Erica's no friend of mine

This is what Michael came home to last night. Ahh, the joys of the first week of school.

So, today I went to the Crafty Beaver to pick up something to get rid of stupid erica. Upon coming home, and pulling into the driveway, one of our neighbors came over to ask if I want to know what to use to get rid of the spray paint. Heck yea I do!

He said Gum out Carb cleaner works on silver spray paint. Who knew.

So now I gotta run to the auto parts store. Hoping I get to post a clean garage door in the near future.

On a pretty funny (and not so clean) note, I was telling my co-worker that we got tagged, and also the garage next to us got tagged with Bella. So, the guy googles Erica Bella. Who knew we had a celebrity in our midst...

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0068610/

The fun continues...

We have been working very hard on the attic - and we'll post about it soon.

In the meantime, I'd thought I'd share what happened last night.

We took a break from the work around 7 for a BBQ. After said BBQ, we decided we were just too tired to continue, even though it was probably only 70 degrees in the attic due to the wonderful 60 degree day August 1st blessed us with.

So, Michael goes to close up the attic, (we have an insane pulley system we'll have to show you all later) and all of a sudden, the ladder (probably built sometime in the 40's) starts retreating up crooked. CRAP. There's a box blocking it's path to push it up, and now it's gone of the track. So, up Michael goes on the crooked ladder to investigate, with me wincing each step he makes.

He gets up there, and says, Ahh, I see the problem, and KABOOM - The ladder (which still attached) goes crashing off the stairs and into the wall, of course shattering the light hanging on the basement stairs.

So, there we stood, me on the main floor, Michael stuck 15 feet higher in the attic, and a slight panic starts, as we realize this could be very very bad.

Somehow, we get the ladder pulled back up, and realize both sides of the track are split. Double crap! He somehow gets it back on track, but this will be a priority to fix since we'll be using this oooold ladder a lot, since it's our only access to the furnace, er, I mean attic.

Yea, the camera is still in the attic, so I can't post any pictures of all this fun, but, stay tuned...

What NOT to do to a Chicago Bungalow

Today, I bring everyone a new series titled "What not to do to a bungalow". Lately, we've been driving around, and just cringe when we see what could have been a beautiful house, but the owners have destroyed it by either adding what they think looks good (usually doesn't) or hiring people or doing work themselves that they clearly shouldn't be doing.

So, Part 1 of this series will start with our own Happy Bungalow. I'm not sure what the PO (previous owners) were thinking, but they sure have left us cussing them out.

Do not use a gray silicone-like material to patch tuckpointing. It looks like crap, and causes me to frown. Also, when painting outside, mask off area's to be painted and try to be careful. Little drips of white paint all over the red face brick doesn't look cool.



When you actually do the right thing and use mortar for patching the tuckpointing, USE THE SAME COLOR as the rest of the mortar! No, pink is not red.



When you have beautiful wood crown molding and beams in your bungalow, do NOT paint them.

Well folks, there is part 1 in our upcoming series.

Also, I must mention that last night, Sidney discovered fireflies. For awhile we were convinced Sid is not a cat, but last night proved us wrong. He went straight into hunt mode, and was running around the yard like crazy. Turns out, we have a cat!

Posting Slackage...

Yea, we've been slacking on the posts. We know...

So - the latest bungalow news is our chimney is fixed! I was pretty shocked, but the guys from Kingsborough Chimney came out yesterday to do the entire re-liner job.... with all that snow on the roof... in the freezing cold!

Yea, these guys rock. They did a damn good job. Even insulated the whole flu area from the water heater. One more thing to check mark off our project list.

I must admit, I never, in a million years thought I'd be happy about a chimney repair. Sad, I know.

Oh yea, this week we were introduced to the fun of Dance Dance Revolution... Hottest Party 2 for the Wii. I'm sure our neighbors next door, and all the dog walkers will be pretty amused watching us through the front windows. Hey, we aim to entertain... I have to try to sneak a video of Mike doing DDR... ha.

The continuing saga of the sump pump

Hello everyone!

I have been accused by many of being remiss in my duties to post to the Happy Bungalow Blog so I am taking this opportunity to set things right and do my part. If I can offer any excuse at all it would be that I have been working on the Happy Bungalow so much to the extent that I didn't have time to do the posts to the blog.

So, there may be some retroactive posting going on here in the future as I am behind at least one or two posts. However, I thought I would start with the most recent events in a effort to at least get things in perspective and I can fill in the back story later.

So, just to catch everyone up, we have been experiencing some flooding issues with the sump and the floor drains in the basement. These issues surfaced when we had a sudden snow melt when temperatures rocketed towards 50 degrees in a matter of hours. The 2 feet of snow on the ground melted and the Chicago sewer system became over loaded and flooding was prevalent in our area. Northern parts of Albany Park reported flooding and for the first time since we have acquired the Happy Bungalow I began to see some issues with the drains.

This all started on the 26th of December and has been continuing since. Now, I have a lot of backfill about that time period but in synopsis: I had noticed that the drains in the basement seemed full and they began to back up on the basement floor. At this time a ton of water was pouring into our sump and we attributed this to a broken drain tile pipe that we recently had to clear out using a power rod and a rather expensive but very good plumbing outfit.

To make a long story short, I re-routed the sump pump line directly into the catch basin in the back because the theory was that due to the broken drain tile, the water that the sump was pumping into the gutter line was draining back into the sump and simply being recirculated. This caused the pump to run every 4 to 5 minutes for hours on end when there was a lot of water.

This kept us up nights, literally (more on that later) and so eventually I had to reroute the line just to deal with the flooding. Basically I bypassed the current sump pump pipe system and ran PVC directly to the catch basin. I left myself an out and installed a couple of valves on the output in case I needed to reroute the water elsewhere or go to a plan B in a hurry.

This worked for a little while until the temperature dropped to well below freezing.

Heather's Uncle Joe had been by to see the place for the first time since we moved in along with Judy and her children. While Heather was showing them around I had shown Joe the latest issues to get his take on things. He told me he thought I was on the right track but that the current configuration of the sump line was going to be in danger of freezing. Joe is a wise man when it comes to Geology, water and old houses and despite his sagely advice, I never did get around to rerouting the line into a more freeze friendly configuration.

Frankly, in the back of my mind, I knew I was headed for a fall here but I was so glad that this all the work I had done had stopped the sump pump from running every 5 minutes that I just reveled in my temporary success a little too long and never got around to what I should have done in the first place. I allowed myself to get lulled into a false sense of security.

So, finally after about a week, the temperature dropped drastically. I had a late night rehearsal with the fusion project I recently started and I came back home and finally got to bed around 12 midnight. I must admit, when I walked into the kitchen from the garage that I detected a decidedly funky smell.

We had had some funky smells from the drains since our last back up incident so I figured it was more of the same and plugged the drains in the kitchen and went to bed.

I awoke at 3 in the morning from an awful nightmare that I can't remember. However, I can tell you this: It was perhaps the most fortuitous nightmares I have had to date. Here is why: I woke up, literally sat straight up in bed and noticed that the sump was running. It wasn't cycling on and off, it was just running straight.

I jumped out of bed and ran down to check it and was greeted with the most awful smell of sewage. Yeah, that is what I call a nice wake up call at 3 in the morning.

The sump pump was running full bore and the water in the sump was steaming. Yes dear reader, steaming. The pump had been running so long that it was in the process of overheating and melting down. It had been dissipating it's heat into the surrounding water and this had heated the water to the point of evaporation.

I quickly unplugged the sump pump and shut it down before it burned out. I tried the backup that I installed but this pump did the same thing. It would run but it would not clear the sump pit.

Let me tell you, no man has ever felt so alone than when he realizes that he has sewage draining into his sump pit and the sump line is frozen. You can only imagine how much I had wished I re-routed that line before everything froze.

Fortunately, due to last weekends adventures, I had an arsenal of pumps ready to go. So, I choked back the urge to vomit and threw the submersible utility pump in the sump, ran the drain hose into the utility sink and cleared the sump to prevent any flooding.

I was alright for now. The lines were frozen but at least I had a way to drain the sump. It might mean staying up all night again but at least I would ward off the flooding. Really, I had just solved problem 1: the frozen sump line.

Problem 2 was a little more complex: sewage back up in the sump. Why was this happening and why now? Before it was just water...why sewage? It wasn't even raining or snowing and we didn't have a melt situation on our hands.

Here is what the water looked like in the sump:




Yes, that's gray water, not exactly what you want to see in your basement floor drains.

So, I kept pumping it out and eventually it stopped being so gray. Although, in this picture, you can see how its running out of one of the drain tiles:



Ok, the auto focus got messed up on this shot, but you get the idea. Trust me, you don't really want to see this in too much clarity anyway.

So, I spend the rest of the night pumping out the sump pit every 1/2 hour and place a call to the city to have them look at the storm drains. My plan at this point is to ride out the flooding downstairs with the pumps on hand until Home Depot or the Crafty Beaver opens so I can buy some more PVC and re-route the sump line AGAIN.

In the meanwhile, I decide that maybe I can do something about the frozen sump line. I get Heather's hair dryer and a microphone stand and some packing tape and start to try and jet hot air on the sump line to melt the ice. Check out my makeshift contraption:



My musician friends will love this: this is how you close mike a frozen sump line. HA! Sorry, it was the only bit of humor I could muster at 4 am when the temperature was a balmy 4 degrees. And so I began the hopeless task of thawing the pvc line. I moved the hair dryer every 15 to 30 minutes. I would try occasionally to pump water through the line but it remained frozen.

I kept this up throughout the night until morning when I gave up and decided: "to heck with this, I will just rebuild the line with a downward slope like Uncle Joe advised."

So, the Water department shows up at 8:30am to check the sewers and they tell me that everything is fine on the city's side and that what I need is to have the drains power rodded out from the house to the street. Around 9 or so I call Big Mike's plumbing and they promise to come out and power rod the drains.


Well, Big Mike came out and I showed them the whole deal, the catch basin, the sump, the drains and the clean out in the front. Big Mike decided we should power rod towards the street through the clean out. After digging out the clean out cap out of the frozen ground they rodded the drains out and we achieved drain nirvanah once agian.

The sump stopped backing up with sewage, the nasty smells went away and the drains in the basement floor went back to normal water levels and stopped backing up. Thank heavens.

So, that was it, the drain on the way to the street was clogged with tree roots and Big Mike rodded them out. He explained that the tree roots grow into the clay pipe that comprises the drain tile system. You heard me sports fans: the tree roots grow through the clay pipe. Think of it like a chia pet in reverse. Those trees are so hungry for water that the roots seek any source of water they can find.

Yep, as gross as it is, they tap that sewer pipe (easy fellas, it's not that kind of tapping) and they just move into the pipe and take it over. After awhile, they restrict the flow of....er....water...and you have backup hell.

So, for now, problem solved. I have some more on how I resolved the whole frozen sump line issue but we have to sign off for now. Heather's yelling about watching some BSG.

Hope you found this entertaining - see you at the next post!

Michael

First Bungalow Guests

Tonight, we have our friends Mark and Tina coming to stay with us for a few days. They are our first official guests!

The good news is that the house doesn't smell like we had a flood. My Uncle Joe lent us his dehumidifier, and we think it's really helped. Just in case, we bought 4 gallons of bleach to scrub the basement with, so that should emit a nice smell for them... but it's better than a mold smell and we need to clean up any bacteria the city of Chicago graced us with. We made the smart choice of stocking up on over a case of wine, that way, they'll never even notice any smell.

Last night Mike started the task of sawing holes in the subfloor to locate the drain giving us trouble. More good news... we have yet to find any water damage. We think we know the route the water took, so we should just be able to remove that portion of the floor until we're ready for total demolition. We'll post some pictures soon.

Crapola

Got a new tune in my head.... I fought the water and the water won.... I fought the water and the.... water won.

Blah.

After the last post, Michael went back to HD 3 more times. The auto switch for the pump didn't work out, and they didn't have anything else that would work. We did go ahead and rig up a system we thought would work, I'm not posting it here since it "may" officially be a no-no... and we monitored the situation for about 2 1/2 hours. It seemed like it was working fine, and my idea was to take a nap for ONLY 45 minutes then check it again. So, I set the alarm for 45 min, came down, and there was water everywhere. We're now back on shifts. I still proclaim the fact that if either one of us was down here, we wouldn't have noticed until it was too late, since the water came from a totally different part of the basement. We would have still been in the laundry room, thinking we were fine. But, we're not fine, and again, I'm up at 1:30. And, I guess this one is kind of my fault. Again, blah.

One cool thing, Mike did build a new route to get the sump water to bypass the cracked drainage tile. It's temporary, but a lot better than what we were dealing with before.

And, the rain has officially changed to snow, so things may be looking up for us.

Space Madness (2008... Go Away!!!)

I title this post Space Madness, because I'm reminded of the Ren and Stimpy episode, where Ren has completely lost his mind while in space. Stimpy comes across Ren, who's posting his captain's log about his time in their space ship (of course, since it's the future, the log is being sucked from his brain). Anyway, I come downstairs to see Michael still awake, and writing a 14 page log, each page filled top to bottom, monitoring our water situation at 5:30 am. Oh wait, let me backup...

I believe I last posted on Tuesday. By Tuesday night I had come down with the flu. It was not fun. Michael had an after work party, and I had to call him to come home and bring me medicine. Since I was so sick and achy, I couldn't sleep, it was just a lot of moaning and groaning, not the good kind either, and a lot of stomach pain. However, around 2 am, Michael woke up, sat straight up in bed, and made a bee line to the bathroom. Seems we both have the flu. Drat.

Anyway, this continued to Thursday, Xmas morning. I was still sick, but Mike was actually feeling better. (He was feeling so much better, that he installed the Watchdog sump backup system. Of course, I slept through the whole thing. I really would have helped... Really...) But, I knew I couldn't make it to his mom's for Xmas, I felt terrible for missing it, but would have felt more terrible had I infected everyone.

So, Mike's leaving to go to her house, when he comes back in 20 minutes later. It seems, when he drove me to Firestone to retrieve my car after they replaced my flat tire, on his way driving home, he got a flat tire. So, his car is stuck in the garage, without any room to fix the flat. And it's a complete sheet of ice in the driveway, so he can't fix it there. Drat. He'll have to use my car. Oh, did I mention my car was in the street stuck in the ice and snow? Yea... So, after he was gone for about 45 minutes, I thought it odd since he said he'd be right back. I look outside, and see him shoveling. I get dressed, go out, and help him get out of the space. it seems all is right in the world again. Ha.

Friday we get up, I'm feeling remarkably better, and the chimney guys come bright and early at 9am. It's not such good news. We need a new liner, they show us a video where the whole chimney is collapsing upon itself, and I'm ready to throw up. Well, also, they tell us we need to rebuild both chimney's top 5 layers, since the bricks are worn away, and moisture is getting in. I'm not even writing down that quote...

So, now, after my minor meltdown, we're getting ready for his Dad to come over to celebrate Xmas. We were going to show him, his wife Kim, and her kids the house, and then go out for dinner. Meanwhile, it has gone from freezing to about 50 degrees outside, and since we have about 1 1/2 feet of snow on the ground, roof, etc, that can't bode well. As we're giving them the tour around 5pm, we get to the basement, where we see the storm drain overflowing. I've mentioned this drain in the past. It's saved our asses before, and is not being nice to us now. We then called our insurance guy, to add flood coverage before something happens, but we're told there's a freeze in Illinois, and we can't add anything for at least a week. Also, it seems Albany park is in the news again, flooding. Shocking! So, Mike tried a bunch of different things, and finally we decided we can't leave, and off he headed to home depot. As much as we NEED home depot, I have grown to hate that place. Anyways, we order takeout, and while he's at HD, I went to Michael's FAVORITE place in the world, Smoque BBQ, to get takeout for everyone. Seems we're having dinner at home. Well, Mike came back with a pump, and started by pumping the water from the drain into the sump pit. Yea, not working. Still coming in. Ok, where the hell can we put the water where it won't come back? That's easy, in the alley. Sure, it's not legal, but what the heck do you do in this situation?

Anyways,the water level is dropping, however, once the pump is turned off, the water comes back in. Oh, and it has started to rain. According to Michael's log, that started around 2:13. He's turning into Mr. Skilling, he's tracking the lightning and thunder too. I told you, space madness...

Anyways, I went to bed at about 1:30, I told him to wake me in an hour, we were going to do shifts, but he stayed up. During his SM time, he kept a log of everything that he had done, and what was happening with the water. He made some trenches outside in the ice, all around the house, so the water would funnel into the storm drain. Oh, he also found the storm drain under all the snow had searched for previously, and shoveled that out for the water to flow into. (Log time 2:49am)

So, when I woke up at 5:30, I couldn't believe he was still down here. I told him to go to bed, and now I'm sitting in the basement, on the stairs, monitoring the situation. The rain just stopped, but according to the forecast, not for long. In the past 1/2 hour, the pump actually started running dry (per the log, this hasn't happened in 3 1/2 hours) so I turned it off, and I'm keeping an eye on the water level. I'm not sure if he expects me to keep this log every minute, but I'm not. I don't want to get the SPACE MADNESS!!!

Update at 11:25am. Now it's pouring, and it's getting worse. Yikes. Mike just left to get another pump from home depot. We talked to our 2 neighbors, next door is ok, but the house next to them is badly flooded. This poor older couple is bailing buckets of water every 30 seconds. Mike is getting them a pump too. And, the rain isn't letting up... We think 2 pumps should handle the upcoming storm (we hope)! At least the drain is close to the sump pit, and I'm just sweeping the water into it. Seems to help. We're at least at a steady level now.





Update 3pm:
That Edwin Starr song keep going through my head.... Water... huuh .. What is it good for? Absolutely Nothing! Say it again!

That is how that song goes, right? Well, Mike came back with the pump, and it was dead. LOL. So, he went back and got another one, after fighting to exchange it. Now, we have 2 pumps running, and it's still backing up. So, guess where Mike just went off to? Yep. HD. I need to buy stock in that place.

So, now, we're getting an automatic switch to turn on and off the more powerful pump, so we don't have to be up all night again. Oh, also, he's going to rebuild the sump pump line, to bypass the cracked drainage tile. We'll basically have to dance the limbo if we want to use the back stairs, but, oh well. Oh, he's also stopping to get some ice cream, because, well, dammit - we need some ice cream...

Tonight we had plans to go to Everest with all our cousins. It was going to be a wonderful dinner, with wonderful company. Instead, we've basically spent the equivalent, if not more, on the latest bungalow adventure. Bummer.

Project #29

Last night, we picked up my car from Firestone. Other than the 2 new tires, it's basically in the same shape as when I brought it in. They may have made the steering wheel a little worse, but they swear the car is aligned straight. I'm tired of fighting, so I'm letting it be. At least the window is in, and the door locks work.

After that, we stopped over at the Home Depot since we found our 10% coupon. We bought the Watchdog Sump Pump backup system. I have no idea when we're going to attempt this install, but it's going to be pretty soon. Once it warms up, there is going to be a ton of water, with all this melted snow. Speaking of which, there's currently a blizzard outside. Since Michael is working late, I may attempt using the snow blower myself.

So, I'm going to have to assume the Chimney guys are going to cancel today. It's pretty windy, and I can't see them climbing on the roof in this weather. Oh, and besides, the chimney cap is currently frozen to the sidewalk. Michael told me to put it in the garage weeks ago, before the snow, but did I listen? Nope. I figured, hell - the thing sits outside when it's on the roof, why put it inside now? Yea, I should have listened...

Fun with cars

We have made the determination that my car does not like attending any Jewish Holiday events at Aunt Hazel's. First, came the flat tire on the way to Passover a couple of years ago. That was a bummer, but I missed the portion of the four questions, and I was very very sad about that.

Now, the flat tire on the way from the Hanukkah party. In a snow storm. We were able to limp it to a gas station, fill it up, and all seemed happy in the world. Until this morning, when we went to snow blow the driveway, and came upon the flat tire again.

So, poor Michael had to change to the spare in the actual temperature of -6. Well, -25 if you include the windchill, but -6 sounds bad enough.

Get to Firestone, order the 2 tires, and I ask them to throw in an alignment. They tell us it will take 2 hours, so we decide to be brave and walk over to the Abbey Pub for some lunch and bloody mary's. That was the longest 3 block walk of my life. Freaking freezing outside. After some lunch, we walk back and it's been 2 hours.

The car isn't done. This is where the trouble started... turns out, they did 2 alignments, and the car still won't drive straight. They assure us it's straight, but it's still pulling, so we're watching them stand around the car, literally scratching their heads. Another 2 hours later, they're still working on it. At this point, I'm ready to tell them to forget it, give me a refund, and we'll go. We've been here for 4 hours, I'm tired, and my entire afternoon of watching Battlestar Galactica and eating chili has been ruined.

So, we're standing by the glass door, waiting to tell them the news, when the guy comes out to inform us the drivers side window has just fallen out. Yep, fell OUT. It didn't break (pfew), but they're trying to get it back in. That took another 45 minutes.

The manager tells us we're done, the others in the waiting room actually cheer for us, and we're off. We pull out and the car is PULLING to the right (previously, it had been slightly misaligned to the left). I mean, you let go of the steering wheel, and it veers hard to the right. No way can this be safe, so we turn around and go back.

The manager tells us he'd like his other mechanic to look at it tomorrow. Can we bring it back? Well, let's just go home, grab another car, and leave it tonight. Ok - he agreed, and promised to stay there to wait for us.

Upon getting into the car, Mike opens the drivers side door, and tries to unlock the auto lock on the door. Nope. Doesn't work now. Sigh.....................

Well, the car is now in the garage, we're happily home, but I'm afraid what will await me tomorrow.

And AGAIN!!!

All night long, we listened to the sound of the valve on the sump pump. Shooop... blickity blickity blooop kathunk. Over and over. And over. About every few minutes.

We seem to have a problem. Well, several actually.

1. The valve is busted. It's still sort of working, but by the sound of it, it's getting worse.

2. We have a swimming pool on the side of our house. Maybe that would be a good thing in the summer, but when it's -10, not so much.

The pipe where the sump pump drains into on the outside of the house seems to be clogged. Or busted. Or broken. The water was gushing everywhere.















First order of business was to replace the valve. I anticipated for this to be a major hassle, which would result in water everywhere, but of course Michael knew what he was doing, and task 1 was accomplished quite quickly.




The other problem, you know, the Sunnyside pond, wasn't as easy.




















Because it was SO darn cold out, the water was freezing pretty instantly. It was overflowing out of the pipe, gushing in the front, going under the fence, gushing in the back, and we had ice everywhere. But, I was more worried about water everywhere in the basement. We decided if we built a trench, all the water would flow into it, seep into the ground, and that would easily buy us some time to figure out how to fix the problem. Well, here's the trench, and I have to say, it wasn't draining anywhere. Mike got a nice workout though!



I'm sure you can guess the next thing we did. www.angieslist.com

Big Mike's Sewer and Plumbing. You gotta love a place that's called Big Mike's. They have an A rating, so we gave them a call. Mike is the bomb. He's the best. He showed up within a couple hours, rooted out the pipe, and was reasonably priced.

Of course, we seem to have a bigger problem, something about a cracked pipe, or something. When he was talking about the "bigger problem", I kind of went to my happy place, so I wasn't quite listening. Sounds like we have a couple options, nothing urgent right now. We'll call them back in the spring for them to take some pictures.

Yep.

Here we go again

Ahhh, the Happy Bungalow in the snow. How pretty.

But what's this on the ground?? Hmmm.


I look up and see this -


Mean bungalow, spitting the chimney cap onto the ground. The question is... did the wind do it, or do we have a new pet?

So, I've started calling around Chimney places I've found on Angies List. I found one I liked, but they can't come out until 12/22. Oh well. And, I'm still waiting for Mike to post about this exact same Chimney, and what we found inside of it. Although, if the chimney cap was loose this whole time, that would explain it. Come on Michael! We're all waiting!!

So, we'll need to have the company do a cleaning, and I KNOW they are going to tell us we need a new liner. Good times...

Warranty Schmorranty

Why is it that nothing is ever free? You'd think if you have a warranty for something, they replace that item for free, and that's that.

Nope.

So, we have this homeowners warranty for the bungalow, which luckily we had added to the contract by the sellers. The company makes it sound wonderful... Buy this warranty, and if anything ever goes wrong, you simply pay the $60 service call fee, and they replace or fix the broken item. Sounds easy, right?

Buried in the small print, is a heck of a lot of small print. One item being, if something breaks, they'll replace it, but they won't take the broken item away. If we want them to, we have to pay. $50. Um, no. I have faith in the Chicago junk guys that someone will be our junk fairy this week, and haul it away. But that meant Mike had to carry it out to the alley. We'll see if someone takes it, or the city may be charging us a nice fee for the fact we just left it in the alley.

Another item in the small print... they'll replace a covered item, but if the water/gas/whatever line they are connecting to is not up to Chicago's code, they can not do the work until they bring those items up to code, for which we have to pay for. Yea, the gas and water line weren't up to code, shocking huh?

All in all, it wasn't too expensive. Less expensive than if we didn't have the warranty, but more than we wanted to pay. But, we do have hot water now.

One of the things we knew about the house when we bought it was the first thing we needed to do was replace the hot water heater. We applied to get the bungalow certified, which did happen, and one of the perks is we get access to grant money. So, we were planning to get a tankless hot water system. But, the city of Chicago struck again, and they ran out of grant money... hence, the old water heater exploded since we never replaced it.

I'll let Michael blog about the bungalow certification later. Fun stuff...

Um, what part of "The bungalow is not a boat!" don't you understand?

I'm asking that question to the bungalow gods on this bright and early morning at 4:30am on Black Friday.

There we were, sleeping peacefully when I realized I was in a half asleep, half awake state. Yes, there's a new noise in the bungalow, but I'm kind of dreaming so not paying much attention. I know it can't be the cat, since he's next to me... Yea, I'll investigate later. I'm tired.

Later came when Mike popped out of bed, and ran out of the room. The noise? That would be the noise of a sump pump, which I guess he thought odd since it wasn't raining.

He comes back, and there's a sigh as he gets back in bed. Well, the water heater just exploded. I love our basement drainage. Good night. Um... what?!?!?

Yep, water heater exploded, and granted, while that sucks Sucks SUCKS, it could have been OH so much worse. The unit is right next to the sump pump, and a couple feet away is the drain I mentioned in the previous post about water. So, all the water was pouring down the drain. None of our boxes got wet, none of the music equipment got wet, no floating organ playing that horrible Celene Dion song as it sinks, just the laundry room soaked, with the water flowing down the drain. I guess we really should consider ourselves lucky in that respect.

I guess I can list the positive aspects of this:
We're surviving our first major bungalow crisis...
We no longer need to worry about what to get each other for Christmas/Hanukkah...
We don't have to worry about throwing out all our boxes of crap in the basement... (wait, is this a good thing?)...

Now, I sit here and search all the black friday adds from the paper, hoping to find the deal of the century on water heaters... so far, that search is not looking good. We'll keep you posted...


UPDATE 6AM:
I was talking to my mom, since I knew she'd be up at this early hour... and she said "Shouldn't the home warranty you have cover that "? Ha. That's right. The sellers gave us a year home warranty on all appliances. Mom, you're the BEST! Guess we're kind of forgetful at 4am. Now we get to see what exactly happens we you activate the warranty. Yay!