Good Morning!!!! 41F @ 5:00AM here in Yankee Hill. Sunny to partly cloudy. High near 50F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.
RNG, was your VW mechanic affected by the fires?
Profoundly. I have had no communication with him since before the fire, and don't intend to have any going forward.:laughing:
Good to hear you're still alive and apparently doing well, Freedom Lives! Good luck with the goats, and with the snow.
I really hope all of you with snow stay safe and cope gracefully with it the rest of the season.
Most of all, Ted, I hope you can continue your horizontal convalescence until your knee is fully recovered. It sounds like your dear wife has what it takes to pick up your load, and you can always make it up to her later when you're back on your feet and well again.
When I came into the house yesterday I noticed quite a few lights were on. Some had been turned on and forgotten by the neighbor lady, but the majority were "smart" lamps from Philips. When power was restored on the 21st, they came on at full brightness and apparently had been that way ever since. They weren't shown as being on in the Apple Home app running on the iPhone, and couldn't be turned off by it, either. I didn't have time to fool with them yesterday, so just used the wall switch or unplugged them to get them to go off. Earlier this morning I found that coming on at full brightness is a safety feature that Philips designed into the lamps. And that people had been complaining about that "feature" for several years. I also learned that Philips had released a software update to change the behavior so that the lamp will come on at the level it was at when power was lost. So it still might come on at full brightness, but it also might not come on at all if it was off when the power went out. Unfortunately, when I tried to apply the update, it deleted all record of the lamps from the app, and now I have to go around and add them all back again. And add them back to any scenes or automations to which they once belonged. But I'm even luckier than I thought: none of the lamps over heated and burned down the house after the power was restored.:shocked: I've already emailed Philips tech support asking for suggestions on fixing the problem. And I'm watching for announcements of a class action lawsuit.
Today I'll move some things around in the garage and bring in a pallet of firewood; I lit the wood stove for the first time this heating season last night to take the chill off the house. And put more wood on in the wee hours this morning when I got up to turn the sprinklers off. The sound of running water woke me up, and now I also wonder if the stuck jet pump switch was due to it being overheated from pumping water out of melted sprinkler lines.
I was able to close and lock the gate at the property entrance last night by pulling the clevis pin from one end of the electric opener so the gate could swing shut. Today I'll gather up some wire and butt connectors and splice in new pieces to replace those that were burned. Hopefully that will get the opener working again. Fortunately the battery was buried in a weather proof box, the top of which showed only minor melting. Fingers crossed the battery is still good. The wooden fence next to the gate is mostly intact, but oddly one post was burned to ash, and it took about a foot of 2"x6" horizontal fence board with it. Not sure how I'll fix that; maybe it's time for steel posts and barbed wire.
I also need to call the electrical contractor back today to let him know he can come by and put together an estimate for a transfer switch and standby generator. Gonna make sure the work covers a sub panel for a new shop building, too.
But I think I'll start the day by pulling everything out of the refrigerator and swabbing it out with bleach solution. Then the kitchen floor will get the same treatment. Overnight the smell got stronger, so I'll also open up the doors and windows when it warms up and get some fresh air going in here, too.
Hard to say going forward what will happen when people go to rebuild, Kyle. Very likely a lot of them will not come back; my wood cutting buddy that lost his home in Paradise has gone to Eugene, Oregon and has rented a house. He and his wife are going to buy or build a new a home there. I know that building codes in California have been revised many times over the years to require fire resistant materials and construction techniques, so new construction should be better able to survive a fire. Not sure if the current requirement for 100' of defensible space around homes will be expanded or not. I'm convinced having that space is what saved my home. But closely spaced homes in Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, and now Paradise had nowhere near 100' of any kind of space around them because the lots they were built on were so small. Those homes lit off like matches in a book and you can't fix that problem with building code changes.
Looking at the regrowth that's already sprouting here, much of it appears to be rye grass that was part of the erosion control mix that was sown several years ago. Another job before the next storm gets here on Tuesday night is to spray glyphosate on another 30' wide band around the house to create a wider fire safe zone. After the storm, I'll follow up with a pre emergent to keep it dead. Not sure what I'll end up covering the dirt with, but it'll be decomposed granite, gravel, or concrete. And I don't think I'll be replacing any of the landscape plants that burned, either. I'll prune the dead parts off what is left, and if it comes back, I'll be keeping it a lot shorter. Some will also get a dose of glyphosate and then removed because it's just too close to the house.
Hope everyone's week gets off to a good start!
