dalesql

So, two years ago, around two in the afternoon, my home caught fire. Folks who have been following me already know what happened then. Today is the closeout of any new claims on the insurance on the house. There haven't been, but I have been procrastinating on the final signoff until last week just in case. That was signed off my mom last week and sent in.

This should trigger the last payments on the claim. If the insurance company runs true to form, they will drag their feet as long as possible on mailing the check, making it payable to multiple parties to further slow down our ability to actually deposit it and get the money.

There are a few things on the punch list for the contractor, but the main one is painting the repaired exterior to match the existing paint, that had to wait until the weather warms up in the spring. there are a couple of interior issues but they are mostly pretty minor. Hopefully this will happen in the next few weeks and we can pay them their final payment.

This leaves us with a large construction loan which hopefully this last insurance payment will knock a big chunk off, and the payments on the loan will be a much higher percentage of principal than the interest then they have been up to now.

Mom and I are living in the house, and slowly getting things set up. Mom turned 90 this month, so she is unable to do much, and I have turned into a near full time caregiver. She needs help dressing and undressing, anything more difficult than making a cup of tea someone has to do for her. We have meals on wheels bringing her lunch weekdays, and I make the rest of the meals, and setup the keurig machine for her midmorning cup of coffee. I still work full time, but taking care of her and getting the house setup consumes pretty much my entire life.

This last set of noreasters were difficult. First one didn't affect us much. Second one whammmed us good. Two feet of heavy wet sticky snow. We had two trees down across the driveway, several more down on our street, which knocked out the power, and several large branches around the yard and blocking the front walk. Fortunately my older brother was not trapped in his house, and was able to purchase a chainsaw and come to the house to help clear the wood. My cousin also showed up in this process with his plow truck, and not only plowed the driveway, but used his truck to pull the partly fallen tree, that had partly snapped off 20 feet up, away from the house. so when we cut it down, it didn't hit the house. Third and fourth didn't bother us much.

I also pulled out my generator and tried starting it up. It turns out that when a wet rag is dangling up against the air intake, it keeps the generator from starting and running. Once I figured this out, it started right up like it should have. From now on, propane powered emergency generators. I am convinced. Ran some extension cords in through a basement window and around the house. Powered up the fios, phone, fridge, mom's stair lift and one of my LED tapelights from the reconstruction. For future reference, one 20 lb tank of propane lasts about twelve hours. Burned about 80 bucks worth of propane total. Considering getting one of those automatic changeover valve things so I can hook up two tanks at once, so I can change out a tank at my convenience, instead whenever the tank happens to run out.

This day of unexpected physical labor left me sweaty and feeling disgusting, so I decided to shower that night, despite the furnace having been off since early in the morning. Fully expecting the water to be lukewarm at most, I was pleasantly surprised that it was still very hot. Even more surprised that it was still hot in the morning. The improved insulation in the house was also keeping the interior much warmer than I expected. While it had cooled off some, it was still quite comfortable the next day. Went into work the second day, and brought home the materials needed to hook the furnace to the generator temporarily. So added furnace to the load on the generator, but that only gave us hot water and heat in the basement. Which worked out okay. Power was restored about 40 hours after it went out, and I returned the house to normal operation.

I resolved to put in some generator cutover circuits for the furnace and the air handler for the first floor. Adding that air handler to the previous loads is gonna pretty much max out the generators capacity. Since the fridge, furnace and air handler are all intermittent loads, as long as they don't all start up at the same time, it should be fine. Found some single circuit cutover boxes on amazon that were ETL listed, ordered a pair of them. Once they came in, went down to pull an electrical permit. thirty bucks for the permit. Installed them next to the power panel, which was kind of a pain, because I had to install a backer board for them to screw into. Shitbird electrician only put in a backer board just exactly big enough for the panel. Anyway, put them in and inspector came out, spent five minutes looking at them, and half an hour yakking with him. Turns out he used to work for my dad years ago. Small world. I should do a trial run of these on the generator before I put it away. Just to make sure I don't blow up the generator because I miswired them or misunderstood the directions.


So that's the state of the Dale.

I'm back from festivating in Bangor, and it's been an eventful couple of weeks.

First in family health news, Stephanie, my niece in Seattle had a much more serious case of the cancer than initially thought. So Wesley couldn't come east to take care of mom while I was in Bangor. Meals and wheels was able to add a supper to her delivery schedule, so that handled her meals weekdays, and my oldest brother was able to take care of her meals on weekends, do her laundry, and so on while I was gone.

Stephanie had her surgery yesterday. The doctor told her that her chances of survival were 50/50. So, fourteen or so hours of surgery later, she spent the night in the intensive care ward, and moved to a stepdawn unit this evening. The cancer had destroyed nearly all of her inner ear, so she will be totally deaf on that side, don't know about the other side. I'm praying and sending good thoughts her way. She is on some major pain medications still, and lab results are not back, so things are still full of question marks. I expect there will be chemo in her near future, which is another huge insult to her body. All I can do is support them via telephone.

In house news, the construction loan came through just before I left for maine, so paid the contractor up to date. He got the subs back on schedule and is working the punch list. replacement refrigerator was delivered today, so we now have all appliances in the house. Need to assemble fridge and install icemaker, and hook up water to it. Three day weekend coming up, I hope to be washing furniture and putting it back into the house, weather permitting.

The festival had some bumps this year. We had to rearrange the site due to construction, and cut some things due to lack of budget. Predictably, bunch of folks were unhappy with this. They will be even less happy with the changes we will have to work around for the next couple of years due to sewerage tank construction on the festival site.

We also had some vandalism during setup. Several tents had large slashes in them, and one of the power distros got tossed into the river. The police evidence tech was able to get fingerprints from the distro once we fished it back out of the river. So had to give the police my fingerprints to eliminate them from the mix. The water was salty brackish, so when we get the thing back from police evidence in a year or so, I expect that it will be less expensive to buy a new one than try to repair it.

I continue to be very pleased with the lowering cost and increasing brightness of led rope lights and strip lights. They are lower power consumption, are now about equivalent lumens as the same length of incandescent festoon lights, more durable, pack into smaller storage space, and are easier to install and remove from tents. Win all around. Next year, gonna buy more and take a pass through the existing inventory of festoon lights to recycle the more broken ones. I figure in four or five years, all the festoon lights and quartz floodlights will be gone.

My dad is very sick in the nursing home. He's been unconscious for a week or so now, stopped eating solid foods about the same time, and stopped even taking liquids early this week. While nobody is saying any kind of timetable, I don't think he has more than a few more days left. I'll probably be pretty distracted by this for a while.


As for the house, we finally got the estimate from the third builder. Hoping to make a decision tomorrow on which one and then go forward from there. Insurance company continues to be a dick, threatening to cut off our ALE money since we haven't started repair work yet.

Christmas was pretty low key, just dinner at my brother's house. 2016 has been a really sucky year, I'm glad it's almost over. And now I have a cold and can't sleep with the amazing runny nose it's giving me.

Edit.
SO about two hours after I posted this, the nursing home called to let us know that he had passed. Goodbye Dad.

So, we got an offer from the insurance company on the contents of the house. As expected, they found the cheapest possible version of everything on the inventory to set base values, then they put about 50% depreciation on everything. Including things like paintings, books, antique furniture, prescription medications, and everything.

I'm sorry insurance company, but not everything is subject to depreciation. Sheesh!

Time for our public adjuster to start earning his percentage.


I'm also wondering is a four month delay on the initial offer from a house fire claim is egregious enough that we should be engaging a lawyer to sue them for interest and maybe even triple damages under the massachusetts triple damages law.

so, five weeks now since the fire. Still stuck in insurance limbo, dad still in the nursing home recovering from his infection, Mom and I still in the hotel.

Got the list of the contents of the house, met with the inventory guy back at the house and added substantially to the list. Many things in the living room, everything in the basement, and bunch of stuff in the attic. So that is making progress, but slow as molasses in january.

The memory care place in Marlboro that we wanted to place dad in was way expensive, and they didn't take medicaid, so they are pretty much a non-starter. Dad is doing poorly enough that he is eligible for nursing home care, so looking at switching him over to the long term side of wingate, which will take medicaid once he has spent his assets down. Once he has recovered from his infection.

With mom not being able to be under the same roof as dad, moving mom to the assisted living has also pretty much fallen through. Short term, the plan is for mom and I to stay in the hotel or wherever the insurance agency places us for living while the house is being rebuilt. I will admit that when we do move out of the hotel, I am going to miss the breakfast buffet they have every morning.

I'm picking up overtime at work, it's our busy season now. But much of that overtime gets eaten up by the various appointments for mom and insurance, which is a bit frustrating. My back is acting up again, and I have a toothache. Dentist appointment monday afternoon. I'm going to call my doctor and ask about a chiropractor or something.