Just a utility basement

Here, you can see the entrance door to the basement.
And yes, it is that short.
I'm 5'5" and I still have to duck my head going in and out, at the top and at the bottom of the stairs.

Open the door and there's not much to see...

just a bunch of junk.


At the bottom of the stairs, you see the furnace and the washer..the bucket you see next to the furnace is there to collect the condensation that the furnace produces, from being a high efficiency furnace.  Tim rigged it up with a sump pump and float and when the pump turns on the water is siphoned into the holding bucket that is mounted above the washer.

when you look up you can see the holding bucket for the water that comes from the Reverse Osmosis System and the furnace.

the dryer

 

Here's the Reverse Osmosis system with the filters and the holding tank. That baby cost 200 dollars.  Filter replacements cost 200 dollars a year plus whatever the water cost is.  Because it takes about 15 gallons of water to make 2 gallons of filtered water.  And then it costs 100 dollars a year to maintain the filter that is inside the refrigerator.
And that's the price we pay to have decent drinking water here in Fountain, Colorado.

Further back and behind the furnace you can see the 50 gallon water tank and a dug out space...storage for paint.

Time to duck and go back up the stairs.
You can see how the McConnaughhay's chiseled out the foundation wall in 1963 to put this basement in.

Here's a closer look at all the junk I have at the top of the stairs.
Just this year we insulated the walls, the ceiling and the door.  Before that, there was a huge, heavy trap door that closed over the top of the stairs.  It wasn't very efficient at keeping the warm air in and the cold air out.