General Discussion

Finding a house to buy in our neighborhood is usually just about impossible, so we took the first one that had enough square footage for us and our two children. It was built in 1973, and had oil heating, like many houses in this part of the world. We also inherited his 1973 vintage oil tanks, which were a catastrophe. We finally replaced them--there were 8 connected tanks, looked like some Rube Goldberg design--with a single spherical tank. It holds 6000 liters instead of 8000 liters, but it's a LOT easier to maintain, and with two less people in the house since our girls moved out 20 years ago, we don't need to heat as much. Still, 6000 liters is over 1500 gallons, and filling it is not a cheap prospect. At least we don't have to worry about it often.

The house, by the way, was a mess. The guy who built it skimped on everything. He had been a refugee from socialism (DDR), and felt some need to show that he had "made it in the west." Appearances were everything. The Germans have an expression for what he had built: "draußen huy und drinnen fui," or "outside hooey and inside phooey."We had to spend a fortune over the years just keep it livable. The heating died within weeks of moving in (middle of the winter, of course). The kitchen and bathrooms needed replacing, and the wall in the back was rotting away to the point where all electrical wiring that ran through it kept short-circuiting. We had a team work for a month burrowing two meters down to the foundation, and then drying the wall out, and then isolating it. Oh, and the man who built it did all the wiring himself. When we called an electrician for the first time, thinking he would need two hours, he ended up working the whole week. We had 400 volts (!!) coming out of our sockets. He said it was a miracle that the house hadn't burned down yet.

It's enough for our needs, so we have no plans to tear it down, but it's a near certainty that the next owner will do exactly that. A few surviving DU veterans are California Peggy, Lionel Mandrake and Steve 2470. If the house burns down tomorrow with us in it, be proud that you three lived to tell the tale!