The Phone's Starting To Ring

New Year Looking Profitable...


To my surprise I got a phone call this afternoon from a stranger asking for some pricing on our custom pneumatic valve rebuild services.

Better yet, they're interested in what we call a "Master Rebuild" which cost about three and one half times as much as a "Basic Rebuild," so the value of the Purchase Order piles up real fast when they send in six or eight valves for service.

Each machine typically requires 16 valves, and there's a few thousand of these old machines sprinkled around North America/Canada, and apparently word is getting out that we do a good job I guess.

I predict that our first real employee we hire will primarily spend his or her time re-building valves if things work out...who knows.

I rebuilt 84 of them from the fourth quarter of 2009 through the last shipment which went out of here by FedEX on New Years Eve, and there's a good but small living to be had by coming up to speed and doing two or three times that number here in 2011.

In other news, in spite of the winter weather outside my front and back doors, last week we had a new ultra-high efficiency TRANE heat pump system installed to replace the ancient, inefficient GE 1970's vintage unit and I'm able to run around both levels of the house without socks and a sweatshirt and be comfortable. 

I'm not in any way a nudist, but at the same time I hate wearing extra clothes unless I'm going to Church or the mall or other places in public.  It's the pirate/beach bum tendancies in me I guess, and this new TRANE unit quietly keeps all of the house at a comfortable level of temperature...hopefully at a cost of less than the $300 per month we were paying three or four months out of the year using the old unit.

This old 1963 vintage house is starting to be in better shape now than it was the day it was build because of our efforts over the past nearly 4 years.  A new roof and a coat of paint on the soffits and facias and window trim and it will be better than new I think.

If I was half it's age rather than being four years older than the old brick lady I'd tackle the roof myself, but my days of doing roofing ended with the 12' x 12' storage building I built for my dear Mother on the Farm back in the early 1990's.

I'm still considering doing the paint because the house is brick on four sides and the tallest part of the woodwork is only about 24 feet off of the ground. I guess I'll get a quote and if I can save $1,500 to $2,000 it's worth my while to climb up and down a ladder a few thousand times when the weather warms up this spring.

I really enjoy working on my cars and my houses and doing mechanical stuff on a "hands on" basis, it's just that like everyone else...the older I get the more fragile I become and saving a little money while risking spending the rest of my life in a neck brace is something I don't have to have anyone else remind me about.

OK, enough blogging for the moment...Until something I read or see on the TV or Internet pisses me off...

Regards Y'all...