It's Not a Dry Heat

The actual onset of warmer weather is really here. For the folks who don't live in the Mid-Atlantic region, let me explain--we don't get much "springtime" weather here. Nope. We go from "Crap, it's COLD!" to the proverbial "It's like a sauna out there" in what seems like two weeks. Sure, we get some nice flowers for a while, but the reality of living in an area primarily built on reclaimed swampland eventually strikes home every year in the form of pretty serious humidity. Just lately, we've been experiencing damn-near rain forest weather--temperatures in the mid-70s/lower-80s and rain, drizzle, sun, torrential downpour, sun, rain... at least it hasn't been necessary to water the new plants. But it's been humid. Really humid. And humidity is unpleasant inside the house. It fosters mold and mildew, it makes things smell funky, it creates an environment for all kinds of gross bugs... it's just unpleasant. Additionally, a humid basement affects the floors directly above, which means the basement won't be the only stinky, buggy part of the house--the first floor will get icky, too.

If you remember this post, I mentioned the need for a dehumidifier in our basement. We made it quite a while without one, but after about three weeks of mixed rain and sun, it became obvious we really needed to do something. All of the tell-tale signs were present (funky smells, extra moisture in the air, etc), and the basement really had a damp atmosphere. Now, I know most fully underground basements smell a little "off," but ours was actually getting a little... err... reeky.

Let me back-track a little here. We haven't really done much with The Serpico House's basement yet. Every other week, Avy and some friends hang out and do some belly-dancing down there, and I have a little amplifier and some guitars in there, too, but it's basically just an empty, carpeted room. It's nice... or, rather, it was nice... until the humidity started kicking in. Starting after Avy's dance rehearsal the other day, when the ladies emerged from the basement, there was a distinct aroma of something other than that of natural human exertion. It was a sort of moldy, vegetational smell.

And that's when I knew we really needed to get a dehumidifier.

So, I started looking around online... the average price for a consumer-level, standard-sized dehumidifier sits somewhere between $160-$350. Most dehumidifiers work by drawing moist air over a refrigerated coil with a small fan. Since the saturation vapor pressure of water decreases with decreasing temperature, the water in the air condenses and drips into a collecting bucket. Dehumidifiers are rated in pints (25-pints, 45 pints, etc), and this refers to the amount of water it can remove from the air in a 24-hour period. The higher the pint-rating, the more powerful the dehumidifier.

After digging around for while, we decided on this one...

It's an LG 45-pint unit. We bought a refurbished model because it came in at a pretty reasonable price when compared to a new one, and the reviews were all at least four-star our of five. It showed up last night, and I set it up right away. My first impressions were that it is somewhat larger than I expected, and it's pretty weighty, too. It didn't take much to get it going--set it down, plug it in and that's it. A fan noise starts up (it's not too loud to me), and you don't notice anything special happening right away.

I guess I started it up around 6:30pm. We went about our usual evening routine, and around 10pm, I went into the basement to check it out. I may be somewhat overly ambitious, but I am pretty sure I noticed that the basement had less of a mildewy odor. When I checked the collection bucket under the unit, it was about 1/2 full of water. I dumped the water and turned it on again. We went to bed about an hour later.

This morning when I woke up, I checked the dehumidifier, and it was still running. I checked the bucket, and it wasn't completely full (the unit is supposed to turn off when it's full), but there was a lot of water in there. I dumped it and started it up again. I could imagine this getting a little old... luckily, this thing is supposedly equipped with a hose-draining option (that sounds naughty!), which allows you to attach a length of garden hose to the unit and lay the other end in a sink or drain. This allows you to set the humidity level for whatever you like and let the unit run when needed without dumping the bucket. I think we'll eventually do this.

For now, the bucket works, and I foresee that the basement (and the rest of the house) will be more pleasant.

Keys, Alarms and Dampness.

All the papers have been signed, so it looks like the deal is done. Due to a scheduling mishap, we get the actual keys to the house tomorrow. Woot!

The keys... Ha! Here's a little amusing side story: apparently there are no known keys to the front door of the house. Turns out Ms. Serpico never used the front door. She only used the back door, so she eventually lost track of the keys for the front. I can see why she'd prefer the back door, though--the driveway leads right to it, there are no steps, it opens into the kitchen... yeah, makes sense. The front steps are kind of steep, too, so I can imagine an older person wouldn't want to mess with those. And, as an added bonus, she also somehow misplaced the key to the garage, so that's just unlocked all the time, and it can be automatically opened by simply pressing a door-bell-like button. You'd think someone named Serpico would be a little more security-minded, huh? Guess not.

We'll need to get new locks for the front door and the garage door, I guess... or have them re-keyed.

Re-keying seems like a good idea, right? I mean, we wouldn't have to buy anything new or replace anything, and the locksmith (who would obviously be a highly trained pro) would be able to come and handle that business on site for about $75 ($45 for the visit, and ~$10 per cylinder.) That seems reasonable to me. Plus, it wouldn't involve me buying kits of some sort and then figuring out the proper method for installation... and almost definitely screwing it up. Although... I am pretty sure I wouldn't screw it up. It's a lock. I have never installed one, but I doubt it's beyond my range of skills. I have some faith in myself.

Replacing the locks on my own... hmm... that's gonna be cheaper, for sure. It's basically a trip to Home Depot or Lowe's (or a hardware store) and an expenditure of maybe $18 for the front door deadbolt. That idea has appeal because it's cheap. And, again, I'm pretty sure I can do it myself.

Having said that much, I'm also sure that my common sense would abandon me (some say it was never doing anything but paying an occasional visit, anyway), and I'd come home with this thing...
Honestly, it looks pretty sweet to me, and we do love techy stuff... but not at five times the cost of a normal deadbolt. That's kind of silly. But just a paragraph ago I was willing to pay someone about the same amount to come and re-key the existing locks. Hey, I'm just weighing my options, OK?

And, speaking of security, we were informed that the alarm system in the house is only semi functional. I think it was installed ages ago, and it hadn't been used for a while. So if we want to make use of this thing, we'll have to get in touch with the alarm company and have a rep come out to update it. I don't know a lot about the way alarm systems are installed, but this one has some sort of transformer living in the attic, and, from what we've been told, it buzzes. Well, since the attic is accessible via Xavier's room, you can bet we don't want any buzzing noises waking up the little man at night. I think we'll just disconnect the transformer for now. We can worry about having an alarm system later. Yeah, so there you go, all you would-be burglars... we won't have an alarm for a little while. We will, however, have two large adults living there, both of whom have extremely strong protective natures. Also, Mack the Attack turtle will be roaming the house, and seriously, you don't wanna mess with him. He's been known to send rottweilers running off, yelping, with just a hard stare. You've been warned.



The sellers also let us know that the basement needs to have a dehumidifier running at all times, and they're not leaving one for us. Bummer. I thought it smelled kind of musty down there when we checked out the house before. Looks like we're going to have to invest in a good dehumidifier, but that's fine--I kind of figured we'd need something like that. I think I have a good one picked out, too.



The reviews are almost all positive, and the price is fair, I guess. According to the info I've seen on this 70-pint dehumidifier, it should do the trick for our basement. I know we could spend something like $1K on a dehumidifier, but screw that... it shouldn't be necessary to spend that much money clear up our space, and, as I mentioned, the Frigidaire unit I like seems to work really well for just about everyone who reviewed it. I just want our basement to be a functional, pleasant space... with no musty smell or mold. Ew.

In more positive news, the sellers are leaving the hutch and buffet for us. They heard Avy commenting about the furniture, and they decided to be nice and leave both pieces. That was sweet of them, I think, especially since Avy and I have decided the best move would be to try and sell the hutch... we can get a few bucks for that thing, and, ya know, those fancy dehumidifiers and deadbolts don't come cheap.