Our Olde House: October 2025
Miss Sherry and I completed the list of Our Olde House’s updates, so now we are in the ‘hurry up and wait for the contractor to have time to do our work’ stage. Our priority project is to add some supports for the back deck and install new plastic decking; we are on the schedule to start this work in the next few weeks.
In the meantime, I decided to find out how much gutters on the two highest sides of the house would cost. These gutters are almost twenty feet off the ground so even in my best, most coordinated days of long ago, I would not climb a ladder that high to install or clean roof gutters. There was an ad on TV for completely maintenance free gutters, which is absolutely necessary in this case. These magic gutters have four sides with a narrow slot to allow surface tension to channel the water into the gutter while using gravity to dump any debris past the slot and onto the ground. We scheduled the sales pitch even though we could not get a ballpark price estimate, which did not bode well.
After the sales pitch, a brief demonstration of the actual gutter and accessories, and some price reductions due to our qualified discounts, we settled on a price with installation set for early the following week. These gutters are very expensive, but during the next rain storm ALL of the water on the roof made it into the gutters, something I thought was impossible. During a brief downpour ALL of the water was captured, even at the corner where a very large stream of water usually comes off the roof. Since they work beyond belief and will last for decades, I now consider their price to be very reasonable.
During this same rain storm, the lower gutters that I installed backed up and spilled over the side as the downpour continued for a few minutes. I found my leaf blower and attached the GutterSnoot to it and turned it up to CAT5. It blew out the leaves and water as slick as a whistle. For good measure I took the GutterSnoot to the front yard and blew out those gutters too, even though they had not overflowed.
I found my drone so I could check to see if the gutters were clean, but of course the batteries had run down, so I had to charge them first. I flew the drone over the front and back gutters, and yes the gutters and downspouts were clean. I avoided crashing the drone into the wires and tree so it was a very successful flight. We will see how the new gutters do this Fall and Winter with the torrent of pin oak leaves, but if they work perfectly I think we will have them installed next year on the lower roofs too.
We are still waiting for the back deck to be repaired so I looked around to see what needed painting. The front porch is the most in need of being washed and painted, but that job takes several days so I chose to paint the posts and trim of the apartment carport instead. I thought it was supposed to be cooler this month, but it was hot enough that I cut my painting short of completion. I went back to painting a few days, actually a couple of weeks later, to finish the job. I got all five posts and the front beam painted, and it looks very nice again.
One of my outside motion sensor ‘go away’ lights is not working. Since it is mounted way over my head, and I am still on ladder probation by Miss Sherry, I needed to troubleshoot the sensor light while standing on the driveway. I thought that maybe the street light was bright enough that the sensor light thinks its noon instead of midnight, so it does not go on. But when I installed it, I tested the sensor light at night, with the street light on, and it worked as expected. I also held a mop on a long handle over the sensor so it would think it was dark, but the lights still did not go on.
I had another think coming, so I took it, and thought it could simply be a burned out bulb, but since there are two bulbs the likelihood of both of them burning out at the same time is slim. I reached one of the sensor bulbs and removed it; I tested it in a small lamp and of course the bulb works fine. So now, someone else will have to climb a ladder and remove the sensor fixture to figure out what is wrong, which probably is that ‘it’s broken’.
Happy Fall y’all; a gleeful phrase undoubtedly coined by the Gas Company anticipating a steep rise in our gas bills. I have learned that Fall in Mississippi means that we will need to turn on the heat in the morning and the air conditioning in the afternoon. I turned on our heat on a cool Fall morning to be sure it actually worked, thereby avoiding having no heat when we have several really cold days in a row, and all of the HVAC repairmen are too busy to get to our problem. Just saying, not sure why I am thinking about this.
