Last night at the dinner table the lady of the house asked us to go around and share one positive thing that had happened to us during the day. When it came his turn, the man of the house(1) shared how, when he was working on the house’s water heating system, which had sprung a leak, and was soaking the carpet outside the maintenance-room door (as the tipoff), he had had to resort to a ten-foot long dual piece of pipe to help him get enough torque to break free a major nut from its many years-long corrosion. In explaining the whole situation - this specific item of which he engaged in successfully, hence his ‘positive’ to share with us - he went into a description of the innards of the water heaters. (There are two of them, hooked up in tandem, to cover the needs of a large house - including a B&B renovation in the basement - with two kitchens and a number of bathrooms.) Today he knocked on my door and showed me an example of the ‘anode’ that he had been talking about: a four-foot-long aluminum ‘pipe’ that sits in the middle of the heater, and is instrumental in the working of the process. (He had to purchase two of them, to replace the ones that had become corroded beyond repair, and had just come back from the shop with the second one.)
It got me to thinking of my own ‘bout’ with a somewhat similar system. Back in the mid-‘70s I had left the U.S. (and my home state of California; to which I returned, in retirement, in the spring of 2012) - to go join a spiritual community in the north of Scotland. From their base in a caravan (trailer) park on a peninsula jutting into the Moray Firth abutting a bay off of it (called the Findhorn Bay, after the name of the small fishing village at its edge; and thus the name of the community - Findhorn - after the Findhorn Bay Caravan Park from which it had its origins) they had just expanded their operation by taking over a former four-star hotel in the nearby town (‘royal burgh’) of Forres, and were looking for new members specifically to help them in renovating and then running that big building, which had, er, seen better days.(2) I found myself ‘answering the call’ based on my life’s experience of having worked some years previously, for a short (qualifying??) time, as a foreman of a building maintenance business (taking care particularly of big hotel buildings up at the Sun Valley resort in Idaho). Shortly after arriving at the community, in the dead of winter of ’75/’76, and after a period of helping to prepare the building for guests to arrive in the spring, I found myself volunteering to be the Night Porter for the season coming up when we, as part of the terms of purchase, had to function as a public hotel, before reverting exclusively to private use for our community’s guests. And therein lies my tale.
Part of my duties as such was to look after the new water and building heating system that we had put in to enable us to run year ‘round. (Which the hotel was not set up to do, running only for the tourist season, catering mostly to ‘coach parties’ of people visiting the area before moving on to other locales in England and Scotland and Wales.) I will clarify at this point that I was not trained in such matters as building heating systems, only in their maintenance, of cleaning the bathrooms and hallways and polishing the floors of the ballrooms; that sort of thing. Detailed maintenance, of the likes of heating systems, was, decidedly, not my forte. However, came the day when I was listening to the Scot who had installed the extra fuel tank and boiler - for year-‘round use - and the connections to the building’s water and radiator systems, to have some idea, at least, of how the system worked. Little did I know at that point how important that ‘session’ was, for me, and for the system; for it was not long after that that one night, before getting too involved in the overnight building cleaning routine that I had set up - cleaning (including hoovering) the main lounge, sweeping and mopping the hallway behind the kitchen, etc. etc. - I felt drawn to go down and have a look in the Boiler Room in the basement, the site of my tutorship by the heavily-accented Scot (whose accent kept me from understanding much of what he was saying). Not sure precisely what to ‘look for,’ I tried to run through the process as had been detailed to me. I knew that part of it had to do with a big round metal water container called (something like) a heat exchanger, which kept the boiler(s) from overheating, and for which monitoring there was a set of valves, on it and on the main boiler. Now let’s see, I thought; which valve goes to which system, and what do they tell me?? This one must be for that boiler itself. That looks normal. Now, what does that other valve ‘go’ to, that is slowly going down towards zero?? Why would that be dropping like that, with the boiler going full blast on this very cold evening???…
Somehow the idea dawned on me that the valve that was dropping had to do with the water pressure from the heat exchanger. Which bit of equipment was keeping the boiler(s) from overheating. And that heat exchange was not happening as it should be…
On impulse, I shut down the boiler. And called the Maintenance man. And he came out, and I told him what I had seen, and done. And he nodded. And thought, pulling on his pipe. And then said, laconically - which I understood, and will never forget: “Aye, you did well.’
It turned out that there was a leak in the system, somewhere. I forget where that one was. Later on that winter I had to call him on another such anomaly, and together he and I found the leak in the system, under one of the wings of the (very old) building, the water soaking away into the ground on the hillside. Which we never would have found out about, if I hadn’t acted on my instinct. And instead, assumed something like: ‘Nothing to do with me.’
The world is on the boil. We need a game changer. Call it a/the Global Currency Reset/Revaluation. Call it whatever you want. Do it.
And we can talk about the details later.
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footnotes:
(1) For my part, all I could think of to share in that vein was how, when I took the family dog out for a walk that day, he did his business successfully. Which I counted as a plus particularly because he doesn’t always do it when I take him out for a walk. (I have become, with no reluctance, the family’s dog walker, since I like to get out for a walk as often as possible anyway. For the exercise, mostly, but also just to shake the cobwebs, from all the reading and ‘net surfing’ that I habitually engage in.)
I realize that it is a bit of a commentary on my life these days that this would be the extent of my sharing about the highlight of my day. But there you go. At my age, I guess I should be glad that I can even get outside for a walk. And have basically good health. And am not needing health/medical insurance. Which I can’t afford, on my basic Social Security income.
I understand that in many states - including my home state of California, which I have just foresworn for colder but more amenable ‘climes’ in Utah - illegal aliens are now being made eligible for the state’s Medicaid system. But that’s another story.
Sort of.
(2) The story is more complicated than this thumbnail sketch of it, with the founders of the spiritual community having been the managers of said hotel for five years some thirteen years previously, after which slowly it began to run down; ‘in perfect timing’ for them to purchase it, for the proverbial song, just when their fledgling community had become financially sufficiently in a position to purchase it at such a knockdown price. But to continue, for the purposes of this particular blog. (But it helps to mention it, I feel, in order to set the scene more clearly.)
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