I went into the city for the Costco shop. Stopped at a mall across the road first. As I drove across to Costco, the dashboard lit up with warnings.
Once parked, I was able to link up my OBDII scanner. Four codes showed up. I sent screen caps to my mechanic and he recommended I go to the nearby Canadian Tire, as it looked like I would need a new ignition coil and spark plugs.
That was over 5 hours ago.
They were able to bring it in for a diagnostic after about 3 hours, as there were several people ahead of me. The diagnostic alone would be over $150 after taxes.
I just got called to the counter after I started this. Spark plugs, for sure. They recommended changing the wires, too, but it’s was not essential. Apparently, with GM, the wires are known to crack, do it would have been preemptive. Do8ng that woukd have brought the bill to over $835, before taxes, and not counting the inspection.
I authorized the spark plug change. They just ordered them from the parts store across the street. Total damage for that plus the inspection, almost $550.
My Costco budget was $600.
On the plus side, I will be using my Cdn Tire MC. That’s what I put my budget on. I should be able to get 12 month, interest free financing. I even have some Cdn Tire dollars left I can put towards it.
So, now I wait. If things go well, I might still be able to do a small Costco shop.
I was watering the future food forest when I heard some scrambling. Syndol had climbed to the top of the old squash tunnel. He looked so very majestic, silhouetted against the sky, so I had to get a couple of pictures!
Even the shy ones are exploring the isolation shelter. I think that’s their sibling in the upper level, with Eyelet.
When doing the evening feeding, Colby has been getting brave enough to actually start coming back to the food bowls, while I’m still nearby. I almost touched him today! The shy ones in the photo, though, ran off even though I was across the yard from them still.
Speaking of feral kittens, while I was out, my daughter took care of paying the septic guy, then making sure the gate was closed after he left. As she was going past the garage, she spotted the mama that lives there, the white and grey kitten I spotted this morning, and a second kitten! She tried to get pictures, but was too far away, and the ran under the door as soon as they saw her. From what we can make out, the second kittens looks SO much like a Siamese!
We have got to get them closer to the house somehow. The mother just isn’t bringing them. At least they’re going outdoors!
As for my day…
Good grief.
Everything was fine when I headed out. I made sure to leave the gate open for the septic truck, so I didn’t have to stop to close the gate behind me. I got to my mother’s in good time, and did her morning med assist. Then we went over her grocery list and she made sure to give me cash. She just couldn’t resist making a nasty comment about how she didn’t want me using my card again. Somehow, she seems to be blaming the high cost of her inhaler on my using my credit card to pay for it. As if it somehow would have been free, if I hadn’t done that. Very confusing.
Speaking of confusing, I made sure to get pictures of my all my mother’s bubble packs. She has three “active” bubble packs, and one completely untouched one – and her secret stash bubble pack is now in the lock box, thankfully. There’s still one pack that has a single bubble in it with pills still in it from a day no one showed up for her morning meds. My mom made comments about how confusing it all was, as if it was the fault of the home care aids. It old her, it’s a mess because of what she’d been doing!
Once I was done going over her grocery list with her, I headed out to the truck to go to the store.
It wouldn’t go.
It started fine, but when I went to shift out of part to drive, nothing happened. The lever just moved up and down, freely, with no resistance.
My immediate thought was that something was wrong with the transmission. Which was a worst case scenario, really.
Whatever it was, the truck wasn’t moving.
After turning it off, then on and trying again several times, I finally went back inside, while sending messages to my family and my brother – I knew my brother was coming out to the farm this morning, but didn’t know when.
Once inside, I told my mother what was going on, and finished sending my messages. Then I told her I would just walk over to the grocery store, do her shopping then, when everything was put away, I planned to walk to a garage that was up the street from her place.
My mother suggested that I get them to deliver her groceries, which would have been done after the store closed, but I said it was fine. The store is just a couple of blocks away, and she didn’t have a large list.
As I headed out, I stopped at the truck to get a couple of hard sided grocery bags I knew would fit all her shopping. Of course, I tried the truck again.
Nothing.
Off I went to the grocery store and picked up my mothers items, then brought them back. As I going past her with the bags to get into the kitchen and put things away, she shoved a box of chocolates at me and said to take some. She wanted me to sit down with her and finish off the last few chocolates in the box. I said no thanks for now, I wanted to put the groceries away first. I always make sure to show her what I got, as I put things away, even if I didn’t have to make any changes to her list.
Then I sat down for a bit and did have a couple of chocolates while messaging with my brother and my family, and updating her, before going walking to the garage.
Which is when she asked me to sweep her floor.
Now, I had expected to do some housework for her today, but that went out the window once the truck stopped working. I needed to somehow get it to a garage and find a way home! We only have the one vehicle. I was still thinking “transmission”, even though, after trying to get it out of park a few times, it didn’t seem like the transmission was being engaged at all.
So I told her I needed to work on getting the arrange to get the truck to a garage.
She wanted me to sit down and “rest” for a while.
I really needed to get on this.
“So, you’re done with me, then?”
…
Yes, today, I am done and have to go!
I went to give her another hug before leaving, and she hung on to me, like she was trying to stop me from leaving.
Now, if this were someone else, I’d be flattered, but this is my mother. It wasn’t that she wanted my company or anything like that. It was because I had a problem to solve instead of paying attention to her and doing stuff for her. It was like some sort of test.
Which I’m sure I failed.
We said our goodbyes and I headed out. My brother suggested something to try first, so I did.
Nothing.
They were on the road to the farm, and said they would meet me at the truck along the way.
The cab of the truck was way too hot to sit in, so I dropped the tail gate and sat to wait for my brother.
It turned out that he misunderstood what I meant when I said the truck wasn’t moving. When he tried it himself, he figured it had to be a linkage problem. He then popped the hood and got me to move the lever while he watched inside. My SIL had to actually look around the hood to confirm that yes, I was moving the lever back and forth, continuously.
Nothing.
We now had to get the truck to a garage. My brother suggested I call CAA and arrange a tow, but I told him I needed to find out where to tow it, first. That’s why I wanted to walk over to the garage, first, so see if they would take the truck.
So they drove me over, with my poor SIL squished in the middle seat, and my brother went in with me. We talked to the woman behind the counter and explained what was happening with the truck. Her immediate thought was that it sounded like a linkage problem! I asked about getting the truck towed to them and she checked their schedule.
They wouldn’t be able to look at it until Wednesday.
Today is Friday.
My brother and I talked about it briefly and she suggested we try one of the other garages, in case someone else could look at it sooner.
So that’s what we did.
The other garage is one I’ve been to before, but not in many years, since we now go to a garage in the nearer town. The original owner sold the garage to one of his mechanics, but kept working his towing company, in the same location. When we got there, I was surprised to see the towing guy, but we talked to him about the truck and he looked at their schedule.
Tuesday. Maybe Monday.
Well, that was better than Wednesday!
So we agreed and he wrote my into the schedule. As we were talking about getting it towed, I found he no longer did CAA tows at all, but they would use the garage a couple of blocks away. He suggested I call CAA for the tow, since it’s covered, and that would save me $100.
That done, I started making the call to CAA while we drove back to the truck. The plan was for me to leave the keys hidden in the truck and then I would go home with my brother.
The call continued after we got to the truck and I had it on speaker phone so my brother could hear as well. We also had a hard time giving the name of the garage, as the guy couldn’t find it. My brother finally looked it up on his own phone and it turned out the only name that showed up was the towing company name, so that was the location they put it in as. The entire call was made extra difficult as we were suddenly getting some of the loudest traffic going by, ever!
As we arranged the tow, the guy told me I had to be with the truck when the tow truck arrived.
???
They haven’t required that in years.
Oh, and the tow would arrive at around 1:30pm
It was barely 11am at the time.
I told him, I can’t do that. I don’t live here, and I don’t have transportation. He said, if I wasn’t there, the driver couldn’t tow the truck.
My brother finally just said, we’ll be here, so I confirmed that with the guy.
I was thanked for my cooperation.
Uh huh.
Once the call was done, my brother suggested I hide the keys in the truck, then we would go back to the garage.
So that’s what we did.
Because of the trouble we had finding the place on the map, I made sure to look for the spelling on the sign when we got there.
The sign wasn’t there.
There was the towing company sign.
Looks like the original owner owns the garage again!
Which I’m good with. I liked him better.
So we talked to him about the call with CAA and what they told us about needing to be there when the truck arrived. Now, he used to do towing for CAA, so his reaction was a big WTF?
The towing company was just up the road, so he suggested we talk to the guy about it.
Meanwhile, I already received a text confirming the arrangement with the towing company, complete with reference number.
So we went over to the other garage (this town has one grocery store, but at least three garages!) and got to talk to the tow truck driver directly. We explained what CAA told us, and he was all, WTF? No, I did not need to be there. I told him where the key was hidden, and made sure he knew that the truck wouldn’t go out of park. That was useful for him, because they normally need to put the vehicle into neutral to be able to move it. I also warned him about the missing handle inside the driver’s side door. My brother laughed and joked, “you probably see that all the time.” The guy said yes, yes he did!
In the middle of all this, my daughter let me know when the septic guy came and went, she took care of paying him (with tip. The septic guy always gets a tip) – and about the kittens she saw! All was being taken care of on the home front.
So arrangements with the garage and the tow was finally done. We then squeezed back into my brother’s truck and drove to the farm!
My brother and his wife, meanwhile, were going to lend us a vehicle.
The one that’s stored in the barn.
Now, there are reasons they replaced it, but it still runs and they were pretty sure the registration hasn’t expired yet, either. My brother would get it out of the barn for me and we could use it until we got the truck back.
!!!
Once we got to the farm, they had to rush to get what they needed to do done – and now they had the extra job of getting the car out of the barn! A lot of stuff had been shoved into it and around it, in their hurry to get everything off their property before possession was turned over to the new owners.
My brother and his wife are the best. I don’t know what we’d do without them!
A few hours later, I was in my room folding laundry, my older daughter came in to let me know that she’d heard the storm door open and close. She went to check and found my brother had dropped some peas on the floor and left.
Peas?
Okay.
As we were talking, I mentioned that they were in a huge hurry, but were making sure to have the vehicle available for us.
Which is when I realized my daughter had said, keys. Not peas.
Auditory processing disorder can be really funny, sometimes.
Thanks to the new security camera my brother installed at the gate, I was able to check the live feed to see them leave. My brother drove the truck out with their trailer, and my SIL followed behind with the care they’d loaned us in the past. When she stopped to close the gate behind them, I was able to use the camera to say thank you again, and wish them safe driving, and hear my SIL’s response.
I love technology!
Not long after, I got a call from the garage.
He had a few minutes, so he got the truck in and took a look.
It was exactly what everything thought it might be. A linkage problem. The cable broke.
He was able to use a clip and put it together and it was working, but he couldn’t give any sort of guarantee on how long it would hold. A few months. A few weeks? Eventually, the part would need to be replaced, which would be the entire assembly. It has been a long time since he’d replaced one, but he thought it was around $400plus.
This is our only vehicle. We can’t take chances.
I gave the go ahead. to order the part, asking him to call me back when he knew how much the part would cost. Labour would be $100 an hour, and he estimated about 2 hours to replace it.
I was getting ready to go out and water the garden when he called back.
Was I good with an off market cable for $150?
Uhm… yeah!!!!
So that’s what he ordered for me. The total, with 2 hours of labour and taxes, would come out to less than the part if it came from GM.
So that will be done on Tuesday.
Just in time for my daughter and I to have our joint medical appointment on Wednesday.
Then my eye test on Thursday that she has to drive me home from.
I had completely forgotten about the medical appointments on Wednesday. If we’d gone with the first garage, we would have had to reschedule, and who knows when that would have had to be.
Thank God the problem turned out to be relatively minor and not the transmission!!!
Plus, my older daughter has said she can cover the cost, so it’s not a hit to our budget, either.
That’s a huge relief!
Meanwhile, I’m going to have to use my brother’s vehicle tomorrow, though I was planning to avoid it. It all the fuss, I completely forgot I was going to hit the feed store for more kibble for the outside cats.
I used the last of their kibble to do this evening’s feeding, and even had to stretch it a bit by making a big bowl of cat soup with it.
The cats didn’t complain, that’s for sure!
After all that, I finally headed out to water the garden and baby food forest, which I’ll write about in my next post.
On the one hand, this was a pretty stressful day and another expense we just don’t need.
On the other than, things couldn’t have worked out better, under the circumstances.
The problem didn’t happen until after I got to my mother’s, and I could still do her grocery shopping.
My brother happened to take the day off today so they could get their trailer set up and out for the rest of the summer, so stopping to help me out was on their way.
They still had their hold vehicle, it was being stored here at the farm, and it’s insured (though they did have to run into town to make sure of that).
We went with the second garage that could work on the truck a day earlier than the first one, which meant we don’t have to reschedule medical appointments I’d forgotten about.
I mean, if something’s going to go wrong, it couldn’t have happened under better circumstances.
As my SIL said, someone is watching out for me, and I totally agree – and give thanks!
We’ve been fighting with this all winter, finally getting the pump fixed, with a surprise find, and the diverter added in January while the ejector was still frozen.
Since we got the ejector thawed and the diverter was no longer being used, I’ve been checking the pump pretty regularly. Not obsessively, like I did for the first while, but still frequently.
One of the things I noticed, and even managed to time, is that the pump takes longer to drain the tank than it used to. Talking to my brother, I was thinking there might be more gunk stuck in the back valve. My brother suggested there could also be gunk partially blocking the venturi valve at the bottom of the ejector. Not something we could check until spring. The back valve on the pump would also be checked. We really want to avoid opening things up if we can, as that risks breaking things, and then we’d really be hooped. So, I just monitor.
I noticed that the water level in the filter started to drop, from filling the cannister entirely, to stayed at the level of the inflow opening. It wasn’t running dry, though, and seemed to stay steady, so I would sometimes top up the cannister after the pump was done, adding a bit of dish detergent to break up any grease that might be coating the pipes to from the cannister to the pipe and maybe clearing away anything in or around the back valve.
I hadn’t done that in a while, as the water level was staying the same and things were working.
When I heard the pump running last night, I decided to check it. Things seemed to be flowing as usual, but it was getting hard to see through the lid of the filter. It was starting to get cloudy from grease and grime.
So when the pump stopped, I opened the filter to wash the inside of the lid. I gave a squirt of detergent into the cannister, then scrubbed the lid at the old laundry sink next to the pump.
Normally, I would have then topped up the filter cannister with water, then put the cover back on.
This time, however, I found the water level in the cannister had actually gone UP – and was still going up, and began to overflow!
I popped the lid on and tightened the ring, and the water level stopped rising.
There are two openings in the filter cannister. Inflow and outflow. With the back valve, water only gets in through the inflow. But the pump was off. When the filter first gets opened, there is a gurgle as water in the cannister drains into the inflow pump, because, gravity. There should never be inflow when the pump is not running, because that would be water running uphill, so to speak.
The other alternative is the water was coming from the bottom. If the back valve was not properly closed, because something is caught in it again, liquid in the pipe to the ejector (and there is always some liquid in there) could flow back into the pump and through the back valve, into the cannister. Again. Gravity. The outflow pipe from the pump itself to the ejector is vertical for a few feet, then runs horizontally along the wall, out the basement and to the ejector.
Once things were closed up, all we could do was wait until the next time the tank was full enough to trigger the pump.
Which was this morning, while my daughter was in the shower.
I heard the pump turn on and it ran for a while before I was able to head down.
Which is when I saw there was NO water flow.
The cannister water level had dropped to the level of the inflow opening, but there was no outflow. Suds in the water showed me that the pump had not gone off during the night, while I was asleep.
I stopped the pump, primed it, turned it on again.
There was an initial splash from the inflow pipe, but no outflow. All it did was make more suds.
I tried again.
Still no outflow.
So I turned off the pump and let my daughter – who was still in the shower – know what was happening.
I then got ready to check on the ejector, in case that was frozen again. It was early enough that the outside cat stuff wasn’t done, so I did that first, then headed towards the barn.
I hadn’t been checking the ejector recently, because of the dangerously cold temperatures we’ve been having. The ejector has heat tape around it, and is sheltered on three sides.
When I got to the ejector, I could see the splash zone in front of it was much smaller, but with the cold we’ve been having, that’s to be expected. The water simply froze faster.
The heat tape was warm, so that was still working, and the nozzle at the top was clear. No evidence that the ejector is frozen again.
While I was doing that, my daughter set up the honey pot in the bathroom again.
*sigh*
I took video of what was happening and sent to my brother. The first thing I would want to do is check that back valve, but we don’t have the tools to do it. Specifically, a heat gun to soften the pipe so it can be taken apart and put back together.
If worse comes to worse, we should be able to set the diverter back up again. It was never put away, with the end just set aside. I didn’t want to have a hole in the wall to close up in the winter, so the pipe is still running through it.
I hate to ask this of him, but I really hope my brother is able to come by tonight to work on this. He hasn’t seen the messages I’ve sent to him yet, though.
Meanwhile, this afternoon, I’m going into town to get that tire on the truck checked. I made sure to check it this morning, after going to the ejector, and it seems to be holding air fine. When I found it low, yesterday, the truck had not been used for several days since the tire got fixed.
Since I’m going to be in town, anyhow, I’ll bring our water jugs to refill at the grocery store after the tire is checked and fixed.
Tomorrow, my daughter and I have our double medical appointment. We will be leaving early, as our first stop will be at the other medical clinic, where I will pick up my medical files to transfer to my new doctor, and get the bloodwork requisition for my mother. I will make sure to check the date of her last blood tests, as they are supposed to be a month apart. I’ll be taking her in to get that done in either late February or early March. Probably early March. Then, the day after tomorrow, I’m doing my mother’s grocery shopping. Next week, we start our stock up shopping trips to the city, and in the middle of that, my daughter has some medical scans that are being done in the town to the north of us. We’ve never been to their hospital/health care centre before.
So getting that tire checked today is pretty important!
Losing our septic again, on top of this, is just s*** icing on a s*** cake.
I am so tired of the plumbing in this place. I understand why we have the system we do, but I really wish was had a gravity septic system, not an ejector system. The less technology there is, the less there is to break down – and I say this as someone who loves my technology!
The first thing he asked when I answered was if we got our ejector working again. I told him no, it’s frozen solid. We’re going to have to install a diverter.
Which is when he had to tell me he wasn’t going to make it. When he hadn’t shown up for so long, I was afraid of that.
We might have to call another company, but this is the only one that has been willing to come out as needed, rather than waiting until there are several costumers needing to be done in the same area. It means paying more, but that’s better than having to wait weeks to get it done.
I just set the honey pot up in the bathroom. At this rate, we’re going to have to invest in a commode. The honey pot is a seat that fits on a 5 gallon pail. Not very comfortable, not very stable.
We actually do have a flushing portable toilet in the basement that we found while cleaning up, but the base is missing, so there’s nothing for it to empty into. It won’t fit over a 5 gallon pail, unfortunately.
I don’t get it. We’ve had more severe cold, for much longer periods, in the first few years we moved out here. We had our vehicles frozen for a month. But we never had problems like this, with our septic system.
And it’s not just us. The Cat Lady had the well pump at their cottage freeze and flood the basement, on Christmas Eve. My brother’s sump pump is frozen, and he’s monitoring it through his security camera to watch for possible overflow. During their drive, they saw semi’s broken down all over. Their own car ran well, thank God. The plumbers all mentioned having vehicle troubles from the cold, and they’ve been dealing with calls for service because of the cold. It may be brutal out there, but we’ve had worse!
The Re-Farmer 