Let It Rain!

This is the boat we bought Salmon off of at the Comox Marina last week.  We are looking at much different weather this weekend - 7 days of rain.  It couldn't be more welcome except to the late summer tourists that are trying to enjoy the outdoors.  You see, we have only had about 3 short sprinkles of rain since May.  Our Valley is in a level 3 water restriction and has been since early July which means no one has been allowed to use a sprinkler system or sprinkler to water anything, nor refill hot tubs nor wash vehicles (except at commercial washing places) in their yard.  Our lawn is a dust bowl, with the only green bits being near the trees which we are still allowed to hand-water as losing those would mean a financial hit to anyone who owns a home.  The fire level has been extremely high all summer and lots of hiking areas had to be closed due to such high fire risk they could not allow potential smokers/ATVers in the area.  The poor salmon are having difficulty with their annual trips to spawn as the streams and rivers are so low.  The blackberry harvest was yucky so I didn't bother to pick any.  They love sunshine but need some rain to plump them up.  Mom tried picking and she said they were like little pebbles - not worth picking.


My tomatoes are still going strong as we were allowed to water those - I expect I will likely have them until the end of September as things don't cool off that much here and there are still a few flowers sprouting out new buds daily.  I thought the zebra plum tomatoes were done - but they seem to be on a second wind and I have picked a few more this week.  One area of my freezer gets tomatoes added to it every couple days.  When my stepson was here I made spaghetti meat sauce using my own tomatoes and it was very tasty!

The offending pump

There was a terrible noise coming from the crawlspace for a couple of weeks that we could not figure out what it was as was only intermittent.  I finally figured it out on Friday - the little pump that takes condensation water away from our heat/AC pump (situated sideways under the house) in the crawlspace is on its way to dying.  If it dies there could be a small flood down there as condensation would be spilled on the floor.  We can't let that happen as it is our one and only storage area.  We took pictures of the make and model and it appears terribly easy to replace ourselves (thank goodness for youtube).  A quick call to our heat pump guy and he confirmed that it was simple to replace without hiring them (*of course if we need help they are just a call away) so the appropriate pump has been ordered on Amazon on Friday and should be here on Monday.  We ordered the exact same unit to ensure that the existing fittings would work.  Cost?  $78 including tax and shipping as it was not available locally.  If we have to hire them to install it there goes another $100 so we are having a go at it.  Thankfully it is not hardwired into electrical but is simply plugged in so we just replace the unit and attach one tube going outside and one to the furnace/AC heat pump.   In the mean time the AC has been shut off and thankfully the weather is cooler so no need for it this weekend anyway.  We tend to use our AC more than others as hubby does internet telephone conferencing for our business and his office heats up with the overhead lights.  It is a cost of doing business in our home and thankfully pretty efficient.   We honestly didn't even know what the unit was until we took pictures of the make and model but figured it out pretty quickly.  The rest of Canada uses humidifiers attached to their furnace as there is so little moisture in the air.  We  on the Pacific Coast use these little condensation pumps instead.  Hubby had the foresight to have the guys ripping out our carpet to cut 3 12x4 foot lengths so that we now have more comfortable paths to things in our crawlspace - much easier than just concrete on our "getting older by the minute" knees.

Accidental crawling around under the house selfie

For those long-time followers of the blog you may remember I blog anonymously for the simple reason that I have a stalker of 15 years (ex before hubby).  I have only ever posted one other shot of myself here - and that was from the back.  Well, here you go, this is what I look like crawling around under the house.  I do not ever take selfies and this was purely by accident while trying to take pictures of that pump when I touched the reverse shot on my iphone (4s - 3 years and still going strong!).  It is definitely non-flattering as shows my fat chin - but I am working on that as well as the rest of my other 46 year old lumpy bits.  At this rate you might even get a decent shot of me here on the blog one day!

And with that I shall sign off - have a great weekend everyone!