Category: House stuff

Posts related to the places I call home

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Kinda buggy

I have been spotting and squishing a number of these little bugs around the house this evening

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Not entirely sure where all these bugs are coming from or what to make of this sudden invasion. I squish a bunch, and then a few minutes later I see another one crawling around on the wall. They look a lot like the bug Dan squished at the SMCCHS meetup last week. He said it was a Formosan termite and that they were swarming this time of year. It looks like a bunch of them swarmed into the house this weekend.

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Except for my room and the bathroom, I haven’t noticed them anywhere else in the house yet. This will definitely require further investigation.

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5 years in the house

Wow, I can hardly believe that it’s been 5 years already since purchasing the house. No big failures so far, although the lawn could still use a lot of help. There’s a little bit of work that needs to be done, but nothing too major.

House definitely needs a good cleaning, both inside and out.

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Dryer maintenance tip

Clothes dryer just doesn’t seem to be drying things the way it used to? Clothes still feeling just a tiny bit damp after going through a dryer cycle?

Check the dryer vent where it exhausts to the outside. Maybe it’s all plugged up with several months (maybe even years) worth of lint like mine was.

It’ll also keep your dryer from becoming a fire hazard.

A bunch of dryer lint pulled from the outside vent and sitting on the ground.
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Sogginess

The rain stopped about an hour ago, so I ventured out in cold wet sandals to get some more pictures of the back yard.

This is where the swale drains into the ditch. Normally during even heavy rains, the water never gets very deep here. Maybe ankle deep at most. Today in the shallow spots farthest away from the ditch, I was in water up to mid-calf.

Swale meets Ditch. There is a lot of water in both.
Swale meets Ditch. There is a lot of water in both.

The ditch that runs beside the house is about 1m deep. Most of the time it never fills up, even during heavy rains. The 12+ hours of rain today filled it up and then some.

A ditch full of water
A ditch full of water

This is the other end of the yard, next to the neighbours. This is where the water was mid-calf deep (easily 30 cm).

Swale meets the neighbour's fence
Swale meets the neighbour’s fence

Looking down towards the ditch. It’s a lot of water to drain away.

Looking along the swale toward the ditch
Looking along the swale toward the ditch
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My first plumbing problem

There’s something strange going on with the tub in one of the bathrooms.
No hot water. Cold water comes out nice and strong like it’s supposed to, but when I turn on the hot water, there’s only a small dribble.

Hot water to the bathroom sink is fine. Hot water to every else in the house is fine. Just no hot water to the bath.

Not sure what’s going on, but I guess I’ll be learning a little bit about plumbing.