RDM

Looks like IAD maxed out at 98 today - was there for a couple hours with a HI of 104.

98/74 Here. Toasty outside.

Experienced 100F or more a few times since moving here in 1985. IAD reached 105 on 22 July 2011. Think that was the hottest I've experienced here - live just a few miles from IAD. Lived in India for 3 years in the early 90's. That heat was brutal. Hottest we had there was 122F. Had weeks of 110-118 every year - with humidity that drove the heat index off the chart. Ambient water temperature in roof top storage takes was too hot to take a shower. Had to pump water from back-yard cistern into the roof tanks in order to lower the temp enough to not be tolerable. So ironic in a land with water shortages that we had to waste water to be able to take a shower.

Rgr that on WD-40. Had a lubricant engineer explain the drawbacks of WD-40 once. In particular, WD-40 is hygroscopic - meaning it attracts and retains humidity/water. Not exactly what we want in many applications. That's why after after the petroleum part of WD-40 wears off, evaporates etc, there's often a rusty residue left over. Then we apply more WD-40 and it quickly becomes a point of diminishing returns.

If you're referring to my "random sh*t", it's partially a curse from being an engineer and partially good fortune from growing up with a dad who could fix just about anything. If you were referring to someone else's sh*t regrets for the off-base assumption.

Was thinking some more... (I know, that's dangerous!). One other suggestion that is often overlooked in home inspections. It's about your garage doors. Most garage doors have a long torsion spring that is wrapped around the jack-shaft. The jack-shaft is the long rod that runs across the top of the garage door with a cable on both sides. It is what actually helps lift the weight of the garage door. On a single door there is just one spring and on a double door there are two. Not all springs are the same. They are tailored to the type, size and weight of the garage door (there's several categories of springs) Torsion springs have an enormous amount of stored kinetic energy in them. Don't mess with them unless fully versed on the mechanicals and even then, be extremely careful. On occasion a torsion spring will break. When it does the release of energy is loud and dramatic - like a shotgun blast (sort of). One thing that everyone can do to extend the life of a torsion spring is to lubricate it once a year. A good spray lithium grease is a reasonable option. Garage door companies use a variety of lubricants. The goal is to use a grease that is sufficiently fluid to penetrate in between the coils of the spring, but not so fluid that it drips down on your garage door or your car when you are entering/exiting (WD-40 is not a suggested option). Getting the lubricant down inside the coils of the spring significantly reduces the friction on the surfaces of the coils, which greatly extends the service-cycle lifespan of the springs. Replacing a coil spring is not an extremely expensive endeavor. But it is best left to the pros who can replace a spring in a much shorter amount of time than any of us can. I've done one before out of necessity. But it's a tricky endeavor and one slip-up in the process can result in a trip to the ER, or worse. Hope this helps and hope things are going well getting settled into your new home.

Congrats again. Sounds really cool. I love older homes. They have "character" and no 2 are exactly the same. Keep an eye on the water. It is a powerful force as we all know. Interesting there's no central AC, but you have solar panels. Hope you got some powerful window AC units to handle this heat & humidity. FWIW - my oldest brother in Ohio lives in a house built in 1860. He and his wife are the 3rd owners/occupants since 1860. Yes, only the 3rd in 162 years. Was an estate sale from 3 brothers who were born and died there. An amazing place with an enormous fireplace with wrought iron kettle arm. Did not have central air, nor central heat, nor indoor running water apart from a garden hose through the kitchen window) when my brother moved into the place about 20 years ago. The privy was a 2 hole outhouse, still "ripe" from daily use.

Can relate on the running water with a well. We're on well and septic. Fortunately we have a 10kw generator, which is sufficient to power the well pump. That said, when the well pump starts, the initial surge is about 18amps at 208, so it taxes the generator a bit. Can run the well pump, one of our two HVAC zones, the refrigerators, microwave and a few lights. Have aspirations to install a whole-house auto-start generator, but they aren't cheap.

Congratulations on your new purchase and welcome to bliss of home ownership... A few suggestions: Home Inspection: Was there a home inspection conducted pre-purchase? If so, read the report. A good home inspection will have a lot of useful info. It will include inspection of the roof, sump pump, HVAC unit/s, siding, exposed water line, electrical panels, appliances, check for GFIs in wet areas, etc... Paint: If the previous owner left any used paint, take a digital picture of the label and dye pigment formula. This can be used by Lowe's or Home Depot to mix an identical match for your paint. Sump Pump: Does your house have a basement? If it has a walk out basement it may or may not have a sump pump. If there is a sump pump, it's probably there for a good reason. Make sure it has a battery backup and a high-water alarm. HVAC: Check the filters in your HVAC air handler unit/s. If there was a home inspection, inspection of the filters would be SOP. If not, check the filter and replace as necessary - at least once a year. Pay attention to the arrow on the edge of the air filter that shows the direction of the air flow - this is critical. Air conditioner: (Regrets - this part is a bit complicated, but if you have some mechanical aptitude is doable for the average Harry or Harriet homeowner) Check the condensate drain in the air handler. There will be a tube or pvc pipe that runs from the side of the air handler to a drain in the floor or someplace. There may be a small pump that pumps the water outside too. This goal is to drain the condensate (water) away from the air handler (water and 208VAC don't mix!). Make sure the drain is open and clean of any debris. In some cases, you can get mold growing in the condensate tray inside the air handler, which will clog up the drain and create a mess. Look for an access panel on the side of the air handler to enable inspection of the evaporator section of the air handler and make sure the condensate tray is clean (at least relatively clean). This may be something you need to watch a technical do the first time. If the condensate drain clogs up, you can get a big mess very quickly with the overflow, especially on a humid day like today. Roof: A good roof is critical to maintaining a solid house. Even a small leak can be cataclysmic in damage. If there was a home inspection they would have performed at least a cursory inspection of the roof, possibly with binoculars from the ground. When inspecting shingles, look at the edges first. Aged shingles will start cracking and breaking off at the edge first. If you have access to a ladder and the knowhow, inspect the gutters and look for access aggregate in the gutters. This may be a sign of low spots in the gutters or excessively worn shingles, or both. Gutters and downspouts: Check the gutters to make sure they slope properly to flush out the water. Low spots may lead to the accumulation of debris and/or promote the growth of mold - not good. If your house has standard 5 inch gutters with 2"x3" downspouts, highly suggest upgrading to 6 inch gutters with 3"x4" downspouts. The larger gutter and downspouts can "flush" out much larger debris (leaves etc) and minimize clogging. The larger gutters are also MUCH easier to clean out. If you have gutter covers on your house, that may be a plus. But... even with gutter covers they are not totally maintenance free. Have had about every kind of gutter cover there is on our various houses and it is not a matter of if, but when the mold starts growing. Once the mold kicks in, it is just a matter of time until a major cleaning is needed to avoid a clog. (this part may generate some debate as there's lots of variables involved with the efficiency of gutter covers). Electrical Panel: Make sure you know where it is and how to shut everything off if you need to. Make sure you know where all the GFI's are in the house and on the outside, just in case one trips. A tripped GFI can take out a series of electrical outlets. If there was a home inspection they should have tested the GFIs for proper function. (they will do a test trip). If this was done, that should have shown you how to reset a GFI. Water and Gas Main Shutoffs: Make sure you know exactly where the main water and gas line shutoffs are at. On the waters lines, make sure you know where the interior shutoffs are for the exterior hose bibs so you can shut off and drain the hose bib for the winter. If there was a home inspection these various shutoffs should have been inspected. Chimney: If your house has a brick chimney, check the mortar holding the bricks together for wear and chipping. If there's missing bricks, hire a brick mason to clean and re-point the mortar. This should have been part of a home inspection too. They should have inspected the flue too. If a chimney flue has not been cleaned recently, that may be worthwhile if you plan to burn wood. Not necessary for a gas fireplace insert. That covers a lot of ground. Regrets for the long-winded reply. Hope it helps. Congratulations again.

92F with an 81dp on my Vantage VUE. Don't ever recall having an 80+ dp here. This is approaching the dew points in Japan during hurricane season, or Bangkok and Delhi during monsoon season. 92F/81dp equals a heat index of 113...

Several rumbles to the west of us for a popup headed this way. Sterling issued a SWS (Severe Weather Stmt) for 60mph gusts IVO Warrenton.

You may want to check with a local wood supply place. They may be interested in the Locust tree. Locust is one of the hardest woods we have here in the US. It's the only wood that is approved for direct burial as-is w/o any preservative. It splits great - is what they use for split rail fences and burns great too if you have a fireplace. We have a group of Locust trees in our front yard. Lost 2 about 10 years ago. Their 2 foot diameter trunks were snapped off about 10 feet above the ground during a "rotational event" that came through Oakton and Vienna. The weird thing was, I watched it happen live while standing in our front doorway about 300 feet away. It was nearly dead calm in front of our house as the wind snapped off the Locust trunks and displaced the upper part of the trees about 50 feet away. Was a surreal experience.

1.24" here NW of Vienna since midnight. Lawyers Road is likely closed in multiple locations now.

Can believe it re the CRT's and can relate to their potential, through my dad and my own experiences. He used to fix TV's p/t back in the 60's and 70's for a little extra cash. Got bit a couple of times by the static charge in a tube. He built our first color TV in 68 so we could watch Apollo 11 launch in color in 69. Will never forget it. Was a Heathkit 25" color unit when 25" was as big as they came. It had a cool mechanical remote that used small tuning forks to generate a semi-audible "ping" that controlled channel, volume, on/off, and color. Was very cool at the time to have a remote control. He was so proud of that TV. Only a fraction of people in our area had a color TV in the late 60's. By the mid 70's color was the norm.

Rgr on the GFIs - We have them religiously installed where called for and even in some other places as an extra precaution. Your observations about self tapping screws sounds like you may have lost some skin in the school of hard knocks. When I lived in India and Thailand it was always interesting watching the locals test a 220vac wire to see if it was hot with the back of their hand. If it was hot, they let out an "ouch" as their hand clamped tight, pulling their fingers away from the hot lead. The practices in some other countries would put OSHA into convulsions here. haha. Back in 2011 when we put on a second garage, we had to relocate about 200 feet of the underground service to our house. Dug the trench, exposed the line at the mid-way point and then dug the lineman a hole for him to get easy assess to the lines. He cut out the old line and spliced in the new cable with the 800amp service still hot. I asked why he didn't lock out the service at the transformer and he said he hated messing around inside transformers. He said "there's a lot going on in there" (our transformer services 4 houses). He put on his lineman's chaps and long gloves and sat down in the hole and crimped/spiced everything without any apparent worry. Out of respect, I kept my distance and didn't bother him with questions as he worked. Just quietly watched him execute his trade. He want trough a ton of self-splicing tape and several rolls of regular ole electrical tape. Inserted the new meter on the riser, installed the seal and checked everything out. Haven't had any issues yet - knock on wood.

Interesting you mention losing one phase. It reminded me that only one of the 2 phases on our neighbor's transformer went. Don't recall how many kva the transformer was. And, it didn't arc or shoot any blue flames. haha. Was fortunate for our neighbors in that the fuses did their thing and popped as designed. Hats off for what you do. Getting stung by 110vac is not pleasant. No second chances with the level you deal with.

Great info Stormfly. Spot on re the arcs. Transformer fires are rare, but when they do happen they can be quite spectacular. The fuses normally do their thing and protect the transformer for obvious reasons. Had an interesting incident with a neighbor's ground level transformer adjoining our property 2 years ago. Two houses on the same transformer lost power. VA Power responded, with what eventually became 5 trucks/crews. They replaced the fuses and tried to "reset" things, and that didn't work. Dunno how many fuses they burned up, but it was several. After several hours of troubleshooting they said the transformer failed; with a very perplexing look of bewilderment. The head of the crew said he'd only seen a couple of cases in his 30+ year career where a transformer actually failed on its own without any apparent reason. Bye coincidence or not, the failure was a couple days after the owner of one of the 2 houses put in a new wood fence, with a crew that used a power auger to make the post holes. One of the posts was installed right over where the underground service runs from the transformer to their home. We wondered if the auger may have nicked the line in a way it didn't electrocute the fence crew but somehow created a ground fault. The lineman nodded with more bewilderment and said "that fence crew was very lucky". They replaced the transformer and installed new fuses and got our neighbors online again w/o any further issue. It was very interesting to watch the lineman install the new fuses with the long fiberglass pole, with the high-voltage feeds running to the transformer still hot and all of his buddies standing well away from him. Things were quite serious at that moment. As a side-bar... during the initial conversation with the lineman, he said "the service to your house is out too, right" I said no. He was convinced it had to be because according to his schematics we were supposed to be on the same faulty transformer as the other two houses. I took him to the transformer where our service is from on the other side of our property and he just shook his head with a perplexing "well something is messed up here"... He took pictures and measurements and told me he'd make sure they corrected the records for future reference. That experience explained why we had such an issue with VA Power about 10 years ago when we had to relocate part of our underground service feed. (That was a nightmare and VA Power wouldn't explain why... too long of a story to repeat here)

Yup - just posted watches for western MD and northeaster WVA - just to the west of Winchester. The system is still very active as it crosses eastern Ohio. There's a ton of lightning on the real-time viewer. Parts of Ohio are getting nailed now with a pronounced bow-echo on the front end and a secondary one lagging behind a bit to the SW of the main front. Pretty impressive.

Yup - just came in from watering some transplanted azaleas. DP is 74 here. The air has that thick/yucky feel to it.

Good luck Mappy. Hope your hubby has a quick recovery. I tested positive last Dec 20th with only mild symptoms. Was 2 days after my 60th birthday, which allowed the doctor to prescribe me to receive the antibody infusion. This was before Paxlovid was available (I think). Was one of 26 people in FFCO who received the infusion that day and only got it because I was 60+. Within a few hours I could tell it was working and within 3 days I was asymptomatic. Was pretty amazing - in a good way. I was vax'ed, which likely helped reduce the severity. However, getting the antibody infusion reset the clock to get boosted. Best of luck...

Very interesting. Appreciate your insight and the same from Stormfly. Had a combination of Mitsubishi and Frederich mini-splits in Afghanistan and mainly Mitsubishi at my house in Japan. It got pretty cold in Kabul, but not for extended periods (fortunately) Same in Japan - at least where I was in Japan - near Yokohama. (the mountains get much colder). They seemed to heat ok, but I can't testify as to how efficient they were operating. The Mitsubishi units cooled very well in Japan where the humidity is atrocious - provided I kept the condensate drains cleared out. It was a 2x per year routine to blow them out of accumulated muck.

wow - you lost me at zone control (sort of - haha). But, spot on re the flickering lights on well pump startup. When the well pump goes, going to get a good one that handles the surge better. Maybe it will have the VFD feather thingy, whatever that is. (smile). Never had our well flow tested but 20gpm is awesome. We have great tasting water and even though City water is available, don't want it. City water wasn't available when our house was built in 76. They ran it about 10 years later, but it's $30k to connect - our driveway is 450 ft long. If your BIL is looking for more exercise, send him over in a couple weeks when the first semi-load of block arrives!

Rgr on the mini-splits. They rule in most of the rest of the world. Had them in India, Japan and Thailand. Most folks in the US don't realize our central HVAC systems are a rare commodity in the world. Most cultures don't have access to the power and/or can't afford to heat/cool an entire home the way we do. My home in Japan was a fraction of the size of a normal house here in the US. Even with only using individual fan-coil units on a room by room basis, my electric bill was routinely $1000+/month - and that was in the 90's. Plan to install a mini-split system in our garage/work shop addition. When I get-around-to-it... With you on the BU generator too. We live less than a half mile from the Vienna city limits, but are on well water and septic - with nat gas for heat. When the power goes out (and it does a lot here), we have a small 10kw generator which is enough to run one blower unit for heat, some outlets and the well pump. But that 208vac well pump has a significant surge on startup. No slow-start motor to help quell the surge. Plan to go with an auto-start, auto-switch unit at some point. When I get-around-to-it for that project too. The current project this summer is another retaining wall in front of the house. Will probably be about 80k lbs of block that weight 82lbs each. Lots of fun. Like Tom Sawyer and painting a white picket fence. You should try it!!!

Yea - agree. My brother and his wife bought the place in early 2000's. It was the estate from 3 brothers who were born, raised and died there - never married. When he bought the place, it had no indoor running water or plumbing, no central heat, no AC. The heat was provided by fireplaces in every room with the main fp standing about 5 feet wide by 4 feet high - had the proverbial wrought iron swing arm for a kettle. The only way to the second floor was a curved staircase that followed the profile of one of the chimneys. The stair treads are about 6 inches deep and the risers are about 15-18" high. Going up or down is a deft balancing act. My brother is a general contractor on the industrial side. He knows all aspects of construction. They lived in a trailer for 3 years while they overhauled the place. Put on a sizable addition which included "normal" stairs to the second floor. Completely replaced all the electric service throughout. Added central HVAC and the aforementioned heat pump. It was the cats meow at the time and he knew they were pushing the zone thing, but they went extra deep with the water loop (where the heat comes from) and thought they'd be ok. Was a gamble that didn't produce the desired results. It was a labor of love to restore the place into a modern home, albeit while retaining the architectural elements of a 1860 homestead. Didn't even mention the hand hewn beams in the house and the barn. Masterpieces of mechanical know-how.

I wasn't paying attention as well that we were in the OBS thread. My fault and regrets to the Mods. Great info on heat pumps. My brother in Ohio has a geothermal heat pump. Was "state of the art" when he had it installed in the early 2000's. Was nothing but problems from the start. Plus, it's just too darn cold in Ohio in the Winter for the heat pump to provide adequate heating alone. The aux electric heat offset the supposed efficiency and savings of the heat pump. He's since scrapped the heat pump and converted back to propane - the standard for farms and others off the natural gas grid. (his house was built in 1860 and he's only the 3rd occupant!) I'm with you on the R-12, to R-134a and now they are migrating to something else for the automotive industry. Why does it HAVE to be so complicated? Speaking of complicated... You can probably appreciate this... Our system has 2 zones. Has a nat gas fired boiler for hot water heat that flows to both air handlers with a pump and 2 thermostatically controlled metering valves. One air handler in the basement and one in the attic (I still don't know exactly how the hot water supply and return lines runs to the attic - terrified of driving a nail in the wall and get that hissing sound of water..). When we had the attic system replaced 5 years ago, the guys spent 2 full days on the line with Tier 3 support at Carrier trying to figure out the control logic for the new attic unit and it's very complicated digital wi-fi thermostat. They worked 14+ hours one day to get it up and running in a test mode, and had to come back the next day when they spent 12 more hours online with Tier3 trying to get the wiring ironed out. And of course, it was the hottest time of the year. Those guys worked their butts off in the sweltering heat of the attic trying to get the control logic working as needed. They finally got both AC systems working, but had to come back in the Fall when it was time for heat to complete the troubleshooting to get the AC AND the Heat to work as designed. It was a nightmare for control theory logic.