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boiler on, 2008
Wednesday, December 3 2008
This morning I went down at the greenhouse and made measurements to ensure that its roof would be perfectly square. I had a huge homemade square made from two by fours that I'd used for squaring the foundation and though it had been out in numerous rains, it was still demonstrably square.
It bears mentioning at this point that I'd never bothered to get a building permit for the greenhouse. Back in the summer when the leaves were out, the building site had been entirely hidden from the road, and as autumn came I began piling pine boughs and freshly-cut White Pine saplings to continue to conceal the building site. And as my building climbed above concealment, I began spray painting the dimensional lumber with random scrawls of black paint, making them blend in with the fallen leaves. Still, I'd also taken some comfort in plausible deniability: I'd done some web research and found that the old building inspector had been replaced about a year ago. The old inspector had hassled us about the solar deck, but we had no history with whomever the new building inspector happened to be. Furthermore, I'd found on the web that in Hurley Township there was no permit fee for new buildings having less than 140 square feet, which describes my greenhouse. I was hoping to pull off the entire greenhouse project without drawing any attention from township bureaucrats, people likely to take a dim view of my experimental techniques and esoteric goals.
So it was with understandable dread that I beheld a white truck emblazoned with a Town of Hurley crest pulling into our driveway. Its driver, a fit greyhaired gentleman smoking a cigarette, got out and ambled down the wobbly bluestone steps to my greenhouse. "Hello," I said, extending my hand as if I'd been expecting him. He introduced himself as the building inspector. Busted! Immediately, though, it was clear that he hadn't come to read me the riot act. He noted the building's modest size and unusual construction and then turned his attention to the question of whether or not it was too close to the downhill neighbors' property line. I hadn't known this, but it seems there's a rule that one cannot build a structure within 50 feet of such a line. (It must be a very recent rule; our house, built in 1994, is within thirty feet of a property line.) Though the property line was not obvious, I managed to convince the inspector that the greenhouse might be far enough away from it. The building inspector told me that generally one is supposed to get a permit for such projects, but that I was correct about the 140 square foot no-fee rule. At some point there was a sudden huffy appearance of a very dirty-faced Eleanor the dog, which provided some welcome relief from the bureaucratic nature of our interaction. The building inspector asked some questions about what the greenhouse's roof would be like and requested that I make him a plot map. Then he departed, leaving me with the impression that all I had to do was come up with a map showing my greenhouse in locational compliance so he could put in his files and move on to worrying about bigger problems.
I spent the rest of the daylight installing the greenhouse roof, starting with the nine rafters hurricane-clipped to the rafter support beams and ending with five sheets of 7/16 inch OSB. I didn't yet have the metal roofing with which to finish the roof, though I did have a huge sheet of plastic to protect the OSB until the roofing arrives.
The sun had gone down and I was nearing the end of my OSB installation, cutting two long and narrow pieces with the a power saw when Gretchen came out to ask why I hadn't yet fixed the boiler. The oil pump had arrived yesterday and it was getting cold, but I'd been outside all day and had acclimated to the cold; every time I went indoors it felt like a sauna. But from Gretchen's perspective on the couch in front of the teevee, the house had become an icebox. It wasn't just that I'd procrastinated on fixing the boiler; I'd also neglected the fire in the woodstove, the only source of household heat.
So, once darkness had fallen and I was done with the greenhouse for the day, I turned my attention to the boiler. It took about ten minutes for me to swap out the fuel pump and establish that the replacement had fixed the boiler. It took another twenty minutes to clean up the resulting fuel spill, which formed a puddle so extensive that it soaked beneath some of the carpet of the downstairs hall. The manual shutoff valves for the boiler's fuel line (and there are two of them) do not seem to do anything, no matter which way they are rotated.
In an attempt to wash off the clinging stink of fuel oil (and also to take advantage of the newly oil-based nature of household water heating) I took a long and relaxing bath.
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