basement

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Love It And Hate It At The Same Time

I love it and hate it all at the same time. That’s how I feel about our dehumidifier in our basement. 

love it and hate it at the same time

There is a show on TV called, “Love it or List it”. It’s a real estate show about couples who are at odds with whether they should renovate their current home or buy a new one. 

These couples usually place great restrictions on the show’s two hosts – one who has a plan to renovate their home to suit their needs, the other who wants to find and sell them the perfect new home. 

At the end of the show, when the renovation is complete and the couple have seen some great homes, the hosts ask them, “will you love it (keep your home) or list it (buy the new one)?”

The couple is usually very torn and there is a suspenseful pause before they reveal what they want to do.

The thing is they love what the one host has done with their home, but they still hate some of the things that could not be fixed … which makes the new home look so attractive. 

They love and hate their current home all at the same time. 

And that is how I feel about what’s happening in our home. 

This spring and summer’s weather have made our basement very damp. I can tell because it is freezing in our basement – probably 3-5 degrees cooler downstairs than upstairs. 

But it is not a nice cool, or dry cool. It’s hard to describe other than it feels damp.

So this spring I hauled out our dehumidifier. It’s getting older but is still pretty good. With it working away in the corner, our family room has been transformed into a very liveable environment. 

But what I hate now about our downstairs is that the loud noise of the dehumidifier makes it very hard to hear. 

The TV has to be turned up and, if I have a conversation with Lily, it’s like we are under the “cone of silence” from the Get Smart show. We are always saying, “WHAT?” to each other. 

When important things are on TV – like a hockey game – I turn the dehumidifier off. But then sometimes I forget to turn it back on and it gets cold down there again. 

I’m not ready to go on the show “Love it or List it”, but man, I love and hate our basement all at the same time.

In reality it is not the basement that is the issue, it’s the dehumidifier. 

It sounds like a diesel truck is idling in our family room. And we’ve had the unit for so long that I can’t remember if it always sounded that way or if there is a bearing that is gone in it. 

Either way, there is no “quiet” setting on it for when the desired humidity has been reached. 

Maybe it’s time to “list it” and buy a new dehumidifier.

Here’s the thing: There are some sins that can become habits. When they do, they, in a sense,  become very comfortable. We get used to them. But they also become a main source of guilt. We love them and hate them at the same time. You can try to clean the sin up, but in the end it will still be there. You have to deal with that sin and move out of the habit. That you can only do with the help of God in your life. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you love and hate about you life all at the same time? Leave your comments and questions below.

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Do I Turn It On Or Leave It Off?

I’m not sure whether I should turn it off or leave it running. For the last month and a half we have had our dehumidifier going round the clock. 

It was getting far too chilly down in the basement – so much so that you really didn’t want to spend any time down there.  

I would go down to exercise, or to get something that I needed, but I really didn’t want to be in the basement for any length of time.

It was just too cold.

The cold was due to the humidity, however, and since we rolled out the dehumidifier, the temperature is just right. 

The only problem now is that the dehumidifier is so loud you don’t want to be in the same room as it. To watch TV you have to have the volume set ridiculously loud.

There are two issues with the noise. First there is a fan that runs all the time, and it’s not quiet. But then there is the hum – yes, a hum. It’s louder than the fan and you can hear it upstairs.

The good thing is that it’s so loud it drowns out any neighbourhood sounds of dogs barking, loud music or motorcycles.

I don’t pretend to know the process of extracting moisture out of the air, but this machine really has to work at it. You can tell it’s no easy matter to make it rain inside that unit.

Don’t get me wrong, though; it does a great job. We regularly have to empty its water collection bucket.

I think it’s time for that Dyson guy to take a crack at dehumidifiers. He’s tackled the vacuum, and he’s made a really cool fan … pun intended. A machine that sucks water out of the air and blows dry air into a room would be a perfect fit for his next project. 

I realize that if Dyson makes one, we would likely have to take out a mortgage on the house to pay for it, but it might be worth it.

I’m either going to go deaf or freeze to death in my basement. Neither of these two options are all that appealing.

It’s not that we haven’t tried to get the thing to shut up. I put a piece of duct tape on the container to stop the vibration. It worked for a while but not all that long. 

Then we wedged a rubbery grip sheet in there. Again there was some success, but nothing seems to last for any length of time.

I would like to figure out other methods to keep the noise of this dehumidifier down to a bearable decibel, but it’s so loud I can hardly think! 

I guess I might have to stay upstairs even when the temperature in the basement has become liveable.

Here’s the thing: There are side effects to every action. For example, if you take a pill to help correct something, there is often some other issue you will have to live with. When you seek God and He gives you a course of action, there will be something else you will have to live with. The temptation is to keep things the same, but if you take God’s direction the benefit will always outweigh the side effect.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What are you holding off considering because of an unwanted side effect? Leave your comments below.

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I Didn’t Think The “Wet Lands” Meant My Basement

It sure has been a wet spring where I live. There have probably been years where we’ve had more moisture in April and May, but I can’t remember any.

It always strikes me that when you have a record-breaking day, it is only record-breaking to a certain point, like “this is the hottest day on record … since 1923”, or “we haven’t had this much snow for 31 years”, or “this is the most rain we’ve had since Noah finished building his ark”.

It seems that with weather there is always a day somewhere back in time that was cooler, hotter, wetter that what we are experiencing today.

But I will say that, in the last month, my sump pump has NEVER gotten as much exercise as this … period.

I probably I need to qualify that too, however; we’ve only had the sump for 8 months.

We’ve lived in our home for 21 years, and when we bought the house it came with a sump pump in the basement.

I was not too familiar with sump pumps, having never lived in a house that had one before. So I didn’t pay too much attention to it.

For several years it would turn on and suck some water from the reservoir in the corner of our basement spare room. Any time I got to see it I was amazed at how fast the water shot out of the tube.

I remember one time being on our deck in the back yard and a firehouse volume of water came shooting out of the tube that extended from our house’s foundation.

It truly was remarkable.

But for many years I just forgot about the sump pump. I don’t think it did any pumping for years. I lost track of the last time I remember hearing it work.

One time we were looking at that area of the house and I tried to manually get it to pump. There was nothing; it didn’t work at all.

I figured that it was old and had stopped working due to lack of use. It had been that way for years.

Every once in a while we would get some moisture in our basement, but I never equated it to the sump pump not working.

This past fall, we took a look at our sump pump again and, sure enough, it still wasn’t working.

Now I’m not sure if the weatherman was warning people of a wet fall or not, but for some reason Lily and I thought we should replace our sump pump with a new one that worked.

I bought one, installed it, and I think it worked a few times last fall.

But that was nothing like this spring! We had a stretch of about 5 days of solid rain in which our sump pump came on every 2 – 3 minutes.

If we hadn’t had that sump, I’m sure our basement would have been about ankle deep in water.

Back in the fall, the thought of buying a new sump wouldn’t leave us. It stuck with us until we bought one … I’m sure glad it did!

Here’s the thing: God is speaking to us all the time, but often we are good at ignoring or dismissing His voice. Start listening and paying more attention to His voice; you’ll be glad you did.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What thought have you had that you are glad you acted on? Leave your comment below.