Notes from Maine - 2026/03/15

I just called my mom to wish her a happy birthday! She’s looking forward to a little yard work today, followed by friends and family coming over to celebrate. I sent her cookies last week so she could enjoy something sweet prior to the big day. In a few weeks they’ll have their Easter party and then she might be free for a visit up here. We’re losing our snow rapidly, so April could be a good time for her to get started on her northern gardens at my house.

In front of the house here, when I bought the place, there was a quaint split rail fence that ran alongside the road. The posts were pretty rotted and fell over within a year or two. After that, I let the mower encroach on the little garden bed there, year after year, until it was mostly grass. About ten years ago, Mom started expanding that garden space again and now it hosts a variety of perennials. It lights up with color from May to September. My sister and Mom add to it each year.

Mom is already talking about which flowers she wants to bring up this spring. 

This year we’re also eager to find out which plants at the camp have survived. They planted all types of flowers around the rock in the dooryard. We went up dutifully to water everything several times each week when there was no rain. Everything looked reasonably healthy last fall, but this has been a harsh winter for transplants. Only time will tell.

I believe the house is reasonably ready for visitors.

Yesterday, as I took my shower, I noticed that the water wasn’t hot for long. In this house, that means one thing: the heat exchanger is gummed up. My furnace has an external heat exchanger to heat the water, and the hot water side of it gets crudded up every so often. The heat helps the minerals accrete and then the water can’t flow as fast as it should through the tiny channels. The first time I had it replaced, I held onto the clogged one and my friend cleaned it out with his ultrasonic cleaner and a bunch of chemicals. I’m going to ask him what type of cleaner I should buy for myself this time. Feels like I’m always cleaning pinball parts anyway—I might as well make things easier.

This morning the water was blazing hot again so I think it’s all good to go.

I have other work to do on the furnace this year. I installed a kick-space heater under the kitchen island and I’ve never hooked it up. It didn’t seem necessary because I put heat under the tiles. Even without the furnace’s help, the kitchen feels plenty warm. But, since I put in the heater, I might as well hook it up. While I’m doing that, I’m considering changing the fittings for where the heat exchanger mounts. It’s not difficult to remove and replace, but it puts torque on the copper pipes every time, and I have to catch all the water with a towel and awkwardly placed bucket. Maybe I should come up with a valve system. It could also be that I’m completely overthinking this for a maintenance task that I’ve only done a few times since I’ve owned the house. 

I used to back-flush the heat exchanger every month, but it didn’t seem to change how quickly the thing got clogged. It’s hard to say, really, since there are years between switching them out and I don’t have a rigorous way to measure the resistance to the flow. The well water has its own cycles—some years we have lots of sand in the filter and I have to change it three or four times in the spring because my water pressure decreases. Other times it’s just twice a year. Maybe the minerals in the water ebb and flow the same way. 

How long does a furnace last? The web tells me 20-30 years, and I put this one in about 22 years ago. Maybe I shouldn’t make decisions around an appliance that might be due for replacement. The furnace sits under a brick arch that might need work as well. The maintenance never ends!

Routine maintenance is a concept that I’ve had to warm to over the years. I’m more of a learning and prototyping person, so coming back to “fix” something that I’ve already worked on can feel like a major hassle. The idea that I would install something permanent that has the ongoing task of a time commitment makes me wrinkle my nose. I get it—oil needs to be changed, heat exchangers get clogged, and teeth need to be brushed. But when I’m designing or building a project I’m trying to make the thing maintenance free. That’s not always practical, but it seems like laziness when you run across a machine that appears built to fail. 

Speaking of which, I have to give Albert (dog) his heartworm medication today. I do that on the 15th each month, but I have to wait until he eats something. Albert doesn’t always eat when I put out food—I have to wait for him to decide it’s time to eat and then go get the pill. 

Perhaps I’ll put a treat under his food. That works sometimes.