Must-have tools

While doing research for work, I came across this list of seven tools every homeowner should own. (the headline says eight, but you'll notice the numbers skip from six to eight). Want to have little fun? Before you check it out, come up with your own list of eight and see how it compares. Then see how many of them you actually have in your home.

It's a pretty good - if basic - list (What? No power tools?). But it's perfect for someone who's just a dabbler in home improvement. With a few more tools in your arsenal, you'll be ready for those annoying fix-ups that you'll inevitably encounter.

For the record, I'm only missing one. Care to guess what that is?

What next? (aka the five-year itch)

Five and a half years. That's how long we've owned our loft. Coincidentally, that seems to be the outer edge of the life span on a lot of our appliances, all of which were new when we moved in.

As I've mentioned before, problems with our power-flush toilet and tankless boiler have been ongoing for most of those five years. Now I can add to the list the Insinkerator disposal and the dishwasher.

The disposal has acted up off and on for a while, sometimes refusing to process anything else and backing up into the sink. Because the dishwasher empties into the drain, this has sometimes caused problems with water spewing out of the relief valve. This valve is located at the top of the sink, next to the cold water handle, so you can probably guess the results (think pools of water all over the kitchen counters). After the last backup, we stopped running egg shells, coffee grounds and things like banana peels and melon rinds through. Problem solved.

Now it seems the disposal has sprung a small leak. It's located directly under the sink, along with a few other things like trash bags, lightbulbs, and a Swiffer we never use anymore. The leak is on the left-hand side where we store flower pots and other things we rarely use. Specifically, it's on the opposite side as the Big Bucket of Cleaning Supplies. So imagine my surprise when I went to crawl under the sink to install a new faucet and found a pool of standing (and very stagnant) water. The solution? Put a vase under the spot where the water drips. I know it's only a temporary fix, and it's worked ok for now.

Rewind to a couple afternoons ago. We usually run the dishwasher overnight, but this particular day, it ran in the afternoon. When I went into the kitchen to refill my water glass, I found a large puddle on the floor in front of the dishwasher. Cleanup became the first concern, and it involved taking the kick plate off the front and swabbing the (very cramped) space underneath.

Next came diagnostics. At first, it seemed that the leak was under the dishwasher, but that turned out to be wrong. Instead, it appears to be leaking from a spot on the bottom outside of the door. Not coincidentally, this is where a hose feeds into the unit. The sheer volume of water makes a "quick fix" like a catch-cup impossible, so we'll have to call in a pro. Until then, it's all about sopping and and wringing. Fun times.

If you're keeping score, in the coming weeks we're going to have someone come in to fix/maintain our boiler, dishwasher and disposal. The problem is, I have no idea who to call for the dishwasher and disposal. A plumber? Or is there someone in the area who services our specific brands?

To top it all off, one of our cars started shaking pretty violently when we drove it on the highway. This is going to be an expensive month ...

It's not that easy being green, part 2

Finally, as promised, here is the saga the wall-hung boiler. I know you've been eagerly anticipating this, so thank you for your patience.

As you recall, the developer who transformed an old shoe factory into 34 condos (one of which we own) was very forward-thinking. He went out of his way to use a few energy-efficient and eco-friendly technologies in every unit. One was the power-flush toilet. Another was the Baxi Luna tankless wall-hung boiler, which operates on natural gas. These types of boilers have been popular in Europe for years, but at the time we moved in, they were relatively new to the U.S. According to the manufacturer, the Baxi is "from 86 to 98% efficient" and "can heat a home or office space from 600 to 6,000 square feet."

As with the toilet, the boiler has been, to put it mildly, a challenge. Heating has never been a problem, and we've been nothing but pleased with our gas bills over the last five winters. Hot water is a different story.

Less than a year after we moved in (about a year after it was installed) our Baxi began struggling to keep up with our hot-water needs. When the temperature dropped, we'd get about five minutes' worth of hot water before the boiler would reset and start over. With no tank to keep hot water in reserve for just such an occasion, the water would go from comfortably warm to ice cold within seconds. Showering became an adventure. (As an aside, others in the building have had similar issues. As a result of my "pioneering" adventures with repair, I've been called on more than once to help someone fine-tune their boiler because of "Cold Shower Syndrome." Ditto with the toilet.)

Knowing nothing about boilers - let alone space-age ones - I called in the professionals from a local plumbing company that supplies and services Baxi (and other) tankless boilers. On their first visit, they replaced a rubber bladder on which dust, dirt and other particles had accumulated. The next day, the shower went cold.

Their second visit involved replacing the mother board inside the boiler (cost: $175). This worked. Temporarily. Within a few days, the boiler was back to its old tricks. The pros came back and found that the board had shorted out. They replaced it at no charge. Cold showers resumed the next day.

Fourth visit: replaced a part inside the Temptrol shower control. Bet you can't guess what happened the next day.

Fifth visit: the tech adjusted the temperature control knob, turning it from all the way up to about halfway. Naturally, I was skeptical. He explained that the Baxi was apparently having trouble keeping the cold water coming into it at the highest temperature. With the temperature set halfway, we'd lessen its workload and still have water hot enough to shower. In the spring, when the water coming in warmed up, we could turn the temperature back up.

This "fix" worked, but for the last four-plus years, we've dealt with a different problem: water pressure. While the Baxi worked, someone could shower while the other washed their hands, for example. Now, if hot water is turned on in two places, the water pressure drops to a trickle. And guess what? Even in the dead of summer, if that temperature knob rises a half-inch above halfway, cold water "rains" supreme mid-shower.

Call me crazy, but I expect the things I buy to actually work, especially when they're as pricey as a Baxi. But instead, we've learned to just deal with its shortcomings. Does that seem right to you? (Aside #2: As explained here, this is apparently a known issue with the Baxi.)

It's more or less an accepted fact that using green technologies is more expensive, but that the good that comes from using them is worth it. That may be true in monetary terms (and if the products actually do what they're supposed to do for more than nine months), but in terms of reliability and inconvenience, I'll quote one of my 2-year-old's favorite sayings at the moment: "No way, Jose."

I refuse to throw up my hands in defeat

As a parent, there are few things as "rewarding" as cleaning up your child's vomit in the middle of the night. Especially when there's partially digested milk involved. Imagine the rewards of doing it three times in the span of four hours.

Without taking clothing into consideration, version one was easy: dining room table, wooden chair, concrete floor. No sweat. The third wasn't terrible (graham crackers and water on a pretty resilient rug). The middle one? That was the winner of the night. Curdled milk was all over the overstuffed rocking chair in my daughter's room, down the side, underneath the cushion, in the fabric-covered tote of books beside the chair ... you get the picture.

When I saw the destruction the chair alone endured, I was sure it would be so nasty that we'd have to go all "Velveteen Rabbit" and toss it in the burn pile. But I wasn't going down without a fight. After searching online, I found that we had a "miracle cleaner" right in our cupboard: Arm & Hammer baking soda.

Now I've heard about all the wonderful things baking soda is supposed to do, but being a natural skeptic, I've viewed those claims as I would a huckster hawking a cure-all tonic. So not feeling too confident it would work, I decided to try it. So after wiping off and sopping up as much of the vomit as possible, I sprinkled baking soda liberally on the damp spot. This morning, I vacuumed it off to find that the chair doesn't stink. So it gets to stay, after all.

And the best thing is that I didn't have to endure the stench of that industrial-strength cleaner powder they use in schools and (unfortunately) on trans-Atlantic flights. To me, that smell is worse than the vomit itself.

However, I haven't - and don't intend to - test Arm & Hammer's efficacy against scarlet fever.

(Photo courtesy of Real Simple)

Giving up the garden

If you're waiting with bated breath for part two of my "It's not that easy being green" series, bear with me. It's been busy-ness as usual for me, so I haven't had time to delve into the saga of the wall-hung boiler (which may itself turn into a multi-part series).

Instead, I'll post a quick update about the garden.

As I've written before, the garden seemed like a great idea, but in practice, it's been so-so at best (the photo to the right was actually taken on a good day). Having one of the less than a dozen garden plots (for 34 units), we've considered giving ours up for a while. But every spring we pledge that this will be "the year" for our garden.

A couple weeks ago, we finally gave it up. But it had nothing to do with the work involved.

This year, a fellow gardener had the thought that because our garden plots are situated on industrial-filled land, a soil test might be in order. The results showed the sporadic presence of heavy metals, including lead (we're still waiting on exact lead numbers).

My wife and I have always tried to eat organic (or at least locally grown) produce, especially since our daughter was born almost two years ago. So needless to say, those preliminary soil results led (no pun intended) us to give up.

Not having a garden should mean more family time and - of course - finishing home projects. I only wish we'd gotten the soil test results before I dug two-plus feet down in our plot so we could line it to keep the grass out.

It's not that easy being green, part 1

When converting our building from a vacant shoe assembly plant to lofts, the forward-thinking developer installed a couple energy- and water-efficient technologies. In theory, this would seem like an excellent decision. In practice, however, each has provided more than their share of headaches. In part one of a two-part post, I'll talk about the first of these: The toilet.

We have a power-flush toilet, which uses air pressure to quickly (and loudly) drain the bowl, eliminating the need for excess water to be stored in the tank. The trouble started within

six months of move-in.

Part of it was my fault. Never having seen a power-flush before, I dropped a sanitizing tablet into the half-inch of water that accumulates under the flushing assembly. This actually caused the chain from the handle to the activator button to corrode and break. My wife was not amused when this happened while I was in Florida on business. Upon returning, I was able to fish the majority of the mostly undissolved tablet out of the tank and replace the chain.

The next headache was with the assembly itself. As a result of our water coming into the building through old pipes, the small amount of sediment it contains builds up over time and causes the stopper to stick in the open position. With this open, the system can't re-pressurize - and the toilet won't flush. Luckily, the sound of running water accompanies this, so I know when to fix it. While this is annoying, it's easy enough to take apart and clean.

The major problem is that I've taken that assembly apart so many times that at least four of the eight screws that hold the cap in place have stripped the plastic holes they fasten to. This also prevents re-pressurization and is more difficult to fix. To seal the tank, I put silicone around the rim of the cap (on top of the rubber O-ring) to hold it in place.

So far, my solution has worked (knock on wood), but I know it's only a stopgap. I've scoured the Internet for a more permanent fix, and so far, the only solution I've found is to use fatter screws. Having no other ideas, I'll try it.

So while our toilet is taking care of the Earth, it's certainly not taking care of us.

Next up: the wall-hung boiler.

"Daddy fix"

One of the drawbacks of being even slightly handy is that you build up expectations. In the past, my not-so-handy (or not-handy-at-all) friends and family have often called on me for advice or ask me to help them install or repair something (or even to do it for them). Partly because I like to get all the experience I can, and partly because I've always had trouble saying no, I usually oblige. Not surprisingly, it poses quite a quandary when it comes to my own projects.

While I enjoy helping, these requests have thankfully dried up in the two years since my daughter. People are respectful of the fact that I don't have the time I once did for my own projects - never mind theirs.

This segues perfectly into the new quandary of high expectations - my daughter's.

As she's gotten older, more independent and very, very smart, she's seen me fix a few things, including some of her toys and pop-up books that no longer pop up. I love seeing the expression on her face when she sees Elmo and his daddy back in their rightful place in one of her books. The Baby Einstein book "Jane's Animal Adventures" was a particularly tricky fix, but it's been restored to as close to its original form as humanly possible.

So now, whenever something breaks, she hands it to me and says, "Daddy fix." Flowers, bananas, books, toys - it doesn't make a difference. I love that she looks up to me as a Mr. Fix-It hero who can repair anything.

Aside from the fact that she often seems to break things on purpose with the thought that I'll fix them, the biggest problem is that sometimes Daddy can fix. Sometimes he can't. For example, you can mush a banana back together. But in the case of flowers, tissues or other un-fixables, if a reasonable facsimile can be found, a little sleight of hand usually does the trick.

So in addition to my continuing education in the ways of DIY and home improvement, I'm also getting a self-taught education in magic tricks.

But given how smart this one is proving to be, I have to wonder how long I can get away with that.