Preventing dog pee....

Since we bought the house, we have practically gutted it and started over.   We have replaced a few pieces of major hardware, and added new pieces as needed (e.g. the water filtration system).

The first piece that was replaced and subsequently moved, was the oil tank.  We intend to eventually put a high efficiency air conditioner near it, too, but that's later down the list now because we ended up remodeling the basement this year.

With Hurricane Irene, we lost power for 5 days.  With no electricity comes no water.  We borrowed a small generator from the autocross club (I am the chairperson... so I should be able to use the equipment as needed.... it's the small perks for being a volunteer, right?!) to save our refrigerator and power the TV.  But really, the lack of water really cramps one's style, to put it mildly.

Enter stage left, a whole house generator.  When we bought this house, we had every intention of putting one of these in since the electricity goes off every time a squirrel walks on the lines.  Luckily, BGE has been fairly responsive up until now, and we've been REALLY lucky during the major snowpocolypses to not lose power, but Hurricane Irene was the first time BGE resources were stretched way beyond their capacity.  The morning after the storm, the neighbors were all outside talking around a fallen tree across the road (which was cleared by neighbors with chain saws and front loader tractors).  I asked them what the over-under was on getting power back any time soon, and every last one of them said,

"Oh, it'll be at least a week."

Because that's what happened with Hurricane Katrina.  So the bets were pretty good that the same would hold true here.  And it did.  So this pushed the whole house generator need up to the top again.

Today began the generator installation.  It's not complete yet as it's not yet hooked to the house, and I need to schedule time for my propane company to move my oil tank and install it to the generator.  But now that we have at least 2 new "appliances" outside, I decided it's time to fence it off from the dogs.

NO MORE DOG PEE ON MY NEW STUFF.

To be fair, I should have done this with the oil tank when we first got it, but I wasn't thinking straight at the time... I had a lot of other things going on at the time.  Imagine that.

Oil tank on the left, generator on the right.

Generator in the foreground, oil tank in the background.

Anyway, clearly this is a temporary solution... since i'm using baby gates.  Yes, I said baby gates.  In fact, baby gates tend to be effective as dog gates, too!  My dogs could jump these if they REALLY want to, but I think they're too lazy for that.  And actually, this needs to remain temporary until we plan out where all of the other "appliances" (air conditioner and propane tank) will be.  Then we can work through making a more permanent solution.

Or, we put up something semi-permanent knowing that we may have to start over when other hardware is moved.

I can't wait to hear my neighbors laugh when they see it tomorrow.  LOL