All Caught Up...

February 21, 2010
Peoria, AZ

Wow, I didn't realize how long it's been since the blog has been updated. Of course, since we're not traveling, that's not necessarily a bad thing. On the other hand, we've had some interesting stuff going on over the past two weeks so here goes.

First and foremost, we completed the painting project. Woo-Hoo! Two coats of paint, and the house looks pretty good, if I do say so myself. As with most painting projects, the devil is in the details. In this case, it was all in the preparation. I'm so glad I found our commercial-level airless paint sprayer as a reconditioned "special" at Home Depot several years ago. Once all the masking was done, I was able to spray each coat (three sides of the house - we held off on the rear for a separate phase since we have work to do on the patio before we paint) in under four hours. I had to do a lot of masking since I'm not as adept and practiced as the professionals in using a hand-held block and not getting overspray. At a cost of around $750 for paint and supplies, we're at about 35-50% of what it would cost to have pros come in and do it. Not bad for a retiree on a budget. Of course, our friend Mary Ann had her house done last week and it took three guys two days to get the whole thing done. It took me, with Geri's help managing the ladder work, two+ weeks. Of course, we had the time so, overall, we're pretty happy with the results. Painting wrapped up last Wednesday and we washed all the screens (Geri) and windows (me) on Friday.

Thursday was a great change of pace. I got to work on the coach for a change! I did the annual maintenance on the furnace and had a bad float switch replaced. Unlike most RVs that have forced hot air heat using a propane burner, ours has a hydronic heating system using a diesel-fired burner, just like a residential furnace using oil as fuel. The burner heats a hot water tank for domestic use and there's a coil inside that heats a fluid that's pumped to all the heat exchangers throughout the coach (3 zones). It's pretty neat in that there's a separate coil that circulates engine coolant so we always have hot water after a day's drive. As a bonus, we can use the furnace to warm up the engine for easier starting on cold mornings (this came in handy when we were in Florida last month - brrrr!).

In any event, just like a household furnace, there's an annual maintenance routine that needs to be done. The burner nozzle gets changed, the combustion chamber gets cleaned of any soot and checked for cracks, the igniting electrodes' gap is checked and set, and a small fuel filter is changed out. It's not difficult, costly (~$30 in parts), or time-consuming (~1 hour once you've done it a time or two). This year's maintenance was a little different, since a float switch needed to be replaced. The furnace uses an electronic control system to manage the ignition and burn processes, control the various pumps for the zones, and provide safeguards. One key item is that it'll shut down if the boiler fluid level is too low. Fortunately, this doesn't happen too often. Unfortunately, the float switches tend to go bad; we've had our switch replaced once several years ago, and it failed again last June on our way to Alaska. Although it was easy to bypass the switch and get it operating again, I knew that I eventually wanted to get it fixed. I'm glad I waited, since Roger Berke, one of the best "roving" hydronic heating service providers, found a new solid-state sensor that should be much less likely to fail. I'd made arrangements to have him come out while he was in the Phoenix area, and we worked together to change out the switch. He also gave the burner and chamber a once-over, verifying that we're in good shape at this point.

In spite of all the projects going on, we have been able to squeeze in a bit of fun. Friday night, we caught up with some colleagues (Pat, Sharon, and Leslie) from my Aetna days that I haven't seen since 1993. We reconnected via Facebook, which is actually turning out to be a reasonably good communication tool. Pat and Sharon were in town visiting with Leslie and spending some time with family they brought along from Connecticut. We met up at an interesting "burgers and beer" joint, Greasewood Flat, over in North Scottsdale and had a great time catching up.

Of course, the other thing we had going on was our annual "celebration week": Valentine's Day on the 14th, our anniversary on the 16th, and Geri's birthday on the 17th. We had cards galore, Geri got a Kindle, we had a great dinner with our friends Ana and Larry (Chateaubriand and Penfolds Grange - how can you go wrong?) and their pups, Molly and Tsunami, and generally enjoyed the idea that we made it 30 years. I still own her a lobster dinner since we ended up ordering pizza on our anniversary due to the painting project.

So, we took advantage of the break in the El Niño weather pattern to get a lot of things done, and now we're in for a couple of "showery" days. No matter - plenty of "rainy day" projects like filing the taxes (refund time - Woo-Hoo!), paying bills, updating the blog, etc. This week, we'll probably wrap up painting the rear of the house (it's just the body color since the trim is all done), so I'll be able to put all the painting equipment away.