Sjoerd enjoyed your stories . Why in the world would they cut down 100 sycamore trees. Don’t they realize the impact to the neighborhood and habitat for wildlife, not to mention the shade from hot summers and cooling temps down. Pure ignorance, because some dufus in office wants to leave his legacy behind his tenure at the helm, and your street paid the price. Did you ever see the bike path??? My imagination gets carried away sometimes. I hope there was a good reason for destroying all those trees. I felt so bad when the woods next door was clear cut. Some 200 year old growth forest trees gone too. They got out the big guns to chop all your neighborhood trees down and must have been horrifying to watch. Sorry you lost the battle to save them with the city. I bet you put up quite a fight . Duking it out with city bureaucracy is always a loosing battle. … Gardeners heal from precious losses but the scars remain. Lovely street and neighborhood where you live… Movin on to the cat incident… Your cat story sounds like a plant lost to a spoiled bratty cat. Have a few of those myself. In the past I repurposed a big parrot cage and placed small house plants inside the cage to protect against cat attacks. Cats are mischievous little varmits . Cute with so many needs and attention seeking habits and most of the time loved and adored . Even though a precious plant may become a target of a cats aggressive behaviors, we always have a special place in our hearts for them. To sum up that whole week of one thing happening after another… it might go something like this… ………Some days your the windshield and some days your the bug…… Thanks so much for redirecting me to your stories here. PS : Did your clematis plant recover?
Many local councils consider tall trees an inconvenient expense. Here in Trafford we have a lot of tall trees. They can cause problems when they are situated in the pavements next to busy roads. The roots can start to push out the kerbs. In some places it can be difficult for pedestrians, say with a pram or pushchair to squeeze between them and the curtilage wall of a house. But there's been no wholesale removal of trees well over 100 years old lining many roads. One classic road is Brooklands Road in Sale. It's about a mile and a half long. Built in the mid 1800s and named after the landowner, who sold large plots on either side of it for buyers, to build huge houses. One such house was owned by the owner of Kilverts Lard. This became the Woodcourt pub, but is long gone and the area replaced by blocks of flats. But the road is still tree lined, for its whole length, either in the pavements or close to them, in the gardens of much smaller houses that replaced the many Victorian mansions. We've many other roads with such tall tress, even the busy A56 has quite a few.
DHR So many benefits in communities from trees. Here in my state trees along city streets are trimmed away from power lines or trees that are not near power lines are also trimmed to retain sailworthyness disease or improvement to roads , construction or cleared due to winter storms. All cities in the PNW have tree lined streets as well as major highways. City /state commissions in charge for the care of trees for safety concerns.
Pac— well, that was quite a while ago. As I recall the council wanted to re-shape the street and re-do the intersection. The street was widened and the intersection was made very large. No doubt good for the traffic flow with certain places for emergency vehicles to cross the median to reverse direction. In the end they did replant most of the large trees with saplings and these days they have grown amazingly. I do not go back over that way so often, but it does look better now the grass has grown back and the saplings are adult now. I cannot remember if that little Clematis survived or not.
Not a good day yesterday. We have a tall 50/50 Miele fridge/freezer. It must now be six years old. It wasn't cheap. It's the second one we've had, the first had to be replaced under guarantee after three months, as it stopped working and their engineer couldn't fix it. An overall disappointment, they couldn't have put less paint on it, as it's worn off on any sharp edges like the corners of the doors. It has no end of settings, including "Party." Beefs up the cooling of the fridge part, as the door could be frequently opened. "Holiday," reduces electricity consumption as the doors won't be opened for several days. There's even one for "Sabbath." I think that just turns the interior light off in the fridge part. None of these settings we've ever used. As long as the fridge half stays on +5c and the freezer -18c. We're happy. But now the freezer part is fine, it's holding -18c. But the fridge part is showing +16c. Putting it on "Factory re-set" cures it for a while as it comes back down to +5c, but after a few hours it's back at +16c. I've done that four times now. So I phoned Miele's "service department." Huh! This was, "a very nice Indian woman, possibly working from home with her children, in a house in the foothills of the Himalayas, for no end of companies," Such people work from a provided script. She had of course, no technical knowledge whatsoever and said she was unable to connect me with someone who had. She gave me two choices, a sort of "lucky dip." I could either pay up-front £170 for a call-out plus parts, or £309, for a guaranteed repair for 12 months. Or if they can't fix it, that much off a new fridge/freezer. "They better fix it!" Miele do have a "web chat" facility, that appears to be unmanned. I've sent them a "strongly worded," e-mailed complaint, for what good that will do. At the moment I've paid the £309, "upfront" as we need it fixed. One advantage we have is that I nicked a shelf and a door rack off the one that was replaced, as there's never enough supplied. I've moved everything but veg out of the freezer part (just in case) and put it in the two back-up freezers in the garage. I emptied the decades old Budweiser fridge I keep in the tea-house of beer, and carried it down to the house and stuck it next to the sink until the other is fixed. So at least we have a working fridge. How times have changed. Fifty years ago we had a much smaller, "Hotpoint Iced-Diamond" fridge/freezer, which was trouble free for twenty-five years and when we replaced it with a larger one, "we had to beat the Hotpoint to death with a stick."
@Sjoerd we had similar thing happen on my street when I was a kid. I still remember us kids trying everything to remove tht painted mark. I an going back to the late 70's so the event did leave a lasting memory for me.
Clay — I can just imagine. It is a big deal. When large trees go down, it is always sad to me. Here though, there is a law that if trees are chopped down by the municipality then they must plant the same number of new trees somewhere.
I tackled another job this morning. The tap in our kitchen. The kitchen units were fitted about 20 years ago and are in excellent condition. I did everything else, tiling, electrics, false ceiling with down-lighters, floor, etc. But over time, the tap has become harder to rotate. It happened before, about eight years ago. If the body of the tap moves, it puts a strain on the connecting pipes, which might eventually cause one to crack and we'd have water everywhere. Space in this kitchen is at a premium. To get at it, both these soft-close drawers have to come completely out. To do that, the door of the washing machine has to be open..no kidding! Then I'm faced with this. Above the flexible pipes there are two short lengths of 15mm copper pipe which connect to the tap unit. Behind them is a nut with a centre screw. To get at it, I needed a socket on the end extension bar (by feel as even lying flat on my back with my head and shoulders inside the cupboard, I still can't see it) and turn it with the socket ratchet bar, (all at the age of 85). Anyway, job done. My wife suggested, "I get a man in." But plumbers don't want these small fiddly jobs. As I'd done it before, it wasn't too hard. Job done. The tap now turns without trying to move the body. My ancient Budweiser fridge is next to the sink as this load of rubbish has gone wrong. I've done four, "factory re-sets" which has got the fridge back down to +5c. But after about five hours, the temperature has gone back up again. Fortunately, the freezer half stays constant at -18c. But I've stopped doing re-sets, in case the freezer part packs up. We can survive for the moment. A Miele engineer is coming on Tuesday to fix it. I think it's either a fault with the computer or a faulty valve. But either way, it's going to cost me £309. We've not a lot of choice.
The replacement tap I ordered over last week-end, for the kitchen, finally arrived at 3.00 pm today. "Damn it! Janet!" This one had been getting harder and harder to turn on and off, so much so my wife couldn't use it at all this week. No amount of lubrication made any difference The new one was a pain to fit. The flexible tails attached to the supply, for the original one, must have been fitted before the work surface was put on. They didn't reach the base of the tap and the fitter had added two short lengths of copper pipe, because he obviously couldn't be assed to get longer ones. I couldn't get a spanner on the ends of the tails, so I had to connect each of them to the new tails, with a short length of 15mm pipe. So the supply of hot and cold water now has two tails and two in-line taps. I needed to leave the the second ones on the new tails. as it's impossible to reach the original ones. So we've got a longer than usual loop of pipe tails, but there's a space behind the back of the top drawer for them, so it doesn't matter. It seemed to take for ever, lying on my back with my head and shoulders in the drawer unit, but in the end it only took just over an hour and a half. The longest time was spent getting the old tap out. When I said I was going to do this, I got the usual, "Why don't you get a man in?" But "a man," if they agreed to do it, would have wanted to take the work-top off. It's a huge corner piece, the tiles come down to the surface and it wouldn't have gone back without causing more work.
Good job Riley. It looks like winter time plumbing issues always pops up. It’s like clock work around here, every March or April. Mostly clogged drains. I use dish soap for clogs. Sometimes the pipes get an airlock from the air pipe on the roof which will freeze from icey weather. Just a wait a see till it’s thaws.
An up-date on our Miele Fridge/Freezer. We were presented with a choice, by Miele's, "Service Department," which I've since learned are just people working from home in Greece (I thought it would be India), for a number of different companies, who have no technical knowledge, they just work from crib sheets. There is no facility to talk to anyone with technical knowledge who might be able to give advice. Having paid £309, for what turned out to be a fairly easy fix, in case a new compressor was required, I complained by letter to their managing director. I got an apologetic phone call this morning from the MD's secretary, with the promise of a partial refund, I'll "only" have paid £170. The cost of a call-out. So £139 will be "winging its way back to me." She said he agreed with my suggestion that they could have been better and that they were now going to set up a facility, where customers can ring for advice, but this will cost £70 for the call, but it would be taken off the £170, if a visit is required. They aren't giving much away, are they?
Riley… Mmm such an issue … same here. Refers are not made well any more. As a matter of fact there has been so much of the same issue with frig manu here. There is a mass law suit to protect consumers against the very same issues you mentioned. The appliance repair organization has been pushing for quality part and repair issue to be reorganized, not just for the appliance repair guys but for the consumers to have the right to know. New refers are not worth the money these days. It’s a throw away society these major corporations are feeding into causing unnecessary problems with no recourse for the consumers.
It's only going to get worse unless the courts stop the abolishion of the Consumer Protection Agency. If not, you have no recourse, in this country, but to get screwed by all big businesses. Make the rich richer and the poor poorer is the agenda.
