Paul’s Hardware Blog

Mouse season is here again and I am fighting the battle at my house.  It all started about a week ago when I got home late and was confronted, almost at the doorstep by the most un-afraid mouse I have ever seen.  We had sort of a mini standoff.  The mouse, unmoving, looked up at me with his defiant little beady eyes.  It stared at me for a few seconds before it sort of squeeked and slowly went behind the stove.  I knew I had a problem.  If you see one you can be sure there are many more.

 We sell every mouse and rodent control product imaginable.  I have experimented  with all  of them. 

Poisons

I am not a big fan of poison.  We have always had pets and almost all rat poisons will hurt animals if they eat the dead rat  or mouse.  Every time I have ever used a poison I have had an odor problem.  I know they all say they have ingredients that will prevent odors but they have never worked for me.

Sonic Rodent Control devices.

We used to sell these in the store and we will order them if someone really wants us to but I don’t think they work.  We sell a lot of bird seed and have fought the mouse battle for years at the store.  When the sonic devices first became available I set them up all over.  One night I came in and a mouse was sitting on one.  I guess he liked the warmth. That pretty much ended sonic traps for me.

Live Catch Traps

I am sorry.  The logic of live catch traps just escapes me.  I dont want to catch them, I want them dead.  Rodents have been the enemy of humans since the beginning ot time.  A pretty tough enemy too.  Remember the plague.  I just saw a show on the History channel talking about rats attacking babies.  No thanks.  I want them gone.

Snap Traps

These work Pretty good.  I have found that the best bait is a snickers bar.  I don’t especially like snap traps since they are messy.  I had a  rat once that did’nt die right away and had a  BIG bleeding problem on a snap trap.  That was not fun to clean up.

Glue Traps

These work.  I dont like them though.  Last time I used one I walked in the door and heard a pitiful squeeking sound.  There was this little mouse completely stuck staring up at me with his sad little black eyes.  What do you do with a mouse on a glue trap.  There aren’t any good options.  I mean, do you just throw it away.  How long will it live – until it starves to death.  That doesn’t sound like a good option.  One of my neighbors drowns them.  It worries me a little bit.  He seems to enjoy it too much.  I eventually just started putting them in a zip lock bag and throwing it away.  That seemed to be the most humane way to do it. 

Victor Electronic Rat Trap.

 

This is my favorite of all rodent remedies.  It takes 4 C cell batteries.  You put a little bait (A small piece  of snickers bar works best) in the back of it and sit it next to a wall.  The rat or mouse will go in to get the bait and be electrocuted.  A light flashes to let you know there is a dead mouse inside.  You just dump it in the garbage and put the trap back in place.  I caught five this week.

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OK.  I normally don’t do house calls.  Not to actually fix anything anyway.  We go out all of the time to look at lawns and plants with problems.  Every once in a while though, something interesting comes up that I can’t pass by;   especially if it is for a nice customer and presents a challenge.

One of our customers has a limestone fountain ( 30 – 40) years old that was broken in three pieces.  She had purchased it on a trip to Florence (Italy, not Alabama as I thought at first) and the cost to replace the bowl was prohibitive. I don’t remember if it was hit by a tree or frozen.  She asked me if I could find someone to fix it.  I asked everybody I could think of but they all just sort of smiled and slowly shook their head no,  in a way that just screamed “ARE YOU STUPID.  THAT CANT BE FIXED.”  Not a good sign.

There were several problems:

1.  Nobody was willing to try to fix it since a good long term result was doubtful.

2.  The fountain was about 4 feet in diameter and made of carved limestone.  It was heavy.  The limestone was also soft. Pins and anchors would tend to pull out.

3.  The fountain sat in the center of a 12 ft circular pond that was about 4 feet deep.

So I decided I would try to fix it.  Smart.

Note to Mr. Mountain Brook Business license inspector:  This was done as a fun project to help a nice customer.   No costs of material, fees, delivery  or labor were charged.   

Mr Business license inspector and I have met before.

So anyway I decided to fix this fountain. 

I guess at this point it becomes obvious why I am not in the handyman business.  I had great intentions.  I went and got the broken fountain pieces to test glues.  I ordered a book on working with stones.  Then I put the pieces of the fountain in the back room of the store for a year.  I thought about it from time to time.  Especially in the middle of the night as I sat bolt upright thinking of all the things I had put off.  Fortunately, she was very patient. 

Finally, when I got the courage to face her again I decided to get serious about this project.  I called one of the local stone companies and convinced the owner to tell me how he would fix it if he were dumb enough to try.  He suggested this super duper high strength epoxy made especially for bonding limestone.  It cost $50.00 a quart.  I thought hmm, this must be some good stuff.  So I ordered it. 

When it came in,  I decided to do a trial run with the pieces before we went to the actual site.  I very carefully mixed in the hardener and applied it, clamped the pieces together and waited.  When I took them apart they immediately separated leaving a thin sheet of the epoxy glue.  Not so Good.  “Moisture”, said the manufacturer.  Not a complete impossibility since it had been under water for forty years. 

So I was back at square one.  I am really beginning to worry.  All of my ideas have failed and even though the customer was patient there is a little edge to her voice now when she calls to see, “how it’s coming.”

What am I going to do.  I have to glue 3 heavy things together that have been soaked in water.  That is when I looked at the shelf of Gorilla Glue in the paint department.  I hopefully read the instructions.  Stone okay. Moisture not a problem.  Sounds good.  But could a 5 dollar bottle of glue really fix this fountain when my high tech special order epoxy failed.  I decided one way or the other I was going to glue that thing together.  It might last a minute or a day but I was going to get it done.

The first problem was how to get to the fountain.  I got a 2×12 pressure treated board 15 feet long from one of my buddies with a lumber yard.  We attached two 2×4 peices to the bottom of it for support.  This made a good walkboard. We still were pretty tight but at least we could get to the fountain without getting wet. 

The next problem was how to clamp the pieces together once we applied the glue.  The outside of the bowl was irregular and I couldn’t think of anything to use to hold it in place.  We finally decided to use a ratcheting strap placed around the center of the fountain to pull everything together. We applied the glue, tightened the clamp and stood back.  Everything was holding.

The only thing I didn’t take into account was the fact that Gorilla Glue expands as it dries.  I should have brought plastic sheeting to put under the fountain but I didn’t.  We got a few drops in the pond.  If you look to the left of the Lilly Pads you can see a film on top of the water.  I got a spoon and dipped out as much as I could while she was distracted.  To my knowlege no plants or fish were affected. 

So I left with high hopes that everything would hold.  The next few days I would anxiously call to see if everything was still together.  We did this late last summer and so far it is still holding. 

So if you have a tough gluing job I can recommend Gorilla Glue.

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Ok.  I have another exciting home repair entry today.  My aim for this blog is to provide information that isn’t always readily available.  Things that we see all the time that aren’t always as clear as they seem to be.  Here is another one.

One of our long time customers came in with a problem.  He had just replaced the washers in his shower and was able to get the leak stopped but ended up with a very low water pressure.  He said he had taken the shower faucet apart 3 times and still couldn’t get it to work.  He showed me the package the replacement washers had been in (not our brand by the way but we let these things pass) and the washers he had taken out of his faucet.  The replacements were the correct ones.  He couldn’t figure out what he did wrong. 

This happens all of the time.  Or at least in our area it does.  Our water has a high mineral content and deposits often build up in pipes and faucets.  When he took the faucet apart the minerals were displaced.  They traveled to the shower head and clogged it up. This happens on other faucets as well.  The aerator gets clogged.  It is amazing that such a simple thing happens as often as it does.  So,  if you have a low pressure after doing any plumbing work check the aerators.

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Every year when people start decorating we get MANY requests for an electrical plug with male prongs on each end.  We don’t have them.  To my knowledge they don’t exist. 

Christmas lights have a male plug on one end and a female plug on the other.  They are made this way so that you can connect several strings together without running multiple extension cords.  You only run into problems if  you string the lights starting with the wrong end. The female plug is where you intended to plug the lights in.  To make them work you need an adapter with 2 male plugs.  The problem is that if you plugged the 2 female ends together there is going to be a totally uninsulated male end somewhere that is live.  An extreme shock and fire hazard.  The solution is to either run an extension cord to the male plug at the end of the string or take the lights down and redo them starting with the male plug end.

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