What is that sound? Are they Back?

Oh noooooo!!!

The construction workers are back!

They are taking their little moving platform up the outside of our apartment building again!

This makes year 3 of our tour of hell. They've been "fixing" the windows on the 30-odd stories of this building for what seems like forever. Apparently some people have very wet windows - on the inside - so the windows are being sealed on the outside. This of course means less air movement on the inside, but couldn't that have been the problem to begin with?

In Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings, where all of the ancient mummies they could find still in Egypt have been gathered they are also having problems with water - on the inside. The humidity in the underground tombs is destroying the 5000 year old mummies. Living humans have recently discovered that this is from the living human beings that are visiting the mummies. Tourists are unwittingly destroying the mummies they are coming to see. It's that whole "humans are 62% water" (percentage info from Science Fact Finder) - warm water that tends to send moisture into the air when people... live and breathe. Most of the mummification efforts were actually to get rid of the wet parts of the human body. The internal organs that would stay wet after death and start decomposition of the body were removed and put into jars or boxes separate from the body. The ancient Egyptians knew about this humidity of the human body problem, can we not learn from this?

Back in our apartment building, many of the suites in this building are not occupied for months at a time, which should mean less of a problem, but people leave all their windows and curtains tightly shut when they leave, so the moisture that was in the air when they left sticks around and festers while they are gone. Other people like to have very warm apartments. There are many people living here that are originally from the Middle East or the Orient and they like their homes to be very warm. Unfortunately, in this climate we frequently have close to 100% humidity in the air - and yes, a lot of rain. Heat up that much water, and yes, you will grow mold quite easily.

So have we had a humidity problem in our suite? No. The difference here is we Like fresh air. We always have at least one window open. We don't keep the place too warm - we grab a sweater when we feel cold. And we have no mold. But this winter we did have a bit of humidity for the first time in 10 years - easy to remove as soon as we saw it, but that's new. Our windows were sealed in last year's round of construction. Can we bonk someone on the head for this? Actually, a mangled coat hanger to the vents around the windows has helped... the ones that were sealed last summer by the construction workers going up the side of the building in their
little
noisy
platforms...

Is painting in the dark with a flashlight good?

OK, so they are working into December to finish painting the outside of our condo building, which can be considered nice because they may actually finish this year. (It's already been a year and a half since they started.) BUT is it good that they are painting in the dark? Is it good that it's past 5 pm and they are still painting? The sun went down about an hour ago.

The building has gone through stages of men redoing the edges of all the windows, replacing tiles on open balconies (to the exact same colour tiles, just a bit bigger - why?) to painting the beige bits (with more beige paint, maybe a bit lighter, but essentially the same colour). And it's all been annoying as hell due to the construction debris that is everywhere (don't park your car near this building unless you want dents), the scaffolding which makes the place look terrible, and the bloody noisy, bad mouthed construction workers with the bad taste in music constantly outside our windows.

We have many paint spots on our windows already. I shudder to think what these men are doing to the windows in the dark. Is there any chance of ever having clean windows again?

Does anyone hear that knocking?

So I'm just sitting at my desk in my home office, working on my computer, when I hear this knocking. It's a metal sound. Doesn't sound like it's coming from inside. It must be something outside.

I look out the window and I don't see anybody. But there is this large metal container that the construction workers are using to put their equipment in. I hear more knocking. Oh damn, one of them has been locked in the metal box. Now who do I phone to get someone with a key to let the guy out?

As I'm going through the list of possible people to phone I realize that there is no business name or phone number on the metal box. I could phone the office downstairs, our building has 24 hour security, but they do walk around the building sometimes making them hard to find, and they don't have the key. I could phone the police, but they don't have a key. I could phone the fire department, hey, now there are people with some heavy metal busting equipment...

And then I see a construction guy come and open the metal box and let his coworker out. They seem to be joking about it, so I guess no harm was done.

Oh well, it would have been more fun to get the fire department in on this. Bummer.

Why are they digging deeper in that hole?

I was walking along Georgia Street today between Thurlow and Bute, just past the new Shangri-La Hotel which is set to open in January when I heard several shrill warning whistles. A few seconds later there was a boom. It was more of a base-note that you feel rather than a loud noise that you hear. And then I heard one more shrill whistle, which would be the all-clear whistle. They were blasting in the hole in the ground that was going to be the foundation of a new Ritz Carleton. But there isn't going to be a new building there.

Part of the impact of the current global financial crisis is that construction has been halted or abandoned on new buildings. In downtown Vancouver the hole in the ground that was to be the foundation of a Ritz Carleton hotel / apartment building has all but been abandoned. The huge signs with the great pictures of the planned building are gone. No company name is displayed anywhere near the site.

So why are people still digging deeper in that hole? Shouldn't they be filling it up so no one falls in while the financial crisis continues and nothing is being built?

Some "news" on the web suggested that the construction was stopped because they needed to make changes to the parking garage design. Uhuh, that would be what was going in that hole, but I don't think that's what is happening. The derelict building that was there before the construction was started was your basic rich-person's graffiti - a partly-built building that was never completed and just abandoned to be an eye-sore. Maybe this is just a more insane and dangerous version of rich-people graffiti, a hole where people can fall into and die rather than spray paint and squat in.

It's fall in Vancouver now, with the coming rain maybe this will be the biggest puddle on the planet, and they're going for a Guinness World Record!

What's another term for overly ambitious?

Dehumidifying Vancouver

So we have a flood in our apartment building and for the 3rd time, yes, the water is on our floor and in the walls of our apartment. So we have the disaster recovery dudes come in, rip up carpets, drill holes in kitchen cabinet toe kicks, put 3 industrial strength fans in a bedroom and the kitchen. and put a huge dehumidifier in the bedroom. The disaster recovery guys are typically fun guys, they cheerfully rip up your home and warn you to keep the windows closed, or else the dehumidifier won't work - it will "dehumidify Vancouver" before it will take the water out of your room if you leave the window open.

Now there's a term! Dehumidify Vancouver. The mere thought brings to mind many other fun overly ambitious terms like:

* boiling the ocean
* solves all our problems
* hole in one
* self-appraisal
* honest feedback
* getting your ducks in a row
* business intelligence
* help hotline
* herding cats

Is there something trying to escape from the walls of my apartment condominium building?

Maybe I jinxed it. A couple of days ago I wrote about the labyrinth of duct work in my apartment building and the new access doors on the 9th floor. I figured a small Minotaur had moved in because they would feel right at home in the maze. I also talked about the perplexing maze of pipes that run through this building. The noise that comes from these pipes had me thinking there were small versions of mythical sea monsters living in there. And yesterday we had another flood. So maybe we do have monsters and they are having epic battles in our walls.

The flood started on the 9th floor and the water flowed down to a point where the cupboards above the kitchen sink on the 1st floor had a waterfall coming out of them. It took a while for the investigators to find the leak. All of the apartments from the 8th floor down now have holes in their walls. The investigators started looking on the 2nd floor and moved up through all the apartments until they found the source. It was the 9th floor. The floor plan on the 10th floor is different. The amazing mess of piping and duct work on the change-over is the culprit.

So yet again we have holes in our walls, water on the floor, people from our property management company who want to get restorers in here as soon as possible to fix the damage, and an unresponsive Strata Council who will have to pay for it and will delay the entire process for months. Yes, this has happened to us 3 times now, we know how bad the Strata Council is, we are expecting the worst.

But have the monsters managed to escape? Or do they enjoy the pain and frustration of the human inhabitants of this building when we have a flood? If they enjoy floods, an apartment condominium in Vancouver is The Place To Be.

What is living in the walls of apartment condominium buildings?

Vancouver is a sea of apartment buildings. Most of these buildings contain a large number of privately owned condominium units. And most of these lovely apartments hide a labyrinth of duct work, electrical wiring, and plumbing design done by a certifiable madman.

In our building we've recently had our dryer ducts cleaned. Well, most of us have had our dryer ducts cleaned. But several months after this process started, today they are finishing up the 9th floor. What happened on the 9th floor that caused the act of duct cleaning to take several months? It's the labyrinth. Maybe it's something that's been living in the labyrinth. Maybe we have a small version of the Minotaur living in our walls!

The final solution to removing the Minotaur from the dryer ducts on the 9th floor has involved making holes in the walls in the apartments of the 9th floor. Big holes with new hatches. Permanent doors to give access to the world of the labyrinth beyond the walls. Maybe the Minotaur just thinks this is a home improvement, giving it access to wander about outside the labyrinth.

Why the 9th floor? You may ask. Because the floor plan of the 9th floor is not the same as the floor plan on the 10th floor. There are 4 apartments on the 9th floor and 3 on the 10th floor. The floor plans change again a couple of times as you go up the building, but the problem is only on this one change-over point. The Minotaur obviously doesn't like heights.

We had to find a water shut off point in our main bathroom a couple of weeks ago. It was well hidden under the vanity, behind the drawers, covered by a metal plate that was screwed on, 2 handles surrounded by pink insulation. And this is all a very long way from the shower stall and bathtub. Just how the pipes get from there to the shower we will never know! So what's been living in that maze? Is it the refuge of sea monsters that have had to find new homes because all the divers with side-scanners and sea monster investigators with cameras are making too much noise in their regular environment? At night there are some very odd noises that come out of our pipes. Maybe it's the sea monsters.

Since we live on the 6th floor, maybe the Minotaur on the 9th floor is battling with the sea monsters from our floor at night. I'm sure the plumbing on the 9th floor has its own special problems as well - maybe it is connected to the labyrinth.

This is, of course, all wild speculation on my part... but noises in the night do make the mind wander.

Can I throw dirt and gobs of paint on your windows?

Construction dudes have been working on the outside of my apartment building for more than a year now. Apparently mostly glass walls start leaking after 15 years or so - go figure. The construction has meant we've had dirty windows for more than a year now, removing all the benefit of having walls that are mostly windows.

The most aggravating moment happened about 2 days ago. After drilling, hammering, globing out sealant around all the windows, and making a general mess, they've started painting... ooh, could they be getting near the end? I'm afraid to hope. But they aren't being any more careful with the paint than they were with anything else they've done.

At the end of the day, there was a huge gob of paint on the window. The window that we look out of most often. The window that faces West, where the sun makes the shadow of the gob of paint so incredibly obvious. The window most likely to have paint burn a hole in it from the sun beating down on it. I guess it had to be that one, didn't it?

But this story doesn't end like that! I am stunned, thrilled, and amazed that today the construction workers have removed most of the gob of paint off the window!!!

I've always wanted to open a window to ask these construction dudes if I could have their home addresses, so I could come to their homes and throw dirt and paint on their windows. They all seemed to care nothing about the people living in the building they were working on. But I guess some of them do understand that this is our home, and there are humans living here, it's not just a bunch of windows they are working on.

So my faith in human nature has recovered somewhat, and I may not refer to these guys with the derogatory name I've been using for a while for them. This is a happy day.

Did you remember to bring the...?

It's taken ages to get everything together and you're outside your apartment waiting for the elevator now. Then someone says "Did you remember to bring the ..."

Now the elevator door opens and there's someone in the elevator. So you either:
* decide we really didn't need that anyway and go into the elevator
* split up and arrange to meet downstairs at the place you usually meet up when this happens
* apologize for making the elevator stop and everyone goes back into the apartment ... thus starting over again: "Did you remember to bring the ..."

On the outside of my apartment building there is a lot of construction work going on. This means that there are at least 5 construction platforms being used by the construction workers to go up and down the outside of the building. They are like little, slow elevators. They've been doing this for months, getting onto years now. Up and down. Slowly. The men on these little elevators wreak of body odor and cancer stick smoke and it all gets blown into our apartment. Day after day.

It's become quite obvious that the "Did you remember to bring the ..." problem is a plague on these construction workers. First thing in the morning, you hear the little motors going and the bumping on the outside wall begins. The babbling of radio programs gets louder as the platforms get closer to our floor, then fades as the platform goes higher. The stench of body odor and cancer stick smoke makes everyone inside wrinkle their noses in disgust. A few minutes later, the motors get louder again, the radio blabber gets louder, the smell gets worse. Then it fades again as they reach the ground. Half an hour later and yes, they are back, once again with the motor, the radio, the stench. They forgot to bring something.

It's annoying when you're going out for the day and have to go back to get something. But wouldn't you have a checklist if you spent your days going up and down on slow little elevators for a living? Wouldn't the aggravation of having to go back down to get a forgotten tool just drive you nuts?

Did I mention that the building is about 30 stories tall? Urgh.

When you display a Mohawk hair style what do you do for a living?

Beyond spending a great deal of time putting various products in your hair to keep it standing straight up, what do you do for a living when you have a Mohawk? Mothers everywhere ask their children this when they come home with the shave-the-sides to leave a broom-on-the-head, stripe-up-the-middle, colourful-blue-bristles-from-the-brows-to-the-top-of-the-backbone hair display. But there ARE adults who proudly display their skulls with this Mohawk stripe to the world. So what do they do for a living? They can't all be in punk bands.

Last night we got a clue to this mystery.

The construction workers working on the outside of our building have been filling a dumpster outside our building with their debris. This dumpster was taken away and replaced by an empty one last night.

A yellow truck with an empty dumpster pulled into the alley. Carefully, but not so quietly, the empty dumpster was dumped in the middle of the alley – an argument may have started between someone trying to drive a car down the alley, but the driver who got out of the truck sported the ever-feared tuft-on-top Mohawk and car drivers found another route to take for the next half hour. The noise caught our attention so we watched the event.

The truck driver skillfully backed the truck up to the filled dumpster, with the truck bed angled up at about 45 degrees, and got out to prepare the dumpster. He jumped into the dumpster to flatten down and rearrange the contents, then he jumped out and got out a cover for the dumpster. After tightening the cover, he hooked the winch on the truck bed to the dumpster. Getting back into the truck cab he drove ahead a few meters, dragging the dumpster behind – yes, you can see the mark on the pavement from this, but there are other older marks, so what's one more. He then jumped out of the truck and unhooked the dumpster. He jumped back into the truck and skillfully angled it to the front of the empty dumpster. He then even more skillfully positioned the empty dumpster into the place where the full dumpster had been – in one shot – he got out to check the placement, and it was spot on, so he unhooked the dumpster. He then jumped back in the truck and angled it in front of the full dumpster, jumped out, hooked the full dumpster and then loaded it up onto the truck bed which lowered from the 45 degrees to a flat surface. After securing the load, he jumped in the truck and drove off. It had been a masterful performance of skill and choreography.

So that's what you do when you display attitude and defiance of societal norms. You aren't an average construction worker who spends all day going up and down the sides of buildings drilling and making noise while talking about the sports you played on the weekend. You are a lone worker who dances through your work with skill and style, and an attitude that makes others leave you alone to do your job. Gee Mom, I think he wins!

Do I really want to know the construction workers that well?

Outside my window now, and for about the last year or so, there are construction workers working on my apartment building. Yes, a Vancouver condominium that needs repairs done on it from water damage, what a surprise! (Heavy on the sarcasm there, ALL buildings in Vancouver's West End neighborhood need repairs done on them due to water damage. No, we haven't had a flood or hurricane or any other natural disaster, we just live in a rain-forest area and no one can make a building that won't be damaged by the rain, which we get for six to seven months at a time. It's a soggy place.)

These construction workers talk a lot. They talk on the way up the outside of the building on the swing scaffold. They talk on the way down the outside of the building on the swing scaffold. They talk when not moving and the drilling momentarily stops (it's an occasional reprieve, they are replacing all of the tiles on every balcony, and drilling and refilling all of the joints between all of the wall panels out there).

The building walls are mostly glass, and they are also spending a lot of time replacing all of the caulking around every single glass pane. Glass is not a good sound barrier. So there is a looming shadow behind the blinds as the swing scaffold stops, they remove the old caulking, clean it out, and put new caulking on. This is not an engrossing task for them, they tend to talk the most when they are on the other side of this non-sound-proof glass.

It's a lot of talk about nothing in particular. Hockey is always a popular topic. Food – what should they have for lunch today. Games of various sorts. No debates about the dichotomy of good and evil, why don't humans have tails, or what is “colour” and is black a colour?

The problem is, I'm not trying to listen in. I really don't want to hear it. And I'd rather do my work without the chatter in the background. But I'm getting to know all about these men, and I don't want to. When I see them down in the lobby when we're all coincidently walking about, do I really need to be wondering which one had a great game of softball on the weekend? I'm going a bit nutty, and my ears hurt from listening to my Ipod all day! I'm beginning to think it would be quieter if I worked in an office building - at least it wouldn't be one conversation at a time going on! As a recent escapee from the corporate world, this makes me shudder!