Savannah

 We went to 3 weddings in 2022, the first was back in June. Angie's cousin got married at a big estate in Savannah. Like the trip to Italy in 2019 we decided to make a vacation out of it.

Savannah is a great little city and we stayed in three different hotels, the contrast between the three was really interesting. The first was Avid. This is and IHG (think Holiday Inn) hotel and is marketed as "midscale" but I would consider to be somewhat downmarket from Holiday Inn express. We stayed because it was the closest to the wedding venue and I could get it free on points. Thank you to Avid, my employer, for years of having me stay at IHG properties.

Our second hotel was the McMillan Inn. It's a fairly large B&B on the edge of the historic district of Savannah. Nice place, good food, nice people, fun little pool.

Finally we stayed in the Marshall House. The most expensive of the 3 it's a grand old hotel near the river. The room was small but this one is all about location, it's a short walk from all the touristy stuff in Savannah. The breakfast was fantastic as was the wine hour in the afternoon. One day we played trivia, the next they had live music. The wine flowed freely and Wayne, the host, made us feel very welcome.

Yup, those are Segways. This was our third Segway tour, the others were Chicago and Nashville. If a city is walkable at all then a Segway is a great way to see a bunch of the city. Our guide was very knowledgable and we had a great time.

Savannah the city sits on the Savannah river. There is a bricked in walking path along the river ("River Walk", imaginative name) and it's pretty nice to just sit and watch a working river do it's thing. We saw a number of giant container ships going up and down river and even got to see dolphins.

Johnny Mercer was a Savannah native who wrote a bunch of songs you've probably heard, even if you didn't know who wrote them. He's buried in the Bonaventure cemetery which is worth the short drive. There are guided tours and, when you first get into the cemetery it's easy to see why people take them but aided by the Google machine we found a bunch of the touristy graves and even a bunch of interesting graves that aren't typical tourist spots.

Of course being in the south I wanted a low country boil. This was from a place just across the street from the Marshall house. It was very good and not expensive.

Angie got a po-boy. I can't remember what the protein was, probably shrimp. She was jealous of my meal...

One of my favorites from the trip was the Savannah history museum. This is the bench from the movie Forest Gump and while it looks like a real bench in pictures (and in the movie) in real life it's obviously fiberglass.

While wandering around the museum this young fellow approached us and asked if we'd be interested in hearing a talk about the siege of Savannah. We followed along and he talked for 30+ minutes with no notes and covered all aspects of the siege. The detail he provided was amazing including names and dates. Places, guns, famous people, the whole bit. We then followed him outside where he fired his musket 3 times.

As a black powder shooter I knew he was the real deal when I saw the black smudges on his hands. It was hot and muggy (normal for Savannah) and he managed to get the gun to go off 3 times with zero misfires.

I'll confess I travel largely for my stomach. On our last night in Savannah I convinced Angie to go to a British pub for a meat pie. We'd had a big lunch and ended up having just one pie between us but it was a good un.

The drinks were also fun, on the left was a rubarb drink I can't remember the name of, on the right was "Gandalf the Grey" which featured gin steeped with Earl Grey tea.

I don't have pictures but our last stop before leaving Savannah was "Mrs Wilkes Dining Room" which is a MUST if you're going to the city. We'd seen it after our Segway tour on Wednesday, but there were maybe 10 or 15 people in line and we'd decided to wait. BIG mistake. Doors open at 11am and by 10 there were probably 50 people in line, so many in fact that we missed the first seating. I knew we were cutting it close but persisted and I'm so glad we did.

Food is served family style, big plates of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, fried okra, buttered corn, rolls, turnips, squash and I can't remember what else. We ate until our buttons were bursting and then they brought out desert! What a place, a meal I'll remember forever.

Anyway we really enjoyed Savannah, oh wait, one last spot:

Leopold's ice cream, a real old time ice cream shop. Another MUST if you're in Savannah. Get the waffle cone, you'll thank yourself.

Plumbing and electrical

 So here we are again, 2023 is upon us and I've forgotten to update the blog for 6 months...

It feels like just yesterday since I updated but clearly not.

This week I'll be working on few posts to bring us back up to date. For today lets dial back to July.

You might remember our house in Maine:

In 2021 we repainted the house and rebuilt the enclosed porch. The idea is to stop the house from disintegrating before starting any upgrades. In 2022 I decided to continue down the same path when I discovered that the water pipe to the toilet was leaking.

Thus embarked a weekend long odyssey of pluming. Here we've got the pump and pressure tank. Those have been left alone but notice the blue pipe heading up, that's 3/4" PEX. I did have to sweat in a copper to PEX adapter which was surprisingly easy but from there on almost all of the the plumbing is plastic.

I've been a plumbing traditionalist in the past, not wanting to use "those new fangled things" but honestly PEX is the way to go. I installed the entire cold water system in one day and could have done it in less with better planning. With copper I'd have been at it for several days.

My original plan only involved replacing the cold water system, as shown here. Everything in blue is new PEX, the hot water side is still copper. I did that because I still haven't installed the hot water heater, so there really wasn't any point in doing the hot water side. Then I decided I'd link the hot water side to the cold water side. This would result in both faucets running cold water but it would at least let the hot water faucet do something. In the picture you can just spot a little red pipe from the cold to the hot.

This turned out to be a terrible idea, all the hot water pipes (unused for many years) leaked. So I took another day and replaced those as well.

This is 3/4" PEX running along the outside wall of the house. Since all the fixtures in the house are in line with each other what I should have done was run one 3/4" trunk line and then spur off with 1/2" lines to each fixture. I'd have used less pipe and it'd be a better looking install. Probably in 2023 I'll redo all of it, I'm planning to relocate the kitchen sink anyway so I'll do both at the same time.

This is the new bathroom vanity. It replaced a very ugly, early '80s unit that was installed with galvanized pipe that had very nearly corroded away...

Anyway, with the PEX installed we were no longer one plumbing leak away from a flooded basement. Even with my ugly install things are way better than they were. So I turned my efforts to electrical.

On the electrics side the first thing I did was wire in basement lights. There were a few lights down there but not enough and not done in a safe way. Now we have 4 foot LED lights wired to a common switch and a good, grounded, outlet. This makes working in the basement much more pleasant and safer.

The next step was to address the well pump wiring. I've been told the pump itself is probably from the 1920s.

This is the old setup, we're looking directly above the pump, the pump you can see in the picture is the old "soft water" pump that was used to move rain water from a cistern. That system has been disconnected from the plumbing for years but the pump was still connected to the electrics via the left side switch at the top of the picture. The right side switch that you can barely see in the picture powers the well pump. What you can't see is the copper pipe that used to run between them. This was not what you'd call a safe install. Also notice the top of the ladder in the left of the picture. Those switches are eight feet off the ground, very difficult to access.

This is after, I've added the piece of plywood to protect the switch in case the pump blows up, I've located it lower so it's much more convenient and I've used 12ga ROMEX wire directly from a 20a circuit breaker.  

I still need to repair/replace the pressure switch on the pump. It'll work if you tap it but it gets stuck between uses and we run out of water pressure until the switch gets tapped again. I think this is just because it doesn't get used enough. I have another pump with pressure switch I could put in it's place which would undoubtably be quieter than this one but part of me thinks that this thing has been working for 100 years I should probably keep it.

So what's on tap for 2023? This *should* be the year for upgrades. We spent some time in November working on the kitchen and have the old plaster and lathe mostly removed. I need to shore up ceiling a little and remove a little stub of wall and then wire in electrics. I want to be able to run the microwave and toaster oven at the same time so I'll be running at least three circuits, plus one for an electric stove. Eventually I think we'll go to a propane stove but short term a used electric stove is cheap.

Once the wiring is done I want to replace the two kitchen windows. The one facing east is too small, it'll be over the sink so I want something fairly large. The other one is a reasonable size but I want them to match...

After windows I'll get the kitchen spray foamed. Foam insulation offers the highest R-value for thickness and seals the room against drafts. There is a chance I'll get the bathroom done at the same time, that's contingent on removing the tub, removing one window and replacing the other. That window replacement is kind of a big deal because we'll be going with a much smaller unit that is up higher in the wall. We'll see...