I thought that I'd do an update that was promised to my readers in 2004. Shut up, it only took me nine years. The update is the colulumn that follows this one. It tells you how to keep bats out of your attic once they're already up there. Read this, then the following arktickle to learn how. Cretins.

THE OLD HOUSE DOCTOR 12-13-04

 

YOUR BATS!

 

Dear Old House Doctor,

While doing my annual home winterizing this week, I noticed a spot under my eave with black smudges that weren’t there last year. Looking closer, I saw a piece of trim had dropped off and there was a gap between the boards. Is my house leaking some warm air out? What could be causing the black smudges?

                                                  Signed

                                        Worried on Wall Street

Dear Worried,

          Not seeing your problem firsthand, I can only guess what condition you’re suffering from (AAAAUUUGGGHH! A preposition at the end of a sentence! That it something up with which I shall not put!). But I don’t think you’ve got anything coming out of your house. I imagine something is getting in.

          If it’s squirrels, you’re doomed. They are nearly impossible to evict. But I imagine you have bats.

          This is the time of year that bats hibernate, and old houses are a favorite roost. With spaces in the woodwork and separations in the joinery, they will take up winter residence in numbers ranging from two to two million. There they will sleep and dream their little batty dreams until the temperature warms, then they’ll either decide they like it or move on. Most move on in spring, but if they stay, they will likely raise little bats and might even invite some friends to share the space.

          It is not only imperative that you do not disturb them in winter, it is also illegal. The Bat Police will come and take you away to Bat Jail, and you’ll have to share your cell with others like yourself, which is perty scary if you think about it.

The bats are doing no harm in winter, and if you disturb them they will likely die form exposure. They’re in suspended animation and will not recover easily enough to find another roost.

When spring comes, they should be allowed to wake naturally, flit forth at sundown, and then you can plug up their hole to keep them out. There are other alternatives to this, though, and I’ll talk about them next time.

This was an offering to glen Schwartz and The Emerald City of the South. If you've read many of these colulumns, you'll notice that I do tend to harp on certain subjects, mostly about how you should KEEP UP YOUR FUCKING HOUSE FOR CHRISSAKES. This is one of my House Invaders arktickles. And perty short for ECOS. I had moved out to Roland, a rural burg thirty miles west of the Downtown of Little Rock, and so this thing lends towards country.




THE OLD HOUSE DOCTOR 3-14-13

 

INVASION OF THE OLD HOUSE SNATCHERS

 

So the winter has hung on longer than usual. So you still sleep until eleven because the sun doesn't come up until then. So you have a bag of ice-melt sitting by your front door even though the daffodils have already died off.

Spring, believe it or not, is here, and baby, it's gonna be a big one.

How does the Ol' Doc know? Because I lives in the country and have intimate knowledge with all those invasive things that are headed your way when the weather truly turns warm.

And juss whut duz ah know?

To start with, the skunks got active early, despite the cold. They are coming around right now looking to fatten up on bugs and grubs and roots because they is hongry after having slept all winter. There are more than I've ever seen this year, and we out in Roland are having a time with them. DO NOT try and trap them; they will spray you. If they take up residence under your house, they are a pain to get out, so make sure there's no place for them to get in. The same goes for raccoons. NOW is the time to repair your foundation holes. While you're at it, open your foundation vents. Whut, yew ain't got no foundation vents? No wonder you got critters.

Birds are beginning to make nests, and the ones you need to be concerned about are starlings. These corvids (related to crows and ravens, you dolt) are extremely fecund (have lots of babies), nest the same places from year to year (don't let them get started), make a ton of noise, and stink up the attic or eaves something fierce. They also raid other birds' nests to kill their babies and eat their aigs. Remove them now or they'll bring up a brood in your eaves.

We in Roland are plagued by fire ants (far aints to yew Arkies), and they are about to explode throughout the county. Grits and corn meal are old wives' tale cures that don't work, and Orthene is a terrible poison that can't be used in a vegetable garden. Putting pure orange oil on the mound is supposed to help, but Rolanders are country folk and use two methods SEPARATELY. One is to build a fire directly over the mound (after clearing dry grass and burnables, of course) and keep it going for a day, but the most used method is plain old gasoline. I'm sure it is not environmentally friendly, but it does kill them dead, and I doubt it's worse than Orthene. DO NOT LIGHT THE GASOLINE! Actually, don't lissen to me at all; I'm just a pack of cards.

Piss aints will make their way into your kitchen, and Terro is a biodegradable product that will attract them, then kill them day-id. Put a drop onto your counter by the backsplash and watch the fun. I think I tole you about that stuff last year in my colulumn "F#$#$@! Bugs and Why You Should Be Happy to Kill Them," which my editor changed the name of for some reason.

Warm weather brings human pests like burglars and thieves, so get yourself a pound pup and they'll leave you alone. Get two and they'll be easier to bring up, more entertaining, and better guards. I do not recommend putting 3-inch drywall screws through the top rail of your privacy fence, though. Liability issues can make this messy. You didn't hear that here, y'hear? Here here.

The bats in your attic are going to be waking up soon, and you want them to fly away and not come back to the attic. Look for dirty marks near the eaves and gable where they've been wriggling their little batty bodies in through the cracks. They've been hibernating all winter and will soon emerge to gorge on mosquitoes. Be glad they're around, but do two fun things to keep safe and help them at the same time. Find some light plastic netting with fine mesh (no more than 3/16"; the type of mesh you want is similar to onion bags at the grocery store) and tack it up around their dirty little exit/entry. Tack it loosely with the bottom open, but not so that the opening flaps around. When they exit, they won't be able to get back in. The second thing to do is to install a bat house nearby. If you have access to fresh guano (bat poop, and if you have bats in your attic, there's poop there, too), rub some on the bat house entry (I told you this would be fun!). This will attract them and they will hang out and eat mosquitoes forever. If you do come in contact with bat poop, wear a facemask or respirator and use gloves. It's not good to breathe and your hands will smell for years.

Go back in time to read my "Them What Stings" arktickle to brush up on your bug problems; I won't repeat them here.

Some of the most undesirable invaders to the old house are flora, not fauna. Climbing vines such as English Ivy, Carolina Creeper, and trumpet vines may look pretty, but they hold moisture against your house and promote wood rot (they kill trees, too). The dreaded wisteria, despite it's sweet-smelling  bunches of blue flowers, is a real threat. Think "Day of the Triffids" here, or if you're an old Genesis fan, "The Return of the Giant Hogweed." You must truly be an old stoner if you remember their album "Nursery Cryme." A great performance of the song can be found on YouTube.

Back to wisteria. Wisteria grows so fast and is so powerful that it will actually grow under your trim and siding and will lift, tear, and pull it off (oh my!). If you have this stuff, cut it back and keep it on a pergola away from the house. At least trim it back from the eaves or brick monthly. I have seen it destroy a brick veneer in one summer.

Another plant to watch out for is the Empress Tree, which my brother sometimes refers to a s a kluckalucka. Yeah, well, he's a Nartist. Go by Galley 360 at 900 South Rodney Parham and you'll see. They may actually be two different trees; the Empress has opposite leaves and stinky white flowers and the kluckalucka may be a young catalpa. They're very sneaky trees; sometimes it's hard to tell just what they are. The catalpa's leaves are huge elephant-ear looking things and the wood grows at a rate of about a foot a week (I'm not kidding). Both of these trees need to be kept from growing near your foundation, as do all trees. They'll heave it and break the brick and then where will you be? Living in a cardboard box, sniffing Tootsie Roll wrappers and agreeing with Paulie Ryan that the rich need to eat the poor to absorb their power and become all-powerful. It's a sad cycle. Soon you'll become an Arkansas congersman and pass bills outlawing women, minorities, and progressive thinking.

So there you have it. Skonks, birruds, aints, and Triffids. Then Paulie Ryan. Finally becoming a Hillbilly legislator. It all leads to disaster.

Better get started before it's too late. I need a drink. Want to buy me one? Do so at king.oldhousedoctor@gmail.com.

Then go to my blogs and all will despair!!!

architecturalvestiges.blogspot.com and oldhousedoctor.blogspot.com

Yippie tie one on!

Apparently this was posted in 2012, if the intro is to be believed. Din't know I went back that far with this thing. More Winter Prep. You'd think you'd know about this stuff by now. Sheesh.






Jeez, it's been a while since I posted. You should check out "Architectural Vestiges" because that's where I've been hanging out. If you like the drivel in THIS blog, you'll love "vestiges."

This is from two winters ago, but aside from the mention of the midterm elections, all still holds up.

THE OLD HOUSE DOCTOR

 11-10-10

TURNING TO WINTER AND WHAT YOU CAN’T DO ABOUT IT

 

The wettest, coolest year in ever in Arkansas was, of course, followed by the hottest, driest ever. If that’s not incentive for moving to Canada, I don’t know what is. Also possibly the mid-term election results. Either way, more than my faith in Americans’ voting preferences is cracking.

I have received more calls than ever about plaster cracking. Not drywall, mind you, but plaster. It seems the extremes in temperature and moisture are playing havoc with the expansion and contraction gods, and they’re taking it out on you.

Hairline cracks can be taped with fiberglass mesh and floated smooth with drywall mud, but larger, deeper cracks may require special attention. Open the crack to a width of 3/16ths of an inch with a utility knife or paint scraper, making sure to expose the spaces in the wood lath behind. If the plaster is on brick, you don’t have to worry about the spaces. Like duh.

Create an inverted ‘v’ by making the bottom of the crack wider than the top, vacuum out the dust, wet down the crack with water from a squirt bottle, then fill the crack with setting-type joint compound. This stuff comes in powder form, will set up hard in the time indicated on the bag (20 to 90 minutes), and will bind the wall back together. Make sure to push the wet mixture deep into the crack with enough pressure to squeeze it through the spaces in the lath behind. Make sure it lies lower than the surface of the plaster, because after it dries, you will float out the repair with regular old drywall mud.

It’s a great way to spend the holidays, especially if Cousin Guido comes to visit with a large suitcase and his drum kit.

Old houses have some issues particular to them at this time of year, so I’m now going to chastise you for not attending to them.

Have you closed your foundation vents? How about the gable vents in the attic? You cretin. These only make your electric bill more astronomical than normal. And though some of you will erroneously assume that closing attic vents will lead to moisture buildup, trust me. Your old home’s attic is so full of air infiltration that you could put a humidifier up there and the steam it creates wouldn’t even condense.

Put some Styrofoam hose bibb covers onto your outside hose bibbs. And don’t ask me where the word ‘bibb’ comes from; I’m still trying to figure out the origin of ‘soffit,’ and I’ve been using that word for thirty-five years. Pipes near open foundation vents are subject to freezing first; wrap them or cover you damn vents already.

This has been a banner year for rats and mice; I found this out the hard way when I fired up my oven for the first time since spring (I cook exclusively outside in the hot months). Oh, my! The kitchen has a rather piquant aroma now, I can tell you. Time for the Easy-Off. I’ve been pretty successful with warfarin baits in my client’s homes, but I prefer a goodle fashioned mousetrap with peanut butter. Creamy Jif, of course. I wouldn’t touch the stuff, but the meeses love it. The problem with poison is that it sometimes leads to dead rodents in the wall. Then you’ll be calling me to extract them.

Okay, enough of that subject. Let’s talk about something much more pleasant; your house burning down.

The holidaze are upon you, and though the Grinch in me screams “Get them off!!,” (hey, Chuck! Remember that line from the 1996 OHD?) you are saddled with them. Don’t like it? Become an atheist. After the operation, you’ll hardly notice the difference. Everyone else will, though.

Several wonderful scenarios come to my mind at this time of year; the dog watering the tree in his own special way, the kids lopping off limbs with real light sabers you were stupid enough to give them for Christmas, Cousin Guido thumping away upstairs as he practices Led Zeppelin’s “Moby Dick.”

But the scene that pushes these out of the way is that of the wires in your wall sizzling before they ignite.

Holidays tend to see more of a load on your electrical circuits due to the electronic games, computers, DVD players and other gifty effluvia you people waste your money on (excuse me; that was rude! I meant to write ‘on which you waste your money’). Add the lights and the robot Santa and eight tiny reindeer on the roof, and you might be heading for disaster.

If you have had your old house completely rewired with grounded Romex (identified by a plastic white or yellow sheath surrounding a bare wire, a white wire and a black wire), and you have a large gray breaker box equipped with black switch-type breakers, you might be in the clear. If, however, you have screw-in fuses, you might already be on fire.

Most homes with these early fuse boxes have a much more limited electrical load capacity, and therefore can only handle so many Wiis and Xboxes.

Honestly, who comes up with these names? They’re complete undiluted drivel.

The fact that you might have ungrounded sheathed cable (usually indicated by silver sheathing or two-pronged receptacles) lets you know that power surges, spikes and close lightning strikes are not going to be safely directed into the ground. And even if you have three-pronged outlets, they should be checked by an electrician; many older homes have had these installed on a two-wire system.

If you go into the attic and can see two individual wires running side by side and held off the joists with white porcelain insulators, you have what is known as a ‘knob and tube’ system, which is the most ancient of all. Even if it is ancient and ungrounded, it only becomes unsafe when it is either covered with cellulose insulation, has its sheathing removed, or becomes overloaded. The insulating sheathing on this type of wire is cloth-covered rubber, which, if disturbed, will crumble like American voters’ resolve does every two years. And if something crosses the two wires, there will be many sparks and a nice warm conflagration next to which you can warm your toes.

So don’t overload your system. Remember that VOLTS are used as a measurement of how much power comes from the outlet (110 in most cases, 220 for stoves, air conditioners and dryers), but AMPS are the amount of load that each appliance draws. Microwaves, power tools, and toasters draw 20 to thirty amps, and most of the breakers in your house will trip beyond this level. Run two thirty amp appliances on one circuit, and the breaker will trip. But if it’s a screw-in fuse, it will burn out if you’re lucky. Otherwise, get the marshmallows.

Electricity is nothing to take lightly. Talk to an electrician before big chunks of sizzling power begin to roll around the house.

Some other things you haven’t though about because you’re too busy watching television shows about snarky people trying outdo one another’s snarkiness, or featuring decomposed bodies and how they got that way (really, who writes this ordure? And more importantly, why do you watch it?).

Have you got the ice melt? It won’t do you any good if it’s still at the hardware store after the Big Storm. Got candles? Have you outfitted at least one room with a gas space heater so you won’t freeze your butt off when the power is out for six days?

I heat my house exclusively with antique gas heaters, and I will laugh at your pleas to stay at my home as you shiver at the bottom of my stairs. And you won’t be able to climb them, either, because though I HAVE ice melt, I don’t use it on the stairs specifically to deter freeloaders like you.

Well, there you have it.

Chunks of falling plaster, freezing pipes, rats in the oven, your house going up in flames, falling on the ice, living in an unheated house for a week, and Cousin Guido practicing Led Zeppelin on his drums in your guest room upstairs. Have I left anything out?

Oh, yeah, decomposed bodies and the kids lopping off each other’s arms.

That should just about do it.

This is the Old House Doctor telling you to have a Big Merry One.

I need a drink.

THE OLD HOUSE DOCTOR

9-27-12

GET TO WORK

 

You sit there all fat and happy, thinking, “Damn, I'm still running my air conditioner and it's October!” Okay, the summer’s lasted since April, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore the fact that your old house has been aging and falling apart beneath the couch that supports your fat ass. Get up and gather some tools, me bucko, because I’m puttin’ you to work.

Yes, it’s time to think about winter.

I know, I know. Footble’s beginning and baseble’s just getting interesting and the Fed Eggs Cup’s finished and all that. Shut up and grab a ladder or you’re really going to be sorry when your house collapses on you during the Superbole.

I KNOW you don’t have a ladder, but you know someone who does. Let them borry your Stop Making Sense DVD and you borry their ladder; that’s the way it works.

Get up and examine your roof. Be careful; all these things are dangerous. You’ve been warned.

If there are leaves in your gutters, wait until the trees start to drop them before you clean them out….but wait! Because you’re ESPECIALLY lazy, you didn’t clean them out LAST year. Put on some gloves and pull that yuck out of the gutters or they might collapse with the extra weight after flooding your precious wood eaves with overflowing water. Tap on your upper downspout elbows; if the ring hollow, you’re blessed, and if they sound full, you are in league with BeezleBoob hisself. But even BB can be handled if you dig the goop from the elbows, put a coathanger down them (unwind it first, you dope), and flush them out with your hose. Whattaya mean you don’t have a hose?! BORRY one, dammit! Bribe someone with some brownies (easy on the hash, you stoner!) or let them watch your “Bewitched” DVD collection. Who can resist Lizzie Montgomery? Not me, that’s for sure.

Maybe you don’t have gutters. Maybe you don’t have a roof. Maybe you live in a cardboard box under the Markham Street Viaduct. If that’s the case, I know what this paper’s going to be used for once you’re done reading it.

But if you don’t have gutters, look for leaves gathered in your roof’s valleys; they can hold water and cause backup leaks during the winter, especially when they ice up.

If your roof is too steep to comfortably walk on, stay off it and put a long extension on your rake to reach the leaves in the valley. Do this while it’s dry and it will be a lot easier than after the rains start.

If your roof is walkable, you might as well check your roof vents and metal flashing for gaps. If gaps are found, they should be cleaned out then filled with clear silicone or polyurethane caulk. Do not use water-based caulks like painters’ caulk or cold-process tar-in-a-tube. The tar dries out and crax and the painters’ caulk will dry, separate, and grow mildew. Soon the spores will enter your brain and you’ll start listening to Raunch Limburger as you beat people to a pulp with you protest sign reading “WE DON’T KNEED KNOW HELTH CAYR.’ Which is kind of oxymoronic, if you really think about it. Don’t think about it. I tried, and now my head hurts. Mighta been that guy with the sign.

While you're up there you might as well look for gaps around your chimney/roof joint. Push on the roofing around the roof near the chimney to find any soft spots; that's where water tends to penetrate and rot the decking below.

Another thing you can do to check for leaks around your vents is to look where they penetrate the decking from below, which means you need to get up in your attic with a flashlight. Don't walk on the spaces between the wood joists or you'll fall through the ceiling, you dope. If you check the vent penetrations (pipes that go through the roof)  while it's raining outside it'll make the exam easier. Also look around for squirrel nests (bunches of sticks and leaves piled up near the eaves), light coming through the eaves, and bats roosting in the rafters. Clear out the squirrel nests during the day (squirrels are diurnal, and if you don't know what that means, buy a frickin' dictionary) and leave the bats alone until summer. I'll have written an arktickle about how to humanely remove them by then.

One thing about silicone and polyurethane caulk. They must be cleaned off your hands with mineral sprits (which is certainly NOT turpentine), or you’ll end up with black marks on your hands, and those won’t come off until the Springsteen Administration. The marks, not your hands.

If you have gable vents (those triangular slats below the pointy part of your roof; God, I don’t know how your species has survived to this point), check them while you’re still laddered. Be careful! Wasps love to nest up there. You should have screen or hardware cloth behind them, in the attic. If it’s missing, get back up into the Hot Place and tack some up. Otherwise you’ll become host to many more little bats, which are nice to have because they eat mosquitoes, but you really don’t want them in your house. They tend to stink it up even worse than what YOU managed to do. Hard to believe, I know.

Once you're back on terra firma, close your foundation vents until it gets hot again, probably February next year (thanks, Exxon/Mobil and the coal industry!). Tap the bottoms of your downspouts like you did up on the ladder (you DID thump them while you were up there, didn't you?), and if they don't ring hollow, take them apart and clean them out. If they drain into an underground conduit, put a hose into the conduit and see if it's really draining. Many old clay pipes have roots clogging them; if the drain backs up you can have The Rooter Guy snake it out (oh my!) or you can bypass it entirely, letting the downspout drain on the ground. If you do, add an extension to keep the water away from your foundation.

So, there you have it. Ladders, Talking Heads, Coathangers, Rooter Guys, BeezleBoob. It all leads to disaster. I suggest you get some gin and tonic and remember summer the way you should; in a drunken stupor. But only AFTER you’ve got the leaves from where they oughtn’t be and  done all that other stuff I tole you to.

I’ll ignore as many letters posted to my blog as you can send. Just go to http://oldhousedoctor.blogspot.com.You’ll wish you hadn’t. Once you've become disappointed in that, check out http://architecturalvestiges.blogspot.com . Then you'll REALLY be depressed. You cretin.

 

           This is one of my last arktickles for The Lovely County Citizen, and is surprisingly non-humorous. Possibly because my wife had just announced her desire for a divorce. If I'd known how good it was for both of us, I'd have injected a little more levity.

THE OLD HOUSE DOCTOR

                           3-7-05

FROM THE PAST

          Isn’t it funny how things can come out of the past and chomp you a good one on the tookus? Such as the fact that the well pump on my eleven-year-old log cabin went out last month, and when we pulled it out, the date on it was 1981. Oh yes, we got a big laugh out of that one all right, ha ha. Paying thirteen hundred bucks for something you already have is quite humorous, I can tell you.

          The same thing is true when it comes to old houses. You don’t know what bozo homeowner or contractor has done in the past to create latent problems with which you will eventually have to deal. And sometimes it’s fads or building code changes that makes our miserable lives truly humorous. Ha ha.

Take aluminum electrical wiring, for instance. In the sixties and seventies, it was thought that aluminum wiring would create major savings in the building business, as it was cheaper than copper. It turned out to be a dangerous thing to have; aluminum wire expands and contracts as AC current pulses through it, causing it to loosen at connecting points such as junction boxes, switches and receptacles. This can cause arcing (loose chunks of electricity) and as a result, possible electrical fires.

To find out if you have aluminum wiring, you can look in your junction boxes, located in your attic or crawlspace. First turn off the circuit that you want to examine (it’s best to throw the main breaker or unscrew all the fuses), then unscrew the cover to the box and look inside with a flashlight. Aluminum wire is silver and copper wire is, well, copper-colored. It is even possible to have a mixed system with both types of wire.

What to do if you have it? You can ignore it, of course. Many homes have aluminum wire and live long and healthy lives. You can replace it, but that is an expensive process of snaking new wires through walls. Or you can routinely tighten your connections. Best to talk to an electrician about your options.

 THE OLD HOUSE DOCTOR 11-24-02

TRIX OLD AND NEW

          People who have worked on (or lived in) old houses have seen a lot of tricks to make the hideous appear, well, less hideous. Just look around YOUR old house. Do you have flattened tin cans nailed over holes in the floor? Of course you do, and some of you are darn proud of it. Ever pulled off a piece of trim to find ancient newspapers filling the void behind it? I have. ‘Insulation of the worst sort, it is’, as Yoda would croak. It might keep out the “draffs”, but it feeds the termites and mices. Steel wool, chewing gum, wads of tape, all have been used to seal the cold wind out. Usually in a pinch, when you’re drinking coffee on a lazy Sunday morning and the cold wind inside your house just gets to be too much.

          I have found toothpaste filling wall holes (this is one you renters [and yes, you too, Barbara]) have used for years. Works great on white walls. Just don’t try it with the blue or red stuff. I’ve personally used corks to fill round holes in floors, and will readily attest to its efficacy. I can’t tell you how often I’ve found scraps of glass covering window holes, artfully attached with scotch tape.

          Most people would patch cracks and voids in plaster with setting-type joint compound, followed by paper tape and drywall mud. Floated to a thin line, of course. Many, though, would rather stick a piece of duct tape over the crack, and, if they were feeling especially energetic, splash some paint on top of it. Hopefully it matches. It’s not exactly the kind of repair I would make, but I don’t care what you do. It looks good from my house. And makes for a good laugh later on.

          There are lines that, when crossed, make things go awry. Use just any old chunk of scrap wood to shim that porch joist, and you may pay for it with a swayed floor. Use pressure treated wood for any foundation-to-structure shim. Filling old mortar joints with “Quickcrete” might work for a while, but the hard mortar might very well cause the softer brick to flake and crack as the years go by. Then where would you be? Probably hiding in your ramshackle house, watching reruns of “Love Boat” and sucking the filling from maple doughnuts while you take down license numbers of illegally parked cars.

          Oh, yes, precious. You KNOW who you are. And so does everyone else.

                       THE OLD HOUSE DOCTOR 1-11-04

FIX YOUR OWN DAMN WATER HEATER

Dear Old House Doctor,

            My water heater has stopped heating water. Could it be the electrical connection? What in the world can I do?

            Signed

            Filthy From Not Bathing

           

Dear Filthy,

            I hold my nose as I answer. Your electric water heater is suffering from Lime-o-nitis. It has built up so much lime that the lower element has burned out. As you say, What can you do?

            You could smoke a couple of bongs and go into the woods to burn a circle, but praying does little for electric water heaters. I know, because God told me that she wants you to use natural gas.

            Okay, I’ll tell you how to rejuvenate your electric water heater, but you’d better be prepared to work at it. Otherwise you need to shell out up to four hundred bucks for a new one, and I know you have more bongs to do, so bear with me for a couple of weeks whilst I explain this.

            Electric water heaters heat water using an element that comes in contact with the water itself, as opposed to gas heaters that use flames to heat the tank. With me so far? Good. The water around here has a lot of lime in it (calcium carbonate to you cavers), and the action of heating causes oxidation, which coats your heating elements with a hard white scale. This eventually causes the element to burn out. Don’t axe me why, it just DOES.

            Your electric water heater has two elements; one halfway up the tank, and one at the bottom. The bottom element does the lion’s share of the work, and is the first to burn out. HINT; if you replace one, replace the other! Labor is the main expense in any construction project, unless you build with gold or platinum. Anyway, you don’t need to toss the whole thing. A couple of hours work will make your electric water heater last nearly forever. Trouble is, you need to do this every other year.

            Do WHAT?, you axe. Unh-unh-unh. You gotta wait til necks time. Cold showers for you, you dweeb.