December was a busy house month. I:

• Pulled out half the mouse-infested fiberglass insulation in the basement

• Plugged up a one-inch-by-16-inch gap behind the basement window under the deck, an easy and obvious entry point for mice and insects, which as far as I can tell is original to the house. See the channel filled with steel wool? That was completely open, and goes directly to the outside. The spray foam is mine too: no attempts at blocking mice were ever made in this basement.

• Narrowly avoided having to pull the heating elements out of my hot water heater and instead tested them with a multimeter (they were good!) I’m lucky my father does this stuff in my parents’ house, and can help me out with all of it.

• Found a water leak, which led to pulling off the access panel on my heat pump and took apart the drain pipes to look for blockages, and cleaned the drainage tray inside the unit.

• The evening before we were traveling for Christmas, we smelled a skunk-like smell in the house, which—I recalled reading once—could indicate a leak of toxic refrigerant in an air conditioner, which is what a heat pump is. A panicked few minutes resolved the concern when I found the smell outside, which meant, possibly, we had a skunk living somewhere in or around the garden.

The mouse stuff is an ongoing effort, but the water heater issue started when every faucet in the house spit out freezing-to-lukewarm water (I initially thought the finnicky shower fixture had finally broken, but a faucet check confirmed it was an issue with the water). The day after testing the elements and thermostats—and learning that one of the elements was a much higher wattage than the heater is rated for, which is one of those things you shrug at while hoping it doesn’t cause an electrical fire—I found water pooled all around the water heater and the heat pump unit, which is very close.

When there’s water around the water heater the day after you partially disassembled it, you obviously worry you’ve got a leaky water heater.

But a close look at the way the water had flowed on the floor—I used a level on the floor, which showed the floor tilted up from the water heater to the heat pump—meant a leak from the water heater probably wouldn’t pool around the heat pump. That was a relief, I guess?

Now the drainage pipe leading out from the heat pump had given us a problem before; it backed up once, and flooded the utility area and a chunk of the carpet in the finished area. We used a Hoover upright carpet cleaner to suck up all the water in the carpet—the only way I could even think of, and a good reason to own one. As for the overflow, sticking the Shop-Vac in the little spout of the drain pipe, with the airflow reversed (you can make a Shop-Vac blow or suck) somehow fixed the clog.

So when I figured out that the water was coming from somewhere in the heat pump, I assumed drainage pipe again. Disassembled it—no clog. Opened the access panel with a ratchet set, found water pooled inside the unit, in the steel pan on the bottom. Here’s what’s inside a heat pump unit:

There’s an internal plastic channel that catches water coming off the coils and channels it into the exterior drain pipe. That little channel was so full of rust, from the steel frame around the coils, that it looked like it was made of rusty metal. I’m talking about the inside of the plastic piece running though the middle of this photo:

So I cleaned it out so that water could flow more smoothly, and then tested it by pouring out a water bottle in it and watching it flow without backing up. Panel back, filter back, no leak. Auxiliary drain, closed off with a stopper on my unit, which the manual suggests you hook up to a drain pipe but which never was? Cross your fingers.

Done, right?

To be continued.

Then to cap off December, there was the painted-over smashed spider I found in the basement closet.

And the almost perfectly fossilized mouse skeleton chilling inside a piece of fiberglass. Content warning, I am going to show you!

Continued: a few days ago, I found the same water leak pooled around the heat pump and water heater. It turns out none of this had anything to do with the drain!

The add-on humidifier unit—which had never appeared to actually work—did in fact work. By “work,” I mean that the little pipe that drips water over a filter actually dripped water, but the filter was completely calcified and the piece of plastic that ensured the little pipe dripped in the right spot was in upside down.

A new filter and proper assembly fixed it. Now there’s no leak and the house isn’t so dry. And I haven’t seen a mouse in two weeks.

I saw a tweet the other day making fun of suburbanites in fancy neighborhoods who have elaborate camera and security systems—basically, their fear of crime is greatly disproportionate to its likelihood in most cases.

That’s probably true. But it made me think about something I’ve written before—in a piece headlined “If you live in a castle, does everything feel like a siege?” I wrote about how subjectively, I feel less secure in an expensive house in an expensive neighborhood, than I did in a (modern, pretty nice) apartment building in a statistically higher-crime neighborhood. You never know what might happen alone, outside, after dark, but inside a building with keycards, a staffed lobby, resident-restricted elevators, in an electronically-keyed room on an upper floor, with super sturdy windows that only partially open? I realize now I sort of miss absolutely knowing that nobody could possibly break into my room.

In a detached house, every window is an entry point. Front door, garage doors, deck door, patio door? Entry points. They windows are all easily broken, should anybody want to. It’s strange to feel exposed in such a statistically safe setting, but it makes a certain sense to feel that way.

I add this here because there’s something really, deeply rewarding about laboring away in the bowels of a house, tinkering with the heater, learning the ropes with tools, looking for potential mouse holes. But there’s also something vaguely menacing about it—the realization, I guess, that you spend all this money with only the most cursory inspection, no warranty, no guarantee, and no real idea of how good or durable anything in it is. Either you spend thousands of dollars on contractors, or you spend real time and effort figuring things out yourself. You don’t think about that part of homeownership. At least I didn’t.

The flip side of being responsible for your own place and working with your hands is the fear of getting lost in it. The fear that its opportunity cost, if not actual cost, will mount. I guess I’m still learning the ropes. Heck, most people might be afraid to pull the access panel off the heater. (It’s fine, but know which circuit controls it, and turn it off! Same with the water heater.)

We originally didn’t want a finished basement, but I’m glad we ended up with one. Most of the dark underground of the house is tamed.

Related Reading:

The Opposite of Home Improvement

Me Or Your Own Eyes

Wood, Quartz, and Kids

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