Texting with Bob, we both had the same idea: with the condensate line now thawed and seemingly open – it was a good test to blow some compressed air down the line, to dislodge anything still stuck in there… and to also confirm that the line was open/free.
While I had this setup upstairs, Liz was down in the basement, watching the end of the PVC pipe.
A view of what we call “the wagon wheel,” the decorative joists that make up the base of the turret.
After a demo session a long while back – Bob noticed that the ceiling joists were sagging considerably. And so we put up a set of supports to brace the ceiling, temporarily.
OSCA, look away. Just… don’t look.
The second floor furnace appeared to be backing up. The condensate line was spilling over a bit, and the theory we had was that the main condensate line was frozen somewhere. The condensate line runs along our North wall, and our guess was that it froze somewhere along that wall in the basement.
I’ve been stressing a bit about this cleanup. The drywall we need to move is 10′ long, 5/8″ thick, and is markedly heavier than your typically drywall (because it’s soundproof drywall).
At some earlier point, I had moved a lot of things we had upstairs down to the basement. Space is a premium at our house, and we’re constantly moving things from one place to another – to make temporary room.
Spent a little time today, reorganizing the basement area.
For most of last week, Liz and I were both mostly just recuperating from Covid. Not much of anything, other than a lot of coughing and a lot of sitting in bed, resting.
This week, we started to get a bit more energy. We’re still coughing more than makes sense, but have been going about doing a little house work over the holidays.
It’s incredible to see the change, and to look back on photos of what things were like when Liz was experimenting incessantly.
While we were in Michigan, Bob was able to install both windows in our bedroom. It’s a bit mind-boggling to me, when I imagine how much he must have had to go up/down the scaffold for this – but we arrived home to see our bedroom in an entirely new light – quite literally so.
It’s like we left a time capsule for ourselves. What a lovely converage of the past and present.
Today, we started to prep the exterior – and also removed the AC unit which was embedded into the foam insulation. If all goes well, we’ll be looking to install two newer windows into this space.
Liz is a great researcher, and has a methodical process when she’s trying to figure something out. And as much as I tried to follow her summaries and descriptions, I was not able to do so today.
Suffice it to say, there’s an awful lot of testing going on. I kept up with most of it for a while, but I think at this point… I’m mostly just nodding and smiling politely.
I am not a good chronicler of all the stain-related experiments that Liz has undertaken. I’ve tried to keep up with all her variations, but there are times it gets pretty confusing to me.
Liz has so many different tests, with so many different products… I’m having a hard time keeping it all straight. When she gives me a recap of what she’s done, I tend to have to ask a lot of basic questions, to try to catch up.
It’s a lot of testing, it’s a lot of variations. It’s all kinds of impressive.