How's Your Day? August 2019

Discussion in 'The Chatterbox' started by richgem, Aug 1, 2019.

  1. Sara-s

    Sara-s This Pun for Hire

    They’re aa pretty understanding bunch. And it’s down to 2 now. I remembered that the stuffed beaver was purchased in Juneau, Alaska and named Mendenhall.
     
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  2. richgem

    richgem suffering from chronic clicker hand cramps

    they were the adopted redheads, so.....:innocent
     
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  3. brit

    brit in a box

    :)..all is good then.. download (1).jpg
     
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  4. richgem

    richgem suffering from chronic clicker hand cramps

    Oh, stop ... um.... moos-ing around, will you? ;)
     
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  5. richgem

    richgem suffering from chronic clicker hand cramps

    Made a batch of blueberry-lemon biscotti* for friends that I'm visiting next week.

    *vanilla cookies w/ dried blueberries and lemon sugar icing.
     
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  6. brit

    brit in a box

    download (9).jpg :)
     
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  7. MntnMan62

    MntnMan62 Well-Known Member

    I seem to be taking hits the past couple of years. I won't rehash the old stuff. But here's the latest nonsense. I'm in New Jersey. My son calls me into his room and asks what all this stuff is on his bass carrying case. It was very small granular like bits and there were a lot of them. I look around where he had been keeping the case and notice a modest hole at the bottom of the window sill where the sill meets the wall itself. I take a look at them and wonder what they could be. I immediately was thinking some sort of insect. Either termite or carpenter ant. But I go online and can't find any pictures of subterranean termite or carpenter ant droppings that look like the ones we found. I call in our termite guy. He comes and looks at it and is puzzled. Says it doesn't look like anything he's seen before. He says it's definitely not carpenter ants or termites, at least the kind that we have this far north in New Jersey. He takes a sample and sends it out to an entomologist for identification. Meanwhile I'm online looking at everything I can and I come up with the conclusion that they are dry wood permite droppings. But what do I know? And he said that's "nearly" impossible because they can't survive up here. He calls me back after hearing from his entomologist who confirmed that I was correct. Dry wood termites. He then proceeds to tell me he can't help me because he isn't equipped to deal with them. So I call another exterminator that was highly recommended by everyone on our local Facebook 411 pages. They send a guy to come out and look and the guy can't identify them but says he wants his boss, the owner, to see this. A couple days later he shows up and is puzzled but less so than the first guy who left me hanging. We look at other places in the house, down in the basement, the attic above. No signs of anything. Back in my son's room and we start knocking on the window moulding because there are very very tiny holes where the droppings seem to be coming from. I knock along the left moulding and my knuckle sinks into the wood. It is original moulding to the house which is about 90 years old and the paint looked fine. I then stepped back and he asked me if I minded his digging around a bit. He sticks his poker into the indentation and starts pulling back the many years of paint. We uncovered a nice sized void behind the paint and sure enough we could see the little buggers crawling away from his light. We opened up more of the moulding and the channel runs for about a foot or two. We also found a soft spot up on top of the window moulding. Checked the outside and the window framing outside is sound and solid.

    So, we are all scratching our heads how I could have ended up with dry wood termites in NJ. They are far from their indigenous territory. My understanding of how this species is treated down south is to tent the building and fumigate. But that's not an option because no one around here has the equipment to do that. Plus my house is a full 3 stories plus a basement which is above ground at the back of the house. I'm now waiting for him to get back to me with suggestions as to how he intends to attack these little buggers. I think the plan is to pull the moulding entirely off and see what we can find. I'm not worried about structural damage yet because my house is constructed without the conventional wood framing that supports the exterior walls. Mine is two layers of brick with the floor joists resting on the inside layer of bricks. But there is some lath behind the plaster walls that they could be eating as well. So we need to tear stuff out until we no longer see any damage so we can be sure we are removing all of the wood that they are infesting. They tend to live in much smaller colonies than normal subterranean termites so I'm hoping it's localized and we can just spray the area we rip out. Then I can have our contractor come back, try and match the old moulding and I'll do the plaster work.

    Leave it to me to end up with something that shouldn't be there. Just how my life has been going from about 2016 on. Things tend to happen in threes. Hoping this is number three. Sheesh.
     
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  8. brit

    brit in a box

    good luck sir..sounds like a cool house..
     
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  9. MntnMan62

    MntnMan62 Well-Known Member

    Thanks. It's really nothing special. We like it but it's a modest house on a 50 x 100 lot. This isn't the first surprise we've had with this house. Many years after we bought it (bought in Jan '95) my wife was digging in the circle that was in one half of our front lawn and was a nice lush garden when she notices something sticking just above the dirt. She calls me to take a look and I immediately knew what it was. An oil tank fill pipe. As far as I was concerned the house was heated by natural gas and had been for a very long time because the furnace was old. For years after that I was afraid to even think about it, yet could not bring myself to do anything about it for fear of what we might find. We finally bit the bullet this spring and had it removed. I was there for the unveiling. The contractor dipped it and said there was about 22" of something in there. He seemed to think it was mostly water. That got me worried. Cut open, pumped out the liquid which was almost entirely water, just a film of oil on the surface. Scrubbed down the inside. No evidence of rust or holes. Pulled the tank. It was a sunny day. Turned it so the bottom was exposed to the sun and looked inside. Not a single point of light. And best of all, not a drop of oil in the ground. All these years I had been imagining the worst, oil migrating towards the back of my property, getting into the ground water, contaminating other people's property, hundreds of thousands in remediation costs, etc. etc. In the end, the entire ordeal cost me $1,750, including permits. Best money I ever spent. And now I have termite that don't belong anywhere near here.
     
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  10. brit

    brit in a box

    i hear you sir..hopefully like you said ,its localized..
     
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  11. Paul Turner

    Paul Turner outside the quote(s) now

    I was at the gym, and watched an Archery match on the treadmill TV. I couldn't find @Sara-s....perhaps she was waiting in line, lol. The TV monitors don't have sound, thus I had to wonder how you broadcast archery: " OK here comes Smith, looks good, sets his feet, cranks that baby back, FIRES, and OH WHAT A MAGNIFICENT SHOT!".
     
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  12. Paul Turner

    Paul Turner outside the quote(s) now

    That's right Mr G...you're our blueberry rep.
     
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  13. Sara-s

    Sara-s This Pun for Hire

    Nope, sorry, I wasn’t at that one. I actually was out shooting at thee outdoor archery range in the park. We had the most delightful weather- 80 degrees, with low humidity and a light breeze.

    When I watched the archery in the last Olympics, the commentary was actually pretty good. They had cameras on the shooters and others near the targets, so you could see what was happening. The commentators did a good job of explaining how it was scored, why a certain shot was good or bad and even why the bows looked the way they did.
     
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  14. Paul Turner

    Paul Turner outside the quote(s) now

    Oh that's good......proper commentary for the sport. I did see a shooter with the camera right on him-thought he was going to fire right at the camera!!!
     
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  15. richgem

    richgem suffering from chronic clicker hand cramps

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  16. MntnMan62

    MntnMan62 Well-Known Member

    Spoke to the exterminator today. He said there does not appear to be any evidence of termites from the outside. He's speculating that since the windows are relatively new, like within the past 5 years, it's possible the window in my son's room had a queen living in it as they could have come from the Carolinas or somewhere much warmer. Or it could have been in a piece of wood that my contractor used to finish off the trim around the window. Clearly speculation. But he said that basically I need to open up the moulding around the window. So that means the entire left piece where we actually found them as well as the top piece because the wood is soft on top. He said rip those pieces off, throw them in a trash bag and be ready with a shopvac, have a tarp laid around the window. He said if the evidence appears to go further such as behind the plaster, he said remove as much of it as needed until there is no longer evidence of these critters. He's thinking they have been there for a few years. 3 or 4. And he said they work very slowly. He also said he'd be there for the initial "unveiling" to provide advice and get a look at the situation. And if we find the infestation goes further and we have to fumigate, there are commercial companies that tent cargo containers at the port of Newark who also will do the occasional home since it isn't often needed. Expensive but at least I know I have all the bases covered and one way or another, we'll beat these nasty suckers. Still can't believe it happened to me.
     
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  17. brit

    brit in a box

    sorry to hear Todd,but at least they are slow movers..just make sure you get every one of them.the options look good..
     
  18. Paul Turner

    Paul Turner outside the quote(s) now

    Just after coming back from a good gym workout, and right before sitting down to dinner, I suffered a rather freakish fall, as my foot got stuck under an area just below my dishwasher, and down I went hard onto the floor. My left upper arm bore the worst brunt, especially my elbow. It's one of those injuries where you feel OK right now, (although there is some discomfort), but then you wake up the next morning and the pain gets worse. My foot has been caught in the same area many times before, but I always escaped injury. Not this time. I need your well-wishes that nothing becomes seriously wrong. Thanks.
     
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  19. brit

    brit in a box

    i hope you are ok sir..
     
  20. Steveclarkus

    Steveclarkus Well-Known Member

    It has been a good day
     

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