The Howerter Family Homepage

Many of you don’t have ponds, so you may not know that there is an overflow drain in the dam of our pond.  When we returned from Europe in November, we noticed that the pond was higher than usual.  We assumed that the overflow pipe was plugged up, so we had our septic tank guy come out to try to unplug it.  (Do any of you have  your own septic tank guy?  Just wondering.)  He used some sort of blower that has a jet engine on it, and they could not get anything out of it.  This meant that the pipe had probably collapsed and was not going to be opened up again.  We called an excavator guy to come and take a look.  He told us that the pipe was too small and should not have been a plastic pipe to begin with.  Big surprise that it was installed incorrectly!  So, guess what we got for Christmas — a new drain pipe!  The pipe is 120 feet long and 12 inches in diameter.  We had 2 small tractors and a huge excavator in our yard on New Year’s Eve.  Since it has been so wet and warm, the tractors really tore up our yard.  It was a muddy mess, but now it is all frozen.  They tore out the old pipe and put in the new one.  It was fun to watch that big tractor in the mud.  When they were finished, the guy told us that he was not happy that all the dirt they had to use to fill in around the new pipe was wet and clumpy because it may not settle correctly.  He told us that if we got lots of rain before it melted and settled, we might still lose the dam.  We really did not want to hear that.  We thought we had fixed the problem and were out of the woods.  It was our only option, but it is still not safe.  It is in God’s hands now.  Hang on God! 

This past weekend Jeff and Judy came over for a visit.  We always enjoy these weekend visits so much.  We play cards, eat, visit and just relax.  On Friday night, Ryan brought Elijah and Josiah out to camp.  They set up their tents by our firepit and got to do all the fun camping stuff without having to drive too far.  Sara and Lily came out for a while too, so she got to enjoy too.   We hung out with them for a while in the early evening too.  Lily and I went into our garage to get a drink, and there was a big black snake right by the fridge!  I grabbed Lily and ran out of the garage screaming for John.  I got everyone’s attention quickly, and they all came running.  Of course by the time John got there, the snake was behind the fridge.  He pulled out the fridge, and there was the snake.  When Sara saw it, she screamed and grabbed Lily.  She told me that she was not expecting it to be so big.  The boys loved seeing this snake up close.  Josiah did not want Grandpa to kill it, but Grandma insisted.  John carried the snake (on a garden rake) to the woods with all three kids following him.  Even Lily went along.  I don’t think she knew what was going on.  She just saw her brothers and Grandpa going, so she wanted to go too.  Just another exciting evening at the Howerter’s!

We have been without hot water since Saturday.  When I woke up Sunday morning, I tried to get some hot water, and it never came.  John checked the hot water heater, and the pilot light was out.  He relit it, but it did not stay lit.  John checked the Whirlpool website, and it said to replace the thermal cupler.  John bought one on Monday, and he replaced it Monday afternoon.  He relit the pilot light, and the water was heating.  I went out to mow since I knew that I would now be able to take a shower afterwards. While I was mowing, the pilot light went out again, so John called Whirlpool back.  Evidently, this is a very frequent problem with Whirlpool hot water heaters.  Nice.  They told John that they would send him the $200 part, and then they would send a repairman to replace it.  The part would not get here until Wednesday, so the repair could not take place until Thursday!  The part did come yesterday-which surprised me.  We also got a message from Sears that we were scheduled for a repairman for Thursday between – wait for it – 8:00 and 5:00!  Nothing like commiting to a time frame!  So, here it is 2:45 Thursday afternoon, and I have not seen nor heard from any repairman.  I don’t put a lot of stock in Sears repair services.  We have heard from other people that their Whirlpool hot water heaters were not very reliable.  If anyone reads this website, you might not want to use Whirlpool products.

We have put our house back on the market.  We are using FSBO (for sale by owner) this time.  We are also putting it on the Chicago Tribune website to get some exposure in the Chicago area.  We have heard from many people that people in Chicago buy property down here for weekend getaways.  We will see what happens.

The gutter guys showed up today.  Hooray!  We are anxious to get the new gutters before the spring rains set in, and we want to get the outside of the house cleaned up.  There is no use cleaning up until they get the old gutters down because they are full of crud.  There is a big pile of gutter buildup right now on the patio.  Yuck.  Hopefully, they will get the job finished today, and we will be able to work on the cleanup this weekend.

Well, we bit the bullet and put a new roof on the house.  When we bought the house 4 years ago, we knew it had the original roof, and it would have to be replaced soon.  It still was not easy to pull the trigger on spending the money.  We are so blessed to have Shug as our good friend.  He took care of it all, and it got done quickly and correctly.  Our roof is at eye level when you drive in our driveway, and it does look much nicer now.  We are getting new gutters next.  John thinks they might get started on that next week.  I will be glad when it all gets completed.  We need to start doing spring cleanup in the yard.

We are doing a few updates on the house this spring.  We bought a new front door which has a full glass front.  It has brushed nickel caming and a cut glass design.  It is beautiful.  Shug and John (Shug’s foreman) put it up a couple of weeks ago, and it looks great.  It lets so much light in.  My John still needs to paint the door, but that will have to wait until it warms up.  The wrought iron black storm door is still up because we may need it when John paints the door.  If the door needs to dry in the garage over night, I thought we might need a door to keep the critters out!  I certainly don’t want any racoons and such in the house!  Once the door is painted, we will remove the storm door.  We are also getting a new roof.  Evidently the roof is the original, so it is about 15 years old.  It is not exactly what we want to spend a bunch of money on, but it is needed.  The new shingles are prettier and look more like a shake shingle pattern.  It will be money well spent I am sure.  It will also be an added selling point when we list the house.  An additional benefit is that we have a huge dumpster in our driveway right now!  Now that is living!