It’s stopped snowing here (more or less) but not before setting a new December snowfall record at about 71″ for the month so far, and last night was cold and clear – down to the single digits (like, about 3°). This is rather inconvenient, because my pellet insert (yes, brand new, and a pain in the ass from Day One) has, to use the technical term, shit the bed. Last week was kind of tough that way. As I arrived home Thursday evening, I was relatively happy because tomorrow was Friday, after all, the weather was supposed to be sunny, if not warm, and I had a whole bunch of simple little projects I was planning on crossing off my list. I wasn’t even out of the garage when I heard Granny making some rather loud exclamations to the effect of “oh no.” Turns out, she was doing laundry, and water was pouring out of the ceiling (which is not how it’s intended to work).

This was one of the symptoms we had back when the septic backed up, so I wasn’t terribly happy with the prospects of how things were looking. At any rate, I was in no mood to deal with it, and the toilets appeared to be working for the time being, so I resolved to deal with it over the weekend. Besides, I don’t do my laundry ’til Sunday.

Other than that, all seemed OK. We were getting a break from the snow, and things were all comfy-cozy by the glow of the pellet stove. The dog woke me up to go out at about midnight, which is no big deal (a dog’s gotta do what a dog’s gotta do, after all), and I noted that the stove was still running fine, but that the glass could use a cleaning. When I got up the next morning, though, the stove had kicked off on the low temp safety.

Well, not a huge deal. It’s done that before (though not when running on ‘3’ – out of 5), and I needed to clean it anyway. So, I gave it a pretty good cleaning and started it up. After a while, I noticed the burn pot was full of pellets, but not lighting. Sure enough, I’d put the pot in bass ackwards, so I shut it down, put it in the right way, and it lit with no problem. Except, as I soon noticed, the pellets weren’t feeding.

Well, that’s great. No time to deal with it that morning, so I figured I’d deal with it later.

So, to make a long story short, it sounded like the pellet feed motor (which turns the auger which makes the pellets go up and down the chute and crap into the burn pot) was turning, but no pellets. This would require some dis assembly (and pellet removal – I had dutifully filled the hopper when I cleaned it), so, again, another weekend project.

Yesterday morning, I took everything apart, found the auger motor laying on the bottom of the stove, the hollow end of the auger shaft (which, really, ought not to be hollow; this thing is a piece of shit) and the lower brass bushing both torn to shit, and the cotter pin that is supposed to hold the shaft to the motor (really shitty design) broken, but still in the motor shaft. It looks as if the pin got caught up in the auger, jammed everything, and it tore itself up.

Well, isn’t that special?

A couple of calls told me I’d need to deal with the manufacturer – US Stoves – for warranty parts. They don’t work on weekends. Did I mention I have 4 tons of wood pellets coming on Monday? At this rate, they ought to last me quite a while.

OK, on to the laundry drain.

The way they’ve got this thing set up, it drains to a plastic sump bucket, then gets pumped up in the air, across the attic, and then down to the basement and into the drain (and the septic; bad move there). I have to redo that one of these days so it drains outside and not into the septic tank. But that’s for another day.

Up in the attic, they’ve got the drain line vented (not outside, though; just up to the attic), and there appears to be some restriction, because on the second tankful, it pukes out the drain. So we went down to the basement and cut the line down there, figuring it would be full. It wasn’t. In fact, it was dry as a bone. So somehow it’s plugged up in the attic (unfortunately, we cracked the cleanout plug to the main septic discharge line, and water came out of there, too – though the main drains weren’t full). Whether there remains a problem with the septic, I’m not sure. I’m kind of hoping that the tank and or the line just shifted a little, so that water sits in the discharge line, but will still drain into the tank. This may be wishful thinking, I dunno. We’ll see. We did dig out the tank cover and lift the lid. It looks full, but then I don’t rightly know how high it needs to get to drain out, and can’t really tell without, I suppose, jumping in and looking around. And that aint gonna happen.

But, anyway, that appears to have nothing to do with the laundry situation (I also have no idea how that could be plugged, either, unless the line froze in the attic and is restricted – which is a distinct possibility. It wasn’t exactly all down hill up there, so some water would have to sit in the line, which is very close to the soffit, and I can attest to the fact that it was really f*cking cold up there.

At any rate there’s a floor drain in the laundry area that was unused and plugged off, so I put the plug, and it appears to take water OK. Now the washer is piped to that drain, so hopefully I can do laundry. And if it plugs, at least it won’t come out of the ceiling. If the septic is preparing to back up, well, that would really suck, too. And the way things are going, I’d say it’s a distinct possibility.

My inclination is to go and buy a non-piece-o-shit pellet stove from a local dealer that will offer me service, and then save this one for the other fireplace. There’s one close by (a pellet stove place, not a fireplace, though there is actually one right on the other side of the one I’m using now), but that would run me about $2500. Unfortunately, I have $1,000 to pay for wood pellets come tomorrow evening ($936, actually, but who’s counting), County taxes in a couple of weeks (I think that’s $3,000 or more), ongoing dental bills (about $100 a visit – with another one tomorrow), a septic tank pump out (if I need one) would run me, or I dunno, a few hundred, I reckon, and then there’s all the normal bills (like, say, gas and electricity). So I dunno if there’s money for another new pellet stove.

Suffice it to say, there’ll be no Christmas goose for Tiny Tim this year.

On the bright side, I hooked up my new onboard diagnostic code reader to my van and got the code. It was “random misfire detected,” which is what I was hoping to see, what with me replacing the cap and rotor when it wouldn’t start. I cleared the code, and no more ‘Service Engine Soon’ light. So that’s good.

Oh well, I’m kind of scared to face the day here, but I suppose I’d better. I hope this coming week isn’t quite as shitty as last week was.