Bad Weather and Breakdowns
The rain started sometime before I woke up this morning, and I found the back window leaking again. The rain turned to snow before breakfast time. After breakfast I went out and swept off the ramp, but the snow was huge flakes and falling hard, and began building up again immediately.
I raked off part of the roof above the leaking window to slow the runoff and began examining the window closely again. This time I used a flashlight and mirror from the inside and spotted water seeping in around what looked like a screw point, but not where there should be a screw. Going out and working from the outside I found a faint scratch and at the inside edge a tiny hole with remains of a snapped off screw. Someone evidently once had something screwed down over the windows.
Being as everything was wet, I covered the area with tar to patch it for the winter, and it seems to be working well. It is amazing how much water can come in through such a tiny hole!
I then spent some time raking off the whole roof, plus the storage shed roof, the ramp again, and cleaned up the slush the plow pushed into the end of the driveway with a shovel. We got over 6 inches of very heavy wet snow, but it is melting off fast now.
Going in to warm up I found the kitchen sink drain had plugged. When the water level hadn't gone down during lunch, I bailed out the sinks and poured some CLR (acid) down the drain. Waiting another hour or so, nothing had changed, so I went and got a plunger, held the drain plug firmly down over one drain and used the plunger to suck back in the other. After a couple of tries, the drain cleared and ran fine - until it plugged again! In a few minutes I'll go out to the garage and get a snake.
The other day I went to order some more magnesium chloride to de-ice the ramp and found out it had gone up $20 on Nov. 1 to over $60! I finally found a 50 lb. bag at Wal-Mart for $50 and ordered that. I was notified it had been delivered on Saturday. There was no sign of it anywhere. Wal-Mart said online to wait 3 days, so I did and yesterday a neighbor I had never met who lived on a completely different road knocked on our door and said it had been delivered to his house! His address is nothing like ours! So we finally got that last night.
Hopefully nothing else goes wrong today! I'm writing this and having a cup of coffee. This afternoon I hope to advertise the snow tires and wheels off the Jeep for sale so we can get some cash to buy new snow tires for the Dodge. It looks like winter is coming early this year.
I raked off part of the roof above the leaking window to slow the runoff and began examining the window closely again. This time I used a flashlight and mirror from the inside and spotted water seeping in around what looked like a screw point, but not where there should be a screw. Going out and working from the outside I found a faint scratch and at the inside edge a tiny hole with remains of a snapped off screw. Someone evidently once had something screwed down over the windows.
Being as everything was wet, I covered the area with tar to patch it for the winter, and it seems to be working well. It is amazing how much water can come in through such a tiny hole!
I then spent some time raking off the whole roof, plus the storage shed roof, the ramp again, and cleaned up the slush the plow pushed into the end of the driveway with a shovel. We got over 6 inches of very heavy wet snow, but it is melting off fast now.
Going in to warm up I found the kitchen sink drain had plugged. When the water level hadn't gone down during lunch, I bailed out the sinks and poured some CLR (acid) down the drain. Waiting another hour or so, nothing had changed, so I went and got a plunger, held the drain plug firmly down over one drain and used the plunger to suck back in the other. After a couple of tries, the drain cleared and ran fine - until it plugged again! In a few minutes I'll go out to the garage and get a snake.
The other day I went to order some more magnesium chloride to de-ice the ramp and found out it had gone up $20 on Nov. 1 to over $60! I finally found a 50 lb. bag at Wal-Mart for $50 and ordered that. I was notified it had been delivered on Saturday. There was no sign of it anywhere. Wal-Mart said online to wait 3 days, so I did and yesterday a neighbor I had never met who lived on a completely different road knocked on our door and said it had been delivered to his house! His address is nothing like ours! So we finally got that last night.
Hopefully nothing else goes wrong today! I'm writing this and having a cup of coffee. This afternoon I hope to advertise the snow tires and wheels off the Jeep for sale so we can get some cash to buy new snow tires for the Dodge. It looks like winter is coming early this year.
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