Happy New Year – New building, cold weather and tornados
This week, North America had some very fierce weather, with blizzards and twenty year low temperatures. On one night there was a frost in every state in USA (yes, that included Hawaii – but it was a freak incident up a mountain). Here in Dahlonega, we had several days warning of the impending freeze, and it arrived on Sunday night. It had been raining heavily earlier in the day, and then as night fell, the temperature dropped like a stone, reaching lows around 5F (-15C for the metric minded). And the temperature only rose to about 20F (-7C) at best until Wednesday. We were lucky compared to some places strong winds had dried off the worst of the rain before the big freeze, and we had no precipitation during the cold spell, so no snow or ice. 40 miles South, down in Atlanta, it was a lot worse with serious problems with snow and ice.
And if that was not enough – on Saturday morning we were asleep in the early morning when both our mobile phones alarmed us with simultaneous ghastly screeches. Alarm in stereo. The phones are both automatically connected to a variety of alarm and alert services, and this was as bad as it comes – a tornado warning. We scrambled our things together and stumbled rapidly down to the basement where we sat surrounded by our boxes of unpacked possessions from London. The alarm went on for about three quarters of an hour before we could emerge. Subsequent investigations indicated that a twister had touched down at Juno, 20 miles away headed towards us at 45mph, but it fizzled out before it got here. This is not the season for tornado alerts around here, that ended in November or so, but maybe the freaky weather has had something to do with this. There was a massive lightning storm for another hour or so, with thunderclaps rattling the plates in the cupboards and torrential downpours not good for building works.
On the build site
Following the Christmas slow-down, things are starting to move on the building site. Work on the site has to be a bit slow since the slippery, clinging red clay mud created by the wet wet weather must be handled with care. The framing crew started work on Wednesday this week, checking and annotating the architectural plans to “square up the building”. To the complete amazement of absolutely nobody, they immediately found inconsistencies between the lower and upper floor plans, as well as errors in the roof design. Whilst we have lots of respect for the architect and his sense of design, his draughtsman seems a bit sloppy at ensuring consistency between drawings. The framing crew reassured us that, in their experience, house plans are rarely fully accurate and consistent. Even with only two days on site this week, we have the basement framework fairly complete, and we look forwards to seeing the upper level floor structure in place next week.
Not that we have been totally idle this week ourselves. Since the New Year arrived, we’ve been increasingly busy with the house build and immediately after New Year we were chasing around to ensure that all the building materials purchases were locked into 2013 prices so far so good. This week we have decided on the brand of plumbing for the bathrooms – that may not seem much, but it is actually fairly critical (we need early decisions as the brand-specific valves have to be ordered right now), commissioned a stained glass window and front door from a specialist based in Dahlonega, taken a quick trip to Canton (Georgia, not China) to see specialist bathtubs factory where we ordered a soaking tub for ourselves, and we discussed the finer points of well drilling with a local specialist. The well driller is a cousin of our electrician (and concurs with the general opinion that Jonathan is a “crazy guy” – though he’s also a good electrician). All this was done in a week when we spent two working days cowering inside from the extremes of what the elements were throwing at us.
So, things are really moving ahead and we are expecting lots more progress over the next few weeks. From what we have seen at a parallel building project that Bill has in hand, we hope to have a roof and walls on the house in about 4 weeks from now.
Robin’s Opinions of America
Continuing my weekly Likes and Dislikes section, here’s my personally opinionated thoughts for this week on life in USA.
Likes  | Dislikes  |
| Pressure Balanced valves Have you ever been having a shower when someone somewhere else in the building turns on a tap? Or worse, flushes the toilet. In England the results can be quite surprising and alarming. The sudden change in pressure in one part of the system can lead to painful fluctuations elsewhere – and it always seems to be your shower temperature where the results are be felt. At this stage, I am sure readers are saying “what does he mean� That has never happened to me.†Then maybe you haven’t had the joys of Victorian-era plumbing to contend with. It does happen. Once experienced, never forgotten. In America, contemporary plumbing has this problem solved. All the valves in the system are specially designed to meet the changes of pressure square on and combat the temperature swings. There are even electronically controlled version of the pressure balanced valve (but that seems a bit like overkill to me. The mechanically controlled versions seem perfectly adequate to me. So, congratulations to USA for ensuring comfortable showers. | Knocking Copy Do you know the phrase “knocking copy� An English English term meaning negative advertising. Don’t bother with explaining how good your product or policies are – put all your effort into running down your competitors. It takes little effort to think of ways to smear your opposition, without making yourself a hostage to fortune by actually saying anything substantive about your own product or opinions. This is a destructive approach that America has honed to a fine point. A couple of examples from TV (anonymised to protect the guilty). Car advertising is a classic example. No attempt to say that my car has lots of attractive features, or has great fuel consumption. No, far easier to throw out a mishmash of half facts like “my car has better consumption that a Toyissanundai and has the same price as the mpg†(and what does that last bit mean? They sell the car for the round sum of 33mpgs?). Similar knocking copy can be found in the grocery wars. “Our carefully chosen selection of groceries is cheaper than the same items at someone else’s store this week†– but no information on how the basket of goods to compare were chosen (it couldn’t possibly be this week’s loss leading specials) or how it compared the previous week. Or will be in future. There is even a much repeated TV advert for a cholesterol-lowering prescription medication starring a supposed consumer dancing about in glee because HIS pills are more effective than certain named competing brand. The benefit of the negative comparisons is that they are impossible to confirm, or are hedged around with small print. A favourite small print get-out is along the lines of†90% of consumers who expressed an opinion preferred widgets to gismos†(my italics). What this could logically mean is that, of 100 people who were polled, 90 could have said they had no preference, 9 made a positive noises about widgets and one actively disliked widgets. So 9 out of a hundred preferences converts to 90% by a careful bit of copywriting and false statistics. The tests which are supposed to be the basis of some great truth are actually carefully constructed to prove a self-serving point. This negativity reaches a high point in politics. The mid-term elections to the US Congress take place later this year, as do state elections in Georgia. I suspect that we will face a barrage of advertising on how misguided certain politicians are (mixed with a lot of careful innuendo about their past practices) – paid for by their opponents. But we may wait a long time before we see anything about what the candidates are proposing themselves. |
Come back next week and find out if the building project is really moving ahead again. We are also promised some more cold weather midweek, so that may delay things a bit!