Cold Weather, Bad Timing
We have decided to outsource a few projects in order to push through the backlog of work that has piled up since Grace arrived on the scene. When we had the floors sanded a few weeks ago, we went through the entire house and disconnected all of the radiators and moved them to the garage. Why? Well, they have years of peeling and chipping paint on them and I needed them to be stripped.
The most efficient way to deal with them was to sandblast them and, faced with the choice of setting up a safe sandblasting pit in our garage versus giving them over to professionals, it was easy to choose the professionals.
Being the headstrong sort, I tucked Grace away with a babysitter, rented a U-Haul van and hired a couple of guys from the neighborhood to load these things up for me. Why the extra help? Well, these radiators are so ridiculously heavy that it takes 2-3 people to move each one. Luckily, we keep a moving dolly around that came with the house (one of the more useful items that came with the house).
We had been able to move the radiators to the garage because we had Coco's ramp still set up. But how to get the radiators into the van? They were WAY too heavy to lift. Luckily, we had an old wooden door that we had salvaged from another house and then decided not to use because it was too damaged. It came in handy as a ramp from the garage to the van. Two guys + dolly + door = six radiators in a U-Haul moving van.
Feeling confident, I thanked the guys, climbed into the van and roared off towards the sandblasting place. Well, I tried to roar off towards the sandblasting place. Hundreds of pounds of radiators in the back slowed me down a bit. When the professionals were unloading the van, one of the guys looked at me strangely. "It's getting to be fall again, isn't it?" I thought he was just making conversation, "Oh yes! It's my favorite time of year!" I gushed. "So pretty!" I drove away, giving him a thumbs up sign from the window.
Before I took the van back to U-Haul, I refilled the gas tank. The amount of gas I used to haul these radiators seemed a bit high. Five gallons to drive 26.7 miles. Of course, I am nerdy enough to find that COMPLETELY FASCINATING!
Great, right? Radiators will be sandblasted and we can paint them, tune them up and reinstall them. No problem.
Until the temperature began to drop that night. I hadn't checked the weather report.
So, I was feeling a bit stupid and extremely cold when the temperature outside hit 47 degrees. I had to break out my old space heater for the second floor and put a hat on the baby.
Timing is everything.
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Comments
I reconnected mine without taking the old paint off. I just wanted to get it over with. I think I'll just make a radiator cover or something (eventually) for it. I haven't fully tested my soldering yet, so hopefully there will be no leaks.
Posted by: homeimprovementninja | September 21, 2006 5:47 PM
Oh this is too funny. We found ourselves in a similar situation being under the gun to get our radiators finished. It's amazing how fast fall has "fallen"! It seems like summer just disappeared in a flash.
Check out what we did on my latest post and try not to judge our environmental mess too harshly. :(
Posted by: Jocelyn | September 21, 2006 8:16 PM
I did a similar thing. Had to remove a radiator to fix our bathroom floor. Only problem was I did this in February. It was only disconnected with the system drained for one night, but it got pretty cold that night.
Posted by: Dan R | September 22, 2006 8:48 AM
Could you email me the name of the place you took your radiators? That seems like such a great idea!
Posted by: Violet | September 22, 2006 9:37 AM
We have just been through the same thing with taking off radiators so we can paint and stain wood behind them. After we put it all back together, the plumber is planning to add shut off valves to some of the radiators so that we can just turn off sections if we need to. While this does not help us now, it will be useful in the future because we won’t have to drain the whole system. Something to think about….
Posted by: Allison | September 30, 2006 9:30 PM