I woke up this morning and for some strange reason, decided to brush my teeth before I took a shower (usually I head straight to the shower). That's when I noticed the silent hum of pump in the Qwik Jon System I use in my basement to overcome the problem of pumping waste from my shower, toilet, and bathroom/kitchen sinks up 3 feet into the main sewer drain. You may have read about the installation of it on my basement project pages.

Well anyhow, I hear the hum of the pump. It sounds as if it's about to turn on, but for some reason is stuck. When I've heard it in the past, I always assumed that the level of waste inside the tank was at just the right level to cause the pump to not know if it should turn on or off. So I turn on the kitchen sink for a few seconds to allow the level in the tank to rise, and boom, the pump turns on and flushes out the waste. No more humming.

Well this time, I turned on the bathroom sink. 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds. It's still humming. Being as stubborn as I am, I continued to try and fill the tank, hoping the pump would finally turn on. I even flushed the toilet (empties a few gallons of water into the tank). The toilet flushed. Still the pump was humming. So I tried flushing the toilet again. Bad idea. The toilet didn't flush properly because the level of the waste inside the tank was so high that there wasn't enough room for more water. The waste water started to leak out through the rings where the toilet attaches to the tank. My worse fear had come true.

It was smelly waste water. I scrambled through my tools looking for something to cut the freshly painted closet wall open to gain access to the pump. I found a sheetrock saw and used that. Then I searched for a flash light. I realized it was outside in the shed, so I grabbed my camping headlamp and used that instead. After frantically cutting the wall open, I paused. What was I going to do now? The tank is secured closed with 16 bolts, some of which are in very hard to reach areas. I decided to try shaking the 2" up flush pipe in hopes that I would get the pump to realize it needs to turn on and flush the damn tank out. It worked.

After cleaning up all the smelly waste water that had leaked out of the tank (and trying to keep Debian out of the bathroom at the same time), I needed to conduct a test. Fill the tank up again and see if the pump turns on. As I sat there with the bathroom sink running and the toilet flushing, I realized I won't be able to take a shower in peace until this problem is fixed. I'm always going to be worried that the pump isn't flushing (I can barely hear the pump flushing when I'm in the shower, unless I listen carefully).

The tank filled up, and flushed as it should. I did the test a second time, and once again, it flushed without a problem. So I took a shower, and listened very carefully to make sure the pump flushed. It did. In a 5 minute shower, the pump flushes twice. I guess from now on I’ll have to take a 5 minute shower and listen carefully for the pump flushing. Or I can open up the tank, deal with the extreme smells of waste water, put some gloves on, and reset the pump so it flushes sooner than it does now. Even then, I’m not positive that will fix the problem. I think I'll wait awhile and see if the problem gets worse.

Ah the joys of owning your own house. 🙂

Well, the three bedroom apartment I've been trying to rent on Bowers ST for the past few months has finally been rented. I put an ad in the Lowell Sun and had it run for two weeks. Since then, I've received at least 40 calls inquiring about it, but now that it's rented, I can't wait until the ad expires! I'm lucky to have a good tenant on the first floor who did the majority of the repair work in return for a decrease in his rent. Of course I still had to pay for, and buy, all the materials required. I also rented the rug cleaner. Total spent on repairs including $300 rental reduction: ~$1500.

Today I had to fix an issue with the kitchen sink drain in the unit. The problem: it wouldn't drain. The tenant doing the work said he poured a whole bottle of the drain clearing gel, but that it didn't work. So, I went in with my snake (a machine used to clear drains, resembles a snake) and even that wouldn't go down the drain more than 8 inches. So after poking and prodding for a good 20 minutes, I finally got something out: a spoon. No joke, it was a spoon. I turned on the water hoping the drain was clear, but it drained very slowly. There was tons of rotted crap in the drain. Sticky, smelly, moldy crap. I was wearing gloves, but I soon learned that they would need to come off. I eventually pulled apart the pipes underneath the sink and discovered a total of six spoons and forks stuck inside the drain. Who in their right mind sticks that many spoons and forks down a kitchen drain? Brainless idiots.

So anyway, all that's left to do are a few minor things, which I'm going to do tomorrow morning before I go into Cambridge. The new tenants came by tonight, signed the rental agreement, and gave me the deposit.

I started my workout routine again today. I took a week off to allow my body to recover from a lingering illness. It seems to have passed now, so I'm back on track with my workouts. I seem to have sprained or pulled a muscle in my hand. I feel a sharp pain when I move it a particular way. I've had it happen before, and icing is usually the best remedy, however I have no ice pack.

Following is a letter I wrote and mailed to the Massachusetts Insurance Complaint Department. It's a chronological account of the events that occurred between January 24th and February 3rd, 2005. The end result? I received a letter 13 months later (this March) stating that I wasn't covered, so I was responsible for paying all $16,000 worth of bills. I learned my lesson: read your insurance policies and know what’s covered. And what isn't. Trust no one, unless it's in writing. Continue reading →

I have added a new page to the basement project post. It contains three images of pages that the structural engineer gave me when he consulted me on digging under the foundation. He said it was very difficult to find any information on the topic, so hopefully these three pages will come in handy to someone. Obviously, if you actually do dig under your basement foundation, I am not liable if something goes wrong! This is not something that should be done without advice from a structural engineer.

I had a buyer that was ready to buy the house I am selling. He's an investor and owns at least 30 houses around Massachusetts. He buys houses in bad shape, has a team of people fix up the house, then rents them out. He put down a $1000 deposit and after about 8 offers/counter offers, we finally had a deal we both agreed on. He setup the home inspection (probably set him back $450, for a 4 family house) and attended the entire home inspection. I also waited there the entire time (4 hours!!) for the inspector to finish. The next day, I get a call from my agent telling me that he backed out of the deal, stating that more work was needed than he wanted to get into. Oh well. I'm starting to wonder if I still want to sell it; if maybe I could spend some money to fix it up and make the house profitable and worth keeping. You can take a look at the property's listing sheet here (PDF).

In other news, I had to make the difficult decision today to sell one of my top losing stocks, Shanda Interactive Entertainment (SNDA). I was losing 25% on the stock after it made a 20% plunge a few days ago when the company reported a net loss of $66.8 million, or 94 cents a share. Analysts had been expecting a profit of 26 cents a share. I had the choice of selling now, as Michael Murphy recommended, or holding onto it and risk losing even more money. I decided to play it safe and sell the stock. I reinvested the money in two stocks that I believe will do very well in the coming months, Dendreon (DNDN) a biotech stock, and Plug Power (PLUG) a battery backup company.

I've been spending all my time working on my basement. I'm turning it into a studio (building a bathroom and kitchen, and finishing the walls/ceiling). I've taken pictures as I progress, so when I get a chance I'll throw up a page for the whole project.