Hi All!
Slowly making progress on the ‘Northern To-Do List’…
A) It’s nearing the end of October and so far the infamously long over due emptying of the storage lockers has been completed
——> Never could have gotten it done without the help of my younger daughter who took time out of her plans for the month of September to help with this!
—> Still have a lot of boxes to cull through here at the house but it’s considerably less than what we had before!!! Still hoping on reducing what we have left by half before the end of the year…
B) The acquisition of the (all used in good condition) John Deere 318 w/Front End Loader, the HF towable backhoe and HF plate compactor have been accomplished

They all have been tested on preliminary projects and seem to be just right for what we’re planning on accomplishing.
C) The removal of the 30 year old house combi boiler system has been completed
Boy was that a task! I did make a mistake when draining the system hydronic fluid… I should have saved it for reuse with the new system… that stuff has gotten a lot more expensive over the years $$$… live & learn…
—-> Note: while it’s nice to have gotten this out of the way it’s good to remember it’s always somewhat easier to tear something apart but generally harder and more time consuming to build back the replacement…
D) The installation of the new house heating system is actually progressing along reasonably well… there have been the inevitable delays getting parts found, ordered, delivered ….as well as the figuring out where the actual parts will actually functionally fit… and how they can actually be plumbed together into a serviceable functioning low maintenance system that meets the heating and hot water needs of the house. Looks like it just might be possible to have this working before the end of the month!
—-> Sometimes it’s the little things that eat up time like a brass water flow sensor I ordered that finally came in with the pipe threads not completely cut…spent an entire fruitless day attempting to find a 3/4-14 NPT tapping die all to no avail

… I’ll attempt to make one of my own tomorrow from a 3/4 FPT black iron coupling by filing notches in the coupling threads and carefully try to tap the required threads into the brass sensor. If that doesn’t work I’ll just have to bypass the sensor for now and order another one that I can splice in later… just an annoyance— not a deal breaker.
E) Surgery… yeah the Doc says I need to have something taken care of again and she has it scheduled for early/mid November. She really wanted to do it sooner but held off so I could get some of these projects started/completed/tucked-away … (Not what I had planned for on my ‘Northern To-Do List’ but it’s on it just the same. So it looks like I won’t be able to tear up the driveway and parking areas nor start getting the retaining walls built this year. Oh well…

… it is what it is… at least the equipment has been procured and tested

).Better to deal with the surgery in a calm planned controlled manner than as an immediate crisis in the middle of hospital shutdowns due to a pandemic!
So for now at least it looks like things are a bit more like a glass a little more than half full rather than empty.
Our plans are still to head back south in January after the year end holidays and still hoping to meet up for the ‘Meeting of the MacGregors in Philadelphia
I’ll try to post some pictures of the heating project after I get it wrapped up
Best Regards
Over Easy
