Looking for Leaks, Golf Cart Pontoons, Clean Teeth

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

8/5/23

Aloha Ohana --

Well, glad to see some of you are cooling off a bit.  I noticed in the news that even Phoenix cooled down a little, dropping below 110d after a record-setting month of daily highs at or above that level.  Of course, it's a dry heat.  Kind of like a convection oven or an air fryer.  And it cools down at night -- to around 92d, downright chilly!  Schadenfreude is unkind, I know, but it sure is fun occasionally.  I do, however, feel sympathy for those who don't have the means to deal with this kind of extreme heat by retreating to home air-conditioning. It must be truly brutal -- and even deadly in some cases.

A main focus of my week was dealing with leaks.  The first was with our garden irrigation system.  Part of the system was already installed when we moved into the house, but I've greatly modified and expanded it over the years.  It's relatively efficient, with low volume sprinklers that are placed to benefit specific areas of the garden, rather than blanketing everything. Also, by adding several additional zones, I can adjust the amount of water depending on the locations and the plantings in them.  The system is controlled by programmable timers that I have set to go off every other day for about 10-15 minutes depending on the zone.  If we get a lot of rain, I have the controllers skip a cycle.  Like many repair projects, this one started as something else.  Karen accidentally poked a hole in one of the lines while gardening, and in the process of fixing that I discovered there was another leak that had probably been going on for some time.  It wasn't obvious, however, exactly where the problem was because it was in a section of line that was buried pretty deep, and the symptom was that a fairly sizeable area was overly soggy.  So I had to trace the line and dig down until I found the leaking spot.  However, here "digging" is not an easy matter of "stick-shovel-in dirt-and-move-to-the-side."  Our volcanic, rocky "soil" requires a lot of effort and swear words.  Anyway, I finally found the leak and repaired it so now more water should be going to where it's needed.

The other leak appears to be related, but I'm not so sure. We got a notice from the water department of unusually high usage based on their latest reading of our meter.  I know, you're probably thinking this might have been coming from the leak in the irrigation system that I fixed.  Maybe, but the holes I found didn't seem big enough to account for the amount of high usage. This week I checked the meter myself many times and I'm almost positive there's isn't currently a leak in house plumbing (like a bad toilet valve).  Our meter is read once every couple of months, and our bill is figured on the difference between the latest two readings.  However, a few months back our meter dial hadn't moved, so a couple of weeks after that the water department replaced it. The following reading, then, was based on fewer days than usual.  The latest reading is what showed the unusual usage, but it isn't as far out of line as I first thought. I'll keep checking a few more days to get a good idea of how much we use for irrigation and how much for other things.  I'm beginning to wonder if the latest reading was wrong, and if it was, the billing will straighten itself eventually. And I'm still open to the possibility that the irrigation leak was the cause. Time will tell.  Patience, grasshopper......

Speaking of water, Karen and I tried to play golf on Thursday but we only completed 5 holes before it started dumping.  A die-hard committed player would have just kept going but we aborted and headed for cover, sort of surfing our way down the mountain to the club house.  Maybe the course should add emergency pontoons to the golf carts?  I played really well the first couple of holes, and we saw seven peacock babies, then even the birds opted to find someplace dry.  We'll try again Monday.

Finally, a big deal for both of us this week was getting our teeth cleaned (!).  There is a shortage of hygienists on our island and so you have to schedule very far in advance.  Last year we had to change our appointments because of a conflict with travel dates and it was a major hassle getting back into the schedule at our regular clinic.  Our insurance will completely cover 3 cleanings per year, and we try to take advantage of that, but a 4-month interval is difficult for the scheduling people to handle.  Anyway, we're back on track and have appointments for December, April, and August all set.  So far it looks like our travel plans can be adjusted to accommodate the dates.  Note the oddity of planning your life around getting your teeth cleaned!

That's it for this week.  Take care, whistle a happy tune.