I had forgotten to change our HVAC air filter for way too many months, so this is what ours looked like when I pulled it out today. We had been having problems with our heater during the last month or so of the winter, in that it was taking way too long to heat our little house. I thought the worst and was expecting some expensive repair. Turns out, the filter was so clogged that it was inhibiting the airflow and making us cold during the nights. Change your filters folks. It’s time.
I know I haven’t posted anything about our chickens yet (like the fact that we got baby chicks, built a coop, and have been raising them for 8 weeks), but I figured I should start somewhere. Here’s a photo of our ladies enjoying a few handfuls of clover and grass I just ripped out of the yard.
. . . You have to go out in the rain and get stuff done, by yourself.
So yesterday I climbed up on the roof with my leaf blower and cleaned all of the muck out of the gutters all the way around. Then, I got up all of the rest of the leaves in the yard from the fall. I felt super accomplished.
Well, today we’re on a flood watch in Atlanta because of the 1-3 inches of rain we’re supposed to get. It sure is a good thing I cleaned out those gutters! The gutters were so clean and free-flowing that the water overflowed the clogged pipes I installed to channel the runoff away from my foundation. Wait, I didn’t install clogged pipes. They got that way when I blew leaves out of the gutters into them.
Since the ground pipes were clogged, they overflowed and flooded the foundation, filling my basement like I’ve never seen. I wouldn’t have seen it at all if my lovely wife hadn’t asked me to fetch something from down there. Thanks lovely wife for saving the day!
So. . . Now that I had water in the basement and clogged pipes and it’s Sunday night and the Grammy awards are on and I was gonna cook dinner and all those other plans, I put on my raincoat, forgot to change out of my nice jeans and shoes, and trudged outside to unclog and drain and play in the puddles. My neighbor let me borrow his sump pump so the basement was dry empty of water minutes after I stopped new water from entering.
The moral of this story: when you own a home, sometimes you have to change your plans and fix some stuff, by yourself. You can do it. Just go out there and get that stuff done.
The other moral of this story: don’t clean your gutters. It’ll apparently clog up everthing else.
Old House Crazy 