Water line fixed

I'm happy that my house is no longer purging water through a 60 year old service line. Turns out that in the 50s the standard allowed for there to be multiple pieces of pipe that were soldered together. The standard now is to have only one piece of copper line. Good news is the new pipe should last over 60 years! Even though there was some corrosion on the old water line, it didn't have holes or anything. Here are some before and after pictures.

My wallet hurts a little from this expense, but luckily I made sure to save up before buying the house. And I keep telling myself that it makes the house more valuable. Really, it pays for itself in just a couple of years because the leak was pretty bad. I'm hoping my water bills will be at least a third of what they are now. For a couple of days this was the view out of my front yard.

I watched them do a little of the work. They duct taped the new line to the old line and used chains and the backhoe to pull the old line out and the new line through without digging up much of my yard. Yes, duct tape proves to be very useful again!

Dryer Vents... The Homeowner's Slinky

Imagine, if you can, using duct tape for its actual purpose… taping ducts! I did just that in order to prepare to use for my new clothing dryer. In the spirit of “what were they thinking” I must explain that I’m anti-tape right now because the previous occupants tried to fix EVERYTHING with tape. However, since duct work requires duct tape, I made an exception. The ducts from the bathroom exhaust fan and the dryer needed to be connected together to exhaust out of the house. Those were connected with a T-duct that was in inch too small in diameter. In order to remedy this, I bought the correct size T-duct connector (4 inches, in case you were wondering) and duct tape. Basically all you need to do is put the ducts over the ends of the connector and tape them down. It normally results in the whole connector being covered by duct tape, but there’s nothing wrong with that because it ensures that the exhaust is, in fact, exhausted from the house. 

Fun fact - - Duct tape was originally called duck tape b/c of its waterproof quality according to wikipedia.
Also, I must admit... even though dryer vent duct work looks like a slinky... it's not as fun.