Category Archives: Family-Friends-Home

Post related to our family and close friends and projects around the house.

2014/09/12 (F) Posted

Linda was up very early to try and beat the morning rush inbound to Detroit from the northwest. I took an Ibuprofen and went back to bed, finally getting up at 7 AM. 1-800-PACK-RAT was scheduled to pick up the 16 foot long storage container we have had in our driveway for the last two months and I wanted to be up and dressed when they arrived. I did not have any problems with my teeth overnight. They felt OK this morning but the upper right was still a bit sensitive to biting pressure. I had a nice soft banana for breakfast and decided to keep taking the Ibuprofen and Tylenol.

I put a load of laundry in the washer and then ran out to take care of errands. I stopped at Dunkin Donuts for coffee, Lowe’s for solar salt for the water softener, and then Teeko’s for coffee beans. Jeff still did not have the Sweet Dreams decaf blend even though he orders it every week. I got a pound of the Seattle Blend 50/50 regular/decaffeinated, and a pound of regular Brazilian Serra Negra to blend with the decaffeinated beans we already had at home.

Heather, from Root Canal Specialty Associates, called around 9 AM to check on me. I mentioned the sensitivity and she said that was normal and to keep taking the Ibuprofen/Tylenol through the weekend to counteract any inflammation and/or discomfort. She wanted to know if I thought the temporary filing was high and making contact before the other teeth. I wasn’t sure, but she said if it was to call them Monday morning and they would get me in to adjust my bite.

Since I was on the phone anyway I called Bratcher Electric to see about the quote/estimate for the generator service / fuel changeover and the service entrance feed from the transfer switch to the sub-panel to change it into a main panel. They have been very busy with repairing damage caused by the storms of the last few weeks. We did not suffer any damage beyond some dead branches breaking off from trees, but south of us folks were hit much harder. That kind of work always takes priority.

The day was overcast and dreary with morning temps in the mid-40’s and a high of 54, but that was OK; it was a perfect day for sitting at a desk and working on a computer, undistracted by either bad or gorgeous weather. I did, however, bring my computer upstairs and work at Linda’s desk. My office is very nice but it is in the basement and it is a bit of a cave. Sometimes I like that, and sometimes I don’t. I worked on our blog until early-midafternoon and finally uploaded posts from Aug 2 through Aug 20.

My only interruption was a visit from one of Roese Construction’s field supervisors who was checking on where the runs will go to connect the houses in our neighborhood to the natural gas main. After looking at our situation he agreed with me and Mel who had looked at this a few weeks ago, that staying to the east of the east entrance to our pull-through driveway made the most sense even through it required them to bore at an angle relative to the main line. That conversation confirmed that they will be horizontal boring the branch line rather than trenching it in. He did not give me a firm date, but it sounded like it could be as early as tomorrow (Saturday) and likely by Tuesday next week.

My computer battery was down to under 1 hour of charge remaining, so I took it downstairs and plugged it back in to its power supply. While I was down there I put another load of laundry in the washing machine. Back upstairs I made a PB&J sandwich for lunch, along with some green tea. I got back on the RVillage Mobile development site, played with a few more features, and provided some additional feedback to the development team. I then worked on this post using my new Logitech Bluetooth keyboard. The Wacom Bamboo stylus is nice, but the keyboard is the way to go when creating extended text.

Juniper, our female cat, was getting into something in the library so I went to investigate. She had cornered a yellow jacket and was trying to figure out what to do with it. I solved the problem for her by capturing it and putting it outside. I don’t think she was pleased with my solution, but not 20 minutes later she was at it again, and it was another yellow jacket. We have a nest in the soffit near the library that we need to get rid of, but we have not had a problem with them getting into the house until very recently. Hopefully that has not changed but I will have to investigate the situation. It may be that with the onset of cooler temperatures they are finding their way into the library through the recessed ceiling downlight cans. If so, there’s really no good way to seal those. Fortunately we can close of the house from the library with a kitchen door and a living room doorwall that includes a screen door.

It started raining very lightly around 4 PM, but never developed into anything. Linda got home from the bakery at 5:30 PM. The storage container had not been picked up yet so we called the 1-800 number and left a message with our callback number. I got a call around 6 PM from the local (Plymouth, MI) office verifying the pickup and address. The driver arrived around 7:20 PM and had the unit loaded by 7:30 PM. After he left we headed to dinner at LaMarsa where we had crushed lentil soup and split an order of Koshary and salad. Even splitting the dish we both ate too much, aided by the fresh-baked pocket bread and garlic spread. The food and service were both excellent, as always, and the garlic spread was “…the gift that keeps on giving.”

We got back from dinner a little before 9 PM, too late to start any in-depth computer work, but early enough for me to finish this post and for Linda to do some recipe research for Sunday’s brunch. It seems like only yesterday it was still light at 10 PM at night, but we are approaching the autumnal equinox, and there are noticeably fewer hours of daylight now.

20140911 (R) Rooted

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After a breakfast of zucchini muffins and a banana (soft foods) I tried playing with the new RVillage mobile site on my Samsung Galaxy S III phone but I was unable to log in so I read a few blog posts. We had gusty winds overnight after the rain cleared out so I checked the weather to see what might be headed our way today. There wasn’t any additional rain in the forecast, but it looked like we would stay shrouded from the sun all day. The wild turkeys were not put off by the weather and spent some time foraging back by the fire pit. There were there long enough that I was able to get my good telephoto zoom lens on the camera and get this shot from the basement walkout doorwall.

These three adults and three young have been regular visitors to our yard of late.

My endodontics appointment was at 11:45 AM with Root Canal Specialty Associates in Brighton, Michigan. Their offices are on Grand River Avenue just northwest of St. Joseph Mercy Hospital. That’s only about five miles from our house; much more convenient than driving to Dearborn. Although I have been having discomfort in both the upper and lower rear teeth on my right side, the bad tooth turned out to be one of the uppers. Once they had determined that it needed a root canal I never even had to get out of the chair; they just seamlessly moved from diagnostic mode to repair mode. Endodontic operations are very efficient.

They were done and I was on my way by 1:30 PM. I stopped at Smead & Son just up the road to see if they could fabricate a rebar cage for our ham radio tower foundation. They can, and they also sell Sonotubes if we decide to use one. They stock diameters up to 36″ locally, and have tubes up to 48″ diameter at their Pontiac location. They can bend the round horizontal sections, fold over the ends of the vertical sections, and supply the twist ties for tying the pieces of rebar together. They even sell a special tool for twisting the twist ties. The pieces would not be welded, but the assured me that twist tying them together is the standard way that rebar is held in place. They can also supply the threaded steel anchor bolts if I decide to get them locally.

My next stop was Staples in Brighton for a new touch screen stylus/pen. I ended up getting a Wacom Bamboo stylus with no pen, and a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard to pair with my iPad2. I create the rough drafts of all of my blog posts on the iPad, and I should have gotten a keyboard a long time ago. I also picked up a sympathy card for a friend and co-worker of Linda’s whose father just passed away.

I stopped at Dunkin Donuts on the way home and got some hot apple cider but could not drink it right away as the local anesthetic had not yet worn completely off and I dribbled every time I took a sip; not a pretty sight. Back home I took my 3 PM dose of Tylenol. I will be taking Ibuprofen every six hours for the next 24 hours and also taking Tylenol every six hours spaced halfway in-between the Ibuprofen doses. Between the anesthetic wearing off and the apple cider cooling down I was finally able to drink it in small careful sips. I unpacked the wireless keyboard and got it connected to my iPad2 and used it to finishing typing this post. The keyboard comes with a case that turns into a stand that can hold my iPad2 at two different angles in each of portrait or landscape position. All-in-all a very nice little package. I have generally been very happy with Logitech products over the years.

I wanted to play with the RVillage mobile development site but still could not get logged in. On a suggestion from Linda I figured out how to tell my Samsung Galaxy S III phone to NOT remember logins for websites and was finally able to login and navigate around. The initial login was a 2-step process and my phone was automatically providing the username and password for step 1 even though I was manually entering the information for step 2. Once I was in I joined a test group, replied to a topic post, created a new topic and made an initial post. I also replied to a message, searched for two members of the development team, and sent messages to each of them with some site feedback. Based on our limited testing of the site it appears that the development team has done a great job on the mobile version.

Linda made a barley, kale, white bean stew for dinner. She has made it before and it is a wonderful blend of tastes and textures. Besides the named ingredients, it included onions, garlic, mushrooms, and tomatoes. For dessert she made apple crisp. Apple cider and apple crisp in the same day; nothing says “fall” like apples.

Butch called to bring me up-to-date on their situation regarding the transfer of parts from their business in Indiana to the buyer in Nevada. It looks like the 53′ trailer won’t be there to pick up material until the 29th of this month but I could take our bus there any time after the 18th, when their younger daughter (Brittani) is getting married. And once our natural gas situation is resolved. As of this writing we have no idea when they will run the line to our house and hang the meter. The only date we have ever been given was project completion by September 26.

2014/09/10 (W) A Functioning Landline

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The Ibuprofen/Tylenol mix did the trick and I slept comfortably through the night. Twinges were just starting as we were waking up, so breakfast was two zucchini muffins, half of a banana, and 800 mg of Ibuprofen, washed down with orange/grapefruit juice. Linda went for a walk after breakfast as it was supposed to be rainy most of the day.

I spent part of the morning selecting and re-sizing photographs from the Arcadia Bus Rally 2014, uploaded them to a folder in our Dropbox, and e-mailed the link to Brenda Phelan who runs the rally with her husband Bill. She had put out a request on Facebook for photos if anyone had them. I did an article for Bus Conversions Magazine on that rally shot over 700 photos, so yeah, I had a few.

I registered us for an RVillage Ambassador webinar later today on the new mobile app, and then came upstairs to have lunch. We enjoyed the vegan Sloppy Joe’s Linda had made, along with some vegan baked beans (canned) and store bought apple sauce. It had been raining lightly for a while and the intensity increased while we ate, but it fell straight down with little to no wind. The radar loop on Wundermap (Weather Underground) showed that we were in the leading edge of a large fetch of moisture that would likely train over our location for several hours and that is, in fact, what happened.

I took a short nap. I rarely do that, but I always enjoy it when I do. I worked the rest of the afternoon at my computer editing blog posts and finally getting around to selecting and processing photos to go with some of them. I had called Kerry Fear this morning regarding snowplowing this winter and he stopped by the house around 3:45 PM to meet with us. He lives nearby and plows our neighbor’s driveway, which is how we got his name. We agreed to hire him for the season on a handshake; no contract or pre-payment. He will send us a bill every now and then and we will pay it.

Linda made creamed corn for dinner and served it alongside vegan Sloppy Joe sandwiches and fresh strawberries. Again, a soft, easy on the teeth, meal that was very tasty.

The RVillage webinar started at 7 PM EDT and lasted 45 minutes. They wanted feedback on this latest development by Friday so they can finalize it for general release. I continued working on photographs for the blog and installed a set of updates on our Linux box before calling it quits for the evening. Linda had started watching the first episode of Sherlock from last year so I watched most of it with her. Much to our disappointment Doc Martin has disappeared from Amazon Instant Video as part of our Amazon Prime account. We can still get it, but we would now have to pay extra. As much as we like the series we are not going to pay extra to watch it.

It spite of the rain today, we made and received a number of phone calls on our AT&T landline and were online through our DSL connection quite a bit, including streaming the episode of Sherlock, all without noise or service interruptions to the best of our knowledge. We are hopeful that our AT&T service is finally restored and will continue to operate reliably.

One of the calls was from Chuck letting me know that Matt at Bob’s Speedometer Service had tested his VDO bus speedometer and found it to be broken and not repairable. Chuck ordered a new one through Matt, who will take care of programming the odometer with the current mileage. Once it comes in and Chuck verifies that it works I will likely be ordering one for our bus since ours has failed in the same way as Chuck’s. I could go ahead and remove ours and take it in, but I have lots of other things to work on a figured it made sense to wait and see how this works out for Chuck.

2014/09/09 (T) Squashed

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We got up this morning around 7 AM to temperatures in the upper 50’s and thinly overcast skies. I hooked up the garden hose and watered part of the back yard where we have been spot seeding the grass. Breakfast was our usual yummy homemade granola and a fresh grapefruit but I had to eat the cereal carefully.

I woke up this morning with minor pain in my lower right rear teeth. The upper teeth on that side have been bothering me for a little while and the coffee bothered one of them this morning. Not a good sign, as we learned a few weeks ago when Linda developed severe pain overnight. Sensitivity to heat and lack of sensitivity to cold is one of the tests for a nerve gone bad, and that usually means a root canal procedure. I called our dentist’s office at 9:15 AM and they booked me in at 2 PM. When I was there a couple of weeks ago to have an abfraction redone Dr. Steve did not see anything wrong with the upper tooth and speculated that I might be clenching my teeth while I sleep, which can aggravate the nerves. He may want me to try a mouth guard first. We’ll see.

After catching up on blogs I finished watering the back yard and moved around to the front. Being on a well, we cannot just run the water indefinitely; once the pressure tank runs down we need to let it recharge. The tank is large and we never notice this with normal household water usage, but watering the lawn can take a lot of water.

With the watering done I had planned to work on the drywall in the library, something I have not done for the last week, but I decided instead to re-grade a small area of the yard just east of the east driveway culvert. Roese Construction brought two pieces of plastic gas line above the surface in that area, dug a big hole to connect them straight together, and then back filled the hole and buried them. In the process of filling and grading the disturbed area they blocked the lower half of our culvert. Unfortunately the water flows out of that end of the culvert, so their grading was blocking the natural flow of the water.

While I was digging and raking Bill showed up from AT&T. Linda let me know that about 20 minutes before he arrived we had gotten two calls that just identified as “Incoming.” Bill said that coincided with the time he was dispatched and that an automatic line test is run whenever a technician is dispatched. He was able to pull up a screen on his diagnostic tablet of the recent use of the line pairs by 30 minute intervals and could see that our DSL had dropped out shortly after the diagnostic calls were made. This matched what Linda had seen in the house. He repeated the test sitting in our driveway and the telephone test call caused our DSL to disconnect again. He disconnected the line from the service entrance box and went in search of the problem while I continued working on the drainage issue.

I had the drainage problem fixed by 11:45 AM and got cleaned up and dressed appropriately for my dental appointment. We had hummus sandwiches with onion and olive oil, leftover butternut squash from last night’s dinner, and fresh, perfectly ripe pears; all soft foods so as not aggregate my dental situation. I was just getting ready to leave for my appointment when Bill returned. He said it was not a circuit board but appeared to be a cable problem that they refer to as a “swinging line,” referring to a marginal section of cable that develops problems when it moves, such as with storm winds. We had problems on Friday evening as a storm front approached and the winds kicked up, so this diagnosis did not surprise me.

Bill said he moved us to yet another line pair much farther away from our original ones and then repeated the tests he had done earlier. He had not gotten any failures but was not completely confident that he had solved the problem. The weather forecast for tomorrow is for a 100% chance of storms, some strong to severe, and Bill thought that would be a good test. I let Bill know that while I was digging and raking by the road I found an old underground AT&T line that had been cut in half with ends left above ground. He said it was no longer being used but they ask the other utility crews to leave the ends exposed when they snag them so AT&T can find them.

My teeth hurt on the drive down to the dentist, did not hurt while I was there, and hurt on the drive home. Direct examination, hot/cold sensitivity testing, and X-rays did not provide a definitive diagnosis. Dr. Steve was still of the opinion that it could be nerve irritation from clenching my teeth at night, but thought I should have the situation evaluated by an endodontist. Linda saw an endodontist just down the street from our dental clinic, but she needed same day service and they were able to get her in and do the root canal. They referred me to a clinic in Brighton about five miles from our house and made an appointment for me for Thursday late morning. With any luck my teeth won’t go critical in between now and then.

I did get an interesting recommendation on how to manage any ongoing discomfort. Motrin (Ibuprofen), up to 800 mg every six hours, and Extra Strength Tylenol, every six hours, taken half way between the Motrin. Apparently it works nearly as well as narcotics, at least on dental pain, without any of the unpleasant side effects or habit forming properties.

I did not feel like changing back into work clothes when I got home so I enjoyed some quiet time on the deck with Linda, who was working on her counted cross-stitch project, under partly cloudy skies with pleasant temperatures in the mid-70’s and a light breeze. Ahhhh.

With the phone and DSL currently functioning properly I worked in my office for a while before dinner. The login attack on our two WordPress sites hosted by QTH.com had continued, but not to the same extent as before. I set the country blocking to “all” in Wordfence and then deselected the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. I did not have a reply from Scott at QTH.com which surprised me a bit but was not a big deal.

Linda made a nice salad for dinner and then served the leftover baked squash and squash/pasta dish from the other night; a lot of squash for one meal, but very tasty. We had a glass of the Leelanau Cellars Winter White, a very drinkable semi-sweet white table wine blend that must contain a fair amount of Riesling, although the label does not specify the grapes used to make it.

My bottom tooth was really acting up so I took 800 mg of Motrin (Ibuprofen) around 6 PM. We were out of Extra Strength Tylenol so Linda went to the store and got a bottle. I took some of that around 9 PM and then went to bed. I will be taking a pass on wine and coffee until I get the problems with my teeth resolved.

2014/09/08 (M) No More Leaks

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I was up at 6:30 AM, having fallen asleep before 10:30 PM last night. I rarely sleep more than eight hours. Linda was up shortly thereafter. We had breakfast a little after 7 AM and drank our coffee in the living room while we checked in on the world with our iPads. It was a perfect morning to fire up the gas logs in the fireplace, but we did not. The propane logs require the flue vent to be open and most of the heat they produce goes up the chimney, not into the room. We will definitely replace these with 99.8% efficient vent-free natural gas logs that operate with the flue damper closed once we have natural gas to the house.

Linda went for a long walk, about 5.5 miles. I was catching up on blogs I follow on Feedly when Darryll and Alec arrived around 10 AM. With Alec along Darryll did not need my help fixing the leaks in the black iron pipe fittings. To repair the leak behind the garage he decided to install a union in the 1″ pipe coming out of the T-fitting that will feed gas to the garage. They still had to disassemble all of the fittings from there to end of the run and then reassemble them. Ditto for the leak at the elbow in the 1/2″ line coming out of the utility closet to feed the garage furnace.

I had Darryll look at our old propane fireplace logs to see what would be required to replace them with high efficiency natural gas logs and add a shutoff valve. Based on how the pipes are run the shutoff valve will have to be in the outside pipe just before it enters the side of the chimney. That will place it at a comfortable height and keep it out even deep snow.

While Darryll and Alec worked on the black iron pipe I unloaded more stuff from the storage container. I was dressed to work and with Linda away from the house I did not want to sequester myself in my basement office. Besides, I am not very productive at desk work when contractors are here.

As they were finishing up Darryll turned the new air-conditioner on and let it run to check the air temperature it could produce. It got the temp down to 58 degrees F in the main plenum. He said anything below 60 is considered proper operation so he did not need to adjust the refrigerant charge. They pressurized the pipes and checked every junction twice and did not find any leaks. He said a lot of guys, including the gas company, attach a gauge and if it holds pressure for an hour they call it good. Darryll wants to see it hold pressure a lot longer than that, which I appreciate. They finished up around 1:30 PM. After they left I set the pressure in the pipe as close to 15 PSI as I could. I noted that most of the pipe was in the shade and the air temperature was 76 degrees F.

For lunch we had hummus with pita chips and sourdough pretzel nibblers, fresh apple slices, and leftover kale salad. After lunch we worked in the garage for about 90 minutes and managed to get the storage container emptied out and all of the contents stored somewhere. We still can’t get a car in the garage, but we have time to work on that. What we need now is a dumpster, but I think that will have to wait until next spring.

I was supposed to have a FMCA Education Committee telephone meeting today at 4 PM but it was postponed yet again. I did, however, get two phone calls today from the folks at AT&T who are following up on our MPSC complaint. The phone was actually quiet enough today that I could carry on a normal phone conversation with them.

We had several other calls today that were also OK. One of them was from Norma, a woman from New York City that we met last year on our second Holistic Holiday at Sea cruise. Norma stopped by to visit us at Williston Crossings earlier this year along with her daughter and grandchildren. Norma is the person who told us about the Vegetarian Summerfest that is held each July in Pennsylvania. She is eager for us to go, and we are eager to attend; this summer just did not afford the opportunity. Although we will likely be building a barn next year, we would like to take a week and go to this event.

Chuck called in the afternoon to let me know he had picked up his old tachometer from Matt at Bob’s Speedometer and after replacing a few simple parts (capacitors or diodes) it worked fine on the bench. Chuck brought his “new” tachometer along and Matt tested it as well and it also worked, but not with the adaptor cable provided by Prevost. It turned out that the cable was wired to provide DC power to the tachometer from the wire that supplies power to the dashboard lights. Chuck doesn’t drive much at night, so the dash lights were rarely on. Another factor is that the dash lights are on a dimmer (rheostat) that reduces the voltage in order to dim the lights. The tachometer is not designed to work on that reduced voltage.

Once we were done working in the garage for the day I concentrated on deleting or filing old e-mails. I also discovered that we had become the target of a (so far) unsuccessful brute force login attack. I received about 360 system generated e-mails between 10 PM last night and 11 AM this morning notifying me of failed login attempts. I notified Scott at QTH.com and then decided to upgrade the Wordfence plug-in from free to paid/premium on all four of the websites I support.

After purchasing the upgrades I installed one of the API Keys in each site and then activated several premium features including “country blocking.” Wordfence claims to have access to several databases that allow them to identify the country associated with an IP address with 99.5% accuracy. I chose to block China, Europe, Indonesia, and the Russian Federation. If necessary I can “select all” and then deselect the United States and Canada. If the problem stops I could then unblock other countries, such as Australia and New Zealand. Not that I think anyone from there ever visits any of these websites, but with the web you never really know.

2014/09/07 (N) Findlay Hamfest

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I set alarms on my phone and iPad last night to make sure I got up at 5:00 AM. My natural tendency is to stay up a little later each night, something I am now able to do as I do not usually have to get up by any certain time in the morning. Usually. Today, however, was the annual Hamfest put on by the Findlay, Ohio Amateur Radio Club and I needed to be at Mike’s (W8XH) QTH in time for a 6 AM departure. We picked up Steve (N8AR) at the Park-n-Ride lot at Lee Road and US-23 around 6:15 AM and drove non-stop to Findlay, Ohio, arriving at the county fairground at 8:15 AM. We had a good chat on the way down, which is as much of a reason for going as the bargain hunting once we got there. I have included a couple of photos in this post. For more photos, visit:

http://wp36test1.slaarc.com/gallery-2/hamfests/2014-09-findlay/

We each paid our $7 admission fee and got our ticket with a tear-off stub for the hourly and grand prize drawings. We got parked and set our Kenwood TH-F6 handheld radios to 146.475 MHz (simplex). We filled out our raffle ticket stubs, dropped them off, and started working our way up and down the rows of outside tables. The outside sales area was essentially a flea market, sometimes referred to as “trunk sales” because people back their cars up to the road and sell stuff from their trunks. The spots are cheaper to rent for the day, but you take a chance that the weather will be nice.

Outside vendors (trunk sales) at the Findaly ARC Hamfest in Findlay, OH.

We worked the flea market first while the temperatures were cool and the sun wasn’t overhead but also because almost everything offered for sale was used equipment at negotiable prices. These are often one-of-kind items and the bargains tend to disappear quickly. By mid-morning I had purchased a good sized NEMA enclosure (steel box with weather tight gasketed door) and a Harris 22.2 telephone butt handset (tester). I plan to use the NEMA box to create a cable entrance box with lightning protection for RF transmission lines, AC power lines, and control lines. I got the telephone test set because it will allow me to hook up to the phone line the same way the AT&T technicians do, and because it is not the sort of thing most folks have in their home.

Bruce (W8RA) gave a short shopping list to Steve (N8AR) yesterday at breakfast. Mike (W8XH) spotted a matched three-piece set of vintage Heathkit gear, one piece of which was on Bruce’s list. Steve looked at it and they got Bruce on the phone. Apparently it was close enough to what Bruce wanted that Steve bought the whole set for him as the seller was not willing to sell them separately.

We then moved to the inside vendors, most of whom were selling new merchandise at fixed prices. There was some used equipment, however, and I bought an Icom CI-V interface set. This device will allow me to interface our Icom IC-7000 and/or IC-706 to, and control them from, a computer using something like Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD) software.

I also got to meet and talk to Norm, from Norm’s Fabrication in Adrian, and his wife, who is president of the Adrian Amateur Radio Club. Norm is a welder, and his side business is fabricating tower parts out of steel and aluminum for fellow hams. If I cannot get what I need from Heights Tower Systems, Norm may hold the key to getting our used tower erected.

A very classy portable ham radio station (go box).

A number of other hams from the South Lyon, Novi, Livingston, and SEMDXA radio clubs were there. I brought my camera and tried to get photos of our club members for the club website. None of us won anything from the hourly drawings (must be present to win) and we left shortly after noon to meet up at the local Steak-n-Shake for lunch. I had not eaten breakfast so I enjoyed my garden salad and French fries. I had a good chat with Dave (K8ESQ), the current president of SEMDXA, and Don (N8CAK) from SLAARC.

We had a good chat on the drive back, stopping briefly at the Michigan Welcome Center on US-23 northbound shortly after entering Michigan from Ohio. We dropped Steve off at the Lee Road Park-n-Ride and helped him unload the Heathkit equipment. When we got back to Mike’s I moved my purchases and personal gear to my car and then spent some time examining his Heights tower, especially the fold-over mount. After studying the parts and the geometry of the design I had a much better understanding of how it works and what we need to get our tower erected and fully operational.

On the way back to my house I got a call from Darryll letting me know he would be out in the morning as long as someone would be home. Back home I unloaded everything and moved Linda’s car to the side parking pad to make space for Darryll’s truck in the morning. It was nice to have a day away from our house and property projects.

I spent a little time checking e-mail and websites and off-loading digital photos until Linda called me to dinner. We had leftover kale salad, quinoa with pineapple and nuts, fresh steamed broccoli, and corn-on-the-cob. After dinner I recorded the events of the last few days in rough drafts of separate blog posts. By 10:15 PM the early start and long day finally caught up with me and I turned the lights out and drifted off to sleep.

2014/09/06 (S) Deliveries

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We were up early and off to our SLAARC ham radio club breakfast in South Lyon. There was a good turnout and good conversation, some of which had to do with our future tower project. Mike (W8XH) was driving to the Findlay (Ohio) Hamfest tomorrow morning and had room for one more in his car so I decided to go.

Back home we broke down cardboard, loaded it into my car with the rest of our recyclables, and headed over to Recycle Livingston. Afterwards we stopped at the Howell Bank of America branch so I could get some cash for the Findlay OH Amateur Radio Club Hamfest tomorrow. A little farther up the road we stopped at Lowe’s for grass seed and bought three plastic tubs to replace the cardboard boxes we have been using on the floor of the kitchen pantry for recyclables. Lowe’s is at Latson Road and Grand River Road so we hopped on I-96 East over to US-23 and headed south towards Ann Arbor to drop off the window air-conditioner and visit with our son, daughter-in-law, and grand-daughter.

When we exited US-23 at Washtenaw Avenue the traffic was worse than usual, and it is usually pretty bad. Ann Arbor got hit a lot harder by the storms last night than we did and two of the three traffic signals between the highway and Stadium Boulevard were not working. Drivers were being courteous, and everyone was taking turns, but the traffic volume through this stretch of road exceeds its capacity even when the signals are working.

We got the window air-conditioner unloaded and moved to the second floor of the garage. We had a nice visit that included reading stories to Madeline.

Madeline and Grandma Linda read a favorite story.

We were going to stop at the Whole Foods Market on our way home but decided to avoid the traffic jam and worked our way through a subdivision up to Geddes Road and back to US-23. Back home we had a light/late lunch of leftover rice seitan and mashed cauliflower and then worked for a couple of hours getting things out of the storage pod and organized in the garage. We moved the shelves away from the northeast wall so Darryll could work on the gas pipe when he returns. We knew when we put the shelves there that we were taking a small gamble that we might have to move them. Fortunately they slid easily without being unloaded. We must have the storage container empty by the time we go to bed on Thursday evening as it is scheduled for pickup on Friday.

For dinner we had a nice salad, roasted Brussels sprouts, and sautéed potatoes with onions, garlic, and bell peppers. We finished the no-bake (frozen) double-chocolate torte for dessert. After dinner Linda played Scrabble and Words With Friends while I researched Acme screws, nuts, and related components that we need to get the ham radio tower fold-over mount operational.

I turned in earlier than usual as I needed to be up at 5 AM in order to be at Mike’s (W8XH) QTH by 6 AM to leave for the Findlay Hamfest.

2014/09/05 (F) WordPress 4.0

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We awoke to temperatures in the low 70’s this morning and by noon it was forecast to be 85 degrees F with rapidly rising humidity. We turned our A-C on yesterday and left in on overnight and through the day today.

WordPress 4.0 was released yesterday and just before midnight I updated the four websites I manage, including this one. I was looking forward to working with the new version today, but first things first. Darryll called at 8:15 AM to make sure it was OK to come over. We finished breakfast and then opened the garage and moved a few things that might be in his way. Although we would have liked to continue working in the garage during the morning, before it got really hot and humid, we were glad to have Darryll here working on the HVAC installation.

Instead of working on organizing the garage Linda worked at her desk and baked a loaf of bread while I assisted Darryll. He wired up the library thermostat and showed me how the wires were connected. He installed the return air grill, which required some minor drywall trimming, and installed a 6″ combustion air duct in the ceiling of the utility closet. The duct had a screen on one end with a hood, like a dryer vent, and was open on the other end. He installed it from the attic side with the hood in the attic and the open end sticking down through the ceiling into the closet. I may decide to caulk or apply drywall compound to fill that gap between the duct and the hole Darryll made in the ceiling.

Darryll’s main focus, however, was hooking up the four pieces of duct, two rigid and two flexible, that will carry conditioned air into the library and installing the two ceiling registers. That involved working in the attic which was very hot. The flexible duct for the two ceiling registers was the same kind of product that was used in the main house; a pre-insulated flexible accordion tubing with an 8″ inside diameter that comes in 25′ lengths compressed to about 3′ for shipping. To feed the two registers on the lower part of the west wall of the library he cut lengths of 8″ diameter (circular cross section) metal duct and assembled them. He attached them to the supply air duct (plenum) with flange connectors. He then slide insulation blankets (tubes) around them and connected the bottom ends of the duct into the back of the register ducts using several elbows to bring the duct around and close to the wall. Finally, he slid the insulation down and secured it.

While Darryll was doing all of that I finished connecting the AC power to the condenser/compressor. That involved the following:

removing the terminal cover panel from the inside of the fused disconnect box
knocking out access holes on the right side and bottom
mounting the fused disconnect box to the side if the house
cutting a piece of 3/4″ plastic conduit for the cable from the soffit to the box
running the NM cable through the conduit
installing a watertight 90 degree elbow into the conduit
attaching the elbow to the side of the box
cutting, stripping, and connecting the line wires
cutting the plastic armor on the hookup cable to the right length
installing a straight screw-in watertight connector on the box end of the armor
installing a screw-in 90 degree elbow watertight connector on the condenser end
cutting, stripping, and connecting the load wires in the box
cutting, stripping, and connecting the load wires in the compressor.

I had Darryll check my work and then installed the fuses in the pull-out disconnect but was not able to get it to plug all the way in. Darryll bent the blades slightly and got it to seat fully. (I need to get two different fuses. All he had were 30A fuses but 20A would be sufficient. Also, the fuses he had in his truck were notched on one end. I think fuses with full barrels on both ends would be better as they would have more contact surface than the notched ones.) I reinstalled the terminal cover panel and closed the box. I then re-installed the cover panel on the A-C compressor that Darryll had removed earlier.

With the power connected and most of the ducts run, we turned on the 120VAC/15A circuit breaker (for the unit in the utility closet) and the 240VAC/20A circuit breaker (for the compressor/condenser). Darryll turned the thermostat mode switch to “cool” and the fan switch to auto and the A-C came to life. Hooray! I love it when that happens.

While Darryll finished installing the ducts and the registers I connected and mounted the thermostat for the garage furnace and then connected the wires on the other end of the cable to the terminals on the back of the unit according to Darryll’s instructions. I removed the end panel from the Reznor ceiling-mounted garage furnace, removed the documentation packet from the inside, checked that the gas valve was in the “on” position, and put the end panel back on. I also removed the protective plastic film from the bottom of the unit.

Darryll gathered up his tools, extra parts, and unused materials and loaded them in his truck. He then pressurized his portable air compressor and used it to pressurize the black iron gas pipe. It has not been holding pressure, so he pumped it up to 15 PSI and we went in search of leaks with a spray bottle of soapy water. We used my inspection mirror to see behind and under connections and found three leaks. One was in a 2″ pipe fitting behind the garage, one was in a 2″ pipe fitting near the end of the run by the generator, and one was at an elbow in the 1/2″ pipe where it exits the utility closet on its way to the garage furnace.

Darryll was checking air temperature readings at the registers and in the main plenum of the library HVAC unit. The library was 89 degrees F when he first turned the A-C on, and the attic was a lot hotter than that. He connected his gauges to the compressor/condenser and said the readings were close enough to correct that he did not want to add or remove any refrigerant until the room had cooled down and stabilized at the requested temperature.

I was hoping he would get the job finished today but he needed some equipment, which he did not have with him, to work on the iron pipe and he was obviously tired from a long day working in the high heat and humidity. He may be back tomorrow; if not, Monday or Tuesday. Whenever he returns, I have complete confidence that he will get it done before the gas meter is hung and that it will all work correctly for many years with very little attention other than changing a filter once or twice a year.

We deferred lunch until Darryll left. We had chickpea salad on a slice of the bread Linda had baked earlier, corn-on-the-cob, and the last of some fresh pineapple. Nothing says “summer” like organic, non-GMO corn-on-the-cob.

After lunch I called Bratcher Electric to check on the status of the estimate/quote that Mike was putting together to service our generator, convert it to natural gas, and run a 100A Service Entrance Cable from the transfer switch to the garage panel, converting it from a sub-panel to a main panel. Karen said they have been really busy but he would work on it over the weekend.

I also called 1-800-Pack-Rat to arrange pickup of the storage container on Friday September 12th. Steven was not able to schedule the pick-up during the call and said he would contact the local office and get back to me. I made it clear that we did not want to roll over into another billing cycle and I was calling one week ahead of time as we had been instructed. He assured me that it would not be a problem. About an hour later we got a return call and follow up e-mail confirming pickup for Friday, September 12.

Late afternoon I checked on the library A-C to make sure it was not freezing up. Everything looked OK. The thermostat was set to 76 degrees F and the temperature was down to 77, so I bumped the setting up to 78 to let it cycle off and on. Although Darryll did all of the heavy lifting on this project (literally) I spent my fair share of time in the attic on warm days installing the pull-down folding ladder and working on electrical wiring and attic lights. It was very gratifying to see that all of this work—his, mine, and Linda’s—finally result in something that operated correctly.

We were relaxing and reading when severe weather watches and warnings for our area started arriving on our iPads. Naturally we went outside to see what was going on. We were both born and raised in the Midwest, the St. Louis, Missouri area, to be exact, and as kids in the 1950’s, threatening weather was a form of summertime entertainment. Not that we were stupid; we learned from the adults around us when the show was over and it was time to head to the basement. When I was about 5 years old we lost a plum tree in our backyard to a close encounter with a tornado.

The gathering storm. The clouds were very dramatic in all directions.

The clouds were very dramatic but eventually gave way to a formless mass of gray with swirling winds and a few raindrops. We checked the Weather Channel app and the Weather Underground Wundermap app on our iPads. The radar returns showed that we were likely in for some rain, and we got some, but as often happens the worst of it passed north and south of us. The rain we did get was very welcomed. We had heavy rain on Monday (Labor Day), Keith mowed the grass on Tuesday, I spread grass seed around on Tuesday and Wednesday, and a flock of six wild turkeys feasted on the grass seed on Wednesday and Thursday. We needed a nice light rain to help the seeds germinate and take root rather than be eaten or washed away in a thunderstorm.

Storm clouds looking east.

Around 7:30 PM our power flickered several times and we received e-mail messages from our generator letting us know that utility power had been lost and then quickly regained. We decided to check the Kohler OnCue software to see what the generator was doing. We thought sure we had installed the software on Linda’s computer, so we could monitor it from her desk in the kitchen/dining area, but it wasn’t there. After much searching and head scratching we checked my old laptop and there it was! When we thought about it we realized that the generator had been installed about a week before Linda started configuring her new Samsung laptop, so there was no way we had put the software on her machine. We’ve been very, very busy the last 20 months, so it was not surprising to us that we had forgotten the exact sequence of events.

Approaching from the southwest the clouds got more ominous.

The severe warnings expired at 8 PM and the severe watches at 9 PM, but that did not mean the rain was done. A big fetch of moisture was located south of Chicago, Illinois and moving through southwest Michigan in our general direction. The rain was forecast to continue into the early hours of tomorrow but be done before sunrise. When the rains finally came it rained hard for a while. Tomorrow is forecast to be a perfect Michigan day and I plan to buy another bag of grass seed to spot seed the areas that got washed away, again.

2014/09/04 (R) More Organized

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Darryll did not call last night so we knew he would not be here today. That gave us another day to work in the garage. We moved things around, cleaned, sorted through stuff, decided what to re-store, and where, and what to add to various disposal collections. We are pretty sure the old window A-C unit is going to our son’s house, so we loaded it in the Honda Element, which got it out of the garage. Linda also loaded some old video and satellite TV electronics in the car to take to Recycle Livingston tomorrow.

We were making good progress and decided to stick with it and then have a slightly later lunch. We removed all of the doors from some old kitchen cabinets, upper and lower, in the northwest corner of the garage. We plan to eventually remove these cabinets, but not this year. Without the doors we will be able to see what is stored in them, or at least that something is stored in them. We moved a set of small parts bins and a bookcase which allowed us to reposition two work benches. That, in turn, allowed us to move the radial arm saw and finally set the saw on the base and secure it. It is now in a place where I could use it if needed, if it had power. It requires a 240VAC/15A outlet. I bought and installed a 30A double pole breaker in anticipation of this, so I will have to get a 15A breaker instead.

The weather forecast for today and tomorrow was for warm temperatures becoming hot with increasing humidity and chances for rain. We closed the house up at lunch time and turned on the A-C. We have hardly used it this summer, but have appreciated having in on those few sultry days.

We watched our current resident flock of wild turkeys—three adults and three young that have been in the area for a few weeks now—forage in our back yard while we ate lunch. After lunch Linda decided to make banana bread as we had several bananas that did not get eaten fast enough. She was researching dinner recipes when I went to my office to work on computer tasks. Except for a dinner break, I worked late into the evening on the following:

Cleaning up (filing or deleting) e-mails
SLAARC Website user maintenance
Updating WordPress websites (ver 4.0 was just released)
Social media sites (RVillage, Facebook, Linked-In)
Editing daily blog posts
Off-loading digital photographs
Organizing photo storage

BTW: Dinner was a new dish, a pineapple quinoa stir-fry with cashews, ginger, scallions, a little bit of hot peppers, and several spices/seasonings including fresh basil that Linda has been growing in the northwest corner of the kitchen where there is good light. It was excellent.

2014/09/03 (W) Pine Cone Midden

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After breakfast Linda downloaded the Hanks Writer to her iPad2 while I downloaded three app updates to mine. After checking in on the blogs that I follow, I spread some grass seed around the bare and thin spots in the back and west side of the yard by the house. I wanted to take care of that while it was cool and the ground was still damp with dew from the overnight lows in the upper 50’s.

Darryll did not call last night, so I did not expect him to be here today. Our son might be interested in the old window air-conditioner so we moved it to the southeast corner of the garage and plugged it in to make sure it worked. It did, so I sent him a text message to that effect.

We cleared off the table we have been using to cut drywall and got the 1/4″ birch plywood panel that will be the front of the box that encloses the electrical sub-panel and cables. We measured carefully, twice, laid out the cut lines, and checked the measurements again. We got the center cutout very close to correct on the first try and only had to trim it a little bit in one corner to get it to fit around the panel box. We did not secure it place as we still need to feed the thermostat cable through the wall and put some insulation in the wall cavity to the left of the panel as this is an outside wall.

With the carpentry work done we started cleaning and reorganizing the garage, making sure that Darryll will still have access to things he needs to work on. We plan to have the storage pod picked up on the 12th or 13th, so even though Darryll is not quite finished, we were anxious to start working on the rest of the garage.

We moved the tools and supplies we’ve been using to the three new shelving units on the east wall of the garage. We then unloaded two shorter units and two tall units on the west wall and spread everything out on the floor. We moved the units to the northeast wall, the shorter ones fitting nicely under the low end of the flue where it exits the utility closet wall. We went through the stuff on the floor and put some of it in the trash, set some of it aside to recycle, designated a few things to go to the Salvation Army, collected RV parts in boxes to take to the GLCC Surplus and Salvage rally next month, and put the rest back on the shelves.

We took a break for lunch and then finished up in the garage for the day. Linda worked at her desk and I changed out of my construction clothes into something more suitable for working at my desk. She made marinated baked tofu cubes for dinner, with sautéed green beans and corn-on-the-cob (organic and non-GMO, of course). We sat on the deck and watched our resident American Red Squirrel gather pine cones and move them under the cluster of three big fir trees where we presume it has a nest and pine cone midden. These trees have never been trimmed and the lower branches are sizable and long and the ends rest on the ground. I peeked in there the other day but did not see pine cones piled around any of the trunks like I expected, so I’m not sure where the midden is located.

I was up later than I should have been but I finished reading Big Lake Scandal. The fifth book in Nick Russell’s Big Lake murder mystery series, it was a good read. Nick has created an interesting place with interesting characters and reveals a little more about them with each volume. He is particularly good at capturing the way people might actually talk to one another on a daily basis in a small western town. He should know; he has spent a lot of time in such places over the years.

2014/09/02 (T) No More Painting

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After breakfast Linda worked on the financial and membership records for our GLCC RV chapter and I took care of a couple of e-mails. Keith showed up to cut the grass, which he managed to do in spite of the wet conditions from yesterday’s heavy rains. After chatting with Keith for a few minutes I started to resume work on “the project” but decided to look for the tub of grass seed and fertilizer we brought from the old house. I found it rather quickly and we still had a partial bag of grass seed, so I spread it around the front yard by hand filling in the bare and thin spots, of which there were plenty. Our flock of wild turkeys was back today. I think they like the grass seed I put out for them.

Wild turkeys gather in and around the fire pit. No...we do plan to cook them.

Wild turkeys gather in and around the fire pit. No…we do not plan to cook them.

I sanded the drywall compound in the library and applied another thin layer. I’ve been applying non-overlapping horizontal strips of mud, letting them dry, sanding them smooth while feathering the edges, then repeating the process for the areas in-between, or outside, the previous strips. I will eventually turn this 90 degrees and apply the strips vertically. The last set of steps will be to fill around the outside of the opening, feathering everything back to the existing wall surface and sanding it smooth with the central part of the patch. We don’t want it to be obvious that there was ever a hole in the wall. Once the drywall patching is done I have to prime the new compound and then paint the entire wall.

The paint on the east wall of the garage and the outside of the utility closet looked good and the paint on the inside of the utility closet looked good enough; it is, after all, the inside of a furnace closet. I was done painting, at least for now, which should have felt like a big deal, but it just meant I could wrap up a couple of things and move on to the next thing.

The first thing was to mount the electrical box on the wall to the left of the library HVAC unit, make all the wiring connections, screw the switch into the box, and put on the cover plate. I routed the thermostat wire alongside, and zip-tied it to, the armored AC power cable. The second thing was preparing the mounting holes for the garage furnace thermostat on the outside of the utility closet wall. I then cut the thermostat cable to the correct length beyond the wall, removed the outer sheath, stripped the ends of the wires, and secured the cable with a zip tie to prevent it from slipping back into the wall. I did not actually mount the thermostat, however, since I was going to wait for Darryll to connect the wires.

Three adults and three young. They are large and impressive birds.

By then it was time for lunch, after which Linda left for her dentist appointment in Dearborn. I wanted something easy to do, so I assembled the three plastic shelving units I bought at Lowe’s yesterday. They went together easily, but one was missing the feet, top caps, and wall brackets and another one had a defective top cap. I put them against the east wall of the garage and the floor was flat enough that they lined up well, so I don’t necessarily need the feet. But the top caps are important, and it bugs me that I did not get everything I paid for.

The next thing I decided to tackle was the wood box in the utility closet that will enclose the electrical sub-panel and make it appear to be recessed and hide all of the electrical cables. I cleared off the table we have been using to work on sheets of drywall and stood the scrap pieces of drywall against the back wall. I got the two 8-foot 1×10’s I bought yesterday, put them on the table, made careful measurements and then marked them. The two side pieces needed to be 52″ long x 7-1/4″ wide, with notches to create clearance for the top plate, horizontal blocking, and electrical cables passing through holes in studs. I cut them to length with the Rockwell circular saw, and then ripped them to width using the Craftsman band saw. The band saw had not been used in years but it had no problem ripping each board. The notches were made with our Porter-Cable saber saw. This kind of work is a pleasure when you have the right tools.

I screwed the two side pieces into place and then measured and cut a bottom cross member, and a trim strip to go below it, and installed those with screws. I then cut a top cross member and a backing strip to go behind it between the two side pieces. When I was done I had a box that would support a 48″ high by 33″ wide 1/4″ thick plywood panel with the outside face flush with the front edge of the sub-panel once I cut a rectangular opening in the plywood to allow it to fit around the box. The plywood panel will be secured around the edges with a few screws and the sub-panel cover plate will overlap and cover any gap between the panel box and the opening in the plywood. I will finish the plywood panel tomorrow or Thursday depending on when Darryll returns and how much I have to work with him to get the power connected to the new A-C compressor.

Jasper the cat in the kitty tent on the deck. He spends a lot time looking around and sniffing the air when he is out here.

That was the end of my project work for the day so I took a shower and put on some clean clothes. Linda poured a couple glasses of wine and we sat on the deck and enjoyed an absolutely beautiful late summer Michigan evening. We brought the kitty tent out so Jasper could sit outside with us. Linda threw a green salad together, followed by the leftovers of the penne pasta dish and Italian bread she made for dinner on Saturday. As twilight set in we moved inside and I decided to go to Lowe’s for some grass seed. I figured if the soil was still moist first thing tomorrow morning I would spread it around the bare and thin areas in the back and on the west side of the garage, of which there are plenty. Otherwise I will wait until just after the next rain.

I started reading Big Lake Scandal last night and continued with it this evening. It’s the 5th and latest book in the Big Lake murder mystery series by full-time RVer Nick Russell. Nick is a good writer, but he and his wife, Terry, are personal acquaintances, which makes reading his books that much more fun.

2014/09/01 (M) A Day To Labor

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One of the odd things about being “retired” is that holidays, like weekends, do not have the same significance they had when we were employed full time. We no longer have “3-day weekends.” We also do not have a tradition in our family of gathering on the summer holidays, so those days tend to blend into the days around them. If not for our Saturday morning ham radio breakfast and the Sunday morning Howell Farmers Market we probably would not know what day of the week it was.

Knowing that today was Labor Day, Linda prepared vegan cinnamon rolls yesterday and baked them first thing this morning. This was the first time she has made these and they were a real treat. Vegan, yes; whole plant-based food, not exactly. These will be a rare treat for us.

As has been my pattern for the last few weeks, I sanded and touched up drywall first thing after breakfast. Most of the drywall compound was finally smooth enough that I felt it was ready to prime. I discovered that I was out of primer, so I went to Lowe’s to get some and picked up a few other things while I was there. It was very humid today, which tends to slow the drying of paint, but primer is thinner than paint and gets absorbed into the paper drywall covering I was hopeful that I might get a first coat of paint applied this evening.

Mike (W8XH) sent an e-mail Saturday evening to the members of the SLAARC announcing the availability of the new WordPress website and indicating that they would each be receiving a unique username and password from me in the next few days. I wanted to wait at least 24 hours before I started creating users. That waiting period had passed, so today I parked myself in front of my computer and registered users.

Part of the registration process required me to create a username. That was easy for a ham radio club as (almost) everyone has an FCC call sign. It also required a valid/unique e-mail address. When I created an account an e-mail, with their username and a randomly generated password, got sent to the e-mail address I entered. The e-mail also contained instructions on how to get to the website, how to login, and how to change their password. I finished creating the last user account around 9 PM, but I did not work on this between 5 PM and 8 PM.

The vegan cinnamon rolls made for a filing and somewhat higher calorie breakfast, so we skipped lunch today and had an early dinner. I had requested a picnic type of meal to celebrate the end of the summer tourist season, and Linda fixed a nice one. We had vegan potato salad, corn-on-the-cob, and pan-grilled tofu slices with BBQ sauce and caramelized onions served open-faced on some of the Italian bread she made for dinner on Saturday. Dessert was watermelon balls. And the wonderful thing is that I am maintaining a good weight. Eating well and eating healthy are not mutually exclusive. However, like low-fat and fat-free foods, and then gluten-free foods, the processed food industry has discovered a “market” for foods that are free of animal products. That, however, does not mean they are free of unpronounceable chemicals or excessive amounts of sugar and salt. There is a growing amount of vegan junk food available in the marketplace.

We spent a little time after dinner on the back deck watching wildlife as a storm front approached from the west. As the wind kicked up we lost our AT&T DSL connection and then our phone went out, exhibiting the same behavior we have had throughout most of August. I shut down my computer and changed back into my work clothes to do some painting. I put a coat of paint on the east wall of the garage and both the inside and outside of the utility closet. It started raining really hard so I had to close the garage door, which cut down on my light, but eventually the rain let up and I was able to open the garage doors again. The inside of the utility closet may need another coat, but I think that most of the outside of the closet, and the east wall of the garage, may be done. That means I can finally mount the thermostat for the garage furnace and put cover plates back on switches and outlets.

I am still working on the outside of the south wall of the utility closet (with the door). I am using drywall compound to create a smooth transition at the hinge edge of the door to correct for a carpentry error I made when installing the door much earlier in the project. The transition will make it possible for me to install trim around the door, but I have to build up the transition in thin, tapered layers, allow it to dry, sand it smooth, and repeat the process over, and over, and over. Ditto for the west wall of the library, which is the other side of the east wall of the garage, where I am building up a slightly recessed area where the opening was for the old window A-C unit so it will blend in with the surrounding wall surface.

2014/08/31(N) By Any Other Name

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My first task after breakfast was to sand drywall compound and apply the next coat where needed. I’m down to touch up work in most spots and so I am trying to apply very thin layers with feathered edges that will dry quickly and require minimal sanding. The old A-C opening in the library, however, is taking many, many overlapping layers. Fortunately I can finish that at my leisure as Darryll is not working in that location. Since he just this week installed the two pieces of duct in the lower part of the wall between the garage and the library I am still building up drywall compound to fill the irregular and, in places, large gaps on the garage side. Unfortunately, the thicker compound takes longer to dry and watching drywall compound dry is worse than watching paint dry as it’s even slower. The trick is to have something else to do while I wait. Fortunately, I have lots to do.

I had some e-mail correspondence on Friday with the publisher of Bus Conversion Magazine, Gary Hall, whose name turns out to actually be Gary Hatt. He had his reasons for not using his real name when he first took over BCM, which he explained and which made good sense. BCM is running my article on Suncoast Designers in the August 2014 issue and he sent me a Dropbox link to the draft. It looks like another really good issue, but is again coming out a month late. Ever since the editor had a minor heart attack in early May they have been a month behind. It appears that they will be doing an article on spin-on oil filters in the October issue and will also use my article on the Spinner II centrifugal oil cleaner that Joe and I installed a year and half ago. I only have one other article ready for them to use, so I guess I need to get busy and write some new ones.

When I am not working on the house, the yard, or the bus, there’s always computer work to be done. I have multiple projects to work on, but I also like to relax on a pleasant day and catch up on reading the blogs and RV magazines that I follow. It was very pleasant today so we turned off the air-conditioning, opened up the house, and sat on the back deck reading and watching wildlife. I addition to our resident American Red Squirrel we were treated to a visit by three Sandhill Cranes. The squirrel has been busy for most of the month harvesting and stockpiling pine cones in what we presume is a midden under a cluster of very large fir trees northwest of the house. The cranes spent a long time wandering around the back yard foraging. We sat quietly and watched them and they came closer to the house than usual so we got a very good look at them. They are large and magnificent.

I finally decided to continue editing the rough drafts of my blog posts for this month and get them ready to upload. I still need to select photographs to go with some of the posts, or to put in separate gallery posts, but I finally uploaded the tree photos I took on the 21st to our Dropbox and e-mailed the link to Paul at Detroit Tree Recycling.

I spent some time online searching for sources of supply for an ignition coil for our Aqua-Hot diesel-fired hydronic heating system. I can get one from Darin, but he quoted me MSRP and it is an expensive part. I wasn’t having much luck so I called Butch mid-evening to discuss the situation. He suggested that I hold off on getting a new ignition coil until I got the coach to his place and we were able to look at it more carefully. He said I should have had white smoke and a definite smell from the atomized but unburned diesel fuel. I didn’t which made him wonder if the problem might be fuel delivery rather than ignition spark. Good advice, as always. I don’t know enough about the control circuitry on the Aqua-Hot (it’s actually a Webasto inside) to know how the operation of the spark and fuel solenoid might be intertwined. I have the manuals, but I have not had time to dig into them. Besides, I have enough other things to work on right now that I am willing to let this one go for a few more weeks.

2014/08/30 (S) By All Accounts

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We went to the weekly SLAARC breakfast this morning. We stopped on the way back to the house to get a food processor. I shut down my ASUS laptop PC, packed it for travel, and headed for Mike’s (W8XH) QTH; the first time it has been out of the house since I bought it at the end of April.

I worked with Mike on the new SLAARC WordPress website, walking him back through the process of creating photo galleries. He then uploaded pictures from the 2014 Field Day event, added captions to some of them, and created photo galleries.

I was going to create user accounts, but that turned out to still be a bit premature. In showing Mike around the site we discovered that the home page login widget for the WP-Members plug-in was not working correctly. It was last night, but that was before I installed the Global Hide Admin Toolbar plug-in. Suspecting a minor incompatibility (although the site did not crash, thank goodness) I had to engineer a work-around. The problem and solution turned out to be multifaceted.

One aspect of the problem was that we needed to remove the WP-Members widget from the Home screen, but it was the only place where a logged in user could log out. Another aspect of the problem was the realization that users would have to click on one of the pages in the Member Only Area to get a login screen that would actually log them into the site and allow them to navigate wherever they wanted.

One facet of the solution was to create a new page that would appear at the right hand end of the main menu bar and place the WP-Members widget on that page. It was not immediately obvious to me how to do this, or if we even could, but I eventually figured it out. That provided something on the main menu bar, which remains visible at all times, where users can go to logout. (They should also be able to log in there, but it’s the same widget that didn’t work correctly on the Home page.)

The other facets of the solution involved editing the e-mail that gets sent to a new user when their account is created and editing the User’s Guide, both of which describe the login and logout procedure. As long as I had to create and upload a new version of the User’s a Guide, I decided to put the link on its own page so it would show up in the menu structure and be easier for members to find. I did the same thing with the links to the official club roster documents. Adding those two page then required me to edit two pages to remove the old links. As the saying goes “it’s a process.”

Mike was still creating photo galleries so I drafted a notification e-mail for him to send to the members and sent it to him. He had to leave to run an errand right after I left and planned to deal with sending the e-mail later that evening. I will wait at least 24 hours after he sends it before I start creating user accounts.

I was back home in time to relax and work on this post before John and Diane arrived around 5 PM to visit and have dinner. They brought a salad that Diane made and two bottles of wine; a sweet Shiraz that was unusual but delightful, and a more traditional Cabernet Sauvignon. Linda made a penne pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and mushrooms, and made Italian bread from scratch. She also made the chilled no-bake double chocolate torte for dessert. It was so good everyone had a second piece.

Diane now has an iPad Mini and Linda spent time with her after dinner helping her configure some things. They also managed to get connected through the iMessage feature. Storms rolled in around 9 PM and we had brief periods of heavy rain and diffuse lightning all around. There was a lull in the weather just before 11 PM so they gathered up their things and hit the road. I cleared the table and Linda loaded the dishwasher. She started it and then we were off to bed, tired from a long but very satisfying day.

2014/08/29 (F) Sand Mud Press

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Before breakfast this morning I tried to start the Aqua-Hot (hydronic heating system) in our converted coach, but the burner would not ignite. We had the same problem back on June 9th when Darin Hathaway of Hydronic Heating Specialists serviced the unit while we were at Elkhart Campground waiting to go to the GLAMARAMA rally in Goshen. Darin suspected a bad coil but managed to jiggle a few wires and got it to work. It started several times in a row, so we decided not to spend the money for a new coil at that time. I hoped then the decision wasn’t a mistake, but it looks like perhaps it was. I will try to find some time over the next few days to jiggle some more wires and see if anything comes of it. I recall Darin saying the ignition coils were expensive, so I don’t want to replace ours if it is not actually broken.

For breakfast we had some of the vegan muffins that Linda made yesterday. They were yummy. We took a little time to revisit our options for a white, free-standing, double oven, 5-burner, gas range with a convection feature in at least one of the ovens but did not come to any decision regarding purchasing a new one. Linda made a grocery list and then went to the Howell library to see what Consumer’s Reports had to say about gas ranges before stopping at Meijer’s.

While Linda was gone I placed follow-up calls to Heights Tower Systems and Bratcher Electric to check on the status of their pending quotes and then e-mailed Darin about the Aqua-Hot. I then got to work in the garage and library working on the drywall. I sanded all the drywall compound (mud) I had applied yesterday and added the next layer to the places that needed it. Patching the library side of the opening where the window A-C was installed has proven to be particularly challenging, or at least tedious. The new piece of drywall is recessed slightly compared to the original wall surface surrounding it, so I have been building up layers of drywall compound to “fill the hole.” It has taken many passes so far and it is going to take quite a few more before it’s done.

I finished up for the day, cleaned up the tools, and changed out of my work clothes. Rather than spend a lot of time at the library, Linda photographed the relevant pages of recent issues of Consumer’s Reports with her iPad so we could study them at home. What we got from the reviews was that LG, GE, Electrolux, and Samsung are making good gas ranges while Kitchen Aide, and Jenn-Air are best avoided. Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Best Buy all carry LG, GE, and Samsung appliances, so we have a choice of local dealers. While we were pondering all of this over lunch a group of wild turkeys came through the back yard several times foraging for food. There were three large adults and three much smaller birds, obviously this year’s brood.

I spent most of the rest of the day working at my desk getting the SLAARC WordPress website to the point where I was comfortable creating user accounts. I had hoped to have user accounts set up by August 13^th, but that did not happen. One reason for the delay was that I was trying to find a way to automatically e-mail each user as I created their account. It took me a while, but I figured out how to do this with the WP-Members plug-in. I also found a plug-in that hides the WordPress Toolbar from users based on their WordPress user role. In this case I was only concerned about users with the Subscriber role but the plug-in allows me to control all defined user roles. I did a final edit of the User’s Guide, uploaded it to the private Members Only Area of the website, and e-mailed Mike (W8XH) and Larry (K8UT) that the site was ready to go. Our DSL connection was pretty good most of the day but got flaky for a while during the evening. The phone continued to be unusable with loud noise masking weak audio. So far AT&T’s response to our MPSC complaint has been a phone call and e-mail from someone in the “Office of the President.” Impressed? I’m not.

2014/08/28 (R) This And That

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I put in a full day working on our garage project while Linda put in a full day working on this and that. She baked vegan muffins, made vegan rice pudding, worked at her computer on bills, banking, and RV club financial records, and helped me in the garage with drywall installation.

My first task was sanding down drywall compound from yesterday and then adding more in certain places. I then measured, marked, and cut the drywall for the inside of the new utility closet. Linda helped me install it. We had to cut one piece in half lengthwise in order to get it into position. I also had to drill a hole for the garage furnace thermostat cable and push it out through the utility closet wall. Once all of the pieces were secured with drywall screws I applied self-adhesive fiberglass tape to the seams and then applied drywall compound to the seams and screw dimples.

Jasper doing his cat thing.

Since I could not sand, prime, or paint until the drywall compound was dry I worked on some loose electrical ends. I installed a saddle connector in the side of the library HVAC for the armored AC power cable and a cable strain relief for the thermostat cable and A-C compressor control wires. Darryll had already installed these cables through the gas pipe hole, so I made a diagram of how they were connected, uninstalled them, re-routed them through the strain relief, and reconnected them. I prepped the AC power cable, partially installed the switch in the surface mount electrical box, and connected the armored cable to the saddle connector. The final AC power connections for the library HVAC unit will have to wait until the drywall is finished and the surface mount junction/switch box is installed.

I mounted the library thermostat on the wall above the air return but did not connect the wires. The color coding of the wires in the thermostat cable does not exactly match the labeling of the terminals and the instructions were less than clear, so I thought it best to leave this for Darryll. I removed the side panel from the Reznor garage furnace and made the AC power connections. I did not, however, connect the thermostat wires and I left the documentation packet inside the unit.

After dinner I checked e-mail and edited a half dozen blog pages before turning in for the night.

20140827 (W) HVAC and Dentistry

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The only thing these have in common (for me at least) is that they occurred on the same day. Darryll and Alec were back this morning to continue working on our garage furnace and library HVAC project and I had a 2 PM dentist appointment to have them check if I had lost a piece of one of the abfractions they did back on June 17th.

Our dentist is in Dearborn some 50 miles to our southeast, so I try to leave 90 minutes for travel. I got there ahead of time and they got me in about 15 minutes early. It was a quick appointment but I was glad I went. The hard piece of material I crunched while brushing my teeth a few weeks ago was, indeed, the abfraction material from the upper outside of tooth #11. They replaced it under warranty and I was back on the road by 2:30 PM, which allowed me to make the trip back towards home somewhat ahead of the afternoon traffic rush.

These mushrooms appeared in the yard a few days ago as round balls and then opened up.

I needed a saddle connector and Linda needed some “power greens” for our dinner salad so I exited I-96 at Grand River Avenue and headed towards Brighton. There is a Home Depot right there, but they only had the 3/8ths saddle connectors in bags of five. I only needed one, which I knew I could get at Lowe’s in Howell. Traffic headed back towards Howell on Grand River was badly congested so I used a back route, taking Challis Road to Chilson Road to Latson Road. The Lowe’s and Meijer’s are on opposite sides of Grand River Avenue at Latson Road.

By the time I got home Darryll and Alec had left. Darryll had indicated they would knock off early and that he would be back next week to finish up. While they were here they set the library A-C compressor/condenser in place by the west wall of the garage and got the refrigerant lines run, the power cable routed, and the control cable run. They also cut the openings for the two lower supply registers in the library, installed the through-wall duct work, and the register grills. Darryll will be back during the latter half of next week to finish up. That gives me plenty of time to finish drywall work.

Summer is coming to an end. The parochial schools are already back in session and the public schools start on Tuesday next week. Lots of folks are heading north for the upcoming holiday weekend which marks the end of the summer tourist season. Fall colors have already appeared on a variety of trees in our part of the county and a few seem somewhat advanced. Except for the last few days, it has been a cool, moist summer.

Early this morning I e-mailed Shelly from the AT&T Office of the President thanking her for calling us on Monday in response to our Michigan Public Service Commission complaint filing that morning, and for following up with her contact information by e-mail. Our phone line is still noisy to the point of being useless, but we have not seen the dreaded “Check Tell Line” or “Line In Use” messages on our phone and the DSL has stayed connected as near as we can tell. I am not aware, however, that AT&T has actually done anything yet to fix the problem. They certainly have not communicated any such information to us Unfortunately working on the SLAARC WP website and creating user accounts absolutely requires me to be reliably online, as does the Intro to Linux course I am (supposed to be) taking through edX, so these tasks may have to wait until our AT&T DSL connection has been solid for a while.

2014/08/26 (T) Dinner With Kate

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Darryll planned to be back on Wednesday morning. He figures two more days to finish everything except the hookups to the gas meter. I figured I needed to have at least one coat of paint on the east garage wall today to stay ahead of him, so my first task after breakfast was to paint the wall.

Madeline being read to by Aunt Meghan with Grandma Linda.

Madeline goes for a ride on her new Radio Flyer tricycle.

When I was done with the morning painting I did a light sanding of the drywall compound on the outside of the utility closet walls. After a cursory inspection, I decided it was good enough and went ahead and painted it and then cleaned up the paint tools. I took care of a couple of minor electrical tasks and then sanded the library side of the former window A-C opening and applied some more drywall compound. I cleaned up my drywall tools and by 11:30 AM was done with construction projects for the day.

I got cleaned up just in time for lunch. We had left over Koshary, after which we sat outside and read. Linda is reading an e-book titled “Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat.” The book is about the intertwined evolution of cooking technique, cookware, and utensils. I started reading the September-October 2014 issue of The Gypsy Journal, which I had downloaded on Sunday and e-mailed to our iPads yesterday.

MEF3 steers the Radio Flyer with a little help from her dad.

We left around 2 PM for our son’s house in Ann Arbor, making a stop at the Whole Foods Market for some dry ingredients. The reason for our visit was to deliver Madeline’s new Radio Flyer convertible tricycle and visit until time to meet Kate for dinner. Madeline started day care yesterday, which is a really big deal. We were curious how the first two days went, and just wanted to see everyone; I think it’s only been a couple of weeks, but it feels much longer. Today was my lucky day as Madeline decided I was the designated book reader. She has let me read to her occasionally in the past, but usually goes to her mom, dad, aunt, or Grandma Linda, all of whom she has spent more time with than she has with me. It made for a very special afternoon for Grandpa Bruce.

The Radio Flyer tricycle even has a sunshade!

We left Brenda and Shawna’s house around 5:45 PM and found ourselves in the middle of the evening traffic jam on eastbound Washtenaw Avenue. We slowly worked our way east towards US-23 and then turned into a strip mall to pick up some disposable paint tray liners at an ACE Hardware store. We got back into the traffic flow using a street at the end of the strip mall that had a traffic signal. Once we were back on Washtenaw Avenue we had more reasonable traffic flow the rest of the way in to Ypsilanti.

After weighing several options, Kate chose the Wurst Bar in Ypsilanti for dinner. Linda had been their once before with Kate but it was my first visit. It was well rated on Yelp and the menu had several vegan options. They also had one of my favorite beers, the Lindeman Framboise, a raspberry lambic ale brewed in Vlezenbeek, Belgium. They were out of the Lindeman but had another lambic from a different producer. It came in something that looked like a large sparkling wine bottle and cost $15, so Linda and I split it. Long before hops were used in beers they were seasoned with fruits and vegetables. I’m not a big fan of hops, but I like fruit. The substitute was OK, but not what I recalled from the last time I had this at a restaurant in Frankenmuth, Michigan.

Grandma Linda’s turn to “drive” the Radio Flyer.

Kate had recently been to Paris, France and to both Venice and Padua in Italy with one of her nieces and nephews. She had printed about 40 photos (8×10) for us to see. While these are inherently beautiful places her photography was, as usual, superb. The Wurst Bar serves “tots” instead of French fries. Linda and I had some as an appetizer with vegan sausage crumbles, vegan cheese, and sliced jalapeños. Not health food, to be sure, but at least no animal products. For dinner Linda had the vegan wurst and I had the Asian tofu burger. Kate had a regular wurst and a dark beer on tap that she had not had before. She really liked it, but I did not catch the name.

It’s finally Grandpa Bruce’s turn to drive the tricycle.

By the time we were done eating the lights had been turned down and the music volume had been turned up, so we moved to Sweetwater Coffee and Tea a couple doors down the street. We all had coffee and to our delight they had a piece of vegan apple pie, which Linda took, and a piece of vegan mixed berry pie, which I took. I really like fruit pies but they have always been a rare treat; all the more so now that we eschew animal products. So tonight I had fruit beer and fruit pie.

I had planned to put a second coat of paint on the garage walls when we got home but the lateness of the hour disabused me of that idea and I went to bed instead.

Madeline shows her new tricycle to he mommy. It’s not a Subaru, but it’s pretty cool.

2014/08/25 (M) AT&T and the MPSC

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I was scheduled to participate in a meeting of the FMCA Education Committee at 4 PM today but it got rescheduled to Monday, September 8, same time. That was a welcomed change of plans which allowed me to concentrate on our construction project.

Roese Construction, the contractor for Consumer’s Energy, is still working along our street. The main gas lines are run. They are now digging the connection trenches, fusing the sections of pipe together, and filling the trenches back in. We heard them working at the west end of our property and walked down to see what they were doing and take a few photographs. A large backhoe was just starting to fill a trench at the northwest corner of our yard where two pieces of main line were joined with a branch line going to the cul-du-sac to the west. There was a lot of water in that trench and it looked like a (muddy) lap pool. The surface of the water was only about two feet below the surface of the ground. I asked the backhoe operator if that was ground water and he said it was. The northwest corner of our property is a low spot that forms small ponds around many of the trees when it rains, and stays wet for a very long time even after the surface water disappears.

We spent the morning and afternoon sanding drywall compound and touching up a few spots. While the compound was drying I worked on electrical tasks and Linda worked in the kitchen and did some weeding in the beds around the house. Somewhere in the middle of all that we put all of the sections of the ham radio tower back on the middle deck, had lunch, and made a trip to Lowe’s for a light switch and various cover plates. I also picked up an 18″ x 28″ sheet of 1/4″ thick Plexiglas to use as a temporary replacement for the fogged window in the bus when I finally get around to removing it to have it repaired.

Our AT&T phone and DSL service is worse than useless at the moment. After three un-returned phone calls to both the technician (who gave us his number and said to call him directly if the problem re-occurred within 30 days) and the infrastructure manager for this area (whose name and number we got from the technician) we were fed up, so we filed a complaint with the Michigan Public Service Commission. About four hours later we got a call from a women who claimed to be from the Office of the President of AT&T letting me know that she was in receipt of our commission filing and that she would be coordinating the “investigation and service repair process.” The audio level was low and the noise on the line was high, so I could barely hear her and said so. Apparently she heard the noise too, so at least she knew we were not making this up. She e-mailed us shortly thereafter with her name and contact information. That’s a start, but what we really want is the clean, reliable signal that we pay for.

There are things I can do, and need to do, at my computer that do not require me to be online, such as editing the rough drafts of blog posts and selecting/post-processing photographs. The last post I uploaded to our blog was for August 1st, so I am once again almost four weeks behind. I needed to finish processing the tree photos from last Thursday, put them in a Dropbox folder, and e-mail the link to Paul at Detroit Tree Recycling, but I did not get that done either. When I wasn’t eating or driving back and forth to Lowe’s I was working in the garage.

Speaking of food, Linda made stuffed mushrooms for dinner and served them with a side of grilled asparagus. Both were very tasty. After dinner I gave the east wall of the garage a final sanding and then worked on the utility closet wall while Linda vacuumed up the dust. I wiped down the wall with a barely damp sponge and applied a coat of Zinzer primer. It should be dry enough to paint in the morning.

I drove back to Lowe’s to return a couple of incorrect cover plates I had purchased earlier in the day and get the correct ones. I picked up another gallon of paint while I was there to make sure I had enough on hand for tomorrow. On the way home I had a nice QSO (ham radio contact or chat) with Mike (W8XH). Ham radio is fun and we have yet to get involved in making long distance (DX) contacts with folks all over the world on the HF (high frequency) bands. Getting our tower up with some HF antennas on it will help a lot.

2014/08/24 (N) The Critical Path

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The current “critical path” on the garage/HVAC project is the east wall of the garage which has to be finished before Darryll returns. Although not as pressing as the drywall work, our first task after breakfast was to (finally) connect the separate ground wire from the garage sub-panel to the house main electrical panel and remove the bonding screw that tied the grounds and neutrals together in the sub-panel. That took about an hour, but that was because it was work that had to be done carefully as the main panel was energized while I was working on it.

With the ground wire taken care of we sanded drywall compound on the east garage wall. We wiped the dust off with a slightly damp sponge and I applied the next coat of drywall compound.

We then worked on wiring. I finally decided on the locations for the two furnace switches, each of which had to be within three feet of their respective units. I decided to locate the switch for the library HVAC unit on the new wall opposite (20″) and above (16″) the cable entry hole in the side of the furnace. The switch will be in an outdoor rated surface mount junction box with the supply cable entering from the rear. I had already run the cable into the middle wall cavity and had to drill a hole through one of the studs to get the cable where I needed it to be.

I decided to locate the on/off switch for the ceiling mounted garage furnace on the ceiling about a foot to the right of the right rear corner, again using an outdoor rated surface mount junction box. The dedicated 15A cable was already routed to that general area so we just had to move it to the new location.

We also had to install the wiring for the thermostats. Darryll brought a large reel of 4-conductor, 18 AWG thermostat cable, so we had the material we needed. I was studying the installation instructions for the thermostats and it appeared that they needed 24 VAC to operate. I called Darryll and left a message regarding this. He called back fairly quickly and told me we did not need transformers as they were already in each of the furnaces. He also left me know he would be back on Wednesday morning.

With the transformer question answered we were able to proceed with the cable installation. The thermostat for the garage furnace will mount on the outside of the west wall of the new utility closet, so we had to run thermostat wire from that location through the attic to the ceiling mounted switch box. The thermostat for the library HVAC unit will mount on the wall to the right of the door into the garage and above the return air register/duct, so we also had to run thermostat wire from there through the garage attic and over to the location of the on/off switch in the utility closet. I worked in the attic while Linda worked in the garage.

We took a break for lunch and then started installing insulation in the utility closet walls. We got one staple installed and discovered that we were out of staples. That meant a trip to Lowe’s. Lowes’s is about six miles driving distance and we prefer not to go for just one small thing, so we made a list. The Arrow staple gun takes T50 staples. The surface mount junction boxes have several threaded holes into which you can screw different clamps depending on how the cable is connected. I planned to use flexible armored cable, sometimes referred to as “greenfield”, to bring 120VAC power to the furnaces. Lowe’s had 6′ lengths of armored cable with an extra foot of wire on each end. I needed a little more than 36″ for the library furnace and a little less than 36″ for the garage furnace, so that worked out nicely. The guy in the electrical department got me set up with the right clamps for the ends called saddle connectors.

When I got home, I discovered that I had bought brads rather than staples, so Linda headed back to Lowe’s to return the brads and buy the staples. While she was gone I pulled the wires out of the armored cable and cut the armor into two pieces. I fed the wires back through the shorter piece and connected it between the garage furnace and the switch box. Linda got back before I could complete the cable for the other furnace, so I set it aside to finish later.

With a good supply of staples we insulated the west wall of the utility closet and the space above the door on the south wall. We then installed drywall over those same areas. We had to notch around the flue pipe and the black iron gas pipe, but we measured carefully (and twice) and the panel fit just right. We applied fiberglass tape to the one vertical seam, and prepared a length of corner bead for the outside corner at the junction of the two walls. Linda prepared dinner while I applied joint compound to the seam and screw dimples. I mudded the corner, pressed the corner bead in place, and then mudded over it lightly. I then did some touch up sanding on the east garage wall and applied what I hoped would be a final coat of drywall compound.

I finished just in time to clean up and have dinner; vegan Pad Thai made from scratch. A small glass of the 2009 Egri Merlot and some lemon melon later for dessert put a nice cap on a very productive day.

2014/08/23 (S) Square Waves

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We have so much to do at home and on the bus that we might have skipped the SLAARC (ham radio club) breakfast in South Lyon this morning, but I had agreed to meet Chuck at his shop (bus garage) at 10 AM in Novi and to bring Mike (W8XH) along with his oscilloscope to look at the tachometer signal, or lack thereof. We had a nice chat with our ham radio friends, discussed having dinner in a week or so with Bruce and Linda, and then headed to Chuck’s shop.

We had two different opinions as to what signal we might find, if any, at the end of the wires that connect to Chuck’s tachometer. Matt, from Bob’s Speedometer, told me that the signal to both the VDO tachometer and speedometer were variable frequency square waves at 3 to 5 volts peak and that the electronics in the gauge moved the needle in proportion to the frequency. Mike (W8XH) had talked to Jim (N8KUE), who works in the research lab at Ford Motor Company, and Jim was of the opinion that the input to these gauges was a pulse width modulated signal. With pulse-width modulation the frequency and amplitude of the waveform are constant but the width of the “pulse” (the “on time” of non-zero voltage) varies from zero to some maximum percentage of the half cycle, up to 100%. If it is on for the entire half cycle it becomes a square wave. The longer the pulse (on time percentage) the more energy is transmitted. The gauge electronics can convert that to a needle position or run a motor faster or slower, such as might drive an odometer.

So which was it? Well…neither. What we saw was an alternating current signal that appeared to simply be an impulse (sudden spike in the voltage), one positive and one negative per cycle, with the frequency responding in direct proportion to the engine RPM. The impulse had a rapid but noticeable decay time that appeared to me to exponential, but we did not have the wires connected to a load and that may have affected the signal. The voltage we were seeing appeared to be in 300 mV range, a far cry from the 3 – 5 volts we expected.

We loaded the cardboard in my car before going to breakfast, so when we were done at Chuck’s we headed directly to Recycle Livingston. From there we went to pet Supplies Plus for some cat litter and then to Lowe’s for four more sheets of drywall (Sheetrock) and a large tub of better drywall compound. After fighting with the back wall of the garage recently and having trouble with using the patching and repair compound yesterday, I wanted a drywall compound that would go on easier and smoother. It could just be my technique, of course; I wasn’t that good at dry-walling 32 years ago, and feel like I have lost what little technique I once had.

Back home we unloaded everything, changed into our work clothes, and had lunch; grilled “cheese” sandwiches with tomatoes and dark leafy greens and fresh peaches, ripened to perfection.

While Linda sanded the drywall compound I applied yesterday I removed the panel from the library side of the opening for the old window A-C unit. I insulated the cavity, cut and installed a new piece of drywall, and re-taped the seams. I helped Linda finish the sanding, wiped off the dust with a wrung out sponge, and then applied another coat of drywall compound. I then applied a first cost of “mud,” as drywall compound is commonly called, to the filler panel in the library.

In preparation for dry-walling the new utility closet we had to do some carpentry to box around the flue and gas pipe where they pass through the west wall. We also had to box around the supply air duct where it passes above the utility closet door. Finally, we added some backer boards along the edge of the platform by the west wall. The purpose of all of this carpentry was to provide backing along all drywall edges so it will be supported and can be secured. Our final task for the day was to trim a piece of 2×4 to block off the top of the wall cavity where the return air duct is connected next to the door between the library and the garage.

For dinner we had leftovers from Thursday: Koshary and pita bread with vegan garlic “butter.” Linda read somewhere recently that drier white wines are generally considered (by someone) to go better with Middle Eastern food, but we thought our 2009 Egri Merlot went quite well with dinner. Of course, Koshary is an Egyptian dish, and so perhaps more Mediterranean than Middle Eastern. All of that reminded me that there really are no rules about these things; drink what you like and enjoy life.

2014/08/22 (F) Radio Flyer

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Today was mostly about drywall. Most of the drywall on the lower half of the east garage wall was removed by the previous owners to access and repair baseboard heating pipes that had frozen (they used water in the system instead of coolant). We also have a 19″ h by 29″ w opening higher up in that same wall where the window air-conditioner was installed. (It cooled the breezeway by dumping heat into the garage.) We needed to replace the lower drywall and patch the A-C opening before Darryll returned next week as he will be running supply air ducts down the wall at two locations to feed through the wall into the library just above the hot water baseboard heat radiator. Before installing the drywall, however, we had some prep work to do. When Linda wasn’t helping me she broke down cardboard boxes and got them ready to go to the recycling center tomorrow.

On the lower part of wall I drilled through the corners of the two register locations Darryll had marked on the library side. We then added horizontal wood 2×4 blocking above and below the locations of the two registers. We also added blocking around the inside of the old A-C opening to provide backing and attachment surfaces for the drywall.

With the carpentry done we removed some old insulation that was not in good shape and insulated the lower section of the wall. I marked the locations of all the studs on the floor and on the upper half of the wall. I also marked the locations of the horizontal blocking, the hot water heating pipes, and the capped off gas pipe that supplied the wall-mounted propane heater in the library. Finally, we were able to install the drywall. It took two pieces, 48″ x 87″, to cover the lower half along with lots of screws. By the time we finished it was time for lunch.

We needed another sheet of drywall to cut the two pieces for the A-C opening, so after lunch we drove to Lowe’s and bought a 4′ x 8′ sheet. When we got back we cut the two pieces and installed them. Linda then helped me apply self-adhesive fiberglass tape to all of the seams.

The next step was applying drywall compound. While I “mudded” the drywall seams and screw head dimples Linda started assembling a Radio Flyer configurable tricycle. She ordered it for our grand-daughter a couple of days ago (Amazon Prime) and it arrived late yesterday.

I finished the first coat of drywall compound at 6 PM and cleaned up my tools. While Linda pulled together leftovers for dinner (potato lentil curry, sautéed green beans with garlic, and naan bread) I measured the tow bar on the back of the bus to see how long of a cable we needed for the EZ*Connector system. 24″ + 34″ = 58″, about 5 feet, so their standard 6′ cable should be a good length. Although it was only 3 PM in California, I decided to wait until Monday to place an order as I still needed to determine some circuit details.

After dinner I tried to check my e-mail and discovered that our DSL connection was not working, again, even though the AT&T gateway said it was. The phone (POTS) had gone out earlier in the day and was out again. I called Ken, the AT&T technician, and left a message and then called Steve, the AT&T infrastructure manager for the Howell and Lansing areas, and left a message. I had called both of them twice this week already without getting a return call from either one. My message this time indicated that I expected a return call with some information as to what they are doing to try and resolve the problem.

I called Chuck (on my marginal connection Verizon cell phone) to get a status update on his bus tachometer, then called Mike to firm up arrangements for him to bring his oscilloscope to breakfast tomorrow so we can go to Chuck’s shop and investigate the signal feeding his tachometer. I texted Chuck back to confirm that we would be there by 10 AM.

I helped Linda finish assembling the Radio Flyer tricycle. It is very spiffy and, of course, very red. We spent the rest of the evening reading. As I was typing this post I realized that I forgot to insulate the wall cavity where the window A-C unit was installed. That meant I would have to remove the piece of drywall on the library side, insulate the cavity, and then cut and install a new piece of drywall. I had already applied the seam tape and initial coat of drywall compound, so it will be a messy task. Fortunately, I do not make those kinds of mistakes very often.

20140821 (R) Words With Friends

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With a dry morning on tap I took care of chores after breakfast while Linda worked on preparations for dinner. First I photographed trees around our entire property that were dead or obviously distressed and not doing well. Next I took all of the sections of our Heights aluminum tower off of the back deck, where they have been stored since we bought it in May, and laid them out in the yard in the order in which they go together. I then photographed all of the pieces, including details of how they interconnect, along with the fold-over assembly, fold-over motor, and bearing plate.

Thrust bearing plate for ham radio tower.

I transferred the photos to my computer and then processed a selection of the tower photos, resizing and sharpening them. I put them in a folder in my Dropbox and e-mailed the link to Heights Tower Systems along with a description of what we have, what we intend to do, and what we think we need to do it. I also gave them the name of the amateur radio operator we bought the tower from. He was the original owner.

The gear-motor for the fold-over mount. Mast rotor in the plastic bag to the right.

Fold-over mount standing up on hinge end.

One meaning of having “words with friends” suggests that they might not be your friends anymore, but in this case it’s the name of an online game from Hasbro that Linda plays with Karen Limkemann. Karen and Steve came to visit this today and arrived around 3:30 PM. We all talked for an hour and then Steve and I went to my office to look at our Linux computer while Linda started pulling dinner together.

Ham radio tower sections laid out in the yard end-to-end.

Linda spent much of yesterday and this morning preparing this meal. She made a salad dressing from scratch, crushed red lentil soup from scratch, pita bread from scratch, mixed up a small batch of garlic butter, and made Koshary from scratch. We had a semi-dry white wine from Leelanau Cellars with the meal, and red grapes for dessert. The meal was truly outstanding.

Heights Tower Systems aluminum tower sections laid out in the yard.

After dinner we took a stroll around the property and showed them the landscaping work, the (disassembled) ham tower, the proposed location of the barn, and the natural gas and HVAC projects. Back at the house we discussed past travels and future plans at some length before they needed to head for home.

2014/08/20 (W) Like A Well-Oiled Clock

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Darryll and Alec (DCM Heating & Cooling) were back today to continue working on the garage and library HVAC project. I was talking to them as they unloaded tools and materials when I got a call back from Paul Keech.

Paul has changed the name of his company from Paul’s Tree Service to Detroit Tree Recycling and is also running American Mulch. As I was told yesterday he is trying to focus on tree removal, especially wood lots with multiple trees, rather than tree trimming. Among other reasons, the trees he removes provides the raw material for his mulch business. Also, the guy who did most of his climbing the last ten years has moved on to another job and it’s hard for Paul to run a business when he’s up in a tree, even with a cell phone. I tried to describe the trimming and removal work we need done but in the end we agreed that I would take some photos, put them in a Dropbox folder, and e-mail him the link. He also encouraged me to get a couple of quotes from some companies more local to our new location.

While I was talking to Paul, Darryll found a small leak in the reducer at the T-fitting behind the garage and tightened it. The pipe out of this reducer will bring gas into the garage and was the last piece of pipe they worked on the last time they were here. Alec reset the pressure to 12 PSI and it appears to be holding better than it has up to this point.

In the course of the day, they…

…finished setting the Library furnace/air-conditioner and connected the parts together.
…cut the hole for the return air register and installed the return air duct.
…ran the supply air ducting from the top of the unit along top of the ceiling, over the top of the utility closet door, and then angled it to run along east wall at the ceiling. All of the duct outside the closet is insulated. Two flexible ducts will come off the top and run through the attic to supply air through ceiling registers on the east end of the library.
…marked the location for the two registers that will be at the bottom of two rigid ducts running down the east garage wall to supply air to the library just above the baseboard heat radiators.
…removed the old library window A-C unit and covered the hole with cardboard. We will have to patch the opening on both sides with drywall and paint it.
…shut off the propane to the old library wall-hung space heater, removed the unit, capped the line (iron pipe), turned the gas back on and checked for leaks.
…connected the double-walled flue pipe for the library furnace.
…connected the double-walled flue pipe for the garage furnace.
…ran the 1/2″ iron pipe for the gas supply to the garage furnace.

They will take care of the air-conditioner condenser/compressor installation on a subsequent visit. In the meantime I need to install electrical junction boxes for the two furnaces, which must have switches located within three feet of each unit. I also need to run new 12 AWG 2+g NM cable for old A-C condenser/compressor and repurpose the existing A-C condenser/compressor wiring as an outside 120 VAC / 15 Amp outlet.

We still needed to repair drywall in the library and upper east garage wall and install new drywall on the lower east wall of the garage and on the new utility closet walls. The lower half of the east garage wall is the next thing I have to do as I need to have it done before he comes back to finish the duct work.

I got a call from Chuck Spera just before noon letting me know that he was headed to his shop to pick up his old VDO bus tachometer and take it to Bob’s Speedometer Service on Bergin Road. Bergin is an east-west road about one mile north of our house. Bob’s was over at Old US-23, less than five minutes away. I met Chuck there at 12:30 PM and we met with Matt who handles their VDO instrument repairs. He tested Chuck’s tach and pronounced it broken but probably repairable, so Chuck decided to leave it there.

Matt did confirm for us that both the tachometer and the speedometer take a square wave input signal in the 3 – 5 volt range with deflection of the needle proportional to the frequency of the waveform. Presumably this same signal regulates the speed of a motor that drives the gears of the odometer. I had discussed this very situation with Mike (W8XH) just last night and he is willing to bring his 100MHz 2-channel storage oscilloscope and help us look for and trace these signals if needed. Once we have known good gauges installed knowing what waveform to look for will help greatly with troubleshooting should they still fail to indicate the appropriate information.

After we were done at Bob’s I headed over to the Meijer’s northeast of M-59 and US-23 to get a few things for Linda. By the time I got home, Glen Williams of Tenor Clocks LLC had arrived to service our grandfather clock. I “broke” it about a month ago by trying to wind it at just the wrong time and it has not chimed since then. It has also never been oiled in the 11 years since we bought it and Glen told us on Saturday that it should be cleaned and oiled every 5 – 7 years. (We saw Glen at the GLCC/CCO rally in Clio, Michigan this past Saturday when we were there.) Glen took the mechanism out and examined it and said that nothing was broken. Apparently it finally bound up the last time I wound it from lack of proper oiling. He cleaned it, oiled it, and checked it for wear but did not see any. He reassembled it, checked the operation and timing, and said it was running smoothly and keeping very accurate time “…like a well-oiled clock.”

Although my time on the computer today was limited, I managed to post my blog entry for August 1st and started selecting photos for other posts. I updated the Technical page on the SLAARC website with a document on low band antennas for Field Day use, and added a link to an online Smith Chart Tutorial. I then updated the online roster. I am at the point where I need to generate WordPress user accounts for the club members so I looked more carefully at the WP-Members plug-in documentation to see if there was a way to have the website e-mail each member as I create their account. It appears that there is, but it will take a little more work on my part to get that set up and working correctly. As I was working on this our AT&T DSL line started dropping out; again.

Linda spent part of the day preparing food ahead in advance of having company tomorrow. She held back some of the crushed red lentil soup for our dinner and served it alongside sandwiches. While we were eating we noticed that the phone said “Line In Use.” We knew we were not using it, but I picked up one of the handsets, pushed “Talk”, and got a very loud, very noisy busy signal. We checked all of the phones to make sure there wasn’t a problem with one of them. There wasn’t. When I checked again the message said “Check Tel Line.” That usually means we won’t have a dial tone when we push “Talk” and that was, indeed, the case.

Ken is the service technician that has been out twice to try to resolve the problem and he left his AT&T cell phone number in case we had recurring problems. He also left his manager’s name and phone number. I called and left a message for Ken and then called and left a message for his manager, making it very clear that Ken has been working hard to resolve our problem and we are happy with the service he is providing. I also tried to convey that the service disruptions are interfering with our ability to do things online, like edit websites. It’s bad enough that the data rate is so slow, but we depend on our “always on” DSL service to always be on.

We went to Lowe’s after dinner to buy a couple sheets of drywall. We looked for special cover plates with a switch opening in one half and a round hole in the other, but did not find anything like that. We stopped at Teeko’s on the way back and had Jeff roast two more pounds of half-caff blends for us; one Ethiopian Yirgacheffe and the other Seattle Blend. He was still out of the Sweet Dreams decaf blend, which we have him mix 50-50 with the regular Seattle Blend to make Sweet Seattle Dreams, but he is supposed to be getting some in his shipment tomorrow.

Back home we unloaded the drywall, had some fresh strawberries for dessert, and read quietly for a while. I’ve been reading the PDF version of the 2nd edition of The Mobile Internet Handbook and am done except for the glossary and the appendices. It is over twice as many pages as the 1st edition and is the definitive resource on connectivity for RVers in particular.

2014/08/19 (T) Horizontally Boring

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Yesterday the crew installing the main natural gas line down our street was at the house just east of ours, so we figured they would be at our house today. Not long after we finished breakfast we heard the sound of trucks and checked to see where they were. They were set up by the east end of our pull-through driveway pulling 2″ plastic pipe back through the tube they had just bored. They then relocated their horizontal boring machine down by our third (west most) culvert that will eventually be the driveway for our bus barn. From there they bored back towards the east following a track that was parallel to the road and about 30 feet to the north of the centerline.

We bought some marker flags at Lowe’s the other day. I decided that this morning would be a good time to put them in the ground to mark the locations of the 240VAC/50A power lines, the propane line, the septic tank outlet to the drain field, and the drain pipe for the SE corner of the house.

The horizontal boring technology is fascinating and I got to chat with the crew chief while he worked. He had what looked to be a fairly sophisticated measuring device that told him the current location and direction of travel of the drill head, which has electronics packaged with it that allow it to be tracked. He relayed instructions via radio back to the operator of the Vermeer drilling rig who could then “steer” the drill head. We also got to spend a little time by the horizontal boring machine and I tried to capture the essence of this very specialized piece of equipment.

Mel, who is one of the project supervisors, stopped to check on the crew. I was able to get a few minutes of his time to explain our concern about how they plan to run the gas line to our house. The diagram sent by Consumer’s Energy was not accurately drawn. Mel called Phil, who handles the scheduling of the service drops, and had him make a note on the service card to check with us before finalizing their planned approach. After inquiring about how many gas appliances we have, Mel said to make sure Phil gives us a 425 gas meter.

I spent the rest of the day and evening working at my computer. I started by updating the online roster in the SLAARC/WP website. I then selected and post-processed about 70 photos in two groups; one for the front sidewalk/stairs and one for the retaining walls and drain pipes, and created gallery posts for each project. I will do similar gallery posts for the garage electrical/HVAC project and the natural gas project once they are completed.

2014/08/18 (M) Tasks Menagerie

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I woke up early, before 5 AM, so I got up, showered, shaved (not a daily occurrence), got dressed, and sat in the living room to read. I started making coffee around 7 AM, which provided Linda the clue (incentive?) to get up and get dressed. Ahhh, breakfast (homemade granola).

No more limbs hanging over the bus.

Linda was on tap to babysit in Ann Arbor today and left around 8:15 AM. I got the Little Giant ladder out of the front bay of the bus and set it up as 14′ extension ladder. This is the only ladder we own that will get me onto the roof of the bus. I took a brush to clean off the roof of bus and a pole saw/pruner to trim tree branches encroaching on the bus. When I was done on the roof I collapsed the ladder and put it back in the front bay as this ladder goes wherever the bus goes. I trimmed lots of other trees from the ground and then gathered up the limbs into a pile to get them out of Keith’s way so he could cut the grass. (Monday is grass cutting day this year.)

I wanted to run the Aqua-Hot but discovered we had left the electric heating element on so the coolant was hot enough the diesel burner would not come on. We have been told by Aqua-Hot service technicians in seminars that the unit should be run at least once a month to keep it in peak operating condition. I turned the electric heating element off and checked to see what else might be on that wasn’t needed.

I looked at replacing the overflow reservoir with the larger Oasis one I got from Butch, but it would require stand-offs or brackets to clear existing water lines (at least until I rebuild the water bay) and I did not feel like getting involved in that today. Besides, the overflow reservoir was just below the full/hot mark from having left the electric heating element turned on, so I needed to let the system cool down before I could do anything anyway.

No limbs hanging out into the pull-through driveway.

I chatted with Keith for a little while after he finished cutting the grass and then had lunch, after which I settled in to work at my desk on the SLAARC WordPress website. I took a break mid-afternoon and made several phone calls. My first call was to Heights Tower Systems in Pensacola, Florida to start finding out what I need to get our used Heights tower erected, how to order it, and what it’s going to cost. My chat with Katie made it sound like they might not be all that helpful. They need measurements, photos, and the name of the previous (original) owner as a starting point and I said I would send her that information as soon as I could.

I called Paul’s Tree service next to see if Paul Keech might come out and trim our trees. The gal who answered the phone said Paul was trying to get out of the tree-trimming business but wanted to know if we needed trees trimmed or felled? We need both, but I was primarily looking for trimming. I guess that was the wrong answer. I left my name and phone numbers and asked that he at least give me a call. I suspect we will have to find someone else to trim several trees in places I cannot reach.

My last call was to EZ-Connector in Tulare, California. I talked to Joe and was ready to order until he suggested I double check a couple of things first, specifically the number of circuits (wires) I need and the length of connecting cable. I need to get these parts ordered, but I’m not sure when I will find time to verify these things.

Linda stopped at the Whole Foods Market in Ann Arbor but still got home ahead of the afternoon traffic. She bought an Amy’s roasted vegetable pizza for dinner which we enjoyed with red grapes and sweet Bing cherries. I worked some more on the SLAARC website creating pages for business meeting documents and uploading them. I also uploaded my blog posts for the last five days of July to our personal blog. I added more projects to my bus project list, got discouraged at its growing length, and went to bed.

2014/08/17 (N) Do Nothing Day

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Today was kind of a do nothing day. We slept in, had waffles (vegan) for breakfast, skipped lunch, both took naps, and had dinner. I did a load of laundry in the morning and Linda worked on her counted cross stitch project for part of the day. We both spent a little time reading. I had planned to put in a long day at my desk, and tried looking up some information on Heights Tower Systems, but our telephone and DSL connections were acting up again and I did not feel like dealing with an on again, off again Internet connection. While trying to find a PDF file on my iPad I got distracted and spent some time deleting documents from Adobe Reader that I no longer needed. Even the cats took the day off and spent most of it sleeping. We don’t have a lot of days like this, but I enjoy them when we do.

2014/08/16 (S) Bus People

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We enjoy the company of our fellow “hams” (amateur radio operators) and so our first destination this morning was the Senate Coney Island in South Lyon for the weekly SLAARC breakfast. It was a much smaller turnout than last week, but that often leads to better conversation for the lower noise level if no other reason.

Converted bus people are also our kind of people, so our second destination today was the Fireman’s Park in Clio, Michigan where the joint CCO/GLCC “Back-to-the-Bricks” rally was taking place. There were 22 rigs in attendance, 19 of which were converted buses. We got there around 11AM and spent the afternoon visiting with whomever was around, starting with Pat and Vickie Lintner. Light rain moved in during the early afternoon and we had a nice visit with our friends from Ontario, Bill and Karen, in their bus.

With a few exceptions we knew all of the attendees and they all knew us, so this was a comfortable reunion with old and new friends. We had a chance to talk to Glen Williams, who runs a clock repair business named Tenor Clocks, about our broken grandfather clock and made an appointment for him to come work on it on Wednesday at noon. (Glen is also part of a four man singing group named “Three Men and a Tenor”. Glen is the Tenor.) We were most cordially invited to stay for dinner but we had not paid to attend the rally and there was very little food we could (would) eat so we left around 6 PM as the group was assembling for the evening meal.

We stopped at the Panera in Fenton on the way home and enjoyed their black bean soup and Mediterranean veggie sandwich, hold the feta cheese. Once home we enjoyed a small glass of Late Harvest Vignoles wine from Acres of Land winery in Kentucky while we worked on our iPads a bit before bed.

2014/08/15 (F) On The Level

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I got dressed this morning for physical work, but ended up doing very little. I worked at my desk most of the morning, including working through the first chapter of the Intro to Linux course on edX. I came up from the basement to have lunch at 12:30 PM after which I moved my car out of the pull-through driveway. I then started the bus and, with Linda’s assistance, backed it out of the pull-through driveway, drove it the short distance to our straight driveway (which ties into the other end of the pull-through driveway), pulled it up onto the concrete driveway as far as it could go, and parked it. The concrete driveway runs uphill from the road to the garage and, not knowing how long it might be there, I lowered the front end and raised the back end; not enough to level it but enough to make it better. Linda chocked the drive tires while I hooked up the electrical shore-power. The front bay had gotten water in it from the recent rains so we opened all of the bays to let them air out while Linda soaked up as much water as she could with a couple of old towels.

Spreading 21AA road gravel to fix the driveway.

I got out our 8′ step ladder and pole saw/lopper to prune some large (1 – 2 inch) dead branches that were hanging over the pull-through driveway where the rear end of the bus normally sits. I no sooner started this work when Phil from Precision Grading showed up right on time with his dump truck, tracked front-loader, and rolling compactor attachment to repair the damage done to the pull-through driveway by the recent landscaping work.

Phil off-loaded the front-loader from the trailer and then disconnected the trailer from the dump truck. He had a small load of 21AA road gravel (with lots of fines) that he dumped in two different spots in the pull-through driveway. He then put the truck back in the street and set up his laser level to see just what he needed to do. He used the front loader to move the gravel around and distribute it evenly and finished by back blading it with the bucket to level it.

Rolling and compacting the driveway.

Once he had the gravel the way he wanted it, he removed the bucket and attached the vibrating roller/compactor. He went over the driveway several times, always making his final pass going backwards while pulling the roller to smooth out the tracks created by the machine’s drive treads. The roller/compactor worked the fines down into the base and by the time he was done the driveway looked and felt tight; even better than last year when Phil did not yet have this attachment. The machine also shook the entire house, especially the rear deck which is mostly supported by tall 6×6 and 4×4 posts. He indicated that we did not need to wait for rain, or anything else, before putting the bus back in its spot, so after he left that is what we did.

But before Phil left, he used his laser level to check the grade in the back. Although it does not appear to the naked eye to drop very much in the first 70 feet, the laser level indicated that there was a steady down slope over that distance with a total drop of over 1 foot. He checked all the way to the edge of the cattails marsh, at which point the ground was down 4-5 feet from the deck. The surface of the neighbor’s pond looks to be at least two feet lower from there.

The compacting roller really makes a difference.

There are several implications to this. For one, it means the surface of the pond is well below our basement slab (6 – 7 feet) and at least 2 feet below the bottom of the footings for our house, so it is probably not the source of the water that runs into our sump. It also means there is adequate grade to allow surface water to run off once the grass grows in (although it would be better if there was more grade than there currently is in the first 50 feet). Equally important, the grade is more than adequate for a very effective French drain should we decide to have Phil pull up the existing drain lines and replace them. Finally, having a hole dug at least 8 feet deep for the ham radio tower base should not pose a problem as the starting elevation is at least 6 feet above the basement slab.

With regards to the tower base, Phil suggested that I have the rebar cage, mounting bolts, and alignment structure built ahead of time and ready to go. He could dig the hole first thing in the morning with his mini-excavator (up to 8’ deep) and figured it would only take an hour at most. The assembled rebar could be positioned, plumbed, and secured in an hour or so, and the concrete could be delivered and poured in the late morning. He indicated that spreading the work out over more time than that, especially letting the hole sit overnight, was not a good idea

Close up of the compacting roller attachment. This thing shook the whole house!

We discussed how to get the concrete into the hole given its location about 40 feet northeast of the northeast corner of the house. Our two options appear to be the little dump carts or a pumper. The carts would have to drive up the east side of the house between the house and the septic tanks, but Phil thought that would be OK as long as they put down plywood to drive on. He said a pumper truck would be very expensive but that a separate pump is available that can be towed to the job site. With that equipment the concrete mixer truck would simply unload the concrete into the pumper, which would then pump it to the hole. Both the truck and the pumper would be in the east end of our pull-through driveway. Phil suggested that I call Carl Russell in Byron, Michigan as he is a good concrete guy and probably has a concrete pump.

After Phil left we reversed our earlier steps and moved the bus back into the pull-through driveway. It rolled right up onto the level pad area and did not leave any noticeable tire tracks. Nice. We hooked up the “50 Amp” shorepower cable, turned off the chassis batteries, checked that all of the battery chargers were working, and shut/locked everything.

While Phil was working, Linda went to the Howell Library to return children’s books and came back with a card for the Howell Melon Festival. The Festival started today and runs through Sunday. She wanted to go walk around so we skipped dinner and headed out around 5 PM. At the first turn in our road we encountered two workers from Roese Construction. They were working on installing the natural gas main line down the street and said another crew would be coming along behind them in 1 – 2 weeks doing the branch runs up to the meters on the houses.

The Howell Melon Festival was just getting started when we got there but parking was already at a premium. We parked a few blocks away in an empty church parking lot. Some of the smaller side streets were already blocked off but Grand River Avenue and Michigan Avenue were both still open to traffic. They will be closed tomorrow and Sunday and filled with vendor booths.

The weather was perfect and all of the downtown restaurants were very busy with lots of outside seating. In the 16 months we have lived in the new house we have never really visited most of the downtown Howell merchants. We went into Country Squire, a business that sells fireplace logs and inserts as well as outdoor cooking grills. They had a couple of natural gas fireplace logs that were 99%+ efficient and did not require the flue to be open. We thought they were a bit pricey but they were actually capable of heating a room. We don’t use our existing propane logs because they are mostly decorative and require the flue damper to be open, which just wastes fuel and money. The Country Squire also had a couple of natural gas grills that would mount to our deck and attach to our existing quick disconnect.

We walked through the food vendor area but did not see anything that interested us. After walking past the starting gate for the Howell Melon Run we ended up at Uptown Coffee, on the northeast corner of Grand River and Main, where we had some brew and Sabra hummus with pretzel chips. We started back towards our car and paused at the Old Courthouse long enough to hear the first number by the band. They sounded good and not too loud. We had our folding camp chairs in the car but decided to pass on the concert.

We stopped at Walmart on the way home to buy a microwave popcorn popper bowl and stock up on flavors of ICE brand sparkling flavored water. Meijer’s sells a few flavors but Walmart has the broadest selection, including my two favorites (pineapple-coconut and blueberry-pomegranate). Our final stop was at Lowe’s for a 100-pack of bright orange marker flags. I will use these to mark the powerline that runs under the driveway to feed the RV outlet, the propane line to the house, the drain pipe from the corner of the house into the first septic tank, and the drain pipe that connects the outlet of the second septic tank to the beginning of the drain field.

It was a long day but a good one. We watched another episode of Doc Martin and then called it a night.

2014/08/14 (R) All Computer All Day

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From the time I got up (before 8 AM) until I went to bed (after midnight) I pretty much worked at my desk, specifically at my computer. Much of my time was spent on revising the pages of the new SLAARC WordPress website and making most of them publicly viewable. I also revised the User’s Guide and sent it off to be reviewed. Mixed in with that work I uploaded three more blog posts.

Another chunk of my time was spent dealing with the financial and membership records of our FMCA Freethinkers Chapter and a little time was spent with e-mail and social media, although I really limit the amount of time that goes towards the later. Later in the evening I finally logged in to the Intro to Linux course on edX and went through a short Intro to edX demo course. When I went to shut down my laptop it had 28 updates to install and when it restarted, the Outlook 2013 icon had disappeared from my taskbar. The program was still there on the Apps screen and it still worked, but that was momentarily un-nerving. I also had a Linux update to install.

It was a beautiful day today with cool, dry northwest breezes, more like early fall than the dog days of summer. It was the perfect day for working outside and I wish I could have. We had oatmeal for breakfast, tofu hotdogs for lunch, and lentil loaf with baked potatoes and roasted Brussels sprouts for dinner. It was all simple but very tasty fare. Coffee and juice went with breakfast, green tea with lunch and during the day, and sparkling water with dinner. After lunch I checked the air pressure in the black iron pipe and it was down to 9 PSI. Darryll set it at 12 PSI yesterday afternoon and I doubt that the pressure would move that much just from the change in ambient temperature. I just hope the leak is someplace easy for him to find and fix.

2014/08/13 (W) Bad Times

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Linda had a rough night last night. The tooth on which she just got a new crown two weeks ago started throbbing and even Tylenol did not do much to dull the pain. She finally got some sleep early this morning and slept in while I had toast with jam and coffee for breakfast. She called the dentist when she finally got up and they said they could see her at 10:30 AM. She tried drinking some coffee but the hot liquid immediately aggregated her bad tooth.

Linda has been following a story in the news about Ferguson, the town in Missouri where we grew up. There was an incident there over the weekend in which a cop ended up shooting an 18-year-old African-American male. There were limited witnesses, so the truth about what happened is obscure at best. The town, a northern suburb of St. Louis, is now experiencing “riots” and looting.

It is difficult for me to picture what is happening. Although Linda’s oldest brother still lives in Ferguson we have not been back there in years. This is the kind of situation that “happens to other people in other places” not in the Ferguson of my memory from the 1950’s and 60’s.

Darryll and Alec (DCM Heating &Cooling) showed up just after 9 AM and Linda left for the dentist at 9:15 AM. The stormy weather of the last two days cleared out overnight replaced by cool northwest breezes, abundant sunshine, and blue skies. When the weather in Michigan is nice it is really nice. I took a few minutes to get the trash to the curb, made sure Darryll was all set, and then retreated to my desk to work on the membership and financial records for our FMCA Freethinkers associate chapter, of which I am the current vice-president and secretary.

I got a call from Linda around 11:15 AM letting me know she had a 2:15 PM appointment with an endodontist down the street from our dentist. She was going to go to Fairlane Mall to kill some time but since she did not get much sleep last night I suggested she go to the endodontist’s office and sleep in their waiting room. Given her discomfort and sensitivity to hot liquids she will likely come home today with a new root canal procedure having been done.

Darryll and Alec finished the 2″ iron pipe installation, connected an air pressure gauge, and pressurized the pipe to 12 psi to check for leaks. The natural gas pressure in the line will only be ~4 in-WC (inches of water column). 1 PSI = ~27.67 in-WC, so 4 in-WC us is approximately 1/7 PSI, a relatively low pressure. Still, there cannot be any leaks in the piping connections.

With the pipe done for now they turned their attention to hanging the Reznor garage heater. To support the unit Darryll installed two U-channels in the attic spanning the top side of the bottom cord of three trusses. He determined the location of the threaded support rods from the garage ceiling side using a cardboard template and drilled the holes up into the attic. He and Alec then assembled everything with Darryll doing the attic work. The Reznor is not that heavy, but he prefers to hang the unit when possible rather than screw it into something.

To position the unit they set it on top of one of our 6′ tall plastic shelving units and blocked it up another six inches with scrap wood. (We used the same technique to install the pull-down attic ladder a couple of weeks ago as described in a previous post.) The unit is 12″ high and they set it 6″ below the ceiling near the center of the rear (north) wall. That location will optimize getting heat to all parts of the garage and put the unit right where Darryll needed it to connect the exhaust flue pipe using the existing flue that was originally used for the wood-burning stove.

Linda usually fixes our meals, but I used to do a lot of the cooking during “tax season” when she was working ridiculously long hours as a C.P.A. Lucky for me we had chickpea salad in the refrigerator and I remembered how to make a sandwich. A few almonds and some of this morning’s coffee (Teeko’s Seattle Blend half-caff) made for a tasty, quick, and easy lunch. I checked the pressure on Darryll’s gauge and it had dropped quite a bit, so there was a leak (or leaks) somewhere that he will have to find and tighten. That’s unfortunate given the size of this pipe and the number of connections, but “it’s all part of the job” as the saying goes.

I was hopeful that Phil from Precision Grading might come fix our pull-through driveway today, but as of 1 PM I had not seen or heard from him. There’s still a chance we could see him later today, but it was a long shot at best based on the premise that with all the rain on Monday and Tuesday he might not be able to work anywhere else today.

Linda called around 1:45 PM to let me know the endodontist was able to see her at 12:15 PM. They did some tests to confirm it was the nerve in the suspect tooth and then did the root canal procedure. Apparently sensitivity to heat and a lack of sensitivity to cold is indicative of a nerve gone bad. They gave her an initial dose of antibiotics and some pain killers (Motrin) and sent her on her way with prescriptions for more of the same.

Darryll and Alec wrapped up for the day around 2:15 PM and walked me through what they had done and what was left to do. While I was eating, talking, and working they had run the gas pipe through the back wall of the garage and installed the flue pipe for both furnaces. Darryll needed a few more parts to finish the job and needed to get home to deal with a flooded basement situation from the recent rains. He indicated they should be done by the end of next week, at least with everything they can do until the gas line gets run to the house and hooked up to meter. The timing may turn out to be tighter than expected. When Linda turned onto our street she observed that Roese Construction had started running gas line down our road and appeared to be hooking up houses as they went, but that turned out not be the case.

I was questioning Darryll about the exhaust flue for the Reznor garage furnace and discovered that it is not a sealed combustion unit like the one we had at the other house. He assured me it was approved for use in garages and that he has installed a lot of them over the years, but would double check to make sure. He can return this one if needed, but said the sealed unit is more expensive. It would also require completely different fresh air and exhaust ducting that would have to go through the back wall of the garage. I suspect we will stick with the one that is already installed.

Darryll sprayed every iron pipe connection with soapy water and the only leak he found was the cap they put on the end of the run this morning. Apparently they did not tighten it fully when they installed it. He snugged it down and had Alec re-pressurized the pipe to 12 PSI but did not recheck for leaks. (Hypothetically, if the leak at the end of the pipe was big enough other leaks might not show up anywhere else until that one was fixed.) If there are no other leaks then the pressure should stay at 12 PSI indefinitely; certainly until they come back on Monday or Tuesday.

For dinner Linda made a nice green salad and a pepper seitan dish served over white rice; simple but delicious. I checked the pressure in the black iron pipe after dinner, when it was cooler and the sun had dropped lower in the western sky, and it was down to 11 PSI. That seemed like a lot of pressure loss to me, but the Ideal Gas Law (PV=nRT) says that for a fixed volume (V) the pressure (P) and temperature (T) are directly proportional (by the factor nR). We know from experience that the pressure in an RV tire changes a little with changes in the ambient air temperature even when sitting still and quite a bit when the tire heats up from driving. If all the tire pressures are set to the same value first thing in the morning and one side of the RV is facing south on a sunny day the pressures in the tires on the sunny side will be measurably higher than the shady side at mid-afternoon. Of course there is a lot of air in our bus tires since they run at 100 PSI, more or less. Most of the black iron pipe is not exposed to direct sun for most of the day so tomorrow I may re-pressurize the pipe at 10 PSI and record the pressure and temperature every 30 minutes until 2 or 3 PM to see how it varies. Or not.

Phil (Precision Grading) called back this evening and said he could take care of fixing the driveway on Friday afternoon for a very reasonable price. Sold. That means we will not be going to the Clio rally on Friday for the 1 PM roundtable discussion. So be it. We will probably drive up on Saturday after our ham radio breakfast. While Phil is here we are going to shoot the grade in the back with his laser level if he has time and see what we really have. He and I agree that just eyeballing it things do not look quite right.

It’s obvious to me after the heavy rains on Monday and Tuesday that the two plastic drain pipes running out into the back yard should have had a third drain tile line put in the trench with them (perforated with an oversock) and the trench should have been filled with pea gravel to create a French drain that would remove the water flowing into that low lying area and keep it from saturating the ground. It would also have made the pipes better able to withstand being driven over by a vehicle. As it stands, anything heavy that drives over that area while it is moist/soft will most likely crush the pipes (again). I’m annoyed because I did not know enough to specify this as part of the job and because Steve, for whatever reason, did not recommend it.

To fix this correctly we would need to have Phil locate the existing plastic pipe and dig it up back past the Y-connector for the two downspouts and up into the two slopes far enough that it is out of his way. That would allow him to re-grade the entire area properly, dig a new trench starting from the edge of the lower deck, install the three drain lines, fill the trench with pea gravel, and then finish grade the slopes and valley correctly, all of which Village Landscape should have done, in my opinion, but did not. It would also give us the opportunity to replace the corrugated plastic drain line with PVC pipe which would better withstand the weight of a vehicle once encased in pea gravel. The rear retaining walls and front stairs/sidewalk look nice and appear to have been built correctly so we did get something for our money, most, in fact, of what we paid for, just not everything we needed.

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Category Archives: Family-Friends-Home

2014/09/12 (F) Posted

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