This site has become dormant over the last few years as I have concentrated on my main community news site (Blue Ridge Muse) and my longtime political news operation (Capitol Hill Blue) but I’m prepared to relaunch DougThompson.Com on January 1, 2010.
Stay tuned. It ought to be fun.
Going on hiatus for the Christmas holidays. See you after New Year’s.
Just when we were ready to get back on line a death in my wife’s family caused us to drop everything and head west.
Back now. There was a problem with our archive files. That’s been fixed.
The early word from Hurricane Rita is far less disaster than feared. Lake Charles, LA, took a direct hit, as did the refineries in Port Arthur, TX, but the damage appears less than feared and no deaths from the storm itself (although the 25 senior citizens killed in a bus fire as they fled the storm is an indirect, and tragic, result). On the down side, flooding can still come and parts of New Orleans are under water again.
Of course, the gas prices that went up 30 cents a gallon in anticipation of massive damage won’t come down.
“We seem to have a problem in the kitchen,” Amy said. “There’s a bulge under the linoleum.”
Uh-oh.
I stepped on the section of flooring and felt it give. Grabbed a flashlight and headed for the crawlspace under the house. As soon as opened the door that led from the garage I heard water dripping on the plastic that covers the dirt floor the crawlspace.
Uh-oh, uh-oh.
Water sprayed from one of the pipes leading to the kitchen and pooled on the plastic tarp. I left for work as Amy worked the phones, trying to find a plumber. One said he could come on Saturday. Not soon enough. For weeks we had been trying to locate Robbie at Laurel Branch Plumbing, considered one of the county’s best plumbers, to get an estimate for a water filtration system but his voicemail box was always full (not unusual in a county with only three plumbers).
But she kept trying and reached him in the early afternoon. He’d just returned from another job and was headed to the shower. Said he’d be right out. He arrived just as the clouds opened up from the remnants of Hurricane Katrina. Found a crack in a hot water pipe leading to the kitchen sink. Ninety minutes later, pipe fixed, leak stopped.
But a couple of inches of water remained pooled in one corner of the crawlspace, along with several rows of soaked insulation under the kitchen floor. Headed for Lowes in Christiansburg to pick up an industrial-strength dehumidifier with a pump to send water up and out of the crawlspace. Spent the rest of the evening setting it up and routing the drain hose out into the yard. With luck the unit will dry the wood before mold sets in.
Robbie said he would be back next month to install a water filtration system. Maybe, by then, the crawl space will be dry.