Historic Exchange Hotel looks modern inside

As published in The Erin Advocate

Renovations are proceeding nicely at the Exchange Hotel in Hillsburgh, with seven condominium units now on the market and plans made to open the Coach House Creamery restaurant on the Civic Holiday weekend.

A public walk through the interior of the hotel building was the highlight in a tour of downtown Hillsburgh hosted last week by lifelong resident Lee Tocher, a former owner of the property.

It is still a construction site, but much of the electrical, plumbing and drywall work is complete and the elevator shaft is in place.

Front door will have stained glass

Built about 1883, in the prosperous years that followed the arrival of the Credit Valley Railway, the Exchange "outclassed the other hotels in Hillsburgh" according to Wellington historian Steve Thorning.

It served as a headquarters for the well-to-do members of the Caledon Mountain Trout Club, and the main hotel parlour was a favourite meeting place for Erin Township Council.

Decorative brick exterior preserved

Tocher said traveling salesmen "in the old days" would often use the hotel as their base of operations in the area, showing their products in the sample room above the arched passageway that led to the livery stable.

"Years later, they had a restaurant in here and a big pool room at the back with three tables," he said. "It was a working hotel up until about 1966."

Tocher owned the building from 1966 to 1986, operating his store and renting out apartments. He has given some hotel artifacts to the new owners, including some glassware and a Seagrams 3-Star whiskey bottle, with a cork, which was inside a wall.

Developers Roy McCullough and Justin Morrow were on hand to show off the progress they've made.

"We've gone through a lot," said Morrow. "It's been about a year process trying to get it converted over to condominiums, and we just got approval last week."

The Creamery will be selling ice cream, soups, sandwiches and a variety of treats. The new restaurant is at the south end, while the north end on the ground floor is available for lease (or purchase) as retail or commercial space.

Septic system under construction

A section at the back of the building has been rebuilt, and reinforcements have been made to the structure. Most of the wood in the interior had to removed to meet fire regulations. They have also purchased the small building just north of the hotel. They are using it as an office, but it will soon be demolished.

There are four condo units on the second floor and three on the third, each with its own laundry facilities, furnace and air conditioning.

They range from a 534 sq.ft. one-bedroom unit called The Cataract, listed for $229,900, to The Grand (what Morrow calls the "gem"): a 1,490 sq.ft. two-bedroom unit stretching across the full front of the third floor, listed at $429,900. More information is available at www.exchange-hotel.com.

The Exchange Hotel was originally built by Bill Dwier, in a style that incorporated details normally found on much larger commercial buildings in cities. That exterior appearance has been preserved. The third floor has a mansard roof, with windows in dormers.

"This style was a feature of Second Empire buildings, perhaps the dominant style in the 1875 to 1890 period, and which still adds flavour to downtown Fergus and Guelph," said Thorning, in an article on the hotel. A series of his articles is available at www.erin.ca. Go to the About Erin section and click on History of Erin.

Duct tape adventures in wastewater management

As published in The Erin Advocate

When water goes down the household drains, I just want it to go away – preferably far away. I do not want to see it, hear it, smell it or touch it. Unfortunately, I've had to do all those things this fall.

It started with a soggy spot at the end of the septic bed, and proceeded to the guessing game that septic system owners must eventually face: Are my weeping bed tiles disintegrating? Are they clogged with crud from my septic tank? Have the roots from nearby trees grown into the pipes and choked them? Has the layer of biofilm (smelly black gunk) under the pipes gotten so dense that the water has to drain up instead of down?

With the expensive possibility of having to replace the entire system looming, I asked the inevitable bottom line question: What is the least amount of money I need to spend to get this system working again?

The tank is about 33 years of age, but I get it pumped every three years and it still works properly. Since I was unsure about the condition of the septic bed, I decided against a system that would regularly pump air into the pipes and possibly rejuvenate their ability to process wastewater.

I got some helpful advice from Dave Doan at SepTech Wastewater Systems in Hillsburgh. We decided the best first step would be to pump out the bed, which could solve the problem, at least for the short term. That's when the fun started.

I had to get access to the drain pipe, downstream of the septic tank. To save myself some money, I said I would do the digging on my own, since the pipe appeared to be only about 18 inches underground. When I started digging, however, I found that the pipe took a sharp turn downward, through some dense clay.

Many hours later, I finally had the pipe exposed at the bottom of a three and a half foot deep hole, dug wide enough for someone to get in and work.

I found too that the drain pipe had for some time been separated at one of the joints, leaving a large gap. Standing in the hole, I wondered why the ground was totally dry.

Then, someone flushed a toilet. I was suddenly flooded with a realization: the tightly packed soil I had just dug out had formed part of the drainway. I jammed the pipes together, wrapped the joint in plastic bags and sealed it up with duct tape until a proper repair could be done.

The next day, a whole truckload of gunk was pumped out of the septic bed and the drain was fixed – complete with a new access pipe so I could add hydrogen peroxide to the drainage bed. It breaks down to oxygen and water, putting dissolved oxygen into the system to help the digestive process. The wet spot on the lawn dried up, and everything was fine.

A few weeks later, though, I heard strange gurgling sounds through the kitchen sink. When we used water in any part of the house, it started filling up the kitchen sink. The laundry drain was backed up, and when I tried to let some water out of it, I got a solid spray in the face. I thought the whole septic system may have failed and backed up, but when I went outside and lifted the septic tank lid, the water level was normal.

That meant there had to be a blockage in the pipe between the house and the septic tank, which led me to the big threaded clean-out plug in my crawlspace. But before you can attack the clog, you have to get rid of all the water in your drains. That means unscrewing the plug just enough to let the smelly water pour into buckets. If you have poured Drano into the system, in a futile attempt to clear the clog, then you have to haul out smelly, caustic water.

Running a bucket brigade to get wastewater out of your basement may seem like an unpleasant job, but trust me, it can be much worse. If you are ever in this situation, do not be tempted to loosen the plug just a bit more, to speed up the process.

When the plug popped out of the drain pipe, it only took a few seconds to force it back on. But with a 3.5-inch pipe under pressure from the whole house, that was enough time to create an unforgettable mess. The type of mess that requires not only a Shop-Vac, but a small shovel.

Moving right along...the water was eventually out of the pipe and I had access to the clogged drain, but my plumbing snake was not long enough to reach the clog. So, naturally, I got three broomsticks and attached them together with duct tape. That made a ramrod that would go all the way from the basement to the septic tank.

The clog didn't stand a chance and soon the drain was draining like it should. We put a proper snake through it a couple of days later just to be sure, but the adventure was all over, except for the cleanup.

And the moral of these two stories? It is pretty obvious. Before you start any household project, always have plenty of duct tape on hand.

Paying the price of doing it yourself

As published in The Erin Advocate

I was just cutting a horizontal strip of drywall out of my bathroom wall, near the floor, where the vanity used to be, so my electrician could run a new wire to an outlet on the other side of the new counter. For better or for worse, I am one of those amateur home renovators who want to do some of the work themselves.

Sometimes, you save some money (as long as you do not count too many dollars per hour for your own time). Sometimes, you get the satisfaction of doing a good job on a practical task. And then, there are days like last Sunday.

I was hacking away with my manual drywall saw, and getting pretty tired, so I decided to get out my Sawzall, with enough power to chop my whole house into little pieces. I was able to glide through that drywall like butter, just working my way around the studs.

Later, I checked the operating manual for that reciprocating saw, which clearly said, "Make sure hidden wiring, water pipes, or other hazards are not in the cutting path." It also advised me to, "Stay alert, watch what you are doing and use common sense."

As the saw approached the sink area, I heard a metallic ping, and was hit with a spray of hot water from the copper pipe behind the drywall. It took about two seconds for the nature of the problem to sink in, and another 20 seconds for a mad dash into the crawl space to turn off the water supply.

When I returned to the bathroom, the paint in the open can on the other side of the room had been diluted, and my plugged-in power tools lay in a pool of water on the floor. Fortunately, this story does not have a shocking conclusion (unless you count the bill from the plumber); I was able to cut the power, clean up the mess and assemble a logical explanation for when Jean got home.

My plumber retired a few years ago, and I have not needed one for a while, so I looked in the Advocate's Community Service Directory – no plumbers. I checked the Orangeville and Georgetown Yellow Pages, but could find no Erin-based plumbers, and there are none in Erin's "Who Does It" directory.

There must be some Erin plumbers, but I couldn't find one on short notice. (It only costs $10.50 a week to be in the Service Directory.) So I used a big plumbing company with a branch in Georgetown.

They charge $39.50 to show up, then quote you a flat rate once they see the nature of your problem. If you have them stay to do the work, the $39.50 is waived, which seems reasonable, until you hear the flat rate.

In the meantime, I had trimmed away the wet drywall so the nicked pipe was fully exposed. The price to replace three inches of pipe was $192 plus tax. It took the guy only 20 minutes. I guess I could have just paid the $39.50 and got someone else in to quote on the job, but for all I know, $192 is the normal price for fixing a pipe. In retrospect, I probably should have looked for a firm that charged an hourly rate.

Also, I know I was paying for more than just that 20 minutes of work. I was paying for the answering service on a Sunday, for the dispatcher who called first thing Monday morning, for the privilege of having a tradesman at my door within two hours, and for the quality control phone call later in the day to ask if the plumber had been prompt, courteous and successful in fixing my problem.

As a kid, I remember people being in awe of plumbers, because at that time they were said to make $10 per hour, which seemed an extremely high wage. I guess these things never really change: when you have an emergency, your bargaining power and ability to shop around are limited.

The kicker came when the electrician showed up. It turns out he did not really need that strip of drywall to be cut out of the wall after all.