It seems that even when it’s not raining, and even after my adjustments to the threshold, there is still some moisture appearing just inside the door. It has been lightly snowing a bit, so maybe it’s warm air meeting the snow and melting it. I opened the door to see if the top of the threshold was wet (as it had been previously) and it wasn’t. Okay, then, where is the water coming from? I think the threshold, which is aluminum, and its cap, which is some kind of moderately stiff plastic, are conveying cold into the house and the moisture I’m seeing now is actually condensate, not direct ingress.
Since I got my microwave, I’ve been using that to do most of my cooking, as well as tea water heating, which has helped tremendously to keep the indoor humidity down. It’s still a little high and I want to install that HRV unit as soon as weather permits, but it’s no longer a sauna in here, at least. Still, hovering around 60% RH is a bit wet and I still get some condensation on the windows and skylights. It stands to reason I’d get it on anything cold, including the door threshold. I’ve installed a rubber squeegee-like thing at the bottom of the door in an effort to put something between the cold parts of the threshold and the interior of the house, to mitigate the condensation. It would also keep actual cold air from sneaking in under the door, considering the door sweep that’s there got pretty much destroyed. Even if all it does it keep whatever condensate that happens under the door where it can then drain outside, that’s an improvement over having the condensation happen inside and going under the floor boards, which is what was happening before. The squeegee has been in place for a few hours and the area by the door is showing signs of drying, so maybe it’s working.
It may sound romantic to have an address that isn’t listed anywhere, but I tell you, it is a huge pain in the ass. I can’t have packages delivered directly and I can’t update my bank/credit card records. I can’t get a local driver’s license, either. I talked with my contact at the county office of maps and he said he did the usual thing when a new road/address is born with respect to notifying the USPS. Further, at least one of my banks said they use the USPS database for address validation and that this is a pretty common way to do such things. Yet here we are, 7 weeks since that notice (and almost a month of my residing here) and my address still doesn’t count as valid when I try to use it for things.
I can have parcels delivered to the local post office, of course, but carriers like UPS and FedEx don’t much appreciate that this little rural PO is only open from 12:30 – 4:30, not exactly convenient for their route planning. It’s hit-or-miss — I had one FedEx package seemingly get to the PO just fine (I haven’t picked it up yet, so I don’t know that this is true, only that the tracking says they did it) and another’s been in limbo for days. And I even talked to the FedEx driver (by phone) about it, too.
I went to the FedEx web site to request redirection for them to hold it at a retail outlet, but when I tried, the site said “nothing near you” — though there is a place 12 miles from here. Not “near” exactly, but certainly not “far”, unless you’re walking.
Given how debilitated he post office has become in recent years, I don’t have great confidence this will resolve any time soon.