goodness it was! Otherwise it all would have had to have come off again. But fortunately we got it right the first time! The exposed tungsten or whatever it is in the bulb looks really pretty and has a nice effect for an outdoorsy look. Though we did realize that bugs will probably love it as much as we will and so we'll have to take the cover off and empty it frequently. The fan moves a lot of air and doesn't shake at all, so now maybe we'll start sitting out there more often on summer evenings and enjoy the space a little more. (And yes, we did move the strings of twinkly lights so that they are no longer resting on the fan blades...)

Meanwhile, in the backyard...

We've spent so much time gardening in the front yard that it might seem like we're neglecting the back. But actually, it's in pretty decent shape. The lawn looks relatively healthy (though the ratios of weeds to grass is about 1:1).

Our back patio is more or less free of debris and inviting. We liked the little flowers poking out between the brick, so we didn't bother to use Round Up to kill them off. They are all over the grass too, but again, I guess "weed" is in the eye of the beholder and these are pretty cute, so we'll keep them around (who am I kidding? we're keeping the weeds around too, this year).

Last week, I even enjoyed an hour relaxing in the hammock, enjoying the lovely spring weather. I haven't actually "enjoyed" the outside (read: not forced myself out to garden and weed) in a long time. And I'm hoping that we might enjoy the outside even more this year. We splurged and decided to hire one of those monthly pesticide services. The repeated use of chemicals made me nervous, but they claim it's safe and non-toxic. And frankly, dousing myself in strong Deet-based mosquito repellants just to take out the trash or water the lawn didn't seem all that healthy either.

But no rest for the weary. While cleaning out the backyard to get ready for a big party we were hosting, we were reminded of a few other projects for later this spring.

Time to retreat the wood of our railing, which we just noticed was badly molded (we last treated it in March 2010, so I guess it's about time):

This sand box, inherited from the previous owners, has got to go:

Plus we have some more yard clean-up. The back fence line could make a really good area for shade plants, but is still overgrown, so we want to rip it up and turn the soil and actually make an effort there. And we want to maintain the controlled wild area in this back corner, so that it doesn't get completely unmanageable again.

Turning our attention back to the front garden again, I noticed that they already desperately need weeding. The problem is that I threw down a lot of mixed wild flower seed last month, in an attempt to fill in the bare patches. So now I can't really tell what is a weed and what is a growing wild flower. So I think the weeds will free reign for a while - I don't want to pull the wrong thing!

And it's a little off-topic, but check out our clematis!!!

Gardening baby steps

After our massive efforts to remove our invasive border grass and really clean up our gardens, I hoped that one day it would be easier. That blossoms would magically spring up when the weather warmed and the plants would spread out and fill in the empty space. We haven't actually become green thumbs yet, but this year I started to see the light at the end of the botanical tunnel.

Spring started off with leaves covering our flower beds "for warmth." Each weekend in March, we picked a bed or two to clear. We picked up the leaves and weeded. I tried particularly hard to remove lingering liriope plugs.

They were cleaned and ready to go. So when the compost and mulch were delivered in early April, we spread it down and crossed our fingers.

Our efforts started to pay off. Anemones that we planted last fall are blooming. Our irises, the one flower that seems to have loved our garden from day one, look even happier than usual. We even had hyacinths starting to bloom until I accidentally stepped on them when spreading mulch, severing the flower and ending its too-short life (oops!).

 

I'd given up hope on the clematis after last year when it seemed to fail to root. But this spring it couldn't be happier. Stay tuned for more pictures soon when all these buds should turn into brilliant pinkish purple flowers.

Even the spiraea vanhouttei, that looked exactly like a twig in the ground for two years, sprang to life and even flowered (it's about 20 inches high, so it's still pretty pathetic - do a google image search for spiraea vanhouttei and you'll see truly how pathetic, since these plants grow up to 6' tall).

Our phlox doesn't look thrilled, but finally some started flowering. The others aren't quite dead...The thyme is very happy and has even started flowering pretty white flowers. We also planted a few other things in this bed this year, since the phlox were taking a while to spread out. So they've been joined by Blue Star Creeper and Veronica peduncularis "Georgia Blue".

Our lilacs continue to do their thing as well. They've lived here now for two years but, annoyingly, have not grown evenly. The white-flowered one on the right is producing a lot of blooms.

 The new white-flower one on the other end, brand new as of last fall, also looks happy.

The purple-flowered ones in the middle don't seem to be doing well at all. They produce blooms, but only a few each.

I can't decide if I should uproot them and plant new baby lilacs, but then they would take a long time to grow and provide height to our garden (and privacy to our guest room). Having one big bush and then a bunch of teeny ones, especially given how slowly plants grow at our place, doesn't seem like a great solution either.

But either way, I'm calling this a success because this is what I see (and smell) when I step outside, right outside my front door.

Now I just wish I could make my plants flower with better timing. Some of our plants are in full bloom, others are about bloom, and still others are past their prime. Our camellias were colorful a few weeks ago and now all their pretty petals are dying at their feet (our neighbor's camellias still have flowers on them, so maybe we could have done something differently to make them last longer?).

We're really striving to have a yard as colorful and filled in as this one nearby. Isn't it beautiful.

We're still waiting for some things to come up that should technically be "spring blooms." Last fall to prevent the squirrels from eating the fruits of our labor, we tried to surround our plants in chicken wire (we're never doing that again - it was such a pain, both literally and figuratively). The May Night Salvia and verbena we did that for still haven't woken up. Hopefully the Black-Eyed Susans will, later this summer.

Stay tuned as the weather continues to warm up. Hopefully the things that are alive now will continue to spread out and fill in the gaps. And new things will continue to come up.

Garage Spring Cleaning

It's no exaggeration when I tell you that our garage made us look like we were hoarders. We didn't even manage to get a proper "before" picture because we honestly couldn't walk inside. The front half was filled with giant flower pots for our container gardens, bags of potting soil and mulch and seed, the weed wacker, and the mower. Our "things on sticks" (i.e. rakes, shovels, thrasher, hoe, etc) were all supposed to be leaning against the right wall, but since we couldn't always get there, we mostly just threw them vaguely in the correct direction and let them land wherever. We were saving our old window sashes because "one day" they might make a cool craft activity. We still had various old paint and trim and junk the previous owner had left.

This picture is actually from after we'd already spent about an hour or two clearing the back wall. Imagine it about twice as bad, at least.

It's still far from perfect, but fast-forward two days and we can now walk in (a huge improvement!) and find what we're looking for. We'd planned to donate a lot of what we cleared out to a local non-profit building charity but unfortunately the list of things they would accept did not match the things we had to give (we had a lot of light fixtures and ceiling fans, but not necessarily in their original boxes, for example). So sadly most of the items we cleared out went to the trash can.

Even actions as minor as folding the tarps and stacking them, really improved the way it looked in there. Plus we finally cleaned out the dozens of drop clothes the previous owner left. Many were such thin sheets that the paint seeped immediately through them and onto the floor, making them totally useless. So we saved some as rags and ditched the rest.

Going through the paint was a much-need update too. It had been stacked against the back wall of the garage since we bought the place. There are still a few cans we need to open and evaluate (for example - they still have our dining room/kitchen paint! So if it hasn't dried out I want to pour it into a jar and save it, inside the house, for some touch-ups) but we were able to get rid of most of it. It took them a few days to dry (some of the cans were almost full) but they finally solidified so we could toss them.

(Notice anything else about the driveway??? The piles of mulch and compost are gone! We've been very busy.)

We have bigger plans for the garage, like possibly removing one of the shelves and installing some kind of hanging system for our rakes and shovels. We still have more shelves to clear out, too. And some random hardware like hooks, nails, and screws that can now come inside to be closer to the tools. But at least everything is off the floor and grouped together.

Here We Go Again

Last fall's expensive attempt at calling in professional landscapers didn't seem to really help the yard. So this spring we decided to try again on our own, in earnest. Instead of going to Home Depot where we never can find knowledgeable help, we went to a local garden supply center and explained our needs. They recommended laying down garden lime in the front yard to increase alkalinity of our soil and hopefully eliminate the moss (we get plenty of sun, so the moss wasn't just due to shade). They sold us some starter fertilizer and also some grass seed better calibrated to local soil. Plus I can never leave a garden store without some pretty flowers in continuing attempts to make the garden full and colorful.

D spread two bags of lime and the starter fertilizer, making the lawn look gray and chalky. Then a few days later we got a delivery for 2 cubic yards of compost and 1 cubic yard of mulch (for the garden, not the lawn).

Time to spread it. Yay...(that's sarcasm, if you couldn't tell). You can seem some of the lime that hadn't absorbed yet, still making the ground look whitish.

After getting the compost in piles all around the lawn, we raked it into place. Then we spread the new seed. For a couple of weeks, we really couldn't see any grass at all.

Slowly, thanks to frequent watering and April rain, the compost absorbed and the grass perked up, making the lawn look less black and more green.

We have some new grass coming up from the seeds but also our old grass is looking a little happier. We're not sure how much of that is due to the compost, fertilizer, and lime and how much is just due to the fact that it's getting warmer and wetter. We have a lot of weeds and clover but honestly, at least it is green. Maybe we'll wait until fall to do some more weed and feed type stuff - it is too aggressive to be applied just after grass seed anyway, and by summer it is too hot to do much of anything outside to improve our lawn, especially because that's when we're least willing to water.

A couple of our neighbors have complimented us on our effort. So at least they see we're trying. I think that counts for a lot in the end, even if it doesn't look dramatically better. We don't want to seem like slackers.

Greased Lightning!

So a fact about our systematic, hydromatic, ultramatic microwave and vent - it gets greasy! Sure, we swipe a dishcloth over the vent every day or two, but the grease just builds up from our various adventures with sautéing, simmering, and stewing.

One Sunday morning, when I realized a dishcloth and some detergent wasn't going to cut it, we decided it was time to take more dramatic action to avoid causing a grease fire in our kitchen. It was sort of a spontaneous choice, so please excuse me for forgetting the "before" pictures. But our in progress pics should give you some idea of now gross the vents were. Here's the naked microwave - vent removed from the top and (you can't see it in the picture) the bottom

After two baths in hot water and detergent, the water stopped resembling the color of raw sewage. The top vent didn't quite fit in the sink, so we moved it around periodically to soak the whole piece.

While the vents were off, we wiped off the permanent fixtures - dish soap was the clear winner here. That stuff does definitely cut through grease, just like the ads all say. Here's everything drying, all clean and shiny (relatively). It took almost all day before they were dry enough to reassemble.

Fortunately everything snapped back into place (we were nervous something would snap off or not fit or something). Now that it's a lot less dingy, I've had a much easier time wiping it down to keep it clean.

Who knows...maybe we'll be brave enough to clean the oven one day soon. It has a self-cleaning setting but we aren't quite convinced we won't set the house on fire.

(Excuse the short, rather random post. We've been spending almost every waking, non-working minute out in the yard, so I've been gathering up information to post on that. But the yard and garden spring clean-up is taking forever and I didn't want to keep you waiting longer than I already had. And anyway, I made up for the delay with some 1970s musical kitsch, so it's not all bad.)

Disposable luxury?

Our 32'' flat screen TV has gone to a better place. Or something. In any case, it isn't turning on anymore. 

We tried everything we could think of (mostly the obvious, like changing the batteries in the remote, attempting to turn it on with the button on the side, plugging it into a different outlet, but also taking it apart - being careful not to shock ourselves from the capacitor to see if anything looked obviously burned out). We thought it might have gotten hit by a power surge, but the DVD player and other devices on the same power strip work, so yeah, it just up and died.

At the time we bought it, this Sharp Aquos cost us a non-inconsequential sum. It lived in our living room for a while and then lived in the basement when we upgraded to a 46''.  D thinks it the capacitor and claims that these things are now being built so that they are cheap and "disposable."Fixing it is pretty much impossible, or at least not cost effective, especially since a new TV will only set us back $200 or so.

It pretty much sat unused in the basement because when I exercise I listen or watch through a portable device. But a few days ago I wanted to watch an old DVD and was shocked that our old faithful TV wouldn't turn on. Suddenly the realization hit that we are a one-TV household (we kinda were already, since we never actually used the TV, but it was there just in case). So the question now is - how much are we willing to pay, if anything , to have a TV in the basement that we will barely use. Of course now that it's not there, I have all kinds of reasons to want to use it, all sorts of movies that I want to watch while using the treadmill and elliptical that, while the TV was working (or while I thought it was working) I never wanted to watch.

First world problems...yeah, I know...

How Much It Costs To Heat Our Home

The Nest we got for Christmas is still useful, although it has some annoying quirks. The most prominent being that while they tout the amazing energy savings you will receive by owning one, they make it really annoying to actually get at the data. You can see how long the heat runs, for up to ten days, on the Nest, the iOS Nest app, and the nest.com website, but the data is always presented as pictures - which means there's no straightforward way to record the data yourself. Which you have to do because they only show the past ten days. The monthly email they send is similarly useless.

So what I have done since our oil tank was (finally) filled is keep a log of the Nest-reported heat usage and any notes for unusual activity for each day. Fifty-seven days later, we received 139.6 gallons of heating oil (at $4.29/gallon). Data analytics time!

First thing: get the outdoor temperature for each of those 57 days from wunderground.com. You can type in custom date ranges and get lots of information - I decide just to use the mean temperature. Which allows me to make this simple plot showing temperature and energy usage.

Date on the x-axis. Mean temperature (F) on the left y-axis and heating hours on the right y-axis.

There's clearly an inverse relationship between heating hours and mean outdoor temperature. I made a scatter plot with heating hours versus mean temperature (F) to show this relationship more clearly.

Because I took notes I know that the outlier you see at 44 degrees and 5.5 heating hours is because we turned up the thermostat to 70 when we were having some guests over. I was pleased to see that the trend between heating hours and temperature is linear - this makes it trivially easy to model energy usage related to outdoor temperature.

By model, I mean create an equation that shows the relationship between the outdoor temperature and how much heat we use. How do we make the equation? By sending the data in the plot above to the statistical software R and asking it to find the straight line (in blue) that fits the dots best. Which is: heating hours = (-0.17 * mean outdoor temperature (F)) + 10.43. This may look familiar if you remember back to your algebra lesson. This is a form of y = mx + b, the slope-intercept formula.

How is this useful? Well, if I know the temperature outside, I can predict how many heating hours the house needs. For example, on February 1st, the outdoor mean was 29 F and the equation predicts that we should use 5.5 hours of heat. We actually used 5.25 hours. 

Unfortunately, this model only holds up for our current temperature settings. We only have a few recorded days where we overrode the settings. Not enough to make a new model that incorporates new temperature settings. But with a few points, I can make an educated guess about how changing the thermostat inside changes our energy usage. We had two days where we increased the temperature  inside by 4 and 6 degrees. On those days we used 15% and 75% more heat. On the two days we decreased the temperature by 4 degrees we used 10% and 30% less heat. So, we will not save much by reducing the heat, but increasing the heat could cost us several hundred more a winter. 

Another reason I have been tracking our heat usage with the oil deliveries is to see how much fuel we use to heat the house, per hour. We got 139.6 gallons and ran the heat for a total of 216.5 hours. That works out to about 1 gallon heating the house for 1.5 hours. At $4.29/gallon that's a about $2.86 for an hour of heating. At our current temperature settings, that means that we will be spending about $1000 a year on heat.

According to this, it takes about seven gallons of oil to create one mmbtu of energy. At current oil prices, that means it takes over $28 to make one mmbtu. Natural gas costs only about $4 for an mmbtu. Which is a whopping price difference. $1000 of oil-powered heat might could be replaced with only about $200 of natural gas. The problem is the cost of conversion - since we have water-filled radiator heat, a new boiler, installed, would cost around $10,000. Which means that it would take over ten years to make the money back, at our current energy usage! Still, if we increase our indoor temperature to the US average of just over 70 F, then our payback timeframe would get closer to five years. Also, we could have a gas cooking range! This spring/summer we plan on getting some quotes on what the conversion would actually cost.