After a few days of cursing and tweaking of settings, we seem to have reliable hot water. Theories had included blown fuses, broken elements, and fickle thermostats. In the end, it seems the tank had been overheating and cutting out, mostly at night.
We’ve turned down the temperature, and the tank seems to be happier. A few more days will tell. We’ll also soon see if moving to a smaller tank at a lower temperature still provides enough hot water for both of us to shower in the morning.
Tonight we cooked our first meal in our new kitchen.
We did some exploring and shopping on the main street of Paris today. In addition to some chocolate and other necessities, we picked up a loaf of fantastic cheese bread from a bakery, and some cheddar with caramelized onion from the Three Blind Mice cheese shop.
Tonight’s dinner was the best grilled cheese I’ve ever made, and probably the best I’ve ever eaten.
We’re only 15 – 20 minutes from a grocery store, but the intermittent availability of hot water has us feeling like we’ve regressed to a pre-civilized state of nature.
We brought the dogs home from the boarding facility today. It’s a day earlier than we’d originally planned, but the new house wasn’t going to start feeling like home until they joined us. We’re pretty sure they’re convinced we’re on vacation and all this is temporary.
They also haven’t figured out how big the property really is yet. It’s going to be fun to watch them figure out that the little patch of grass outside the back door isn’t the full extent of their new yard.
The box spring for the bed in the master bedroom won’t fit up the stairs (it’s just a queen, but the house is almost a century old), so we’ve set up the bed in the guest room and will be sleeping there until we can get a two-part box spring. The guest bed is my old Ikea bed from grad school and doesn’t require a box spring. So, we’ve upgraded our sleeping arrangements from “hippy crash pad” to “grad students eking out a living”. I’m not convinced there’s much difference.
Oh, and the hot water heater and I are in a fight.
