Ruminatorial

Rodent Update

So far, the rodent is proving too smart for me. But I haven't found any new piles of mouse droppings, so perhaps he moved out. What would inspire a mouse to move out, you ask? Maybe he saw the traps and thought, "oh man, I was hoping for a challenge, this guy is too lame, I'm going next door where I'll have cats to mock and life will be exciting."

Hey, it could happen!

On another note, when I got home Monday, the landlord was waiting for me. That kind of thing makes me nervous. He said he needed to talk to me, and that he hated to be the bearer of bad news. That's the kind of thing that really makes me nervous! Turns out the boiler for the radiator heat in my house was shooting flames out sideways, rather than the preferable and customary upwards across the heat exchanger. So he'd shut it off and will bring in a boiler expert of some kind to look at it. That made for a rather cool couple of nights until I left to visit Mom for Thanksgiving.

When I got back home Friday night, the heat was on. Yay! Although the house was still rather cool, I figured the heat had just been reactivated and it would warm up. Nope! Come morning the radiators were still barely warm to the touch, and the house was quite cold. So I wandered into the basement with a flashlight to take a look. The solution to the "flames shooting sideways" had been to crank the gas nozzle 3/4 closed, meaning not much heat was being generated. I carefully opened the valve to get maximum heat without letting any of the flame out of its proper place, and a few hours later my house is feeling properly warm again.

It would be nice to have that crappy old boiler replaced with a new high efficiency model, but I doubt the landlord will spring for it. C'est la vie.

posted by Jeff @ 11:05 PM