Category Archives: WFPB

Posts related to our Whole-Foods Plant-Based approach to healthy eating. We became vegetarians in 2000 and transitioned to being vegans in 2011. We discovered the WFPB concept in 2012.

2015/11/02 (M) Driveway Joe

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Linda was up at 5:45 AM and off to the bakery at 6:15.  I got up at 6:45 AM, got dressed, and went to the bus to turn on the block heater and Aqua-Hot engine pre-heat loop.  I then made coffee and had breakfast, after which I e-mailed Mike (W8XH) to let him know Joe would be here all day today.  I then reset the clocks in the two digital cameras.

Joe was at Chuck’s a little before 7 AM to change the engine oil and filter and figured it would take one hour.  I started the main engine in our bus at 7:45 AM to warm up the oil and make it easier to drain.  I let it run for 20 minutes on high idle, dropped it to low idle for a minute and shut it down.  The block will hold heat for quite a while.

Chuck texted me at 8:15 AM to let me know that Joe was on his way to our place and Joe called about five minutes later.  He was on our street but called because he wasn’t sure he was in the right place.  He pulled in to our first driveway entrance just before 9 and pulled his van up behind the bus.

I had dumped the air in the suspension yesterday when I put the coach up on stands so Joe had me start the engine and air up the suspension as a safety backup should one of the stands fail.  I raised it up off of all four stands and then set it back down but quit dumping the air as soon as it was on each stand.

The work for today was routine annual chassis and engine maintenance.  Joe needed to have diesel fuel on hand so I drove to the Shell station and bought four gallons.  While I was there I picked up a large coffee for him at the co-located Dunkin Donuts.

When I got back from my errand run Joe was already lubricating everything on the chassis and engine that had a grease fitting using the Mobil 1 synthetic grease I bought yesterday.  He was starting to generate messy trash so I fetched a large plastic trash bag.  He drained the engine oil, removed the old filter, filled the new filter with oil, and spun it on.  He then added six gallons of Chevron Delo 100 SAE 40 Heavy Duty Engine Oil that I bought on Saturday.  I added 2 to 3 more quarts from the reservoir to use up the oil that had been in there for a while.  I then refilled the reservoir as it is very handy for topping up the oil.

Joe removed and replaced both coolant filters while I fetched a bottle of Detroit Diesel PowerCool engine coolant.  He added coolant to the expansion reservoir while I watched the sight glass on the side of the tank and told him when to stop.  He then had me help him with the secondary fuel filter, which we pre-filled with diesel fuel.  Last, but not least, we replaced the filter element in the Racor fuel filter / water separator.  Joe installed the new filter element and gaskets and topped off the fuel in the housing before putting the cover back on.

I started the main engine and let it run for 30 seconds to circulate the oil, coolant, and fuel.  Joe added a little bit more oil to bring the level up to just over half way between the L and H marks on the dipstick.  This is where the engine likes to run and if I fill it to the H mark it will get rid of the extra oil on its own.

With the maintenance on the bus completed we transferred all of the old oil from the drain pan into the one gallon plastic jugs that had contained the new oil and put them back in the 3-jug cardboard boxes for convenient transport.  Our local O’Reilly’s Auto Parts store accepts waste oil and filters so I will take them there for disposal.  Although I had my own bus work to do I hung with Joe until he was done.  I stayed near the bus and trimmed trees when he did not me to assist with things.

Joe offered to come back next year to do our annual service and suggested that we take an extra day to replace as many grease fittings as possible either with better fittings or with small lines running back to one or more conveniently located manifolds.  The manifolds would have an input for grease and a valve for each line allowing most of the chassis and engine to be greased without getting under the bus.  I must say that I liked the sound of that.  It would be a nice upgrade to the bus and would make a good article for Bus Conversion Magazine.

I did NOT have Joe remove driver side front tire so I could get the splash guard off and inspect the area under the tray behind the driver’s seat.  I will have to deal with that on my own.  I also noticed that the fuel tank was down to 3/8ths so I will have to take the bus out and refuel it at some point and may have to turn off the Aqua-Hot and use the electric toe-kick heaters instead until I can refuel.

Keith called at 1 PM to let me know he would not make it out to mow the grass today.  He will be here tomorrow morning, probably for the last time this season.  Joe was packed up and on his way at 1:45 PM.  He was headed to Chicago where he has a house but has not been there in the last 18 months.

After Joe was done I went to Painter’s Supply and Equipment in Howell to buy POR-15 and the POR cleaner/degreaser.  POR is a brand but stands for “Paint Over Rust.”  It reacts chemically with rusted metal to stabilize the metal and prevent further rust.  I bought a can of spray on rubber material to put over it.  The POR-15 was pricey at $33 for a pint, but it is serious stuff and is used by the U. S. Navy.

My next stop was Lowe’s for a foam brush.  I picked up a 4-foot length of angle, four U-bolts, two pulleys, some miscellaneous nuts and bolts, and a 100 foot length of 3/8″ polypropylene rope, all of which was in preparation for ham radio projects tomorrow on the small tower.  After Lowe’s I stopped across the street at O’Reilly’s Auto Parts store to dispose of the oil and filters.  Their parking lot was being seal-coated and I could not get to the disposal bins so I will have to try again tomorrow.

By the time I got home it was 4:30 PM.  Rather than start working on the bus I did a little more trimming on the trees by the road in front of the house and then put the yard tools away.

For dinner Linda made a whole wheat linguini with mushrooms, onions, and sun-dried tomatoes lightly sautéed in EVOO.  We opened the bottle of Frey Natural Red organic/vegan wine.  It was very dry which made it difficult for me judge its other qualities as I do not care for dry wines or wines with noticeable tannins.  Still, it went well with the dish and I finished my glass.  I don’t think I will ever develop a taste, however, for dry wines and/or wines with a lot of tannins.

After dinner I worked on an article for Bus Conversion Magazine (BCM) about our experience on the Habitat for Humanity build we participated in back in July 2013.  The article has been done for a while but the publisher (Gary) had someone (Teresa) proofread it a couple of days ago and she found some minor things that I needed to correct.  Gary and I are also discussing whether to split the article into two parts and/or cut down a bit on the number of photos, which currently number about 60.  I took a break from 8 to 11 PM to watch television with Linda and then returned to working on the article before going to bed.

 

2015/11/01 (N) Brunch with Kathi, Farewell to Uncle Bob

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We switched from Eastern Daylight Time back to Eastern Standard Time overnight.  It was 11:30 PM when I turned off the lights and 7:30 AM when I got up, and since I had not reset my nightstand clock I got my eight hours of beauty rest.  I put my robe on and started setting all of the clocks back one hour.  We have a LOT of clocks.

My cell phone adjusts automatically, as do the computers and satellite linked thermometers.  I reset the clocks in the microwave, range, and coffee maker, and stopped the grandfather clock, which is only supposed to be advanced, to let the time catch up to the setting.  I reset the clock on our phone system, the clock on my night stand, and on two of our thermostats.  The Wi-Fi thermostat already had the correct time so it may have adjusted automatically or perhaps was never changed to EDT last spring.  We have three battery powered clocks that I did not reset as I wanted to change the batteries and the incorrect time would serve as a reminder that I had not yet done that.  I still need to check the clocks in the two digital cameras, as I like to have correct time stamps on my photos, and there are five clocks in the motorcoach that need to be reset.  We have a lot of clocks, but I quit wearing a wrist watch when I retired.  I always have my phone with me anyway, and it usually knows what time it is in whatever time zone I happen to be in.

While I was in the basement I checked e-mail, replied to one from Gary at BCM, and then cleaned the cats’ litter tray.  Linda was up by then so I made coffee.  I turned on the fireplace and we settled in the living room to read, write, and savor our morning brew.

Kathi Slater, a long-time friend who Linda hired on at the bakery some years ago, came to our house today for brunch.  I think it was only her second visit since we moved to this house but then most of our friends have been here at most once, if at all.  Family members visit more often, of course, but that does not mean frequently.  John/Dianne Rauch and Steve/Karen Limkemann have been here the most, along with Mike Sharpe (W8XH) from our SLAARC ham radio group.  Philip Jarrell of Precision Grading, and Keith Kish of Kish Lawn Care, have been the most frequent people here on business, along with Kerry Fear, who does our snow plowing, and Darryl Mech of DMC Heating and Cooling, who did a lot of work for us when we converted from propane to natural gas.  We do not, however, feel isolated here.  We are getting to know a few of our neighbors and we are only minutes away from three communities full of people and shopping options.  Both of our children and their families are only 30 to 45 minutes away as are the northwest suburbs of Detroit where some of our friends still live.  But most days we live quiet, undisturbed lives at our home in the country, and we like it that way.

Linda and Kathi had “things” to discuss that did not involve or concern me, so after brunch I busied myself with other things.  After checking e-mail I started downloading an update to Adobe Photoshop CC (2015).  These downloads are huge and very slow so I left it to run.  Chuck texted me and arranged to pick up his eight gallons of oil around noon.  We chatted briefly when he arrived and he took a second look at our water intrusion problem.  After he left I went to the O’Reilly’s Auto Parts store in Howell to buy grease.  Joe told me to get two tubes of the best stuff I could find, synthetic if possible.  O’Reilly’s had Mobil 1 synthetic grease for almost twice the price of anything else on the shelf so I bought three tubes and used my $5 off reward card.  Lowe’s was right across the street so I popped in there and got three boxes of Scott blue paper shop towels.  I use a lot of these when working on the bus.

When I got home I changed into my work clothes and got to work on the bus.  I stayed on that task the rest of the afternoon except for a few short breaks.  The first break was for linner.  The second break was to start the bus engine, raise the body, put the stands under it, set the body on the stands, and dump the air from the suspension.  The third break was to say “goodbye” to Kathi and the forth break was for another brief visit from Chuck to pick up a bus engine oil filter from me.

In the course of the afternoon I managed to cut out most the rotten water-damaged wood from the floor in the driver’s area of the bus cockpit.  Cleaning up the metal and protecting it, providing a drain for the water, and then patching in the floor is going to take several days.  Finding and plugging the entry point may not happen.  It’s November 1st and I only have about three (3) weeks to get the bus put back together to the point where we can use it this winter.  The reservations are made, winter is coming, and we are out of here before the calendar turns to December.

When I wrapped up work in the bus around 5:30 PM I had been using a two-tube fluorescent work light for an hour.  By the time I set the thermostats back, and changed the time on the microwave and the battery powered clock in the living room, it was approaching 6 PM and it was dark outside.

Linda made broccoli soup from scratch for dinner.  It was a mild, subtle dish and we both had seconds along with a few crackers and strawberry preserves.  I called Butch after dinner to update him on the floor situation in the bus and get his opinion on my idea of filling the “tray” with expanding foam.  After talking it through I decided it might be the best idea I ever had.

While I was talking to Butch I got a call from Joe and handed the house phone off to Linda.  Joe was northbound on I-275 in Michigan.  He was at most an hour from our house but getting ready to stop for the night.  He wanted to be close enough to Chuck’s house to get there easily by 7 AM and did not want to backtrack the 20 miles from our place.  As we say in ham radio “QSL” (I understand).

I got the phone back from Linda and was continuing my conversation with Butch when I got a call from a 405 area code number that showed up as “unavailable.”  I don’t usually answer those calls but they left a message and called back about 12 minutes later.  I had not even checked the message yet but figured it was someone actually trying to reach me so I gave the house phone back to Linda and took the call.  It was my nephew (by marriage), Philip Pelton, calling to let me know that my Uncle Bob had passed away a couple of hours earlier.  He was also looking for a phone number for my dad.

Bob was my dad’s younger brother by two years, his only sibling and my only Uncle, my mother having been an only child.  Bob was 88.  Linda and I saw him in April on our way home from our winter in the desert southwest.  Bob had Parkinson’s disease and was in a rehab center near his home fighting an infection.  He did not look at all well to us at the time so I was not really surprised by Philip’s call.  According to Philip, Bob had developed pneumonia in both lungs shortly after we were there and the doctors were never able to cure it.  He was at home when his blood oxygen dropped, he lapsed into unconsciousness, and expired.

Uncle Bob was an interesting and unusual guy.  He had a Ph.D. in micropaleontology and was a brilliant geologist.  Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, he moved to Oklahoma and spent his entire career studying the geology of that state.  He developed an interest in genealogy somewhere along the way, and did some significant research on the various branches of our family.  He married Helen Pelton, second marriages for both, but never had children of his own.  Helen had one son, Scott, who passed away some years ago, survived by his mother, ex-wife Linda, two children, Tiffany and Philip, Tiffany’s three daughters, and Philip’s son and daughter.  He was known to all of them as Papa (PawPaw) and they obviously adored each other.  We only had a few visits with him over the years but they were always very interesting.

We wrapped up the call with Butch and I called my sister.  Philip had already reached her but we had a long chat.  She reported that our father is doing better and has recovered somewhat from his stroke of a couple of months ago.  My grand-niece, Lilly, is having short seizures again, which is concerning to say the least.  The doctor has adjusted her medication but it will take a week to see if the higher dose is effective or they need to move to a different drug.  Lilly is six weeks younger than Madeline and just the sweetest little girl you can imagine.  It is most unfair to her, and her parents, to have to deal with these seizures.

I went to my office and downloaded e-mails (which were painfully slow).  I had two in our general contact account, which I do not check every day.  They were both from BCM readers letting me know that they enjoyed my articles and actually found them useful.  I replied to both and answered their questions as best I could.  I then logged into RVillage.  We had one message, which I responded to, and 153 notifications.  The vast majority were from the Comic Relief group and I think I will have to turn off notifications for that, and perhaps other, groups.  In retrospect I should have created a separate e-mail account for RVillage, but I didn’t.

 

2015/10/31 (S) Boo!

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We overslept a bit this morning and did not get up until 7:20 AM.  We dressed quickly and drove to breakfast separately as we had to go to separate places afterwards.  We got there at 8 AM and had a nice chat with the folks at our end of the table.  It was a big group this week, at least 24 people, maybe more.

Linda left breakfast at 9:15 AM to meet Diane at Kensington Metropark at 9:30 and go walking.  I lingered at the restaurant until after 9:30.  I drove back to I-96 and Grand River Avenue in Brighton, where I filled my fuel tank at the Shell station, and had a nice QSO with Mike (W8XH) while driving.  I then drove across the street to Brighton Ford to pick up the four spin-on coolant filter/conditioners I ordered yesterday.

Brighton Ford’s parts department is a NAPA outlet but they do not have any signs to that effect as Ford Motor Company won’t allow it.  My next stop was up Grand River Avenue towards Howell at the O’Reilly’s Auto Parts store where I picked up the nine (9) gallons of Chevron Delo 100 SAE 40 engine oil I ordered yesterday morning.  I drove home and chatted a bit more with Mike on the way.  I found out that he gets his Lawn tractor serviced at/by Sloan’s in Linden and is very pleased with them.  He has a trailer for transporting his lawn tractor and is willing to let me borrow it to transport ours when I am ready.

When I got home I unloaded the oil and filters and then emptied the dishwasher, refilled it, and started it.  I then went to my office to work.  I had an e-mail reply from Byron Pigg with information I needed to finish the article for Bus Conversion Magazine (BCM) about his 1985 Model 15 Eagle bus conversion.  I incorporated the new info into the Word docx and then called Byron on the phone.  We spent at least an hour going over the article and chatting about bus conversions.  After we wrapped up our conversation I worked a bit longer on the article making the last few edits and removing blemishes from two of photos.  I uploaded the article (Word docs) and all of the photo files (jpgs) to my BCM Dropbox folder at 2:15 PM and then e-mailed Gary (publisher), Mike (editor), and Jorge (layout).

Shawna gets Madeline into her Bumblebee costume for Halloween Trick-or-Treat in their neighborhood.

Shawna (back to camera) gets Madeline into her Bumblebee costume for Halloween Trick-or-Treat in their neighborhood.

While I was doing all of that Linda firmed up our Halloween plans with our son.  We left the house at 2:45 PM and drove to Ann Arbor, arriving at their house around 3:30.  Shawna got Madeline into her bumblebee costume and Linda gave her a Halloween gift bag with a rag doll, some candy, and a card.  At 4:15 we walked over to a neighbor’s house for a gathering that included snacks/dinner.  We talked to host Laurel’s parents, Tom and Kendra, who were there from San Diego, California.  All of the kids and most of the adults left at 5:15 to go door-to-door trick-or-treating on Granger Street.  Granger was closed off to vehicles for several blocks with policeman at each barricade and there were hundreds of people out and about.  Many of the adults were in costume, some quite elaborate, and it was quite a sight.

Madeline caught on very quickly to her role in all of this and would often walk past other, larger children right to the front of the line to get her treat.  She is just shy of three years old so it was cute.  One of the houses had two large pumpkins out front, appropriately carved.  They were real pumpkins and each weighed about 1,500 pounds when they were delivered by a truck.  Madeline is above average height for her age but these pumpkins towered over her.  The homeowners are well known in the neighborhood for having these giant pumpkins each year and bring in mind-boggling large quantities of candy in crates.  You gotta love neighbors like that.

The rain held off for most of the prime trick-or-treat window from 5 – 6 PM but I was cold and went back to the house a little ahead of everyone else.  It started to drizzle around the same time Madeline’s endurance was waning and they got back to the house at 6:30 with the umbrella deployed.  Madeline was eager to take stock of her Halloween “loot”.  We enjoyed watching her excitement at having different items to choose from and then “negotiating” with her parents over having to select just one item for this evening.  Halloween trick-or-treat is perhaps best appreciated while watching a three year old experience it.

We left around 7 PM and stopped at the nearby Whole Foods Market for soy creamer.  We picked up two bottles of Frey brand wine, a white and a red, and two pieces of vegan cake.  Frey makes organic wines without the use of animal products and are a sponsor of “Cooking School” with Christina Perillo on the PBS Create channel.

I got a call from Joe as we were getting ready to leave Whole Foods.  He was packed and ready to hit the road first thing in the morning.  He wasn’t sure if he would make it all the way to our house on Sunday or finish the trip early Monday morning.

It rained on the drive home and I took the wheel as Linda has a hard time with dark/wet roads.  We were reminded, once again, of the poor condition of Michigan’s roads, many of which need to be repainted and have reflectors installed such as the ones we saw in Florida the winter before last.  (I suspect that the reason Michigan does not use them is because of snow plows, but they really make it safer to drive dark roads at night.)  We got home sometime after 8 PM and had dessert.  I checked the bus for leaks buy did not find any new water.  I texted Joe our address, checked e-mail, and then opened the package from Rockler Woodworking that our postal carrier had delivered earlier in the day.

The maple veneer from Rockler was a bit darker than I had hoped, but it will still be a nice contrast to the walnut trim when suitably finished.  The two shelf brackets were certainly substantial enough but it remains to be seen if the wall of our coach is adequate to support the table without a leg to the floor.  The main issue will be the fasteners near the top which will be in tension and trying to pull out of the wall.  Of secondary concern will be the lower tip of the brackets, which will be in compression, trying to push through the wall and possibly puncturing it.  I may have to use expanding bolts or toggles rather than screws for the upper (tension) fasteners.

We had some hot tea and went to bed.  Although I did not get to work on the bus today I got a lot accomplished and we had a great time watching our younger grand-daughter experience Halloween.

 

2015/10/30 (F) 21AA

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Linda was up and out the door at 6:15 AM.  I got up an hour later, got dressed to work, and had the last banana-nut muffin and a glass of orange juice to wash down my vitamins.  I turned on the fireplace and settled in to do a search for Chevron Delo 100 conventional SAE 40 motor oil.  O’Reilly’s Auto Parts had it listed online and available in some of their stores locally but not the ones closest to me.  I called the store in Howell and Ron checked the warehouse.  The inventory showed 32 ‘units’ but he said they were packaged with three one-gallon bottles to a box.  I needed 8 gallons to change the oil in the bus’s DD8V92TA engine so I ordered 3 boxes.

I thought I had heard a heavy truck earlier as I was getting dressed but did not investigate.  Around 8:30 AM I heard another one and eventually the gravel hauler pulled into sight.  That meant Phil was already here so I put on my coat and hat (it was chilly outside) and grabbed my camera.  Phil had already spread out some of the construction fabric and the gravel hauler was backing in to the third driveway entrance to dump a load of 21AA road gravel.  He pulled out, unhooked the rear trailer, backed in with the front trailer, and dumped a second load.  The sun was up but low in the sky.  It was brilliant, lighting up the fall colors against darker gray skies to the west but blue skies and white clouds overhead, so I snapped a few photos.

Construction fabric in place on the upper and lower portions of the driveway extension.

Construction fabric in place on the upper and lower portions of the driveway extension.

The gravel hauler reconnected his rear trailer, drove down the street, and turned around by backing his double trailer into the road that leads to the court.  Phil had told me the driver was incredibly skilled but I was impressed watching me maneuver his tractor-trailer train.  After he was gone I helped Phil (a little bit) position some of the construction fabric.  The gravel train was due back in an hour with another load so Phil started up his Takeuchi front loader and started moving the large pile of gravel into place.  I took a couple more photographs and then went inside to have granola for breakfast.  I did not feel like making coffee so I had some Stash China Black tea with soy creamer.  While the water was heating I turned up the thermostats in the bus and the garage.

While I was chatting with Phil he mentioned that he gets all of the things he needs to maintain his Peterbuilt truck and other equipment from Southwest Brake on Haas Lake Road off of Grand River Avenue.  That is certainly closer than driving to W. W. Williams in Dearborn so I checked it out.  I talked to Jack but he could not tell me if they had the filters I needed without part numbers to cross reference.  While I was at it I Googled W. W. Williams and checked the distance to their Dearborn and Saginaw locations, which were 53 and 63 miles respectively.  I also checked the website for A & L Systems in Redford, which is where I get the replacement elements for the Racor fuel filter / water separators.  Before I went to any of these places, however, I checked my existing supply of filters as I try to keep these on hand.

The gravel train returned at 10:05 AM and unloaded two more trailer loads of material.  I checked my stock of filters and appeared to have an oil filter, a spin on fuel filter, and two filter elements for the Racor fuel filter / water separator, but I wasn’t sure.  I spent the rest of the morning checking websites and making phone calls to track down the ones that I needed.

W. W. Williams in Dearborn had the oil filter and secondary fuel filter based on our engine serial number.  That’s pretty cool, and I have confidence that these relatively inexpensive, but critical, parts are the right ones for our engine and the best quality available. They could not identify the spin on coolant filter or the air filter, however.  The air cleaner assembly is apparently determined by the vehicle manufacturer and the two coolant filters on our bus are threaded on to a manifold that is not part of the engine.  I let Chuck know that I might be going to W. W. Williams this afternoon and he asked me to pick up 8 gallons of Detroit Diesel PowerGuard 40 weight oil for him, which I agreed to do.

I had a box in the tub where the filters were stored for a NAPA 4070 Coolant Filter / Conditioner.  I found it on NAPA’s online store but it turns out that Brighton Ford is also a NAPA store so I ordered it from them for pickup tomorrow morning.  They did not have the 6623 (546623) air filter and could not get one for pickup tomorrow.  Their price was higher than I recalled paying for the last one, and I did not need it right away, so I did not order it.

My last call was to A & L Systems, a small company that carries specialty products for heavy trucks and construction equipment.  I got our T. F. Hudgins Spinner II centrifugal oil cleaner from them but they are also a Racor dealer so I get the Racor fuel filter / water separator products from them as well.  John helped me figure out what I already had, which included two replacement elements for the large water separator on the main engine that also serves as the primary fuel filter.  The NAPA 2276 turned out to be the air filter for the generator.  I did not ask about the filter / separator for the Aqua-Hot as I am not going to have Joe change it (I can do it myself when I have time).

At 12:30 PM I chatted briefly with Phil to let him know I was leaving.  He figured he would be done placing and compacting the stone before I got back.  I think he was also going to level out some of the sand he placed at the west end of the yard but I wasn’t sure about that.  He still needs to bring in topsoil to fill in and grade both sides of the driveway and the low areas at the west end of the yard, but he needs the west end to dry out first.

I drove to W. W. Williams in southeast Dearborn.  I bought two secondary fuel filters and two oil filters for me, and eight gallons of Detroit Diesel PowerGuard SAE 40 oil for Chuck.  I then drove home.  It was just under an hour each way plus my time there, so it was a big chunk out of my day, but I did not have a choice as I needed to have the filters on hand by the time Joe got here.

Phil was, in fact, gone when I got back around 3 PM.  It appeared that he had finished spreading the gravel out, leveled the parking area, and driven over it with his track loader to compact it.  The track loader leaves ruts from the tracks so I drove up and down the driveway many times with my car to compact them and even out the surface.  It was mostly for cosmetic purposes, but it looked better and that made me feel better.  I took the filters into the garage and then used one of our metal toothed rakes to even out a few remaining ridges in the gravel.  When I was done I texted Chuck that I had his oil.

Linda called a little before 4 PM while I was working with the rake to let me know she had left the bakery and was stopping at Meijer’s to pick up something for dinner.  I suggested we go out to dinner instead and she quickly agreed.  I figured she would be at least an hour getting home with Friday rush hour traffic so I took a shower and put on my going-out clothes.  Traffic was heavy, as I expected, and she was tired, so it was long, hard drive home for her, as I expected.  We spent over half an hour considering our limited restaurant options without coming to a decision when Linda got a text message from Diane about walking tomorrow morning.  Linda texted back to see if they wanted to have dinner at Camelia’s, the little Mexican place near their house.  It took a phone call to confirm and finalize the arrangements but we agreed to meet them there at 7:30 PM.

Camelia’s is a nice little Mexican restaurant and we had a good meal over good conversation with old (long-time) friends.  Linda and Diane had Margaritas while John and I had draft beers (Dos Equis, of course).  Linda and I split an order of vegetarian fajitas.  They were smoking hot, literally, when they came to the table and very tasty.  We lingered at the restaurant until 9:30 PM.  John and Diane invited us to their house, which is near the restaurant, for tea but we deferred as we were tired, had a half hour drive to get home, and had to be up at 7 AM to drive to South Lyon for breakfast with our fellow amateur radio operators.

We got home a little after 10 PM and went straight to bed.  We caught a few minutes of weather and then went to sleep.

 

2015/10/29 (R) A Setback

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Linda turned off her alarm and slept a few extra minutes before getting up at 6 AM.  I watched the weather on TV while she got ready to go to the bakery.  She left at 6:25, about 10 minutes later than usual.  I am always amazed at how quickly she can get showered, dressed, and out the door.

The temperature across our area was 37 degrees F, more or less, and the wind was blowing, which we could see just by looking at our trees.  The winds were forecast at 15 – 25 MPH out of the SW gusting to 40 and strengthening into the morning hours as they shifted out of the west in advance of a second cold front.

Last night I shut off the color laser printer, the two NAS units, and the Linux box as a precaution against losing power but left my laptop on since it runs on its own internal battery.  Even though all of our devices with hard disk drives are plugged into uninterruptible power supplies, and we have an auto-start whole house generator with an automatic transfer switch, I decided to leave all of these computing devices turned off until the wind subsided later today.  Morning showers were forecast as likely, with the possibility of a few snowflakes, but never materialized.  Overnight lows tonight are forecast in the mid-to-lower 30’s.  The bus is not winterized, and I have been working in it almost every day, so I have had the heat turned on in the bus for most of October.  I do, however, set the thermostats back to approximately 55 degrees F when I am done working for the day.

I got up, put on my robe, fed the cats, and made a half pot of coffee (Sweet Seattle Dreams).  While the coffee was brewing I heated up a banana-nut muffin, poured a small glass of orange-grapefruit juice, washed the last of the blueberries, and fixed a bowl of granola.  I was done with breakfast by 7:15, took my coffee to the living room, and enjoyed it by the warm glow of the fireplace as I worked on my iPad with Juniper on my lap and watched the night yield to the orange glow of sunrise.

New photo accessories from B&H Photo Video in New York, NY.

New photo accessories from B&H Photo Video in New York, NY., photographed with the new Sony a99v-DSLT camera.

My main focus today was the cockpit of the bus, specifically the floor/wall tile, but first I got dressed, turned up the heat in the bus and the garage, and then opened the boxes that arrived yesterday from B&H Photo.  I managed to do that at 8:30 AM; well ahead of my usual getting started time of 10 to 10:30 AM.  Most of the items were in one large box but two small items were in a separate box that must have been shipped from a different location.  The shipping boxes were in good shape and the B&H sealing tape was intact.  I removed everything from the shipping boxes and then checked them off on the packing slip.  Again, all of the individual product boxes and other packaging were undamaged.  I opened each item, carefully removing all of the pieces and manuals/paperwork.  I arranged everything on the dining room table and took a few photos to document what was there.

I had been pondering the damaged plywood under the driver’s seat ever since I removed the old vinyl tile.  The exposed plywood was screwed down in lots of places so I figured it was not the original floor of the bus.  I could also see many additional plywood layers in the holes for the seat mounting bolts.  Closer inspection revealed that the top layer of plywood in the driver’s area was in two pieces, fore and aft, and that only the aft piece was damaged.  Based on all of that information I decided to try removing the aft piece.

All of the screws came out except for two and they just spun in their holes so I figured the wood around them was bad.  It took a little prying but the piece popped loose.  I pushed the two power wires for the motorized seat back through a hole and the board was free.  What I found made my heart sink.

First look at the water damage in the aft portion of the driver’s floor area.

First look at the water damage in the aft portion of the driver’s floor area.

The underside of the plywood was much more damaged than the top side and it was moist.  The original bus floor was even worse.  Part of it was missing and I was able to crumble much of what was still there from the rear mounting holes back.  It was obvious that there had been considerable long-term exposure to water but it was not obvious how this had occurred and was, apparently, still occurring.  I texted Linda and Chuck with a photo of the damage and heard back from both of them fairly quickly.  This was clearly an unanticipated setback but long term it was better that I discovered it, and had a chance to fix it, rather than having covered it up.

Speaking of covering things up, the top layer of plywood must have already been damaged when we bought the coach in late 2009.  One of the things we had Creative Mobile Interiors (CMI) do to the coach between September 2009 and April 2010 was pull the carpet out of the entry and cockpit and replace it with the gray vinyl tile that I just removed.  The tile was under the swivel pedestal base of the driver’s seat so whoever installed the tile must have removed the base and must have seen the obvious signs of damage.  They should have stopped right there and let someone know and CMI should have contacted us to discuss a course of action.  The obvious course of action would have been to pull up the top layer of plywood and see what was going on.  We would not have been happy about it at the time as we were already spending more money on fixing things than we anticipated, but we could have discovered and fixed this six years ago.

The floor directly under the base of the seat is the ceiling of the first bay on the driver’s side of the bus.  It was very chilly outside so I put on my hooded sweatshirt and had a look from below.  I could see that the four threaded holes for the seat mounting bolts were part of two large steel angles running fore and aft that were welded to two square tubular steel cross members.  From that observation I decided on how to proceed.

My plan was to cut out the bad plywood by cutting between the centers of the holes.  That would leave half of each angle to support a new piece of filler plywood.  I got the Porter-Cable oscillating saw and started cutting out the really rotten wood aft of the rear seat mounting holes.  I was not prepared for what I found when I finally got that piece out.

The damaged bus sub-floor cut away. I could see through into the bay below the driver’s seat. The blue to the left is paper shop towels soaking up the water and rotted plywood in a small tray area.

The damaged bus sub-floor cut away. I could see through into the bay below the driver’s seat. The blue to the left is paper shop towels soaking up the water and rotted plywood in a small tray area.

What I found was water; not dampness, but standing water.  And debris, lots of mucky debris.  We had a lot rain starting late Tuesday evening, all through the day yesterday, and overnight into early this morning so I suspected that this water might be “fresh” as in recently arrived in this location.

The cross member aft of the rear pair of seat mounting holes is the top of the rear wall of the compartment under the driver’s seat.  All of the water was in the area aft of the cross member in what appeared to be a kind of tray about two inches deep below the level of the driver’s floor.  It was almost full of disintegrated plywood, and other stuff, and obviously did not have a natural drain.  I sent a second  text message to Linda and Chuck with a photo of the water/debris-filled pan aft of the rear mounting holes for the driver seat pedestal.  Some things you just have to share, and some things you just have to see to believe.

It took me a little longer to realize what was going on as my immediate concern was cleaning up the mess.  I put on a disposable glove to pick up all the detritus in the tray and put it in a trash bag.  The tray extended under the floor towards the outside of the coach so I reached back in there and just kept pulling out more and more wet junk.  At this point I started to analyze what was in front of me.

It was now obvious to me that the damage to the floor under the driver’s seat was caused by water filling this tray and coming in contact with the bottom of the plywood bus floor.  With nowhere for the water to drain it was able to stay in contact with the plywood for very long periods of time allowing it to penetrate the plies, soften them, and destroy the (water soluble) glue between them.

Clearly I needed to figure out where this water is coming from and stop it, but that was not going to happen today.  I did, however, go back outside and check the front electrical bay.  Sure enough, there was a little water on the floor of that compartment, so it was possible that the water might be coming from there somehow.  If so, I need to find the breach and seal it.  That, however, just pushes the problem down the road as I will still need to figure out how water is getting into the electrical bay in the first place and stop that.

The more I studied the way the bus was built the clearer it became that the original plywood bus floor extends under the left console into the first bay and separates the small upper compartment from the larger one below.  But this tray-like area was below the floor and farther back which meant it was under the front electrical bay and above the driver side steer tire.  I will have to check again but it appeared that this piece of plywood must be the floor of the electrical bay.

With a better, but still incomplete, understanding of the situation I resumed cutting out plywood.  My oscillating saw went through the rotten wood like a hot knife through butter, but did not cut the undamaged plywood very well.  I figured the blade was dull so I opened the Bosch replacement blade I had on hand only to discover that it did not fit my Porter-Cable tool.  Arrrgh.

It was probably a good time for a break anyway, so I went to Lowe’s to get a couple of extra blades.  I had good QSOs with Mike (W8XH) going to and from the store.  The weather is supposed to be very pleasant all next week, with afternoon highs in the upper 60’s, so we are going to try to find a day to work on my antennas and the small tower next to the house.  Bus or no bus, I also have to make time for our amateur radio hobby.  When I got home I made popcorn for lunch and then got back to work.  It’s a good thing I don’t have to fix most of my meals.

Linda called at 3:15 PM to see if she needed to come home and pick me up before going to Ann Arbor.  Given what I was dealing with I was tempted to say ‘yes’ but I knew that this was a situation where I needed to stay on task until it was fixed.  Brendan and Shawna both had work-related obligations this evening and asked Linda if she could watch Madeline for a while.  Rather than have her cut her work day short to come home she left the bakery and drove directly to Ann Arbor while I continued to work on repairing the floor.

I called Chuck to see if he had time to consult with me about all of this.  He called me back and we talked it through.  He thinks the entry point for the water could be the frame on the large piece of fixed glass just aft of the driver’s position.  I know we have a leak near the front of the large window assembly just aft of that one and the forward edge of the window panel may also be above the front electrical bay.

As soon as I was done talking with Chuck I removed the reading light on the vertical walnut chase by the driver’s left shoulder and then removed the nine screws that hold the cover in place and took it off.  I have known for a long time that there was a lot of stuff running through that chase but I had never removed the cover to look inside.  It is crammed full of AC and DC wires, coaxial cables, air lines, and residential air-conditioning refrigerant lines.  My immediate interest was evidence of water, and I did find the same stains that were similar to ones we have found elsewhere in the coach, but I did not see anything that looked or felt wet.

With the new blade for my oscillating saw I managed to cut out the piece of plywood between the four mounting holes but it wasn’t easy.  With that piece out, however, I could use my inspection mirror to see the underside of the floor and reach into the space below to determine distances to various structural members with my carpenter’s tape measure.

I still had more wood to cut out but by 4:15 PM I’d had enough for today.  I set the top layer of plywood back in place and covered all of the larger holes with painter’s tape in a feeble effort to keep critters and cold air out of the coach overnight.  I also used two pieces of felt and painter’s tape to seal the hole where the steering column goes through the floor.  I took a few more photos, which I had been doing all along today.  Tomorrow I think I will use the circular saw and/or the cutoff tool and try to make quicker work of this.

Before quitting for real I decided to unscrew the 3-sided bump out from the passenger side HVAC duct cover and measure the left desk base and pedestal to see what the correct distance needs to be.  The bump out protrudes about four inches but it should only be three inches.  As I suspected it is too big by the width of the wood, but I will take more careful measurements before I take it to Jarel to have it cut down.  I also discovered, however, that the filter material we used to cover the hole where the heater hoses previously came out of the HVAC duct was interfering with the fit of the duct cover, including the bump out.  While I was thinking about it I pulled out the two filler strips that go on either end of the plywood sofa seat.  Jarel is going to remake them longer and out of solid walnut.  Since we moved the seat board out almost five inches one side of each strip is now exposed and visible and the stained plywood edge is just not the look we want.

We had a heavy overcast most of the day and by 5 PM the light was fading.  I dialed back the thermostats, grabbed the camera and the house phone, locked up the bus and went inside.  I changed into my robe and then fixed dinner.  I did not want to spend a lot of time preparing and eating a meal by myself so I had a can of Amy’s Chili with Vegetables.  I added crackers, Smoked Tabasco Sauce, and shredded Daiya mozzarella vegan cheese.  Some strawberry preserves on crackers added a touch of sweetness and Stash Raspberry Pomegranate Green Tea added its own warmth.  Given a little more time I can make a better meal for myself but ever since Linda retired and took over preparing our whole-food plant-based (vegan) cuisine I am no longer as comfortable/confident in the kitchen as I once was.  This way of eating involves ingredients and techniques with which I am simply not familiar.

After dinner I sat on the living room couch in the same spot, and in the same robe, as I did at the beginning of the day and worked on this post.  I like the sense of things coming full circle, but mostly it is a comfortable place to sit and use my iPad.  Linda and I texted for a while after she had put Madeline to bed.  At 9:07 PM she indicated that she was leaving Ann Arbor and heading home.  She got home a little before 10 and we sat in the living room for a while and finally turned in at 11.  It had been a long day for both of us.

 

2015/10/27 (T) The Pilot’s Seat

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My morning started at 8 AM in its usual fashion.  I fed the cats, made coffee, started a load of laundry, made/ate breakfast (orange/grapefruit juice and granola with fresh blueberries), drank my coffee in the living room with the fireplace on and Jasper at my side, day-dreamed about high quality used Sony alpha lenses, and finally got to work on the bus a little after 10 AM.  Rain is coming tonight and forecast to stick around into Thursday so today would be a good day to do some more trimming, felling, and cutting up of dead trees.  The temperature this morning was still in the 40’s, however, and there is still much to be done in the bus.

A few days ago I installed a new AC outlet on the forward side of the cabinet behind the driver’s seat.  I wired it into the outlet on the aft side of the cabinet and then discovered that the original outlet was cracked.  I had also used an oversized cover plate on the new outlet and it interfered with the Corian cabinet top.  I finally got around to replacing the cracked outlet this morning.  I also switched the cover plates.  The regular size one still interfered slightly with the Corian top so I cut 1/8″ off of the top edge and added strips of felt on the three edges of the cabinet to raise the Corian top slightly and cushion it.  Everything fit nicely.  I turned the circuit breaker on and checked for power.  The outlets were good to go and I checked this mini-project off my (mental) project list.

I took a break and called the Escapees RV Club to register Linda and me as staff for the July 2016 Escapade.  I then called Josh at Coach Supply Direct regarding extra brackets for our MCD shades/brackets, the wiring of the passenger seat switch, and the correct orientation of the swivel bearings.  I learned that the flange, which wraps around the other piece on the inside of the ring, goes down.  (I had puzzled out that it should go the other way so I am glad I asked.)  When I was done with my phone calls I had a quick lunch of Sabra Roasted Red Pepper Hummus and Snyder sourdough pretzel nibblers.

My next task was unbolting the driver seat pedestal base from the floor.  The pedestal is secured by four large carriage bolts that go through holes at the four corners of the base plate and thread into nuts that I presume are welded into the floor structure.  The base had to be removed in order to remove the old vinyl floor tile which was installed under the base.  To get the old tile out I also had to remove a plastic cover around the steering linkage and a floor mounted bracket that retained the bottom if it.  Last, but not least, I had to unscrew the accelerator bracket from the floor by removing three small lag screws.  The accelerator is electrical, with a cable that runs through the floor, but other than limited access it was easy to detach.

Removing the old vinyl tile from the driver’s area of the cockpit was relatively straightforward.  It’s somewhat flexible and wasn’t glued down that tightly.  When Creative Mobile Interiors installed the tile they laid it out in a way that allowed the pieces to be trimmed in reasonable ways to fit around the steering column and brake pedal.  The brake pedal is mechanically linked to a complex multi-port air valve in the compartment under the floor and any finished floor has to be installed around it.

The plywood under the driver’s seat area was depressed directly under the base.  It seemed unlikely that this was the result of the base being bolted down.  It may indicate that this area also got wet like the area under the passenger side seat base.  I plan to install SurePly underlayment on the floor under the passenger seat but not the under the driver’s seat so I will either have to replace this piece or use floor leveling compound to fill the depressed area.  Replacing the plywood is probably the correct, but more involved, solution.

I started thinking about installing the new tile so I laid out all of the old tiles on the floor in the garage, kind of like putting a simple jigsaw puzzle back together.  I plan to use them as a pattern to cut the new tiles.  With a clear view of the whole driver’s area I became intrigued by the lower sidewall counsel next to the driver’s seat.  The more I looked at it the clearer it became that Royale Coach had cut the top off of a bumped out area, removed the upper three inches of the wall of the bump out, replaced the top piece, and tried to fill in the three inch gap in the side wall.  They had also cut out an access plate and then screwed it back in.  It eventually became obvious to me that they had done this to create horizontal space for the wide Villa driver’s seat that was in the coach when we bought it.  Had Royale Coach left the ISRI seat in place these modifications would not have been needed.  They were originally hidden under carpet but once the carpet was removed the really poor quality of the workmanship in this area was all too apparent.

I probably should have applied adhesive remover to the stairs and walls around the cockpit but it has to sit for 1 to 3 hours and the timing wasn’t right.  The weather was still decent and I needed to finish working on the trees at the west end of our property.  The adhesive remover can be left on for up the 24 hours so applying it at 5 PM with the intent of removing it the next morning might be ideal.  The weather forecast for overnight, through tomorrow, and into Thursday, however, is for rain and colder temperatures, so they will not be good mornings for working with the door of the bus open.

Around 3:30 PM I had a banana nut muffin and then called Phil at Precision Grading.  I got his voice mail and left him a message.  I was getting ready to use the chainsaw to cut down a small dead tree at the west end of the property when Linda texted that she was leaving the bakery.  A few minutes later Chuck called.  He had some carpet remnants for us and was nearby so he came over.  He could not stay long but took the time to look at what I was working on in the bus before he left.  It would still be awhile before Linda got home so I took the chainsaw to the west end of the yard, cut down the tree, de-limbed it, and cut it up into manageable size pieces.  I then cut up another tree of similar size that has been on the ground for a while and cut up some of the larger branches that I trimmed off the trees yesterday.

Linda got home while I was finishing the tree work and started fixing squash and a lentil/quinoa pilaf for dinner, both of which would take some time.  After cleaning the saw and putting it away I took one of the carriage boots from the bus driver’s seat and went to Lowe’s to see if I could find slightly longer replacements.  The old ones were somewhat rusted and some of the threads were in less than ideal condition.  The new Armstrong vinyl tiles are also a bit thicker than the old ones and I wanted to make sure I had bolts that were long enough to completely thread into the retained nuts.  It turned out that the bolts are metric, specifically M12-1.75×80.  Lowe’s had Grade 8 M12-1.75×90 bolts (10 mm longer than the 80s) so I bought four.  I also bought some thick M12 fender washers that were larger than the old ones.  While I was there I picked up a role of red electrical tape.

Dinner was excellent.  The squash was baked without butter (vegan) or brown sugar but was very tasty.  The pilaf had onions, garlic, and mixed greens and was very good.  We finished the Witch’s Brew wine from Leelanau Cellars that Linda used to poach the pears on Saturday.  The squash did not look that big, but neither of us was able to finish our half so we saved it for tomorrow’s lunch.

I checked e-mail after dinner and then we settled in to watch our Tuesday night TV programs.  We caught the weather report at 11 PM and then turned off the television and lights.  I turned down the brightness on my iPad display and worked for another 30 minutes before going to sleep.  I did not hear back from Phil this evening but I already knew he would not be here on Wednesday if the rain came as forecast as he had another job to work on that was better suited to working in rainy conditions than ours.

 

2015/10/26 (M) More Tree Trimming

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Linda was up early and off to the bakery.  I got up at 7:15, put on my robe, fed the cats, heated water for a cup of tea, and had a couple of vegan banana nut muffins.  I turned on the fireplace and worked on my iPad with Juniper curled up in my lap.  With Linda going to the bakery most days for the next few weeks this is how our days will start.

I have a lot of things to do, some of which require good weather.  Today looked to be just such a day so I wanted to take full advantage of it.  Keith called yesterday afternoon and we agreed that he would skip this week and mow the grass again on Monday, November 2nd.  That may be the final  cutting for this year and our hope is that most of the leaves will have fallen by then as Keith’s mower does a pretty good job of mulching them.

I left around 10 AM and went to the Tractor Supply Company store in Howell.  They sell Cub Cadet lawn tractors and someone recently suggested to me that they might carry parts specifically for CC machines.  They had a good selection of mower blades and drive belts but their fuel filters were generic and they did not sell starters, fuel pumps, or ignition coils.  I think the “Tractor Supply” name is a misnomer.  I bought a fuel filter but it turned out to be too big to fit in the clip that holds it on the side of the engine.

I got out one of our battery chargers, connected it to the battery on the lawn tractor, and let it sit for a while.  It has a 60A start boost setting and I tried using that to start the tractor.  It did not turn over fast enough but eventually gets a little fuel, putts, putts, putts for a few seconds, and stops.  There could be any number of things wrong such as any/all of: a gummed up carburetor, a bad fuel pump, or a bad starter motor.

My main focus today was trimming trees at the west end of the property.  Most (all) of them have branches that hang down low enough to bump your head when walking or knock you off a riding lawn mower if you are not paying attention.  Some of the branches were in Phil’s way the last time he was here and I said I would trim them before he returned as he will be placing and grading topsoil all through this area.  This will also make it possible for Keith to mow under these trees right up to the trunks, something he has not been able to do up to this point in time.

Except for a short break at 1 PM to have a quick lunch I worked until Linda texted me at 3:30 that she was leaving the bakery.  I was basically done at that point, finished picking up some small branches, and carried my tools back to the garage.  Linda got home at 4:30.  After catching up on our days she made a batch of granola.

I worked for a few minutes in the bus starting to loosen the last few pieces of old vinyl floor tile in the cockpit while Linda pulled dinner together.  We had the leftover dandelion greens risotto.  She used the rest of the greens in a sauté with onions, garlic hot pepper flakes, and a little EVOO.  We had an Asian Apple Pear for dessert; the first one of these either of us has ever had.  It was definitely a pear but a bit crisp, like an apple, and with some apple taste.  Monday night is TV night and we watched our usual shows before going to bed.

 

2015/10/25 (N) Bus Dinner

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It was 44 degrees outside when we got up this morning but cozy in the house.  We were out of Linda’s homemade granola so we had oatmeal for breakfast.  It’s a nice change of pace on occasion and was a hot, hardy start on a chilly day.  I made a pot of Sweet Seattle Dreams coffee and we had a quiet morning in the living room.  We talked about going to the Howell Farmers Market, as today is the last day of the 2015 outdoor season, but did not need anything and given the temperatures decided not to go.  I changed into my work clothes at 10:30, went out to the bus, and turned up the thermostats to raise the interior temperature.

My focus in the bus today was tasks that I could not do alone.  I got my 15/16ths closed-end ratcheting wrench and removed the main retaining nut from the driver’s seat and from the front passenger seat.  Each of these nuts threads over a vertical stud that is fixed to the pedestal/riser which is in turn bolted to the floor.  In between the top of the riser and the bottom of the 6-way power base is a ball-bearing swivel plate which is centered on the mounting stud.  To get to these nuts I had to move the seats forward using the motorized bases and reach in from behind but I had good access and the nuts were not hard to loosen and remove.  I bought this closed end ratcheting wrench specifically for removing/installing these seat mounting nuts and it was worth every penny I paid for it.

With the nuts removed I unplugged the 12V DC power supply wires to each seat.  Linda and I were then able to lift the seats off of the pedestals without too much difficulty, carry them back into the kitchen (of the bus), and lay them down on their backs on the floor, which was protected with blankets.

The reason for removing the seats was two-fold:

  1. We were going to hang wallpaper on the living room walls where they merged into the cockpit and needed better access to those areas, and
  2. I plan to tile the floor and walls in the cockpit and entry this coming week and needed these seats out of the way in order to be able to do that.

Our next task, preparatory to hanging wallpaper, was to remove the walnut cover (half box) from the front eight feet of the passenger side OTR HVAC duct and wiring chase.  We set it across the two seats we had just removed to get it out of the way.

Bruce marks a piece of wallpaper on the dining room table in the house before cutting it.

Bruce marks a piece of wallpaper on the dining room table in the house before cutting it.

When we were finally ready to start wallpapering we needed three relatively short pieces; two to finish the driver side and one to finish the passenger side, at least as far as we intended to go.  I made a sketch for the shape of each piece, took measurements, and added them to the sketches.  The wallpaper is 26.5″ wide on the roll and the longest piece we needed was only 24″.  I got the 3′ and 6′ rulers from the shop while Linda got the roll of wallpaper.  We used the dining room table in the house to measure, mark, and cut each piece.  Although relatively small these pieces took some additional, careful, attention because they had to fit over, under, and around cabinets and window trim.  To make the installation easier I trimmed away as much of the waste material as possible before hanging the piece.

Linda partially filled two 5-gallon buckets with water, added soap to one of them, and brought them out to the bus while I retrieved the paint tray and liner and the 6″ pasting brush.  We laid out all of the wallpaper tools, put a towel on the floor, and set the paint tray/liner on the towel.  I poured the amount of wallpaper paste I thought we would need into the tray and started with the piece of wallpaper at the right end of the built-in sofa (towards the front of the bus).

As we had done previously everywhere else in the bus I applied the paste to the wall rather than to the back of the wallpaper.  The wall behind the sofa had been primed but the small strip above/behind the end cabinet and around into the cockpit had not been, so I used more paste in the unprinted areas.  This first piece required a lot of trimming so it took a while to hang but it looked good when we were done.  As I got each piece installed, with Linda’s help, she rolled the seams and then washed off the excess paste with a large sponge using the soapy water followed by a second sponge with clean water.

We continued along that wall towards the front of the bus with the second piece.  It did not require as much trimming as the first piece and went in a little faster and easier.  I overlapped the thin strip above/behind the cabinet with the first piece and cut through both of them to create a clean, tight seam.  When we hung wallpaper in our house many years ago all of the seams were done by overlapping adjacent panels and cutting through both pieces.  The paper we are using in the bus, which is actually vinyl, is installed by butting the factory edges together.  This certainly simplifies installation, and speeds it up a bit, but it is harder to get a perfect seam.  Still, it was the right choice for our motorcoach as it is washable and scrubbable and goes very well with the interior.

On the passenger side of the coach I pasted up the last section of the living room wall and part of the small section of wall under the trim on the window next to the front passenger seat.  I ended up cutting off a small part of this piece and installing in separately as the trimming required was intricate and awkward to do.

After installing the two parts of this third piece we decided to go ahead and paper a small triangular section of wall above the bottom window trim.  I got a scrap of wallpaper from the house that was big enough to cover the right triangle shape and cut it approximately to size.  I pasted the wall, set the bottom edge flush to the sill, pressed the back edge into its vertical corner, and trimmed off the excess.  This little section of wall was capped by a piece of walnut that ran at an angle along the bottom edge of the glass.  I trimmed off the paper at the bottom edge of the wood trimmed and tucked the paper in under the walnut.

The reason we did not wallpaper all of the small wall section below the window is that part of the plywood wall is severely water damaged and a piece of it rotted and is missing.  There is no practical way to replace the plywood and the only practical way to repair this area is to panel over it.  We could use thin plywood and wallpaper it but we have enough of the 1/4″ walnut veneered plywood that we salvaged from the old refrigerator to panel this area.

We were done with the wallpapering by 2:30 PM.  Linda cleaned off most of the tools and then took the two buckets of water out of the bus to pour them out and clean them.  I took the paint tray/liner, pasting brush, and some of the tools to the laundry room and cleaned them.  There was very little paste left in the tray liner so I had estimated quite closely on the amount I needed for today’s work.

The swivel mechanisms for the two front seats consist of two rings separated by ball bearings and interlocked around the inside edge.  They have an ‘A’ side and a ‘B’ side and one of them was installed ‘A’ side up and the other ‘B’ side up.  They also have a large washer.  The driver seat was installed with the washer between the swivel bearing and the power base.  The passenger seat had the washer directly beneath the retaining nut inside the power base.  Given these differences I could not tell the correct orientation and order of assembly by casual inspection of the pieces involved.  It is possible that the swivel plates are, in fact, symmetrical and thus can go in either way, but one of the washers had to be in the wrong place.

My interest in all of this was motivated, in part, by the fact that both of these seats have always wobbled since we bought the coach.  The new seats are firmly attached to the power bases which seem tight but may have some play.  I was suspicious of the swivels, however, as the main source of the play.  I studied the design for a while and came to some tentative conclusions.

When the swivel plates are installed the ring on the bottom (that sits on the pedestal) is not going to move as the pedestal is bolted to the floor.  The top ring, which will be in contact with the power base, is going to move relative to the fixed bottom ring when the seat is tuned.  I decided that the larger ring, which wraps around the inside edge of the smaller ring, should go on the bottom.  With regards to the washer it seemed to me that it should go directly under the retaining nut, allowing the power base to swivel relative to the nut without loosening it.  Further, placing it between the swivel plates and the power base would potentially prevent the base from fully resting on the swivel plate and allow the whole seat to wobble.

I will examine all of this again more carefully when we are ready to reinstall the seats.  For now, I took the two swivel bearings to the garage to clean and lubricate them.  After wiping them off I sprayed them with WD-40, worked them around, and wiped them off again.  I then sprayed them with garage door lubricant, worked then around again, and wiped them off.  Finally, I worked Red Tack ‘grease’ into the ball bearing race, spun the rings to distribute it evenly, and the wiped the outer surfaces clean.  After cleaning the grease off of my hands I took the swivel plates back to the bus, wiped the pedestal plates clean, and set them back in place.

We quit working around 3 PM so Linda could cut my hair and beard.  I then shaved, showered, and got dressed for dinner.  Linda showered after me but was dressed and ready to go before I was.  We made plans yesterday to meet Bruce (W8RA) and Linda (K4YL) at Carrabba’s in Novi at 5 PM for dinner.  We left at 4:30 and arrived in Carrabba’s parking lot just after 5.

The parking lot was not full so we knew there would not be a wait for a table.  Bruce and Linda were already there and had opted for a booth.  The booths will seat six adults so they have more table space than a table for four. They also offer a bit more privacy for conversation in an otherwise not very private setting.

Carrabba’s had changed its menu since we were last here.  The one dish they had before, Tag Pic Pak (seriously), was no longer on the menu.  It was Linda’s favorite dish and one of only two that we could eat.  They had something with a different name that the waitress said was the same but it included chicken.  She said they could leave the chicken out but the price would still be $14.95.  The Tag Pik Pak was $10.95 as I recall.  We have come to resent paying for animal products that we don’t eat.  Linda ended up getting whole grain spaghetti with Pomodoro sauce and I got whole grain spaghetti with olive oil and garlic.  Linda said the sauce lacked flavor.  My dish was “off menu” and was unimpressive.  Our salads, dressed with vinegar and oil, were OK and the bread was very tasty.  Linda had a glass of wine and I had blackberry sangria.  Sangria is Spanish, not Italian, but it was good.  The meal overall was disappointing but we had a great time chatting with Bruce and Linda over dinner.  The manager stopped by to ask how our meal was (as a courtesy) and ended up having to talk to us for 20 minutes.

Back home Linda made vegan banana nut muffins.  The organic bananas we bought at Meijer’s two days ago must have been bruised because they were going bad very quickly.  Banana bread or muffins was a great way to salvage what we could.  While she made the muffins I went to my office, checked e-mail, and off-loaded the photos we took today.

At 8 PM I turned on the Yaesu FTM-400 ham radio and participated in the SLAARC Info Net.  When the net was over I came back upstairs, reviewed the items in my B&H Photo shopping cart, and placed the order.  I then spent a little time researching DC distribution panels on the DX Engineering website and doing a Google search for cantilevered table supports and legs.  We each had a muffin for dessert and went to bed at 10 PM.  I put on the Detroit PBS Create channel, turned down the volume, and worked on this post for a while before finally going to sleep.

 

2015/10/24 (S) Meghan and Chris

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We drove separately to our SLAARC breakfast in South Lyon as Linda had plans to walk with Diane at Kensington Metropark after breakfast.  We drove through some heavy rain after which I chatted a bit with Tom (W8TAF) and Mike (W8XH).  As always, we enjoyed the breakfast conversation with our fellow amateur radio operators.  Linda left at 9:15 and I lingered until 9:30 enjoying my last cup of coffee.  I paid our check and had just headed for home when Mike (W8XH) called me on the radio.  We had a good chat about my Hi-Q 6-80 mobile HF antenna and will try to find a time to test it using his newer VNWA.  Mike has learned a lot about how to use it in the last couple of years and is always willing to put that knowledge to use to help his fellow ham.  I would love to figure out a way to mount this antenna so we can take it with us this winter and use it, but I doubt that will happen.  We just have too much else that has to get done in the next month that is more important than this.

At home I pulled up the DX Engineering website on my iPad.  I found their Mix 31 snap-on ferrite chokes and put them in my cart.  If I can find a few other small things to buy the order will qualify for free shipping.  I suspect that will not be a problem.

Next I pulled up the Sony alpha app and researched the acronyms they use for various features of their cameras and lenses.  The model numbers for their A-mount lenses all begin with SAL (Sony “A” Lens) and their E-mount lenses all begin with SEL (Sony “E” Lens) so that helps sort those out right up front.  However, they make both 35mm full frame (36mm x 24mm) and APS-C (24mm x 16mm) lenses in both mounting systems.  The FF lenses can be used on APS-C bodies, such as our Sony a100, but the APS-C lenses, which always include the letters “DT” in the product name, cannot generally be used on FF bodies.  Our new Sony SLT-a99v DSLT camera body, however, can detect a DT lens and automatically limits the active portion of the sensor to an APS-C size area.

SAM stands for “Smooth Action Motor” and SSM stands for “SuperSonic wave Motor” both of which are used with certain lenses, especially large telephoto ones, that have their own internal focusing motor.  OSS stands for “Optical Steady Shot.”  Even though the alpha series cameras have image stabilization built into the body some Sony lenses also have image stabilization built into them.

One of the things I was trying to find out is which lenses have distance encoders so they will work with the ADI (Advanced Distance Integration) feature of the a99 body and compatible Sony flash units.  The lens specification table in the alpha app was not really clear on this point.  Some lenses were marked with a small circle for this feature and others with a dash.  If their nomenclature is consistent with other entries the dash means “no”.  Logically then the circle means “yes” but I did not pursue this further.  I will have to experiment with the 18-70mm APS-C format lens that came with the a100 and see if it supports ADI.

I opened the B&H Photo Video app and revisited the reviews on the Sony HVL-60m flash.  Although more expensive than the HVL-43m I added it to my cart.  Besides being more powerful it has an available external battery pack which I found and also put in the cart.  Finally, I added the Cotton Carrier dual camera harness to the cart.  I found my Minolta electric shutter releases and checked to see if they worked with the alpha 99.  They did!, so I did not need to order new ones.  B&H was closed for online order processing until 7:30 PM this evening so I did not submit the order right away.  The Cotton Carrier is on sale until the 26th so I will submit the order tomorrow while the sale price is still valid.

Linda got home at 12:30 PM and we had the last two vegan hotdogs for lunch.  She then started preparing dinner and I went to my office.  I did a load of laundry, dealt with e-mail, checked in with RVillage, and copied photos from both the Sony a100 and the Sony a99 to my computer.  I updated my BCM article spreadsheet and then moved article folders to the proper directories and deleted them from my BCM Dropbox folder.  I added 80 pounds of solar salt to the water softener and then brought the laundry upstairs and hung it up.  By 4:30 PM I was feeling very tired and took a short nap until Meghan and Chris showed up at 5 PM.

We showed them the driveway and bus projects and then went inside the house just as it started to sprinkle.  Everyone selected a beer and we were standing around the kitchen when a brief, but very intense, line of storms moved through our area with heavy rain and strong winds.

For dinner Linda made a salad of dark leafy greens with tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, and raisins dressed with a raspberry vinaigrette.  The main course was a Farro pilaf with dried cranberries, onions, garlic, broccoli leaves, and slivered almonds.  Yes, broccoli leaves.  The whole broccoli plant is edible but until recently only the flowerets were available in stores.  The side dish was Brussels sprouts cut in half and oven-roasted with salt, pepper, and a little olive oil.  Dessert was pears in wine.  She used the Witch’s Brew, a spiced red wine that was perfect for this dish and this time of year.  After poaching the pears she reduced the wine to a sauce and chilled everything in the refrigerator for hours.  (The pears were made ahead of time as was the Farro, with the main dish being finished just before serving.)

We sat in the living room with the fireplace on and chatted about houses, pets, travel, sports, and the upcoming holidays.  Meghan and Chris stayed until 8:30 PM and then headed home.  It was a nice visit during which both cats actually came out of hiding and allowed themselves to be petted, a rare treat in Jasper’s case.

We were both tired, partly the residual effect of our altered schedule on Wednesday and Thursday, so we finished clearing the table and went to bed.  The Detroit PBS Create channel was featuring vegetarian (including vegan) episodes of various cooking shows so we watched a few of those before turning off the TV and going to sleep.

 

2015/10/23 (F) Fetching Antique

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Linda was back on schedule this morning; up at 5:45 AM and off to the bakery at 6:15.  I got up around 7:30 AM, ground beans for a small pot of coffee and made breakfast.  Breakfast was oatmeal that I made myself from quick cook oats with raisins, dried cranberries, and pecans.  I forgot to add cinnamon and brown sugar but I did add a small amount of vegan butter, sugar, and non-dairy coffee creamer.  I like to cook my oatmeal until it is very thick and then loosen it up slightly with these additions.

After breakfast I checked the thermometers in the bus refrigerator and recorded the temperatures.  They seem to be all over the place and I am really starting to question the accuracy, and thus the usefulness, of these relatively inexpensive “consumer” devices.

Around 10 AM I was getting ready to drive to Canton when I got a call from Chuck.  The pair of motorized MCD duo shades had arrived the other day and he was having difficulty installing them.  I offered to stop by his shop after my errand and he said he would be there.

I called Clyde to make sure he would be home and then headed to Canton to pick up the antique Sun automotive distributor tester.  Clyde’s house was easy to find; an old residential area tucked away behind what is now a heavily developed commercial strip along Ford Road either side of I-275.  He helped me load the tester into my car and then we chatted for a while.  He had a very rare and beautifully restored (customized) 1948 two-door Pontiac boat tail sport coup; all black with two chrome strips, one down each side.  I am not a “car guy” but I appreciate a work of art when I see one.

I drove to Chuck’s shop in Novi to see how the windshield shade installation was progressing.  The pocket between the upper windshields and the cabinets was too narrow on the outside ends to allow the shades to tilt enough to engage the clip in that end and then swing up and latch on the other side.  After struggling with it for a while we went to lunch at the Panera nearby.

Back at his shop we pondered the installation problem until I finally had an insight.  The upper windshields slope away from the overhead cabinets, creating more horizontal space at lower heights.  I suggested that using a 2″x2″ board as a spacer might lower the mounting bracket just enough to allow it to tilt into place and have enough space to lock it in and release it if needed.  Chuck had a scrap piece of 2×2 that we used to see if my idea might work.  Chuck thought it would work so he locked up the shop and I headed for home while headed to The Home Depot.

Back home I checked the thermometers in the bus fridge.  The readings just did not make sense so I brought the LaCrosse base unit and remote into the house to get them away from the TempMinder components.  I researched methods and equipment for measuring temperature in freezers and refrigerators looking for something that would be more accurate and precise than our current technology but I did not find much.

The more accurate temperature measurement instruments that are available for under $100 all use wired probes rather than wireless remote sensors.  The best ones have the probes sealed in small glass bottles filled with a liquid such as alcohol, oil, or glycerin.  These remain liquid at normal freezer and refrigerator temperatures and surround the temperature probe with enough thermal mass to prevent it from responding too quickly to changes in air temperature such as occurs when the door is opened or the fridge compressor and fans are running.  In effect the probes more accurately reflect the temperature of things stored in the refrigerator rather than the instantaneous temperature of the air near the sensor.  The wires for the probes are typically relatively fine and do not prevent the door seals from closing completely, at least in the short term.  A permanent installation, however, seems ill-advised.

I was researching flash units and other accessories for our new Sony alpha 99 camera when Phil showed up mid-afternoon.  I set my research aside and went out to chat with him and watch what he was doing.  He had a full truck load of sand from another job that he dumped at the west end of the property and then moved it into some of the low spots, of which there are many.  He used his front loader to finish removing topsoil from the new driveway area by the third culvert and load it into his truck.  He filled the truck and dumped it at the west end of the property.  He then used his bulldozer to grade out the area of the driveway where he had just removed all of the topsoil.  Finally, he used the front loader to compact the sand driveway base.

Phil was going to come back on Saturday but he is at the point where he needs stone (21AA road gravel) that he will not be able to get it until Monday.  He is also finishing up other jobs that involve inspections and won’t be back here until at least Tuesday.  I need to trim the lower branches on some of the trees to get them out of his way, and out of Keith’s way when he mows the grass, so I will probably do that on Monday, leaving Saturday and Sunday to work on the bus while Linda is available to help.

Phil was still working when Linda got home so I left Phil to finish up and went inside.  I was tired and took a short nap while Linda fixed dinner.  She made a nice salad and risotto with celery and dandelion greens; a first for us, and very tasty.  We also did a taste test of the California Olive Ranch EVOO versus the Philippe Berio EVOO that Linda normally uses.  We used Italian bread that she brought home from the bakery.  I was able to detect a very subtle difference in the taste but had to not use the crust of the bread as the poppy seeds provided their own distinct taste.  The COR product was the top choice of a tasting panel at Cook’s Illustrated magazine and reasonably priced at just under $10 a bottle but I did not find the taste superior to the PB product.

After dinner I went to my office and checked e-mail.  I took care of some things related to the November 2015 issue of BCM.  We had confirmation e-mails from Molly Pinner for our 56th Escapade Volunteer assignments.  I also had one from Kate with links to camera harnesses at B&H Photo and a second with links to a recent interview on AM1700 with the organizer of the Pop-X art exhibit in Liberty Plaza and photos she has taken of guests at the station and musical groups at SxSW and other venues.

I talked briefly with Mike (W8XH) via the South Lyon 2m repeater using the Yaesu FTM-400 radio.  Our ham shack was working just fine so apparently there was no Info Net this past Sunday.  I called Butch to let him know I had the distributor tester and chatted with him about the refrigerator temperature monitoring problems I am having.  It was then off to bed, as we have to be up by 7 AM to get to our weekly ham radio breakfast in South Lyon.

 

2015/10/22 (R) Another Routine Exam

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Linda got up at 2:30 AM and started drinking the second half gallon of GoLightly at 3 AM.  She was done with it by 5 AM, as required, and got me up at 5:45 AM.  We were going to leave for the HFHS Columbus Center in Novi at 6:15 but actually left closer to 6:30.

The traffic inbound to the Detroit Metro Area from the northwest at that hour of the morning is heavy and the slowdowns are ridiculous in the sense that there is no apparent reason for them.  And yet, according to Linda, the traffic comes to a complete stop at approximately the same places every day.  Part of the problem seems to be that people do not know how to merge.  This might be a driving specific manifestation of the more general problems in or society of people thinking they should always come first and being unable/unwilling to compromise.  Another problem is that people speed and tailgate, which means they are frequently on their brakes, the implication being that the rest of us should somehow get out of their way.  Brake lights, in turn, seem to cause a chain reaction and far enough back in the chain traffic can come to a complete halt.  Whatever the causes, we do not drive the highways at rush hour if we do not have to.

We got to the Columbus Center with a few minutes to spare, got a nice parking spot, and went inside.  We found the colonoscopy clinic on the second floor and Linda checked in.  She was the first patient on the schedule for her doctor and did not have to wait very long before being taken in.  The Columbus Center has guest Wi-Fi for their customers and a small self-serve cafe so I went there and had some coffee while I researched flash units and lenses for the Sony SLT-a99v camera that I recently acquired.

Linda’s colonoscopy took less than an hour.  She had come out of the anesthesia, gotten the preliminary results (good), and been discharged by 9:15 AM.  She got dressed and we were on our way by 9:30.  She was hungry, of course, so we went to the Panera on Novi Road just south of Grand River Avenue and had coffee and bagels.  On the way home we stopped at the new Menard’s on Wixom Road just north of I-96.  They had the Eaton RV electrical outlet boxes for the same price as Lowe’s but had a better selection of conduit adapters.  I bought three pieces that together would allow me to connect the bottom of the RV outlet box to the conduit I already had.

We got home at 11 AM and it did not take long for Linda to go to bed.  While she slept I installed the RV outlet box on the post by the new driveway extension and level parking pad.  The first step was to cement a 1-1/2″ to 1-1/4″ reducer into a 2″ to 1-1/2″ reducer which I did in the garage.  The weather was on the cool side of perfect but a nice enough day for working outside with appropriate clothing.  The next step was to determine where to cut off the vertical piece of 2″ PVC conduit so the bottom of the outlet box would be 24″ above the ground.  The pair of reducers would take up about two inches so I marked the pipe at 22″.

The conduit was tight to a 4″x 4″ post and secured by two plastic conduit brackets.  I removed the upper bracket but could not use my Rigid tubing cutter to go completely around it so I used a hacksaw.  I could not just cut all the way through the pipe, however, because of the rope that was inside to be used later to pull wires through the conduit.  I cut a large “V” notch on the side opposite the post, like I would when felling a tree, and pulled the free end of the rope out through the opening.  The notch was horizontal on the bottom and came in at about 45 degrees from higher up.  With the rope out of the way, and secured so it could not fall into the pipe, I continued the horizontal cut and finished cutting through the conduit.

I loosened the clamp holding the bottom of the pipe so I could move the top of it far enough from the post to get some PVC cement most of the way around the riser.  I then pushed and twisted the 2-piece adapter assembly over the 2″ conduit.  Using a short level I plumbed the riser pipe while eyeing its relationship to the post.  Holding the upper clamp over the pipe I secured the clamp with two screws but did not tighten the clamp all the way down.

RV electrical outlet box on top of riser post with level on top.

RV electrical outlet box on top of riser post with level on top.

I set the outlet box on top of the adapters and dropped the third piece through the hole from the inside but did not cement it in.  I used the level to plumb the box, checking it visually in relationship to the post and pipe, and then marked the three mounting holes with a marking pen.  I removed the adapter collar and box and then center-punched and drilled holes for three pan head wood screws.  I put the box and collar back on/in the pipe and secured it to the post with three pan head wood screws.  I then installed the removable panel with the outlet mounted in it.  I coiled up the extra rope, closed the cover, and was done except for getting all of the tools and materials back into the garage.

I checked on the thermometers in the bus refrigerator and recorded the readings.  I then decided to add a duplex AC outlet in the cabinet behind the driver’s seat.  I found a deep plastic single gang remodeling box, a brown duplex outlet, a brown oversized cover plate, and a 30″ length of 14-2+G cable.  I used the box to outline the opening and then completed the lines with a small square.  I drilled out the four corners of the opening with a 1/2″ drill.  I then cut out the opening using a saber saw, finishing some of the inside corners with a hacksaw.  I made quite a bit of sawdust and wood chips so I vacuumed up the mess before continuing with the installation.

The new AC outlet box (blue) installed in the front of the A/V cabinet behind the driver’s chair.

The new AC outlet box (blue) installed in the front of the A/V cabinet behind the driver’s chair.

I turned off the breaker in the inverter subpanel for the driver side AC outlets circuit and verified that the existing outlet was not energized.  I removed the cover plate, unscrewed the duplex outlet, and pulled it out.  I opened a second access hole on top of the outlet box and then prepared the cable by removing about 4″ of the sheath and stripping about 3/4″ of insulation off of the wires.  I fed the cable through the hole and connected the wires to the appropriate screw terminals.  I turned the outlet over so the round ground pins were at the top rather than the bottom, screwed the outlet back into the box, and put the cover plate back on.  I had hoped to finish the whole job before dinner but dinner was ready so I went inside to eat.

For dinner Linda made a salad and Garbanzo beans with onions and Swiss chard lightly sautéed in olive oil.  It probably had a little garlic and might have had a few hot pepper flakes as Linda often uses these ingredients, but I don’t know for sure as I am wrote this post two days later.

After dinner I finished installing the new outlet.  When I put the oversized cover plate on it appeared to be close enough to the top edge of the cabinet that it would interfere with the Corian top.  No big deal, I would just swap it with the regular size plate on the original outlet.  When I went to take the first cover plate off I noticed that one of the outlets was cracked in half horizontally.  I will have to replace it but did not feel like getting into that this evening with the light and my energy fading.

It had been a long day, and I was admittedly tired and contemplating an earlier than usual bedtime, so I locked up the bus and went into the house for the evening.  We turned in at 9 PM and were asleep by 10.

 

2015/10/21 (W) Electrifying

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In spite of being out later than usual last night Linda was up early and off to the bakery at 6:15 AM.  I got up at the same time and made coffee so Linda could take some with her.  Neither of us slept well as we had larger meals, with richer food, and later at night than usual.  I wasn’t hungry but I like to start my day with coffee and it seems to help keep me regular.  TMI, perhaps, but there it is.  I had to get up anyway to prepare the garage so the electricians from Bratcher Electric could get to the areas they needed to work on.  But first I put a load of laundry in the washing machine.

We had a light but steady rain last night starting around midnight.  Phil was hoping for rain over the next few days as the sand base for the driveway will compact much better if the sand is moist.  We have a 70% chance of more rain during the day today and into the evening but by tomorrow a cold front is supposed to push through with much cooler and drier conditions behind it.  I hope the sand gets wet enough to stay moist until Saturday when Phil returns.

Jeremy and Pete from Bratcher Electric showed up at 9 AM.  I walked them through the job and then left them alone to work except for the occasional photograph and questions.  The questions were for my own understanding of the work.

I needed to mix the “GoLightly” prescription for Linda and get it in the refrigerator to chill.  The instructions said to use lukewarm drinking water.  I drew a large pot of our RO water, heated it on the stove, let it cool to what I judged to be lukewarm, added it to the jug, shook it well to mix, and put it in the fridge.  It should be plenty cold by the time she gets home this afternoon.

I was not going to get involved in my own construction projects while Jeremy and Pete were here.  At some point towards the end of their work they were going to have to turn off the whole house generator and disconnect the main service coming in from the utility pole so they could safely tie in the new disconnect that feeds the panel in the garage.  I went ahead and turned off the HP Color LaserJet printer, the two NAS units, and all of the computers except one that was installing updates, and I shut it down when it was done.

While the electricians worked I did some more photo product research.  Based on what I found on the Quantum Instruments, Inc. website they do not make anything that works with the Sony alpha camera bodies, including the SLT-a99v.  Thus it appears that there is no point in repairing (replacing) one or both of my Quantum Turbo battery packs.  I tested my Sunpak DX-8R ring flash the other day so I know I can trigger it but I do not know if I can control it.  My Metz 45CT-4 can operate off of AA batteries but I have not had time to test it with the a99.  Like the ring flash I expect that the a99 will be able to trigger it but I doubt it can control it through the lens (TTL).  If it can then I would have a reason to repair/replace at least one of my Quantum Turbo battery packs.

What all of this means in the short term is that I am going to have to buy a Sony “on-camera flash” designed specifically to work in an integrated way with the a99 body.  Further research revealed that there are only three choices: the HVL-60AM, the HVL-43M, and the HVL-20 (?)  I downloaded the manuals for the 60 and the 43 models and glanced at them, but they are as long as the manual for the camera body.  The 60 has an optional battery pack, but it just holds six AA batteries in addition to the four in the flash unit.  I looked at reviews on the B&H website and they were mixed for both the 60 and the 43.  The 60 is more powerful but is very large.  The 43 is smaller but less powerful and lacks the connector for an auxiliary battery pack.  The biggest knock on both were the mechanical attachment to the camera and an over temp feature that seems to erroneously shut the unit down after just a few quick flashes.

The small box upper left is the new 100 A main disconnect for the electrical panel in the garage. The large box upper right is the automatic transfer switch and the large box below it is the 200 A service entrance disconnect.

The small box upper left is the new 100 A main disconnect for the electrical panel in the garage. The large box upper right is the automatic transfer switch and the large box below it is the 200 A service entrance disconnect.

After the electricians were gone I heated up a can of Amy’s Red Lentil soup and had some hummus and pretzel nibblers.  I put another load of laundry in the washer and then went in search of an RV outlet box.

Lowe’s had an Eaton box with either a 30 A or 50 Amp single plug and no disconnect or circuit breaker.  The 50 A version is what I installed three years ago for the pull-through drive in front of the house.  What I had forgotten, apparently, was that the largest opening on the bottom of this box was smaller than 2″ but I could not determine if it was 1-1/4″ or 1-1/2″.  Lowe’s did not have the adapters I needed so I went to The Home Depot.  They did not seem to have what I needed either so I went to City Electric Supply.  CES had a better selection of adapters and also had RV panels with circuit breakers.  The panels were much more expensive so I did not buy one but I had them set up the pieces to adapt from 2″ conduit to 1-1/2″ pipe thread.  I then went back to Lowe’s and bought the 50 A outlet box.

Back at the house I spent some more time in the bus fiddling with the remote temperature sensors in the refrigerator but otherwise did not accomplish much.  Linda got home late in the afternoon but was not able to eat anything because of her colonoscopy tomorrow morning.  I was on my own for dinner but do not recall what I had as I am finishing this post a couple of days later.  Linda had to consume half of the GoLightly (1/2 gallon!) between 6 and 8 PM.  I worked in the garage for a while removing the knockouts from the bottom of the RV box.  That was when I confirmed that the hole was sized for 1-1/4″ conduit, not 1-1/2″.  I worked in my office at my computer for the rest of the evening.  We both went to bed before 10 PM as Linda had to get up at 3 AM and drink the other half gallon of GoLightly between then and 5 AM and I had to be up at 5:45 AM so I could get her to HFHS Columbus Center in Novi by 7:15 AM.  Sometimes the scheduling of medical procedures just leaves me shaking my head.

 

2015/10/20 (T) Pop-X Pickle

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It’s a good thing there are still five weeks until we depart for Florida; there are a lot of unfinished items that need to be taken care of on the bus and around the house/property before we go.

When Phil is here my attention tends to be on what he is doing.  He really knows his stuff, and is an excellent contractor to work with, but since he is not working from drawn plans there are inevitably questions and discussions about just exactly what it is I want and whether that is the best idea or even doable.

Phil had ordered a load of sandy soil for delivery first thing this morning and the “train” (double trailer) showed up not long after he did.  The sandy soil he wanted was not available so he got clean sand instead.  The train driver of the backed it over our third culvert and into the part of our yard were Phil wanted the material dumped.  That took a lot of skill and was impressive to watch.  I took a few photographs but video was really required to capture what was happening.  The Sony SLT-a99v does video in several different modes but I am just beginning to learn how to use it as a still camera and did not want to mess around with shooting video.  Besides, I am not a videographer; it’s a completely different way of thinking than being a still photographer.

Phil digs the trench for the electrical conduit from the SW corner of the garage to the far side of the driveway extension where he also dug a hole for the post that will support the RV outlet box.

Phil digs the trench for the electrical conduit from the SW corner of the garage to the far side of the driveway extension where he also dug a hole for the post that will support the RV outlet box.

With the material on site Phil was at the point where he needed to dig the trench for the RV electrical feed.  That meant I had to quickly make some final decisions.  I had an 8 foot 4″x4″ treated post and the PVC conduit pieces I needed to go from the post under the driveway to the other side but not enough to go all the way to the garage.  If I only put conduit under the driveway I could cap it, let Phil bury it, and then dig it up later and finish trenching from there to the garage.  I would not do that by hand, however, so it would mean having Phil come back next year just to dig this little trench.  Although I could have him dig the foundation hole for the ham radio tower at the same time that still did not make any sense to me.  Among other considerations I would have to fill the trench in by hand after I ran the cable.

Another option was to still use conduit just under the driveway but go ahead and run direct burial cable like we did two years ago for the pull-through driveway in front of the house.  I would need three (120VAC) or four (240/120VAC) large wires (or equivalent service entrance cable, each at least 80 feet long to get from the outlet box location in the post to the riser pipe on the garage and through the wall into a circuit breaker box.  Not only would I have to get the wire, which would be expensive, I did not have the outdoor outlet box or other parts I needed, so it would take me quite a while to go buy everything.  I also did not know exactly where/how I would feed the circuit.  (I had some ideas about that but they depended on just what the electricians do tomorrow.)

The most expeditious, and least expensive, option was to get more conduit and additional fittings and run the conduit all the way from the post to the southwest corner of the garage.  I left at 9:30 AM for Lowe’s as Phil started digging the trench and the hole for the post.

At Lowe’s I picked up five more 10′ pieces of 2″ PVC conduit, a 45 degree elbow, another 90 degree elbow, a right angle entry box, and a bag of 2″ conduit clamps.  By the time I got back to the house Phil had the post set in place and most of the trench dug.  I got all of the conduit pieces laid out on the ground and got the PVC cement, a hack saw, and the rope and weight.

Since Phil could not do anything else on the driveway until the conduit was installed he helped me install it (or vice-versa).  We joined 10′ sections to both ends of one of the 90 degree elbows and then dropped the weighted rope through it.  We then set the elbow and one of the straight sections in the trench with the elbow at the base of the post and the other straight section going straight up the post where I secured it with two clamps.  We proceeded to drop the weighted rope through additional straight sections of conduit, applied PVC cement to the ends, and put them together.  The conduit had to be inserted about 3″ into the mating piece and twisted as it went in.  I was glad Phil was there to help with this as I did not have the grip strength to do it by myself.  (I don’t have a lot of physical limitations but the arthritis in the base of my thumbs makes itself known in specific situations.)

When we got near the southwest corner of the garage we measured and cut a section of straight pipe to get us to a turn in the trench.  Because of a decorative grass plant the trench could not go directly to the desired location on the west side of the garage and had to go between the grass plant and a nearby small evergreen bush and then turned towards the garage.  We installed a 45 degree elbow to get around the corner and it ended up in the center of the trench.  When I said Phil knew what he was doing I meant it.  We again measured carefully and cut a short section of straight pipe to get us to a 90 degree elbow that would turn up and bring the conduit out of the trench and up the side of the garage.  I measured and cut the vertical riser section and we cemented it into the elbow.  We now had a complete run with conduit coming out of the trench vertically on both ends.

Phil back fills the trench for the electrical conduit from the corner of the garage to the RV electrical post.

Phil back fills the trench for the electrical conduit from the corner of the garage to the RV electrical post.

While Phil used his excavator to scoop and push dirt back into the trench and tamp it down I closed off both ends of the conduit.  At the garage end I removed the gasketed cover from the entry box, cut a short piece of 2″ conduit, and put it in the fitting hole on the back side.  Next I brought the weighted rope up through the bottom fitting hole of the box and used Gorilla tape to secure it inside the short back pipe.  I put a cap on the other end of the short back pipe and then put the entry box on top of the riser sideway.   I coiled up the extra rope, taped it inside the box, and put the gasketed cover back on.   I did not cement any of these connections.  When permanently installed the gasketed cover will point away from the wall and the hole in the back will have a longer piece of paper 2″ conduit cemented in and going through a hole into the wall of the garage.

At the post I used a Rigid brand pipe cutter, designed specifically for cutting large plastic pipe and conduit, to cut off the vertical riser at a convenient height above the top of the post.  I threaded the rope through a 3/8″ hole in the center of a 4″ disc of 3/4″ plywood and tied a big knot in it.  I modified the 2″ cap by drilling three adjacent holes lengthwise from the bottom up and cutting out material with a hacksaw to make a slot.  With the rope hanging over the edge of the conduit I lined up the slot in the cap with the rope and put the cap over the end of the conduit.

Since I decided to not have Phil build the area leading up to the planned barn location I wanted to pull all of the unneeded yellow plastic stakes out of the yard and put them away.  Re-staking the layout, however, is a time-consuming task so I put 10″ metal (iron) spikes at the locations of the front corners of the barn and the center point for the curved transition into the driveway.  I drove them flush with the soil so Keith would not hit them with his mower but we can find them later with a metal detector.

With the conduit installed and the trench filled and tamped, Phil filled started building the “curbs” for the driveway.  He had excavated parts of the driveway path and filled in other areas to create a base for the construction fabric and road gravel that was eight inches below the finish grade.  The construction fabric is 12’6″ wide and Phil likes to wrap it up on the sides about 8″ so when he staked out the driveway to be 11′ 2″ wide.  Phil used the sand to build up the areas along both sides of the driveway so that it looked like he had cut the driveway out, but that is not, in fact, what he had done.

My main bus project today was cleaning up the kitchen and living room, which mostly involved moving tools back to the garage.  It is a confined workspace and tends to get cluttered over time as we fetch tools for this and that.  I also wanted to be able to see the desk and its Corian countertop.

Two of the three sets of cushions in place on the new built-in custom walnut sofa/storage base.

Two of the three sets of cushions in place on the new built-in custom walnut sofa/storage base.

I called Butch in Quartzsite, AZ regarding the distributor tester.  He suggested that I send him an e-mail requesting Bill’s e-mail address and he would send it in his reply.  We then discussed the refrigerator and he suggested that I set the freezer to a colder setting, leave the fresh compartment setting as is, and monitor it for a while to see if it changes.  I did that and reset the min/max memory for both compartments.

Phil is not done with the French drain yet and spent part of the afternoon working on that instead of the driveway.  He made lots of trips back and forth with the front loader to take the topsoil he had removed to create the driveway, spread it out along on top of the pea gravel that fills the drain trench, and grade it off to blend with the undisturbed yard along either side of the drain.  Before he is all done with these two separate, but inter-related projects, he will have to bring in several truckloads of topsoil.  It will be used to fill low spots, especially at the west end of the property, and to cover everything that has been disturbed.  All of the topsoil will be finish graded to blend into the existing contours of the property and then seeded with grass seed.

The view from the living room looking towards the hallway. The new built-in custom walnut desk has its Corian countertop in place and the new refrigerator is in place next to the built-in custom pull-out pantry.

The view from the living room looking towards the hallway. The new built-in custom walnut desk has its Corian countertop in place and the new refrigerator is in place next to the built-in custom pull-out pantry.

I did not want to get involved in any complex or time-consuming projects so I hung out on the west half of our yard where Phil was working and took lots of pictures with the new camera.  Actually, I had been doing that all day trying to document the work as it progressed.  When I wasn’t taking photos I gathered up broken branches and larger deadfall and carried or dragged it to the brush pile on the west side of the line of large fir trees that separate the east and west halves of our five acres.

Linda called around 3:30 and asked me to see if her wallet was on her desk.  She thought she had it with her but could not find it.  She finally located it in her car where it had been since falling out of her case this morning.  She was on her way home by 3:50 PM.

I had a final chat with Phil, who won’t be back until Saturday, and then closed up the bus and the garage.  We were headed to Ann Arbor this evening and I needed to get cleaned up and put on nicer, more appropriate clothes for our evening out.  I used to wear Oxford shirts and nicer pants every day for work, and sometimes a sport coat and tie or even a suit.  These days it’s mostly polo shirts and blue jeans or sometimes REI ripstop nylon convertible cargo pants.  And this summer it has mostly been my work jeans and work shirts.

We left around 5:15 PM and were parked in Ann Arbor before 6 PM.  We agreed to meet Kate at the Lab Cafe which was just around the corner from the Thompson Street parking garage.  (This garage is behind the former Border’s book store #1 which also housed the company’s corporate headquarters.  Our daughter started with Border’s as a cashier at this store and within four years was a regional manager for their PaperChase product line before the company imploded and went bankrupt.)

Kate was sending Linda text message updates on her travel status and ETA so we ordered a couple of decaf coffees to go.  At $3.75 each they were pricier than we are used to paying for coffee but they were “hand-crafted” and the coffee was very good.  It took the barista at least 10 minutes to make our cups, grinding the beans just before brewing and then slowly pouring hot water through individual filter holders after pre-wetting the filters.  In the time it took to make our coffee I would have been on my second cup at Panera.

Linda (front) and Kate (behind) take in the interior of one of the Pop-X art exhibit sheds.

Linda (front) and Kate (behind) take in the interior of one of the Pop-X art exhibit sheds.

The music was too loud and really awful, a bad combination in our opinion, so we sat outside in spite of the occasional attempt to rain.  When Kate showed up we walked the short distance to Liberty Park to see the Pop-X Art Exhibit.  Organized by the Ann Arbor Art Center, all of the art was displayed in “sheds” designed by an architect, one artist per shed.  The sheds were approximately 10 feet square with steep pitched roofs.  The roofs, and the two sides they pitched down to, were covered in clear wavy plastic panels to let in a lot of natural light.  The back end was solid and the front had a pair of sliding “barn style” doors hung from tracks.  There was a solid floor that was elevated relative to ground level and provision for electrical power.  They were designed to be sold as potting sheds after the exhibit was removed at the end of the week.  Although the light was fading I was still able to get some decent shots with the new Sony a99v DSLT camera.  It has much greater light sensitivity than the Sony alpha 100 it is replacing as my primary camera and this was my first opportunity to take advantage of that since getting it.

Our main reason for coming to Ann Arbor was to have dinner with Kate but Pop-X was a nice bonus.  Ann Arbor has a LOT of dining options; hundreds I would guess just in the very walkable downtown area.  We decided to try the Grizzly Peak Brewing Company after Linda confirmed that they had some things on the menu we could eat.  It was a bit of a walk but the rain held off and it was an otherwise pleasant evening.

Linda had a dark Porter with definite chocolate tones and I had a hard cider with distinct cinnamon/vanilla tones.  It was also supposed to have roasted pecan notes but I did not detect that.  Kate had a red beer that was not hoppy and thought I might have liked it.  I had a sip of Linda’s Porter and it was very agreeable.  We both had small couscous and greens dinner salads, which were very nice, and both had wild mushroom burgers, which were excellent.  Linda said her chips were also very good and my French fries were tasty and generously portioned.  Kate had a burger and all of our meals came with pickles.  Kate does not care for pickles, which I knew, and does not care for vinegar in general, which I did not know, so Linda and I split her pickle rather than have it go to waste.  The waiter was very attentive and a good sport when I asked for a gallon of ketchup for my fries.  He brought two very full bottles for the table and a bottle of Frank’s hot sauce.  We tipped him accordingly.

At 9:30 PM we started a slow stroll back to the parking garage and chatted a while longer by our cars, which coincidentally were parked very close together.  It was 10:40 PM by the time we got home.  I fed the cats and we went straight to bed.  I was up later than I wanted to be trying to outline this post but I had not had much opportunity to work on it throughout the day.

 

2015/10/19 (M) Flashless

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Linda was up at 5:45 AM and out the door by 6:15.  I woke up but went back to sleep and finally got up at 7:30 and got dressed.  I turned on the furnace in the garage and turned up the thermostats in the bus and then had breakfast.  Rather than grind up a small quantity of coffee beans and get the coffee maker dirty I had a cup of tea.  I retrieved Butch’s e-mail and called Clyde in Canton to arrange pickup of the antique Sun distributor tester that Butch bought from him last night on Ebay.  I will drive down Friday to pick it up.

Phil showed up around 8:30 AM, unloaded his front loader, and got to work on the French drain.  I went out around 10 AM and talked to him briefly.  I then walked through the southwest corner of our property looking for a corner marker.  I did not find one but I did discover some REALLY big trees with REALLY BIG vines woven through them.  The base of the vines was as big as one of the trees, about 30″ in diameter.  I had never seen a vine root that size.

Back at the house I called John Palmer, of Palmer Energy Systems in Florida, to update him on my recent call to Magnum Energy technical support.  He said he would talk to Tom in the next couple of days and try to get me the connector (terminal block) I need.  We agreed I will call him back on Friday.

Next I called A-1 Upholstery in Elkhart, Indiana and talked to Terry.  I ordered a bolster cushion to fill in the space behind the sofa seat cushions and below the sofa back cushions.  It will be 6″ high x 4-3/4″ deep x 78″ long and will be one density of firm foam rather than a firm center layer with softer outer layers on top and bottom (like the seat cushions).  She will use a plain beige fabric as it will not be visible and so it does not have to match the other sofa cushions.  She said it would be ready in early November, which is plenty of time for us to drive down and get it.  The price was $125, which sounded like a fair price to me.

I got out my old Sunpak DX-8R ring flash and connected it to one of my Quantum high voltage battery packs but the battery pack appeared to be dead.  The two battery packs I have are almost unused but have apparently self-discharged and are now dead.  This also happened to my original battery packs.  The only flash equipment I have is set up to run off these packs but I am not inclined to replace them again as I do not use them enough to keep them charged which makes it hard to justify the cost as they are expensive.  Unfortunately that leaves me, for the moment, without any flash capability for the new Sony SLT-A99V DSLT camera.  Buggers.

I sent a TXT message to Joe to let him know that I did not see any indication of axle/hub seal leaks on the inside of the bus wheels.  I then called Bill in Mexico, Indiana and left him a message regarding the antique Sun distributor tester.  I will drive it at least as far as Elkhart, Indiana when I pick up the bolster from A-1 Upholstery and transfer it to Bill if he can meet me there.  There is also the possibility that I will drive it all the way to Bill’s place in Mexico, Indiana and stop by Jarel Beatty’s cabinetry shop in Logansport to have him cut down the connector on the passenger side HVAC duct cover.  If I do I will also pick up the drawings for the desk, sofa, and pull-out pantry as long as I am there.

Phil checks the grade of the new driveway extension. The laser level is set up by the utility pole.

Phil checks the grade of the new driveway extension. The laser level is set up by the utility pole.

I went back outside and walked through the layout of the driveway extension with Phil.  He then set up his laser level, took elevation measurements at various points, and made an annotated sketch.  He needed to think about the data and figure out what we could actually do given the change in grade from the existing concrete driveway to the road at the third culvert and the need to flatten out before reaching the culvert to tie in with where the barn will (might) eventually go.

Keith, from Kish Lawn Care, showed up around 11 AM to mow the grass.  I got out our leaf blower and let Phil know that I would be occupied for a little while with yard work.  I blew the leaves off of the rear decks, out from under/around various bushes, and off of the two boulder retaining walls into the yard where Keith could mulch them with his riding lawn mower.

About the time I was done blowing leaves Phil had a plan to discuss.  The elevation drops 7-1/2 feet from the concrete driveway (that goes from the street to the garage) to the street at the third culvert some 200 feet away.  Phil thought that our best bet was to slope down from the driveway over a distance of 40 feet, level out for 40 feet, and then gently slope down for 70 feet to the area in front of the future barn location.  That would leave another 50 feet with a slight drop to get to the street.  Some of the area down there will be close to level, however, so another RV could park down there.

We also discussed running power and agreed that I would buy about 40 feet of plastic conduit to get under the level area and headed towards the southwest corner of the garage.  We would need the conduit first thing tomorrow morning so I decided I would go to Lowe’s this evening.

I finally got to work in the bus around 1:30 PM.  I positioned the sofa seat, secured the piano hinge to the stationary backboard with four screws and then drilled all of the other screw holes using my smallest VIX bit.  I installed all of the little screws, dialed back the thermostats, and closed up the bus.  My time-on-task was short but it was a big item to check off of my “list.”

The Sunpak DX-8R ring flash can operate on four AA batteries so I put a set in and connected it to the hot shoe on top of the camera.  The camera was able to trigger the flash (more than once) but the shots were seriously overexposed.  I did not take the time to try and figure out if the flash can be controlled by the camera based on light coming through the lens.  If not it won’t be usable in most situations.

It was a mild day with blue skies and white puffy clouds so I took the new camera outside to capture some images of the work Phil is doing.  I shot a few frames of the more colorful trees in our yard while I was at it.

Linda texted me at 3:40 PM to let me know she was leaving the bakery and stopping at the store on the way home.  Phil continued to find rock, concrete, and brick debris as he dug out the driveway extension.  He used the 30″ toothed bucket on his excavator to sift out the larger pieces and pull them into a pile and then used his front loader to put all of it into his dump truck.  I got a metal tine rake and raked out some of the smaller stuff, not because it needed to be removed but because I needed to do something physical and wanted to smooth it out to get a better idea of how it will look when finished.

Phil started securing his equipment at 5 PM and we were wrapping up our last discussion of the project for the day when Linda got home at 5:30.  After unloading a few groceries she started fixing dinner.  Phil took off and I continued raking for another half hour until dinner was ready.  Linda served the rest of the polenta with puttanesca sauce and steamed sliced parsnips.  I thought we finished the Cupcake Black Forest wine last night but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that we still had enough for our meal this evening.

After dinner I went to The Home Depot looking for a fuel filter for our Cub Cadet lawn tractor.  THD sells Cub Cadet equipment but only had generic fuel filters so I did not buy one.  I went to Lowe’s, where we get a 5% discount on everything we buy! and bought the following:  four 10-foot pieces of 2″ PVC non-conductive conduit, a 90 degree elbow, a coupler, two end caps, 1″ and 1-1/4″ self-drilling screws, an 8′ long pressure treated 4×4′, and a clamp on saw guide.  The saw guide was an impulse purchase but I had a $10 Off card for a total purchase of $50 of more.  We have struggled with makeshift saw guides all summer and fall and I still have more careful cutting to do.  I already have a saw guide but could not find it and should have bought a new one at the beginning of the bus remodeling project.

Phil called the house while I was out so I called him back.  He had figured out that extending the driveway to within 10 feet of the front of the proposed bus barn would add 25% to the cost of the project.  That was more than I was prepared to spend at this time so we will defer that work until we build the barn, probably in summer 2017.  We watched Scorpion and NCIS Los Angeles and then went to bed.

 

2015-10-18 (N) Homage to FLLW  

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We got up at 8 AM.  I made Ethiopian Yirgacheffe half-caffe coffee while Linda prepared vegan pancakes.  We had talked yesterday about going to the Howell Farmers Market this morning but did not feel like going out in the early morning chill.  When we finished our coffee I turned the fireplace off and we got dressed to work.

Our focus in the bus today continued to be the built-in sofa.  We decided yesterday to move the plywood seat out from the wall 4-3/4″ from its original position.  The original stationary board on the back side of the piano hinge, which was only 2-3/4″ wide, was designed to place the front edge of the plywood seat (which has a 3/4″ walnut hardwood edge) 3/4″ beyond the cabinetry on both ends of the sofa with an overhang of just a few inches beyond the vertical front support board.  It was a nice design which tied in well with the cabinetry and kept the sofa from intruding into the living room aisle.  It resulted, however, in a seating depth of 16″ which turned out to be too short.  It was my homage to Frank Lloyd Wright: integrated, attractive, cantilevered, and uncomfortable.

As much as I like and admire FLLW’s work, I also like the Bauhaus maxim “form follows function.”  We needed a 3/4″ thick (11/16″ actually) board 7-1/2″ wide by 77-7/8″ long to locate the plywood seat in its new position.  The only wood we had on hand that we could cut this from in one piece was a 24″ X 96″ piece of walnut veneered plywood.  Since the board will not be visible I did not want to waste the walnut veneered plywood for this piece.

We also had a half sheet (4′ X 4′) of good plywood and after thinking about it for a while I decided to make the stationary board in two pieces.  The key was that I would use a third piece, cut from that same 4′ X 4′ sheet, as a splicing plate to join the other two pieces together.  But I was trying to accomplish more than that.  With the original design the pivot line of the piano hinge was over the top of the wiring chase, about 1-3/4″ back from the front edge.  That meant the back edge of the moveable seat board, when closed, was resting on the wiring chase for its entire length.  With the new stationary board the pivot line of the piano hinge is unsupported except for 5-3/4″ on each end.  The third piece of plywood would be at least a partial solution to that problem.

We worked in the garage with the overhead doors closed and the furnace on.  I cut two 7-1/2″ wide pieces off of the 4′ X 4′ sheet of plywood and then cut them to lengths of 38-7/8″ each so they would be just shy of 77-7/8″ when butted together end-to-end.  We took the two pieces to the bus and set them in place on top of the writing chase which sits atop the HVAC duct.  They just fit, which was nice.  I marked the underside along the edge of the wiring chase with a pencil.   We then took the pieces back to the shop.

I found a relatively flat portion of the garage floor and laid the two pieces end-to-end face down.  I set the third piece on top of the first two so that it was of equal length in both directions from the center and was at least 1/4″ forward from the line I had marked.  This third board extended beyond the front edge of the other two boards by at least two inches along its entire length of four feet.  With Linda holding it in place I inserted four self-drilling wood screws, two for each of the main boards, to hold the three pieces in position.

We placed the old 2-3/4″ wide board along the edge of the new boards and marked the locations of all of screw holes for the piano hinge.  I then center punched and drilled countersunk holes for lots of screws being careful to keep them in between the hinge holes.  I ran all of the screws in until the points just protruded from the other side.  I then applied Titebond II wood glue to the two main boards, positioned the third board using the screw tips as alignment guides, and ran all of the screws down pulling the pieces tightly together.  Linda got a paper shop towel wet and I used it to clean off the excess glue that oozed out from between the boards.

We took the new stationary backboard to the bus and set it in place upside down.  I marked the underside along the edge of wiring chase and then we flipped it end-for-end and set it in place right side up.  We pulled it forward so I could mark the locations of the existing screws securing the top of the wiring chase to the two long sides and then slid it back against the wall.  The line served as my guide for where to screw the backboard to the wiring chase.  (The chase has two long “1×2″ sides on edge with a 3/8″ thick plywood top that is about 4-1/2″ wide.  For maximum strength I needed to screw through the backboard into the 1x2s.  I also needed to avoid the space between the 1x2s as that is where all of the AC wiring is run.)

I center tapped a lot of locations and drilled them with a #6 countersink bit even though I was using #8 self-drilling outdoor screws.  The reason for the drilling step was to make sure I did not split any wood.  I screwed the backboard to the wiring chase with lots of 1-1/4″ #8 screws in two rows corresponding to the front and back side boards of the wiring chase.

The backboard pieces had oozed a small amount of additional glue so I used a piece of scrap aluminum sheet metal to scrap it out of the joint.  When the plywood seat is closed the back couple of inches will rest on the third piece of plywood so there cannot be any interference along there.  We set the moveable seat board in place and marked all of the hinge holes on the stationary backboard and then pulled it out gain.  We did not, however, attach the piano hinge to the stationary backboard as I wanted to let the glue cure for at least 24 hours.

By this point it was 1 PM so we stopped to have lunch which consisted of vegan hotdogs with mustard, onions, and relish and both red and green grapes.  We got these grapes at Meijer’s and their produce is usually good, but the green grapes had almost no taste.  Oh well; there will be days (and foods) like that.

After lunch we shifted our attention to the driveway extension project.  I gathered up a box of plastic and wood stakes, a mallet, a 100 foot tape measure, and the site plan for the bus barn and driveway.  It took us about three hours to stake out the location of the pull-through driveway, locate the front corners of the bus barn, and stake out the approach/apron for the barn.  Phil will be back early tomorrow morning and the first thing on the agenda is going over the layout and figuring out elevations for the two planned level pad areas.

At this point Linda went inside to work on dinner while I cleared the margin of the woods along the south side of the driveway extension.  I added bar/chain oil and a 40:1 fuel:oil mixture to the chain saw and got out the compound loppers, pruning saw, pole saw, and safety glasses.  I initially used the loppers to cut down small saplings, cut off small branches, and trim back bushes and vines.  I used the chain saw to cut down slightly larger trees, up to 3” in diameter at the base, and finish cutting out three bushes and some entwined vines.  I then used the pole saw to trim low overhanging branches.  I dragged all of the cuttings to a spot on the west side of the fir trees and used the chain saw to cut the larger trees into smaller pieces.

It was 6:30 PM by the time I was done and had the tools put away.  Dinner was almost ready when I got a call from Butch.  He was following up on how our refrigerator was performing and also needed my assistance with a possible Ebay purchase.  The item he was interested in was in Canton, Michigan about 45 minutes from our house, and the seller was not willing to ship it.  He wanted to know if it would fit in our Honda Element and if so, would I be willing to pick it up if he decided to buy it.  Of course I was willing to help as long as my car was able to handle the item.  While he was on the phone I measured the clearance for the rear hatch and gave him the dimensions.  As soon as we got off the phone he e-mailed me the link to the auction, which still had 85 minutes remaining.

For dinner Linda started with a really nice salad that had slivered almonds and pumpkin seeds and dressed it with Ken’s Sweet Vidalia Onion dressing.  The main course was an amazing soup.  She roasted a golden acorn squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, garlic, and shallots.  She then put these in a pot, added vegetable broth, and heated the mixture.  To finish the dish she used an immersion blender to purée everything into a smooth, thick, hearty, and delicious soup.  After working outside all afternoon on a chilly day it really hit the spot.  We finished the bottle of Cupcake Black Forest red wine we opened yesterday.

After dinner I retrieved Butch’s e-mail, checked out the item, and e-mailed him back.  I then spent a little time reading and replying to posts in various RVillage groups.  I called Butch back just before 8 PM and then turned on the Yaesu FTM-400 to join the SLAARC Info Net at 8 PM.  Unfortunately all I heard was noise.  I have not used the radio for the last few weeks so I don’t know if the net did not take place (unlikely but possible) or if a problem has developed with our system.  If the later, it is most likely the Morgan I.C.E. lightning arrestor (again).  Whatever the reason, I was not going to figure it out this evening.  I went to bed at 9 PM and wrote this post.  It took some time to write but if I do not record the details the same day they slip away quickly.

 

2015/10/17 (S) First Snow

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Last night we removed the dining table from the back of my car and put it on the bed in the bus.  We then removed the two rear seats and put them in the garage.  We wanted the back of the Honda Element empty when we got up this morning as we do not usually have time to spare in the morning before driving to South Lyon for breakfast with the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club.

It’s always good to see our fellow hams and today was no exception.  We arrived just before 8 AM and stayed for over an hour.  We left around 9:15 and drove to Chuck’s shop in Novi to get the box with the two remaining lower windshields for our bus.  Chuck was already there and helped us load the box into the car.  The box was sized to hold five windshields but only had two in it so it was light enough for us to move by hand.  I knew it would fit in my car as we had measured it on a previous visit and I had checked the dimensions against the car.  We set one end on the tailgate, lifted the other end, and slid it in.  We chatted for a while, and looked at a project Chuck is working in for new front window shades, before heading home.

Phil was not at our house when we got home but he had obviously been there.  All of the concrete, and many of the rocks and boulders, were gone from the driveway extension area so I presumed he had loaded them in his truck and hauled them away.

The Converted Coach Owners (CCO) Halloween Rally was going on this weekend and today was the main day for activities.  We had intended/hoped to go to the rally but the progress on our bus remodeling has slowed over the last couple of weeks for various reasons, all legitimate, and it was not in a condition to travel or be used.  It’s not that things are not getting done; they are, just not as fast as we would like or need them to.  Among other things I have not yet secured the refrigerator and pantry.  We thought about driving over in the car but it was over two hours one way and we needed to spend what time we had available working on the bus and could not justify being gone.  Thanksgiving does not look/feel that far away anymore.  It also seemed ill-advised to be gone while Phil is here digging up the yard.

My main bus focus for today was completing the installation of the built-in sofa.  We had already set the plywood seat board on a blanket on the bus kitchen floor so I had access to the inside of the base/storage box.  I did not need Linda’s assistance for a while so she worked on her counted cross-stitch project.  Before starting on the sofa, however, I took care of a few other minor things.

First I replaced the alkaline batteries in the TempMinder thermometers with Lithium ones.  I then reset the minimum and maximum temperatures for the two remote sensors.  Sensor #1 monitors the freezer and sensor #2 monitors the fresh food compartment of the bus refrigerator.  The directions for the TempMinder suggest using Lithium batteries if the remote sensors will be in cold environments.

Next I got a piece of scrap SurePly underlayment to see how it would fit in the rabbited wood trim on the lower outside wall of the hallway.  I inserted it fully into a corner and marked the edges with a pencil.  It is approximately 3/16″ thick and fit nicely without being too tight.  With a layer of veneer it should be just right.  When I removed it the depth of the rabbits appeared to be 5/16″ to 3/8″.  I think the underlayment will make a nice base for hardwood veneer.  I will cut the panels 1/2″ wider (22-1/2″) and 1/2″ longer (28″) than the 22″ X 27-1/2″ dimensions of the framed opening and allow them to “float” just like a frame and panel door.

My last mini-task was locating the 1/4″ walnut veneered plywood we removed from the old refrigerator and measuring it to see if we had pieces big enough to panel the damaged area on the wall by the co-pilot seat.  I was pleased to find that the remaining pieces are large enough for this application.

By now it was 12:30 PM and my phone reminded me that we had an RVillage Ambassadors webinar/meeting at 1 PM.  Linda heated up some Amy’s Vegetable Bean Soup and made hot lentil loaf sandwiches with ketchup.  Yum.  We got our first snow flurries of the 2015-16 winter season during lunch and they continued off and on through the afternoon.  We moved to Michigan in May 1976.  It snowed on October 15th that year and we had snow on the ground every day until early April 1977.  While that has not held up over the years as a “typical” southeast Michigan winter it was very different from what we grew up with in Missouri and formed our first and most lasting impression of our adopted state.

I retrieved the link for the Go To Meeting from the RVillage website and put it in my web browser.  1 PM came and went with no meeting.  The meeting notice said “Saturday, October 17 at 10 AM PST” but they had clarified that was actually 10 AM PDT, which is 1 PM EDT.  We decided that perhaps they really meant PST, which would be 2 PM our time.  We tried again an hour later, but no meeting ever commenced.

When I finally got to work in the bus on the sofa I removed six screws, three each from two angle brackets, and pulled the entire base assembly out from the wall, giving me complete access to the HVAC duct and wiring chase.  Much of the final installation of the sofa involved this duct.

Powered and manual sheet metal nibblers with the opening Bruce just cut in the OTR HVAC duct and the piece of sheet metal that was removed.

Powered and manual sheet metal nibblers with the opening Bruce just cut in the OTR HVAC duct and the piece of sheet metal that was removed.

The ends of the plywood seat rest on two boxes with open ends that also serve as plenums for air from the OTR HVAC system ducts.  I needed to cut out rectangular openings in the vertical face of the duct to allow air into the back end of these boxes.  I used a 1/2″ drill to create starter holes at the corners of the openings and then used a manual sheet metal nibbler and a drill-powered reciprocating nibbler, both of which I borrowed from Chuck a few weeks ago, to cut out the sheet metal.  The two tools work differently but they both worked well and I was glad I had both of them for this task.  The powered nibbler created a lot of small metal debris so I vacuumed the whole work area very thoroughly when I was done nibbling.

The right (forward) end of the duct also had an extra hole in it where I did not need or want one.  I removed an old sheet metal patch plate and cut a new one to cover the area I needed to close off.  I ended up having to pre-drill holes as I spun the heads off two of my cheap sheet metal screws.  I had a heck of a time getting the shafts out, but I got it done.  This was just one more example of why seemingly simple projects always take longer than they should.

Phil returned while I was working on the sofa and continued trenching in the French drain.  I stopped to chat with him briefly and Linda came out to let me know she was headed to the grocery store.  I then got back to my own tasks and let Phil get back to his.

The left support/plenum box with the circular register hole cut in the face plate.

The left support/plenum box with the circular register hole cut in the face plate.

The open fronts of the two plenum boxes are attached to the inside of the vertical front support, which is 3/4″ walnut veneered plywood.  To get the air out of the boxes and into the coach my design called for brown plastic 4″ round louvered diffusers.  They are considered “four inch” because the two inch long cylindrical pipe on the back will just fit through a 4″ diameter circular hole.  (A 4″ flexible duct, like dryer duct, will also just fit over the pipe.)  The visible part of the diffuser is actually 5-1/2″ in diameter.

The inside width of the plenum boxes is 4-1/4″ by design.  I needed to center a 4″ hole within that space so I had to locate the center point for my 4″ hole saw very accurately side-to-side.  I also wanted the hole centered vertically.  Using my small square I marked the vertical midpoint on the edge of the front plywood at each end.  I then measured in 2-13/16″ from the midpoint mark and used my spring-loaded center punch to mark the center of the hole.   [The 2-13/16″ dimension came from half the inside width, or 2-1/8″, plus the thickness of the plywood used to make the plenums, or 11/16″.]

A close up view of the nylon mesh screen material used to cover the opening in the HVAC duct to keep critters that might get into the duct from getting into the support/plenum box.

A close up view of the nylon mesh screen material used to cover the opening in the HVAC duct to keep critters that might get into the duct from getting into the support/plenum box.

I stood the boxes on their back ends so the front board was horizontal.  I straddled the front board with my legs to hold it and drilled starter holes with a #6 countersink bit.  I then drilled the 4″ holes with a 4″ hole saw using my 1/2″ Craftsman corded drill, being careful to have the pilot bit in the starter holes and drill perpendicular to the face of the plywood.  I have had this drill for 37 years.  It is very powerful and has several ways it can be gripped quite securely.  It is large, heavy, and lacks the convenience of a cordless drill but when I need to use a bit with a 1/2″ shaft and/or need the torque, this is still the drill for the job.  The hole saw created some sawdust so I vacuumed the whole area thoroughly when I was done drilling.

I was just finishing this work when Linda got back from the grocery store.  She put the groceries away and came out to see if I needed any assistance.  I already had the roll of plastic screen in the bus and she got the Gorilla Tape from the garage.  I cut pieces of the screen large enough to cover the two rectangular openings in the HVAC duct and used lengths of Gorilla Tape to secure them.  We then slid the base/storage assembly back into position, pushed it tight to the HVAC duct, and reattached it to the wood wire chase on top of the duct.  The two support boxes and the return air box have foam weather stripping on the back edges to seal against the duct.

We picked the plywood seat up off of the kitchen floor and set it back in place but did not secure it.  We left it out several inches from its original position and got a seat and back cushion from the bedroom.  We experimented with different spacings and finally agreed that we need to have the seat out 4-3/4″ farther than originally designed.  The current hinge board is 11/16″ plywood, 2-3/4″ wide by just under 78″ long.  This board is screwed to the top of the wiring chase and to one side of the 72″ piano hinge.  I will replace it with a piece that is 7-1/2″ wide by the same length.  I will also have to provide some additional support for the seat side of the piano hinge as in the original design had both sides of the hinge resting on top of the wiring chase on top of the HVAC duct.

The Tulip Tree behind our house in its full fall glory. This is the first photo to be posted in this blog taken with the new Sony a99v DSLT camera.

The Tulip Tree behind our house in its full fall glory. This is the first photo to be posted in this blog taken with the new Sony a99v DSLT camera.

That was the end of the interior bus work for today.  By the time we were done Phil had driven his front-loader onto his flat-bed trailer and secured it so it appeared he was wrapping up for the day.  I chatted with him about the project for 30 minutes before he left.  Earlier in the afternoon I had found my site plan drawings for the bus barn and agreed to stake out the driveway tomorrow so we could review it first thing Monday morning.

Linda had invited Meghan and Chris for brunch tomorrow but it was not a good weekend for them as the Michigan vs Michigan State football game was taking place in Ann Arbor.  Chris manages the Pizza House restaurant, and being away on football Saturday is not an option.  They will come next Sunday (31st) instead.

For dinner Linda made a nice salad of mixed greens with dried cranberries, sliced almonds, and diced onions dressed with raspberry vinaigrette.  The main course was pan-fried polenta with vegan puttanesca sauce.  It held its heat to the last bite and was very satisfying on a cold evening.  I opened a bottle of Cupcake Black Forest red wine.  We have had it before and, although drier than I prefer, it went well with the meal.

After dinner I got my flashlight and checked the bus for axle/hub seal leaks by looking under the bus from the opposite side to see the inside of the wheels.  I did not see anything to suggest a problem on any of the six positions and will text that information to Joe tomorrow for planning purposes as he would require a second day to work on the seals if that was needed.

We spent the last couple of hours of the day in the living room, with the fireplace turned on, reading, writing, and playing games while enjoying some red grapes for dessert.  Linda got a text from her sister-in-law, Mary, with a photo of her and Ron “standing on ‘the’ corner in Winslow, Arizona.”  Ron has been retired for many years but Mary only recently retired and they are on their first extended camping trip in their A-liner trailer and their first trip to the southwest U.S.

We went to bed around 10 PM.  Linda fell asleep quickly while I divided my attention between cooking shows on the Detroit PBS Create channel, a concert by Eric Clapton on PBS, and working on this post.

 

2015/10/16 (F) Desk Installation

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We were up at 8 AM, fed the cats, made coffee, and had breakfast.  Phil showed up around 8:30 AM, unloaded his front loader, dropped his flatbed trailer, and left in his dump truck.  I turned on the fireplace and we enjoyed our coffee while iPading until 10:15 AM.

Our first task today was to cut up several large limbs that I pulled out of the woods last evening to get them out of Phil’s way.  I cut them up with the chain saw and then we stacked them on the disposal pile for Phil to haul away.

Phil returned at 10:30 and moved his Caterpillar 305C excavator into the woods across the street by the culvert.  I went down to chat with him briefly to make sure I understood what he was going to work on.  There were a lot of small trees (3″ diameter), saplings, and bushes scattered around the site.  Some of them had been dead for years and some had just been knocked over by Phil.  I decided to work in that area with my chain saw cutting everything up into five foot lengths so Phil could use his front loader to get them into his dump truck.  I worked at this until 11:30 AM and then turned my attention to the bus.  Linda worked on her needlepoint while I cut wood.

Before getting started on construction tasks I took two pieces of filter material and set them on the wire shelf in the freezer compartment of the new refrigerator, one on top of the other.  I then set the two remote thermometer sensors on the filter material.  Butch had suggested the other night that I set the sensor on a sponge to get it off of the floor of the freezer compartment as it was likely responding to the automatic defroster heat strips when they come on.  I figured the filter material would work just as well and that placing the sensors on the shelf would definitely get them away from the floor.

Linda brought out a bag of ice from the house fridge and put it in the bus freezer.  She also filled several 1/2 gallon juice and milk cartons with water, put the caps on, and put them in the fresh food compartment.  The purpose of all of this was to add thermal mass to the compartments to cause the refrigerator to run less often and reduce large swings in temperature.

Inside the bus our first sub-project was installing the desk, which included putting the front passenger side HVAC duct cover in place even though it is not finished.  It took us quite a while to get everything positioned just right.  With Linda holding things in position I screwed the right pedestal to the wall, adjusted the position of the base and screwed the pedestal to the base.  We then repeated that process for the left pedestal and base.

Linda removes the backing from the double-sided tape on the back side of the air grate in the center connector/cover for the desk.

Linda removes the backing from the double-sided tape on the back side of the air grate in the center connector/cover for the desk.

At this point we had several things to do with, and under, the center connector/cover so I removed it and took it into the garage/shop.  We cut a piece of the decorative brass colored metal grate and secured it to the back of the air opening with small screws every few inches.  Next we cut a piece of black plastic mesh to fit over the grate.  We then cut pieces of 3M Extreme Mounting Tape (double-sided) and attached them to the back side of the grate in between the screws.  Linda peeled off the protective layer and we carefully placed the plastic mesh.  Using one of the scrap pieces of the protective layer I rolled the plastic into the take with our wallpaper seam roller.  Finally, we had a piece of filter material already cut to cover this air intake opening so we set that on top of the mesh, pressed it down to take advantage of the tape, and then secured it with Gorilla Tape on all four edges, rolling it with the seam roller to get good bonding.

A detailed view of one of the homebrewed tongue and groove alignment assemblies made from flat mending plates.

A detailed view of one of the homebrewed tongue and groove alignment assemblies made from flat mending plates.

Back in the coach I had to tie in the outlet strip to the 120VAC power feed.  I shut off the breaker for this circuit and checked with my tester to make sure it was not live.  The hot and neutral wires were accessible but the ground wires were back under the left pedestal where they were not easy to reach and manipulate.  It took a while, certainly longer than it should have, but I got the three ground wires tied together with a grounding clamp.  I connected the hot and neutral wires (three each) relatively easily using wire nuts.  I turned the circuit breaker back on and checked that the outlet strip had power between the correct terminals and did have power between any other terminal pairs.

I went to the garage to get a four foot long piece of 1″X1″ aluminum angle that I bought weeks ago to use as a support bracket for the upper rear edge of the center connector/cover.  I was going to cut off a 26″ long piece and then drill countersunk holes but I noticed a piece of 1/2″X1/2″ light gage angle that was about 26″ long and already had holes in it.  It was long enough to span the space between the pedestals and go under each one about an inch.  That was sufficient to position it correctly so Linda held it there while I secured it to the wall with four round (pan) head screws.  I then put the center connector/cover back in place.

Phil has cleared all of the organic debris from the area where the driveway extension and RV pad will be located.

Phil has cleared all of the organic debris from the area where the driveway extension and RV pad will be located.

Phil starts trenching and placing the plastic drain tile tubing for the French drain.

Phil starts trenching and placing the plastic drain tile tubing for the French drain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phil had long since left in his truck to dump all of the wood debris.  We had a light lunch of Amy’s Lentil Vegetable soup and fresh organic grapes.  While we were eating a group of three deer came to our back yard and eventually ended up eating apples that had fallen from our tree onto the ground.  These same deer, along with two others, were here yesterday at twilight and were very frisky.  We saw them later in our neighbor’s yard across the street.

Another view of Phil’s smaller excavator with the 12” bucket being used to trench the French drain in the southwest portion of our property.

Another view of Phil’s smaller excavator with the 12” bucket being used to trench the French drain in the southwest portion of our property.

Phil returned around 3 PM and started working on the French drain.  He replaced the 30″ wide toothed bucket with the 12″ one and started at the high end if the culvert on this side of the road.

The grand finale was the installation of the Corian desktop, which has been sitting on a blanket in the middle of the living area floor since Tuesday.  I drilled countersunk holes through the four corner plates in each desk pedestal from underneath.  I then inserted 1-1/4″ #8 self-drilling outdoor wood screws into each hole, again from underneath, until they just protruded above the corner blocks and then backed them off until the tips were just below the surface.  We set the desktop across the pedestals and pushed it as tight to the back and right end wall as we could.  Linda put her weight on it and I ran the screws home, pulling the top tight to the pedestals.  We reinstalled the four drawers in the right pedestal, finally getting them off the floor in the hallway where they have been since Tuesday.  We stepped back to admire the desk and agreed it was a thing of beauty and a joy to behold.  Linda also marveled, once again, at how much space she now has to work in the kitchen.

A wider shot showing the excavator and drain tile. The laser level is at the left edge of the frame. The main arm of the excavator (with the bucket attached) has a laser sensor on it that tells Phil exactly where the lower edge of the bucket is relative to the laser level.

A wider shot showing the excavator and drain tile. The laser level is at the left edge of the frame. The main arm of the excavator (with the bucket attached) has a laser sensor on it that tells Phil exactly where the lower edge of the bucket is relative to the laser level.

The “denouement” was mounting the outlet strip and adding felt pads to the two fake drawer fronts on the left pedestal and then adjusting the magnetic catches.  I originally had the outlet strip (temporarily) mounted to the wall between the two pedestals with two screws a few inches below the cord notch in the center of the back edge of the desktop.  Rather than put it back there I decided to mount it on the underside of the desktop just in front of the cord notch.

The underside location will work just as well as the wall mount location for regular 2- and 3-prong plugs but probably not as well for small AC adapters.  The added pluses of this location, however, are: 1) it will not interfere with cords coming through the notch, 2) it will be up out of the way of the UPS (uninterruptible power supply) that will sit on the shelf at the top of the center connector/cover, and 3) if liquids are accidentally spilled and run over through the notch they will not run into the outlet strip.  Besides, devices with an AC adapter will probably be plugged into the UPS so this was a better overall approach.

Our next task was to adjust the sofa seat until it was deep enough to be comfortable.  We slide the plywood seat out a couple of inches and then got the seat and back cushions (three each) from the house where they have been stored since September 21st.  We put the cushions in place and sat down.  We pulled the cushions out and pulled the seat board out until it was five inches farther out than originally designed and put the cushions back in.

The front edge of the seat cushions were out farther than I liked but we both agreed the sofa was now comfortable to sit on.  The distance from the bottom front edge of the back cushions to the front edge of the seat cushions was originally only 16 inches and that turned out to just be too short.  With the seat board moved out it will now be 21 inches.

In order for the sofa to work correctly, both as a sofa and as a bed, we will need a cushion that is 5″ wide by 6″ high, by ~76″ long to fill in the space behind the seat cushions and below the back cushions.  The height and foam makeup will be such that it is level with the tops of the seat cushions and have the same firmness and feel.  Would that I had designed the sofa for this depth to begin with and had the seat cushions made accordingly, but we were trying to open up the living room by not having the sofa protrude into the aisle any more than absolutely necessary.

Next up was reinstalling the wood trim in hallway.  We have an interesting plan for the lower half of the hallway but in case we do not get it finished before we leave for the winter we wanted the trim off the bed and back on the wall.

The lower outside hallway wall. There were originally three framed panels of vertical strip mirrors here. We will replace them with wood panels, probably in a lighter color to contrast with the walnut trim.

The lower outside hallway wall. There were originally three framed panels of vertical strip mirrors here. We will replace them with wood panels, probably in a lighter color to contrast with the walnut trim.

This trim originally framed three panels of vertical strip mirrors.  We were able to remove the mirrors as they were glued to wallpaper.  In the process we discovered that the left and right panels were the same width but the center panel was wider.  The trim consisted of six pieces of wood; a long upper and lower horizontal piece and four vertical pieces.  The six pieces were screwed to the lower half of the outer wall but not attached to each other.  The left and right vertical pieces were tight to adjacent woodwork, but the two intermediate pieces were free to be repositioned.

We reattached the upper horizontal piece first making sure the mounting screws went back in the same holes.  Next we pushed the lower horizontal piece into place but did not screw it to the wall.  We then attached the left and right verticals.  The horizontal distance between the inside edges of the left and right verticals was 75 inches.  The two intermediate verticals were each 4-1/2″ wide so the distance between verticals needed to be 22″ (75 minus 9 = 66 divided by 3 = 22).  We carefully positioned and secured the two intermediate verticals to achieve this spacing.

The trim boards all have rabbited edges on the back side.  I need to measure them carefully, but they are ~3/16″ deep by 3/8″ wide.  Our current plan is to use 3/16″ underlayment or other 3/16″ high quality plywood to make three panels that will fit within these rabbits with a little room to spare.  The panels will either have a hardwood face or we will cover them with a hardwood veneer of a wood that contrasts with the walnut trim.  We can get the veneer from Rockler once we decide what we want.

Linda spread out several towels on the new desktop and we moved tools and supplies from the A-V cabinet, behind the driver’s seat, to the new desk.  I then removed the Corian top of the A-V cabinet and put in on the bed.  We still have a small amount of wallpaper to install in the front of the living room and into the cockpit on the driver side, but it will not be easy to do.

These areas, such as the one behind the A-V cabinet, are small with limited access so most of my sanders cannot be used.  The only one that might work is the Porter-Cable oscillating tool but I did not get it out today.  I got some sanding sponges instead and tried those on the wall under the passenger side window trim next to the co-pilot seat.  When I sanded a dark area about 6″ long by 3″ wide the wood in the center crumbled and I ended up with a hole 3″ long by an inch and a half wide.  I could see one of the stainless steel structural members through the hole.  Given what was obviously water damage I was glad we bought a bus with welded stainless steel as the main structural material.

Based on what I could see, the walls in the bus appear to be 1/2″ plywood although I did not measure the thickness.  This area had obviously gotten very wet over a long period of time and some of the wood has rotted.  It is the only spot we have discovered that is this damaged and we immediately realized that we will not be able to wallpaper this area.  We will probably panel over it, similar to what we plan to do with the veneered panels in the hallway, but today was not the day to figure that out.

It was going on 5 PM and we decided we were done for the day.  I turned off all of the electric heaters, turned on the Aqua-Hot, turned on all three thermostats, and set the temperature to 20 degrees C.  The refrigerator was also indicating much colder freezer temperatures than it had been before I moved/isolated the remote sensors so I reset the freezer and fresh food controls to their “normal” center positions.  Tomorrow we will replace the alkaline batteries with the Lithium batteries we bought specifically for the TempMinder thermometer system, reset the min/max data, and monitor it for a few days.

I walked down to see what Phil was doing.  He was making good progress with the French drain but did not have enough of the plastic drain tile to finish it today.  He plans to work tomorrow and will have the additional tile he needs to finish the drain.  I left him to his work and took photos of the fall colors in our yard as I worked my way back to the house.

I spent an hour at my computer dealing with e-mail and transferring photos from the Sony a100 to my laptop.  Linda called me to dinner at 7 PM.  It was a simple meal of vegan Coney dogs with mustard, onion, and beans served open-faced on a whole wheat hotdog bun.  As a side dish Linda steamed Opo squash.  It was the first time either of us had this particular squash.  It was very mild with a hint of cucumber.  It is available all over the world and widely consumed as it is relatively inexpensive.  It was OK, but I thought it might work better as an ingredient rather than a stand-alone side dish.

I exchanged a couple of text messages with Chuck and confirmed that we would be at his shop tomorrow after breakfast to retrieve our two bus windshields.  The rest of the evening was spent in the living room by the fireplace reading and writing on our iPads before turning in and watching episodes of Rick Steeves’ Europe and Joseph Rezendo’s Travelscope on Detroit PBS (WTVS).

 

2015/10/15 (R) Camera Software Updates

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We had breakfast and coffee as usual but Linda had to leave at 9 AM for a 10 o’clock meeting at the bakery.  I had the fireplace on and hot coffee in my cup so I just stayed put in the living room in my warm winter robe.  I was finishing yesterday’s post when I got a call from Joe Cannarozzi looking for Chuck Spera’s phone number.  My N/A/P book is in my phone so after we were done talking I looked it up and texted it back to him.

After wrapping up yesterday’s blog post and starting today’s I spent a little time with the manual for the new Sony a99v DSLT camera and added a BC-VM10 battery charger to my B&H Photo cart.  Around 10:15 AM I made a follow up phone call to John Palmer at Palmer Energy Systems regarding the terminal block for the Magnum Energy Battery Monitor Kit (BMK).  John had not had a chance to talk to anyone from Magnum and indicated that his main contacts were away at a trade show.  He will still try to follow up with them but thought I might do just as well calling them directly.  They are in Washington State but are relocating to Minnesota as a result of being purchased by Sensata Technologies so I deferred the call until later today.  John said their phone and e-mail contact information had not changed yet, but he thought it might eventually as a result of the sale to Sensata and relocation to Minnesota.

There wasn’t much I could do with the desk in the bus without Linda’s help so I gathered up the laundry and started a load.  I then worked in my office for a while.  I was going to off-load photos from both the Sony a100 and Sony a99v but the Play Memories Home software indicated that updates were available and certain features (social media website interaction) required the newest version.  While I do not plan to interact with social media very much, photographically, I might want to at some point.  Besides, I like to have my software as up-to-date as possible.

The version that came on the CD-ROM was 1.03.something and the latest version from Sony’s website was 5.03.something, so my camera body was probably sitting at B&H Photo for quite a while.  The installer was a 15.6 MB download and program was a lot bigger than that.  It took over an hour to download, install, and then re-scan all of the images in the PICTURE folder, even though it just did this on Tuesday.  While I was waiting I got a solicitation from the Michigan VFW and agreed to send them a small donation of $10.

Rather than sit and stare at my computer screen I got the mail and then called Magnum Energy and asked for technical support.  I was caller number six in line to talk to someone so I selected the return call option from their menu and left my name.  Their system had already captured my phone number but had me confirm it.

One of the things I need to do with the new Sony a99v camera is figure out whether my old flash equipment can be used with it.  I found my Sunpak ring flash, my Metz CT-45, and my two Quantum Turbo gel cell battery packs.  The battery packs had their chargers connected so I set them up in the ham shack and plugged them in.

Linda called at 3 PM to let me know she was just leaving the bakery and planned to stop at Meijer’s.  That meant we would not be finishing the desk installation until tomorrow.  At that point I had not yet heard back from Magnum Energy; so much for being number six in line for a call back.

Debris piled where the new driveway extension will go. Phil’s truck and large excavator in the distance on the road at the discharge end of the culvert.

Debris piled where the new driveway extension will go. Phil’s truck and large excavator in the distance on the road at the discharge end of the culvert.

I was just about to return to my office when Phil Jarrell showed up at 3:10 PM.  I put on my outdoor work shoes and sweatshirt and went out to join him.  We looked at the discharge end of the culvert and agreed on a game plan.  He unloaded his excavator with the 30″ toothed bucket attached, drove it back into the woods well beyond the end of the metal culvert, turned it around, and brought it back towards the culvert.  Phil’s Caterpillar excavator is a powerful machine and he was able to dig the large root loose that was blocking the outlet of the culvert.  He then dug a trench back from there for about 20 feet, clearing out lots of other stuff as he went, and then stopped.

Linda got home at 4 PM after deciding not to stop at Meijer’s after all.  I walked back to the house and suggested she come see what Phil was doing.  She did and then went back inside to do some bakery-related work at her computer.

A closer view of Phil’s truck and excavator. He can move a lot of dirt, rock, and anything else he wants with this thing.

A closer view of Phil’s truck and excavator. He can move a lot of dirt, rock, and anything else he wants with this thing.

Phil used a shovel to clean out the end of the culvert, which was already filled with mud, so he could determine the elevation of the top and bottom of the discharge end of the culvert.  He then set up his laser level and started taking readings.  The 12″ diameter culvert drops 9 inches from the high end to the low end.  Phil said a 2″ drop would have been sufficient and the 9″ drop is actually a problem.  If it only dropped two inches most of the discharge end would be above grade.  But that is not the situation so we started working our way into the woods checking the elevation as we went.

The excavator positioned in the woods digging the large root out from in front of the discharge end of the culvert under the road.

The excavator positioned in the woods digging the large root out from in front of the discharge end of the culvert under the road.

By sighting down the center of the road in front of our house I determined roughly where the property line was.  Phil determined that if we continued trenching straight out from the culvert to the property line we would be out a total distance of about 50 feet and would be seven inches below the bottom of the inlet side of the culvert.  He also pointed out the soil he had already dug was very sandy and should drain well.  The fact that this whole wooded area had grass growing in it provided further evidence that it drained well.  A high clay soil would have held water and created an inhospitable environment for grass.

It was well past 5 PM and with the cloudy skies the light was fading so Phil did not want to go any farther today.  He also needed to get fuel in his front loader so it was ready to go first thing tomorrow.  He parked the excavator where it was out of the way and locked it before taking off.

 

 

The discharge end of the culvert with tree roots, dirt, and other debris cleared out of the way.

The discharge end of the culvert (dark hole center right) with tree roots, dirt, and other debris cleared out of the way.  The light gray horizonal stripe at the top of the screen is the road.

Linda made a wonderful pasta dish for dinner.  She used a whole wheat linguini and added it to a sauté of EVOO, garlic, onions, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, greens, and Brussels sprouts.  Yup, Brussels sprouts in pasta.  It was a first for me and it was very good.  Earlier in the week she had picked up a couple of bottles of Barefoot Moscato at the store, one white and the other red, so I opened the red.  It was sweet, of course, but we both liked it and thought it went well with the pasta which was all savory ingredients.

After dinner I returned to my office and finally connected the new Sony SLT-A99V camera to my computer and transferred images to my laptop as I had set out to do this morning.  After completing the transfer I formatted both cards, changed the file system to create daily date folders, and set the USB transfer mode to Mass Storage.  I registered the body, vertical grip, batteries, battery charger, and SD memory cards along with the old Sony alpha 100 body and lens (DSLR-A100K) and then created entries in our password program with all of the relevant details.

The packaging for the SD cards indicated that there were two free software programs available to support the cards so I went to the referenced website.  One program was Memory Card Data Recovery and the other was X-Pict Story.  The purpose of the data recovery program is self-evident.  X-Pict Story is used to create slide shows.

Both programs required proof that I had qualifying media in the form of model and serial numbers in order to even download them.  I got the packaging for one of the SDXC UHS-1 memory cards and looked it over very carefully but could find either piece of information.  I took the cards out of the camera but could not see any identifying information on them.  I got my magnifying lens hood and with that extreme magnification I was able to just make out a model number (SF-64UY) on one side and 8-digit serial number on the other.

As long as I was in front of my computer I checked into RVillage and went through a dozen and a half notifications and “liked” or commented on a few.  There was an Ambassadors virtual meeting today 2 PM PDT (5 PM EDT but we were busy.  There is another one on Saturday at 10 AM PDT (1 PM EDT) and we will try to arrange our day so we can participate.

I spent some more time researching harness systems for holding cameras in front of me.  I think the 2-camera harness from Cotton Carriers may be just what I am looking for.  I was having trouble navigating their website using my iPad2 so I will look at their products more closely on the computer tomorrow.  I will also investigate whether I can order their products through Amazon or be better off ordering directly from the company.

Linda stayed up reading past 11:30 PM which is unusual for her.  I finished this post just after midnight but will look it over again in the morning before e-mailing it to myself.  Lights out; big day tomorrow with lots to try and get done.

 

2015/10/13 (T) Desk Alignment

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I got up at 8 AM, put on my robe, made coffee, fed the cats, and refreshed their water fountain while Linda got dressed and washed blueberries to put in our granola.  We took our coffee to the living room where I turned on the fireplace and we were joined by our feline friends.  I put the finishing touches on yesterday’s post and e-mailed it to myself while Linda pulled up the latest video post from Dr. Michael Greger at NutritionFacts.org.

Linda left at 9:30 AM to meet Diane at Kensington Metropark for their weekly walk.  As this will probably be their last walk together until spring they planned to go to lunch afterwards.  While there was some work I could do by myself on the (permanent) installation of the desk there were other aspects of the job that would definitely require two people.  I needed to finish updating the roster for the FMCA Freethinkers chapter so I spent about 30 minutes reading the manual for the new Sony SLT-a99v camera and then got dressed and worked in my office for the rest of morning.

After a short lunch break I resumed working on the roster until Linda got home.  She and Diane had lunch at Baker’s in Milford as it is close to the Metropark parking lot where they meet.  We removed most of the things from the bus we were not currently using, many of which were stored in the sofa storage box.  We got the sofa seat off of the desk pedestals and set it back in place on the sofa base.

I wanted to use pieces of a 24″ X 30″ furnace filter to cover the various air inlets in the desk bases and the air outlets in the OTR HVAC duct.  The best way to hold the filter material in place appeared to be with some very strong tape.  We did not have any such tape on hand so Linda went to Lowe’s and bought a roll of Gorilla Tape while I cut pieces of filter material to fit the various openings.

The left desk base and passenger side OTR HVAC duct showing the pieces of furnace filter material used to seal these openings while permitting filtered airflow.

The left desk base and passenger side OTR HVAC duct showing the pieces of furnace filter material used to seal these openings while permitting filtered airflow.

We got all of the openings taped up but I still needed to fabricate two tongue and groove alignment devices between the pedestals and the center connector/cover.  I make these out of flat mending plates, one on the pedestal (tongue), and two on the connector/cover (groove).  The tongue is flat against the back side of the pedestal vertical board and protrudes about 1/2″ beyond the edge.  The groove is made from two plates, one stacked on top of the other, attached to the back side of the vertical connector/cover board.  The upper plate is just back from the edge of the board and the lower one (next to the wood) is offset from the edge a little more than 1/2”, just enough to create a space for the tongue.  The tongue and groove devices match two others lower down on the connector/cover.  All four of them are oriented vertically allowing the connector/cover to drop into place and force it to align with the matching pieces of the pedestals.  A pair of horizontal plates, one on each pedestal, provide a resting surface for the connector/cover that aligns it horizontally.

With the devices fabricated we were finally able to set the pedestals on the bases, drop the connector/cover in place, and align everything as if the entire desk was a single unit.  We then got the Corian desktop out of my car, brought it into the coach, and set it in place.  It will require some careful adjustments before we screw everything down but it basically fit properly and looked good.  Final positioning of the left pedestal and base, however, would require us to put the front HVAC duct cover in position.

We got the cover out of the library and into the bus for the first time since we brought it home from Jarel Beatty Cabinetry in Logansport, Indiana.  The length was perfect but the bump out where the heater hoses were originally going to loop through was too deep.    I suspect the mistake was in my design/drawings.  Jarel knew this piece was supposed to line up with the left pedestal and base but I no longer recall if he even had the desk pieces in his possession when he was building the cover.  At this point it didn’t matter anyway.  The misalignment is with the base and is not very visible.  Also, the bump out is screwed on to the main cover so it can eventually be removed and trimmed or replaced with one that has the correct dimensions.

Once we had the cover in place I realized that I also needed to fabricate and install alignment plates between the cover and the left pedestal.  I had not planned on this and did not have enough mending plates so we went to Lowe’s to buy more.  While we were there I bought another can of 40:1 premixed fuel and a bottle of bar and chain oil for the new Poulan Pro 18” chainsaw.  We stopped at Walmart to see if they stocked a particular folding chair made by Stakmore that we have seen online, but they did not.  We think it would work nicely as a desk chair, and go well with the interior materials and colors in our bus, but we would like to see one in the round before buying it.

Back home I worked on the alignment plates while Linda prepared dinner.  We had leftover lentil loaf, microwaved sweet potatoes, and a mix of steamed broccoli and Brussels sprouts.  She added a little water to the lentil loaf before reheating it to moisten it a bit.  We both like ketchup on our lentil loaf and I added some Pick-a-Poo sauce to mine.  All three dishes were served hot, which was comforting on a cool evening, and everything was very tasty including the cup of hot tea.

I returned to the bus after dinner and finished installing the mending plates on the HVAC duct cover.  I was not able to put it in place by myself, and there was no reason to have Linda come out and help at this hour, so I set the thermostats back and locked up the bus.

I called Butch and this time the call went through.  I updated him on the installation and testing of the fan-coil heat exchangers and asked him about the operation of our new refrigerator.  He suggested that I isolate the remote temperature sensors by using pieces of the furnace filter material to keep them from touching an objects or surfaces directly.  He and Fonda are wrapping up at the RV Park in Bouse and moving to Quartzsite on Thursday.  After we were done talking I worked on this post while we watched a few TV programs and then went to bed.

 

2015/10/10 (S) The New Camera

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Madeline was awake before 7 AM and coughing loose a bit of nasal/chest congestion.  A little after 7 Linda put on her robe and went to check on her.  I put my robe on too and Linda brought her to bed with us.  She lay quietly between us for a half hour, as dawn gradually illuminated the outside world, but never fell back asleep.  I needed to change position and offered to hold her on the sofa in the living room, which she accepted.  I turned on the fireplace and she climbed up in my lap and snuggled up.  Linda joined us a little while later and the three of us cuddled in the dancing light and warmth of the fire for another 20 minutes.  These are the special moments.

Madeline wanted to see the last part of the Curious George video we watched last night so Linda did video duty while I made a pot of coffee.  By the time the cartoon was done Madeline was awake enough to help make breakfast; vegan pancakes with blueberries incorporated into the batter.  Madeline helped mix all of the ingredients but Linda handled the cooking.  Madeline is only 34 months old after all, and not ready to work with sharp objects or heat.  We had hot real maple syrup and mixed berries on the side with orange juice (not from concentrate).

The whole morning was accomplished in our robes and pajamas and it felt like it was Sunday.  Madeline even got to see a half dozen very large wild turkeys in the street in front of our house.  The cats seem to know when Madeline is seated at the table and often emerge long enough to get a few kibbles and a drink of water.  Madeline got some berry stains on her pajamas so Linda got her undressed to get them out.  Madeline took that as an opportunity to enjoy the freedom of running around in her birthday suit for a few minutes.  You can get away with that when you are not yet three years old.

Everyone got dressed and then took up their stations in the living room.  Linda and Madeline played with Legos and played (with) the organ.  Ms. M and I then played “soccer,” throwing, catching, and kicking a large beach type ball and a small soccer type ball.  Madeline was still a little tired so Linda sat with her while she played an iPad game that involved taking care of a dog.

Yesterday the UPS truck delivered a package from B&H Photo in New York.  Inside was a Sony alpha 99 camera body, specifically an SLT-A99V, which included an infoLithium (Lithium ion) battery and charger, a camera strap, a hot shoe flash adapter, Getting Started instructions, a CD-ROM with software and manuals, and various pieces of paper that included warranties and special offers.  Also in the box was a vertical battery grip (VG-C99AM), five additional infoLithium batteries, a belt-mount battery holder, and two 64 GB SDXC memory cards.

Linda suggested that this was my Christmas and birthday present for the next five years, but the reality is that the old Sony alpha 100 body was an increasingly unsatisfactory camera and needed to be replaced.  I bought the a100 in 2007 or 2008 and have not spent hardly any money on photographic equipment since then.  The a99 has been around for a few years now but is still Sony’s top-of-the-line full-frame (36mm x 24mm) sensor, A-mount lens body, which means it is compatible with all of my old existing A-mount Minolta lenses.  As it turns out, I can also use A-mount lenses designed for smaller sensors, such as the lens that came with the a100.  The a99 detects the lens format and adjusts the use of the sensor accordingly.  The a100 zoom lens, however, was an inexpensive “kit” lens that turned out not to be very sharp, especially around the edges, so it is unlikely that I will ever use it with the a99.

At 24 MP (mega pixels) the a99v is not a state-of-the-art camera by comparison to the newest offerings from Canon and Nikon, or even Sony’s own E-mount product line, but it is double the pixel count of the 12 MP a100, and has many features that the a100 does not have, including much better auto-focus and much better sensitivity to low light.  The maximum effective ISO speed on the a100 is 1600 whereas the a99v is 25600 and can be set even higher if needed.  The a99v also includes a built-in GPS receiver that enables it to geotag images.  It includes a hot shoe flash adapter, as well as a PC flash connection, so I have some hope that I will be able to use my old flash equipment, something I have not been able to do with my much older Sony alpha 100.

The old a100 holds one Lithium ion battery and one Compact Flash card, 4 GB maximum.  It also has an adapter so it can use SD memory cards, but the maximum usable capacity is still 4 GB.  The a99v also holds one Lithium ion battery in the camera body but holds two additional batteries in the vertical grip accessory.  Not only will the vertical grip be handy for shooting in portrait orientation, the two additional batteries should allow for extended shooting time even when using flash.  The body also has two memory card slots both of which can accept SD memory cards up to 64 GB.  Slot one can also accept a Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo.

Digital cameras are sophisticated combinations of mechanical, optical, electronic, and computer technologies.  Compared to film cameras of yesteryear prosumer and professional cameras, both single lens reflex (SLR) and single lens translucent (SLT) like the a99v, are feature-rich devices designed to give photographers complete control of the images that are produced.  That also means they are complicated devices with significant learning curves.  Throw in the fact that cameras like the a99v can shoot HD movies with sound and it takes considerable practice over an extended period of time to really master their use.  But I am retired, and photography is one of my three hobbies, so I have, and will take, the time to learn to use this new camera competently.  Competence in this case means the ability to quickly and intuitively select modes and adjust settings to allow me to capture (create) the images I envision.

Brendan called to see how Madeline was doing and arranged to pick up her up later in the afternoon, after the 3:30 PM start time of the U of M football game.  Unless you are attending the game you do not want to drive in, or anywhere near, Ann Arbor for the four or five hours preceding the opening kickoff.  It’s not a great place to be after the game ends either, especially as regards getting in to a restaurant or pub, unless you specifically want to be part of the pre/post game experience.

Madeline wanted to go outside and swing so we put on our shoes and got her into a light jacket.  She is just learning to pump her feet.  She understands the concept but does not yet having the timing.  When she was done with the swing we collected branches and twigs that were lying in the yard and added them to the burn pile.  We then walked around part of the back yard but her shoes got wet from the grass and she wanted to go back inside.

I checked our apple tree and was surprised to see damage that looked similar to that caused by the Emerald Ash Borer.  It’s possible that deer have been chewing at the bark but whatever the cause there are some very large limbs that are now dead.  What concerned me is that I do not recall them being in that condition the last time I looked.  The tree is very old, very large, and has not been properly pruned for a very long time.  We may end up losing it in the end, which would be a shame, but the time to prune is late winter to very early spring and we have not been here at that time of year the last two seasons.  I have my eye on a portion of the western 2/3rds of our yard, however, as prime real estate for some new trees, including some fruit trees.  But not this year, and probably not next year either.

Madeline was hungry after her backyard adventure.  She had soy yogurt and pistachios for lunch and found the pistachios very much to her liking.  She and Linda watched a Daniel Stripped Tiger cartoon and then she laid down for a nap at 1:30 PM.  I snuck off to my office to check e-mail, install the software that came with my new camera, and start downloading updates for the Linux box.  Completing the installation of the Sony Play Memories Home software required the camera to be connected to the computer, so I installed the two SDXC memory cards and one of the fully charged batteries.  On first power up I had to set the date and time.  I then connected it to the computer with the provided USB cable and completed the software installation.

One of the things the PMH software does is go through the PICTURES folder and catalog all of the images it finds by date and makes them accessible through a calendar view.  The camera also came with the Image Data Converter program for dealing with RAW format image files and Remote Control software that allows the camera to be tethered to a computer and controlled from there.  I will eventually have to figure out if/how Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop deal with Sony RAW files.

I quit working at 3 PM, Linda got Madeline up at 3:30, and Brendan arrived at 3:35.  Madeline had been sleeping pretty soundly and did not wake up easily.  She was initially upset that her mom did not come with her dad to get her and got herself worked up enough that she took quite a while to settle down.  To make matters worse she really wanted to stay another night at our house and was resisting going home even though she wanted to see her mommy.  When you are not yet 3 years of age it’s hard to understand that you cannot have mutually contradictory things at the same time, although I suppose in this case that had Shawna come to the house and stayed overnight Madeline could have had everything she wanted.

Linda got Madeline’s toddler bed deflated and packed for travel and rolled up her sleeping bag.  She and Brendan then gathered up all of the things that had to go back to Ann Arbor.  Madeline does not travel light; the clothes, books, toys, stuffed animals, and other accoutrements filled four carry bags in addition to the bed and sleeping bag.

After Brendan and Madeline left I checked my e-mail and replied to several having to do with my duties as secretary of the FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter.  We will be holding our annual meeting by teleconference in the next three to six weeks and I have to update the roster and prepare financial statements.

I transferred the complete User’s Manual for the Sony a99v from the CD-ROM to my laptop, backed it up to the NAS units, and then e-mailed it to my iPad.  I downloaded it to my iPad and spent much of the evening reading it.  We headed off to bed a little after 9 PM.  I tuned into the Create channel on Detroit PBS (WTVS) and watched a series of back-to-back episodes of Cooking with Nick Stellino while I worked on this post.  Nick’s show is charming and he is the poster boy for unapologetic high self-esteem but with no hint of arrogance.  His love of food and passion for cooking is infectious and I enjoy his show.

 

2015/10/09 (F) All Charged Up

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We finished the current batch of granola for breakfast and had just finished our meal when Chris, from Bratcher Electric, showed up at 8:45 AM to service the whole house generator.  He let me watch and explained the various steps in the process.  The trickiest part appeared to be replacing the spark plug on the back side of the engine.  Everything else was fairly accessible.  There is a 1/4 turn valve to drain the oil and a rubber tube to get it out to a collection vessel.

Chris had what looked like a small gas can but it was painted blue.  It had a clear plastic tube attached to what would normally be the air vent.  The tube was sized to just fit inside the oil drain hose.  A vacuum pump was threaded on to opening where the pour spout would normally go.  A few pumps of the handle and the device sucked the oil right out of the engine and contained it so he could transport it easily and cleanly.  It was a very clever device, and obviously very handy for someone who does several generator maintenance procedures every day.

He gapped the spark plugs at 0.028″, checked the air filter (it was fine), replaced the oil filter, noting the date on the filter with a permanent marker, and put ~2-1/3 quarts of 5W-30 synthetic oil back in the engine.  He cautioned me to only use the specified filter and pure synthetic oil.  The engine runs hot under load and regular oil can lead to problems.  He checked all of the settings and changed the weekly self-test to run at full speed for the entire time.  He prefers that setting as it gets the engine up to normal operating temperature and helps burn off any moisture in the oil.  He started the unit manually, let it run for a while, and then shut it down and put in back in AUTO mode.

Linda prepared the dry ingredients for her vegan chocolate cupcakes and then put together a grocery list.  She left to go to Meijer’s while Chris was still working.  He finished up around 10:15.  I worked on the bus, using split plastic wire loom to protect the wires that power the fans on the heat exchangers.  I then worked on reconnecting the wires from the front bay electric heater to the supply wires.

A close up view of the fill/bleeder valve assembly for the heat exchangers in the desk bases.

A close up view of the fill/bleeder valve assembly for the heat exchangers in the desk bases.

The supply wires run inside the HVAC duct.  They originally came out of the duct and went through a hole in the floor into the OTR air-conditioning bay and then through the partition wall into the front bay.  I had to cut the cable and pull it through the floor from underneath so I could install the new floor tile.  I could clearly see where the OTR HVAC supply duct came into the distribution duct but when I tried drilling from below I seemed to hit metal.   The bottom of the duct was clearly plywood so I drilled from above with a 1/2″ spade bit.  I got through most of the plywood but again seem to hit metal.  I knew there wasn’t anything in that location, like wires, pipes, or air lines, so I switched to a 1/2″ twist drill and finished the hole.

I dropped a screwdriver through the hole so I could locate it from below.  I then pushed the electrical cable from the heater up through the hole and secured it to a fastener on the forward wall with a cable tie.  Linda got back at this point so I helped get the groceries into the house.  She then mixed a new batch if granola and put it in the oven to bake.  I gathered up my electrical tools, uncapped the feed wires, checked them with a volt meter to make sure they were not energized, connected the feed wires to the load wires, and tucked them back inside the duct.

We had a choice as to what to work on next—fill the heat exchangers and hoses with antifreeze or hang the wallpaper in the hallway—so we had lunch.  Summer has passed, but tofu hotdogs with mustard, onion, and relish, along with some red grapes, was still a tasty lunch.

When we got back to work in the coach we decided to hang the wallpaper.  The pieces were already cut and laid out on the bed.  Hanging them not only got them off the bed, it would allow us to get the wood trim off the bed as well and back on the lower wall.  But not today.  The wallpaper adhesive needs to cure for 24 hours before we work around it and does not achieve its full cure for 5 to 7 days.  We have one piece of wallpaper to hang behind the forward end of the sofa but the wall prep is not finished in that area.  Once that piece is up, and we have the Corian top for the desk, we can complete the installation of the desk and sofa.

Shawna was bringing Madeline at 4:30 PM to spend the night with us.  It was already 2:30 and I needed to get cleaned up and put on non-work clothes before they arrived so we called it a day.  I had once again accumulated quite a few tools in the bus.  I gathered up all of the ones I was done with, returned them to the garage, and locked up the coach.  The UPS truck showed up with my package from B&H Photo which I set aside temporarily while I took a shower and got dressed.

The box looked like it had been treated well in shipment.  I opened the box, carefully removed all of the contents, and compared them to the order/packing list.  Everything was there and appeared to be in pristine condition.  I unwrapped the battery charger and Lithium ion battery, put the battery in the charger, and plugged it in.  The new charger is essentially the same as the one that came with my Sony alpha 100 years ago so I got the old one from the basement.  I bought five additional batteries so I opened one of them and plugged it in to the old charger.  I then found the Instruction Manual and curled up with it on the living room sofa while Juniper (the cat) curled up on me.

The directions with the charger and the batteries indicated that it can take up to 175 minutes to fully recharge a battery and that full charge is not obtained until an hour after the charging light goes out.  So, basically, I need to leave the batteries in the charger for three hours to ensure they are fully charged.  The camera takes one battery, and the vertical grip accessory takes two batteries, so my normal operating configuration will be to have three batteries in the use.  That’s why I have a total of six batteries for this new camera.  I will probably buy another charger so I can charge three batteries simultaneously.

I called Chuck to let him know I got my car back late yesterday but would not be able to move the windshields box until sometime next week.  It turned out that he and Barbara were also busy all weekend.  His daughter, son-in-law, and grandson were in town with more family arriving from Trinidad and Tobago this evening.  Tomorrow is his grandson’s first birthday and Sunday he is being baptized at the church in Ann Arbor where Chuck’s daughter was married.

Shawna showed up just after 4:30 PM.  Madeline had fallen asleep in the car and was slow to wake up, clinging to her mom for quite a while.  Linda brought in the various bags of clothes and toys along with the inflatable bed and got everything situated in the middle bedroom.  When Linda mentioned making cupcakes Madeline finally woke up and became cheerful.  Once her focus was on baking with Grandma Linda Shawna was able to slip away without any drama on Ms. M’s part.

Today was Brendan and Shawna’s friend Jorge’s birthday and the three of them were headed to a new restaurant in Detroit to celebrate.  The restaurant does not take reservations and is apparently very popular at the moment so Shawna was not sure if they would actually get to eat there.

With Linda’s help Madeline mixed the ingredients for the cupcakes and managed to pour most of the batter into the baking tray.  Linda then prepared dinner while I played with Madeline.  We did the ABCs on her placemat, and then colored with crayons.  Dinner was mock chicken tenders, edamame, and steamed carrot rounds with fresh orange segments and sliced strawberries, so it was mostly fresh, whole plant-based foods.

As soon as the cupcakes were cool enough to be frosted Madeline coated each one with the special Halloween orange frosting and the back and orange Halloween sprinkles.  I was summoned to inspect the work and then it was time to eat.  Madeline selected a cupcake for herself and then one for me and one for Linda.  We ate them at the table and they were very good.

After cupcakes we played soccer with two different balls, kicking and throwing them all around the house.  By 8 PM we needed to start winding things down.  Shawna had left her iPad and Madeline selected a Curious George video about Christmas.  Linda and Madeline climbed up in our bed where they could stretch out their legs and watched the first 60% of the cartoon.  I opened two more camera batteries and put them in the chargers and then joined the girls.  We will watch the rest of the cartoon tomorrow morning.

I helped Madeline brush her teeth and Linda got her into her pajamas.  Linda read her several stories and finally got her in bed around 9:15 PM.  During dinner Madeline inquired about having pancakes for breakfast.  (I had made the same inquiry over lunch.)  Linda did not have all of the ingredients she needed so after Madeline went to bed I went to Meijer’s in Howell and bought avocado oil and all-purpose flour.  Linda is trying to use up ingredients rather than stock up on them so I bought a two pound bag of King Arthur organic unbleached enriched all-purpose flour even though I could have bought a 10 pound bag of the Meijer’s brand (bleached and not organic) for only 50 cents more.

Just before going to bed I opened two more batteries and put them in the chargers.  We went to bed at 11 PM but did not turn on the TV to ensure that we did not disturb Madeline’s sleep.  I was basically done with the draft of this post and read some more of the Instruction Manual for my new Sony alpha 99 (SLT-A99V) camera and vertical battery grip (VG-C99AM).  I am really looking forward to using this new equipment but it takes a couple of days to charge batteries, install software, and read manuals enough to be able to configure it for first use.  This class of camera has a lot of adjustable parameters with default settings that may or may not be what any particular user wants.

 

2015/10/08 (R) A Mighty Hose

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Linda was up before 6 AM to drive to the bakery ahead of the worst of the morning rush hour traffic.  I was aware of her getting up but fell back asleep.  She is very quiet as she goes about her preparations on such mornings, which I appreciate.

I got up around 8AM, fed the cats, and cleaned their litter tray.  I made half as much coffee as usual and measured out a bowl of granola, probably a little more than usual.  I took my coffee to the living room and turned on the fireplace, expecting to settle in with my cats and work on my iPad, but the iOS 9.0.2 update was available so I started the installation and read the last few pages of Number Theory and Its History by Oystein Ore.  I read from screens more than from paper these days, but I still like to curl up with a printed book.

Jasper used to sit next to me on the sofa in the morning but seems to prefer sleeping on top of one of the back cushions these days.  Juniper, who never used to pay much attention to me, has taken his place.  She has always sought out warm places to curl up but has always preferred Linda’s lap to mine.

My bus project for today was reassembling the plumbing to the two fan-coil heat exchangers that go in the bases under the two desk pedestals.  Yesterday I cut new holes for the supply and return hoses.  My first task was to remove the hoses from the bleeder valves and install barbed plastic plugs in the ends to prevent coolant from coming out.  I then pulled the hoses back and out through the new openings.

The area behind the desk where the heater hoses emerge from the passenger side OTR HVAC duct.

The area behind the desk where the heater hoses emerge from the passenger side OTR HVAC duct.

I worked on the hose for the right hand (rear most) heat exchanger first.  I positioned the base, routed the hose to the lower fitting, and marked where to cut it.  I put a plastic paint tray liner under the hose before I cut it but more coolant came out than I expected.  I got as much of it in the liner as I could and grabbed a bunch of paper shop towels.  I got the liner outside without spilling any antifreeze and poured the used antifreeze in a one gallon jug that I keep for just this purpose.  I used a funnel that is also reserved for use with antifreeze.

I took the cut off piece of heater hose outside, plugged end down, and set the open end in the tray liner.  We already had a bucket of soapy water in the bus as we had planned on hanging wallpaper yesterday.  I wrung out the sponge and then squeezed some of the soapy water on the floor and cleaned it up with paper shop towels.

The left and right desk bases and center cover/spacer set in place. The heater hoses are not yet connected.

The left and right desk bases and center cover/spacer set in place. The heater hoses are not yet connected.

With the mess cleaned up I slipped two hose clamps over the end of the hose and worked it onto the lower fitting on the heat exchanger.  If only it had been as easy to do as that description!  The 3/4″ i.d. rubber heater hose did not just “slip” over the 3/4″ o.d. copper pipe even with some residual antifreeze lubricating the inside of the hose and the outside of the pipe.  Indeed, it took considerable and simultaneous pushing and twisting to get the hose on.  It was also a lot harder than I expected to work with the heat exchangers installed in the bases, even without the desk pedestals in place.

I was interrupting my work as needed to take photographs and as I finished up the first hose the camera refused to trigger the shutter.  The LCD screen indicated that the compact flash memory card was full so I went to my office to offload the images from the last few days.  My other CF card was empty so I put that in the camera and set it aside.  I had not backed up my photos to the Network Attached Storage units in quite a while so I decided to take the time to do that.  While I was at it I backed up my blog posts from December of 2014 through July of this year along with several issues of The Gypsy Journal.

As long as I was at my computer I checked my e-mail accounts, logged into RVillage, and logged into my account at B&H Photo.  My new Sony alpha 99 and accessories were on their way from New York and due to be delivered by the end of the day tomorrow.  I am excited to finally be getting a new digital camera with a full frame (35mm) sensor that will work correctly with all of my old Minolta A-mount lenses.

By this point it was lunchtime so I cleaned up (antifreeze is definitely NOT good eats) and scrounged around the kitchen for something tasty but easy to fix.  My “go to” meal is usually roasted red pepper hummus and sourdough pretzel nibblers.  We had a little hummus left, which I finished, but I was still hungry so I made a bowl of popcorn.  I would probably not make a good bachelor.

I went back to the coach and contemplated attaching the other hose to the left heat exchanger.  While I was thinking about it Linda called to let me know she was on her way home.  It was 1 PM so I decided to wait for her to get home to help me install the second hose.  I had some phone calls to make and used the time for that.

I called Karen at Bratcher Electric to schedule the upgrading of our 60 Amp sub-panel in the garage to a 100 Amp main panel.  While I had her on the phone I asked if Mike would itemize the quote.  I also mentioned that they had picked up two or three whole house generator customers through my referrals and perhaps Mike could provide some consideration for that in the pricing.  Next I called Ferman Miller at Countertop Plus in Shipshewana, Indiana to check on the Corian desk top and table.  Ferman answered the phone and said he had called Josh this morning to let him know the pieces were ready for pickup.  I then called Josh to see what his plans were.

We originally agreed that he would pick them up and bring them to our house on his way to visit relatives in the northeast side of the Detroit metropolitan area.  His plans had changed and he won’t be visiting his relatives anytime soon.  He is leaving on Tuesday for a FMCA area rally in the Carolinas and will be gone for a week.  Before he leaves he needs to get something to a customer in Cleveland in addition to getting our stuff to us or deciding that we will have to drive to Shipshewana to get it ourselves.  One option is that we meet him somewhere on Sunday.  Ann Arbor is a possibility but Toledo or Defiance (Ohio) are more likely rendezvous points.

Linda got home around 2 PM and changed into her work clothes.  With Linda’s help I was able to avoid the mess I had with the first hose.  The second hose was even harder to get on than the first one but we managed to do it.  In part because of the arthritis in the joints at the base of my thumbs I do not have as much grip strength as I would like and often need.  The twisting and pushing was hard on my hands and the confines of the base and proximity of crisp wooden edges resulted in lots of small cuts.  This was not something I anticipated in the design and construction of the bases and the installation of the heat exchangers.

I took a break and drove to Northwest Plumbing Supply to see if they had a bleeder valve like the ones in our bus system.  They did not and had never do seen anything like it before.  The showed me a couple of things they did have but I did not buy anything.  I got a call from Brighton Honda that my car was ready for pickup so I headed home to get Linda.  She drove me to the dealership and then went on to Meijer’s for a few grocery items.

I drove to Lowe’s in Howell and was fortunate to find Lars in the plumbing department.  The store was not very busy and he took an interest in showing me various plumbing options that might allow me to replace the bleeder valve with something that would do the same thing while also giving me a way to add antifreeze to the system.  What I ended up with was 3/4″x3/4″X1/2″ copper sweat T and a 1/2″ sweat ball valve with a waste port.

Bruce works on attaching the heater hoses to the fill/bleeder valve T assembly he built.

Bruce works on attaching the heater hoses to the fill/bleeder valve T assembly he built.  (Photo by Linda.)

Back home I cleaned some 3/4″ and 1/2″ copper pipe with 120 grit plumbers sandpaper.  I cut two pieces of the 3/4″ pipe about 3″ long and one piece of the 1/2″ pipe about 1-1/2″ long.  I brushed the inside of all the fittings and test fit the pieces.  I then applied flux to all of the surfaces to be soldered, inserted the two 3/4″ stubs into the run fittings, inserted the 1/2″ stud into the bull fitting, and put the ball valve on the other end of the 1/2″ pipe.  I used the lever on the ball valve to mount the assembly in my bench vise.  I removed the waste port cap to protect the neoprene seal and opened the ball valve so as not to trap heat inside.  I then heated the T and the end of the valve and applied the solder.

I figured there had to be an easier way to get heater hose onto the heat exchanger and that Butch was the guy who would know what it was.  I called and he said antifreeze can obviously be used and works fairly well but that a small amount of dish soap would also work as a lubricant and not harm the antifreeze or the Aqua-Hot and its components.  As long as we were on the phone I caught up on their activities.

They were still there at the RV Park in Bouse, Arizona but only until the 15th of this month.  The terms and conditions of their employment as managers of the park had not turned out to be as described during the interview process and they are wrapping up after only a month on the job.  They will move their bus back to Quartzsite and spend at least part of the winter at Joe and Connie’s place where we both spent last winter.  I know it was a big disappointment to them that the situation in Bouse did not work out, but their situation in Q will be familiar, comfortable, and inexpensive, as well as convenient to the Quartzsite Gem and Mineral Club which they joined this past winter.

For dinner Linda made a blend of onions, garlic, mushrooms, and power greens and served it over a baked potato topped with Daiya cheese.  It was very yummy, and the potatoes kept the dish warm all the way to the end.  The weather had turned cloudy through the afternoon and we got the first raindrops during dinner.

The fill/bleeder valve T assembly with the heater hoses connected. The assembly is located between the bases at the floor and will be hidden by the center connector/cover.

The fill/bleeder valve T assembly with the heater hoses connected. The assembly is located between the bases at the floor and will be hidden by the center connector/cover.

I had really hoped to have the hydronic heating system reassembled today so we went back out to bus after dinner to hook up the heater hose that runs between the two heat exchangers.  This was actually two pieces of hose with my homemade bleeder/fill valve half way between the two exchangers.  Even with dish soap the two hoses were very difficult to get onto the heat exchanger fittings and the bleeder/fill stubs, but I got them on.  Linda took pictures while I grunted, groaned, and moaned and I took a few more when I was done.

It was 8:45 PM when we finally quit working, secured the bus, and went inside.  I cleaned my hands as best I could but I could not get all of the black from the rubber hoses to come off.  We sat for a while in the living room and had the last of the frozen chocolate torte that Linda made a couple of weeks ago.  We finally turned in around 10 PM and watched Rick Steve’s Europe, Travel in the Americas, and a couple of cooking shows while I worked on this post.

 

2015/10/07 (W) The Root Cause

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We had Linda’s homemade granola for breakfast with fresh blueberries.  Berry season is just about over for the year and they will become more expensive as they have to be transported from farther away.  I made a pot of Sweet Seattle Dreams, the half-caff blend that Jeff makes just for us, and we drank it in the living room.  Linda checked in on the world and pulled up the latest video from NutritionFacts.org while I researched hardwood veneers on Rockler.com.

After breakfast and coffee I called Metro Environmental Services to arrange to have the culvert under the road cleaned out.  They were able to schedule us for this afternoon so I accepted that appointment.  I then called Brighton Honda to check on my car and left a message for Rob, the service advisor who wrote up the repair for the driver side door lock.  I had no sooner left that message than I got a call from Karen at Bratcher Electric.

Mike had worked up the quote to install the 100 Amp disconnect, tie it into the output of the transfer switch, and run a 100 Amp 4-wire service entrance cable to the current sub-panel, making it into a main panel.  They would also disconnect and cap the current sub-panel feed from the basement as part of the work.  At just north of $1,300 it was a good $300 higher than I expected.  My expectation, however, was not based on anything specific other than my own sense of the cost of materials and the amount of labor that might be involved, plus a desire for it to not cost more than $1,000.  🙁

With the phone calls taken care of we worked in the bus for the rest of the morning.  Linda worked on stripping the remnants of wallpaper that remained after we removed the mirrors from the lower outside hallway wall yesterday.  I worked on re-routing the heater hoses for the fan-coil heat exchangers.  She got her job done before I got mine done.  That’s usually the way it is.

To start, I removed one of the old 4″ round plastic grates and used my inspection mirror and a flashlight to examine the inside of the HVAC duct.  What I discovered was that the two heater hoses were secured periodically with plastic cable clamps to the outer wall of the HVAC duct.  I also discovered that the metal part of the duct is just the inner wall and top.  The bottom is the plywood subfloor of the bus and the outer wall is the plywood wall.  As originally built the metal portion of the duct could be removed but when Royale Coach did the conversion they built cabinets around the ducts and put wood wiring chases on top of them in such a way that they can no longer be removed without partially disassembling the coach.

The location of the hoses and wires in the duct was such that I could safely use my 4″ bi-metal hole saw to cut access holes for the hoses.  I determined where the cable clamps were located by measuring inside the duct.  I then marked where the access slots in the bottom back of the bases would be located and determined where I needed the two hoses to emerge from the duct.

The manual sheet metal nibbler used to cut a line between the bottoms of the two holes in the HVAC duct.

The manual sheet metal nibbler used to cut a line between the bottoms of the two holes in the HVAC duct.

There was already a 4″ hole at one of my needed locations so I drilled a second one next to it with an inch in-between.  I used Chuck’s hand powered sheet metal nibbler to connect the holes together to make an opening that looked like the track around a football field.  We vacuumed up the metal chips and I then installed door edge molding all the way around the edge of the opening.  I was able to reach the screws holding the first pair of cable clamps with a #2SR screwdriver and remove them.  This large slot will be behind the left end of the center connecting cover of the desk and the hose for the heat exchanger that goes in the left base will come out of it.

 

Plastic U-channel door edge molding installed around the new heater hose opening.

Plastic U-channel door edge molding installed around the new heater hose opening.

The location of the next pair of cable clamps corresponded, roughly, to where I needed the hose for the right heat exchanger to emerge.  I drilled two 4″ holes, side-by-side, at that location and nibbled out the little bit of metal in-between them to make a second slot.  Again, I installed the door edge molding around the entire edge.  The molding was a tight fit, and I had to use a screwdriver to get it to go on the inner curves, but I got it on.  The U-channel is locked in mechanically and has adhesive in it so it should stay put once it has had a few days in place.  Once the hoses are re-routed I will put screen material, and perhaps some solid plates, over the openings to prevent critters from gaining access to the living area by way of the HVAC PCTS (Prevost Critter Tunnel System).

 

The access holes in the OTR HVAC duct in the area behind where the desk will be installed.

The access holes in the OTR HVAC duct in the area behind where the desk will be installed.

Linda had two medical appointments this afternoon, both routine diagnostic procedures, so she got cleaned up, changed her clothes, and left around 12:30 PM as I was finishing up the second slot.  I went inside and was thinking about making something for lunch when the doorbell rang.  It was our mail carrier, Michelle, with a package that was too big for the mailbox.  A few minutes later the doorbell rang again.  I figured it was Michelle again, but it was one of the guys from Metro Environmental Services.  They were supposed to call first but just showed up.

I put my shoes on and walked them down to the clogged culvert that goes under the road.  I was really hoping they could clean it out from the south side but when we went into the woods we could not see the end of the culvert.  They got a metal detector and located the end of the pipe.  It was almost completely buried and had a massive root running right in front of it from a very large nearby tree.  They got a shovel and dug out around the root, exposing much of it and the end of the pipe.

The tree was probably 30″ in diameter at the base and the root was at least 10″ in diameter.  I got my (new) 18″ chain saw but had trouble getting it started.  It turned out it was out of gasoline.  Once I got it started I tried to cut through the root on either side of the culvert.  I thought I was all the way through on one end (closest to the tree) and most of the way through on the other end, but the root would not budge.  I dulled the teeth on the chain to the point where the saw would no longer cut and did not want to take the time to put a new chain on just to ruin it quickly.  The guys finally agreed to hydrojet the culvert from the north side of the road.

The actual cleaning out of the culvert did not take that long.  The pump produces 2,000 PSI and they used about 300 gallons of water from the onboard tank on their truck.  The head on the end of the hose has one forward facing nozzle and many rear/side facing nozzles.  The forward facing nozzle loosens and cleans out the area directly in front of the head while the other nozzles force the head forward and blast whatever is in the pipe back out towards the entrance.

They started with a small head and ran it in until there was water coming out the other end of the culvert.  They then pulled the hose back and switched to a much larger head and ran that all the way through and back.  When they were done muddy water filled the culvert and the depressions on either end.  On the inlet end the water was only about 3″ deep in the bottom of the culvert but on the outlet end it was near the top.  They billed me for the minimum first hour amount even though I think they were here longer than that.

I called Phil to let him know what we had run into.  He was surprised, to say the least, as he thought he had checked the other end of the culvert.  Obviously not, but that’s water under the road, so to speak.  Besides the problems with the root and the discharge end of the culvert being below the surface, it looked to me like the discharge area was something of a low spot and it was not obvious to me where water would flow from there.  I have learned, however, that I am not very good at judging such things visually.

Cory, our neighbor across the street, had come over to see what was going on.  He offered that the discharge area does, in fact, drain to the south through his property and eventually to Golf Club Road.  Cory has been here for 30 years so I have no reason to doubt the truth of that.  The elevation where Golf Club ends at Hacker and where our street ends at Hacker appears to be about the same.  Our street is fairly level while Golf Club has a little bit of up and down, but it is subtle.  I suggested to Phil that we might have to clear a path into the woods for his small digger and do some trenching to give the water a way out.

While Cory and I were chatting I noticed that the trees along this part of the road were hanging out over the road on both sides and were rather lower than they should be.  This is the very thing I complain about with regards to the way most of our neighbor’s fail to maintain their properties along the road.  I decided I should do something about it so I got our pole saw and spent a couple of hours trimming the low overhanging branches.

Linda went to the Whole Foods Market in West Bloomfield following her medical appointments and got home just as I was finishing up the pruning.  She went for a walk while I called John Palmer of Palmer Energy Systems in Florida.  I bought our Magnum inverter/charger for the bus from John along with various accessories and batteries.  I needed a 4-wire terminal block for our Magnum Battery Monitor Kit (BMK) because I had messed up the one that came with it when I originally installed it.  John confirmed that Magnum Energy had recently been acquired by Sensata, and was in the process of relocating the plant to Minnesota, but that several of the old-timers were still on board.  John needed to talk to Tom anyway and asked me to call him back in a week to see if he was able to get the connector.

I checked with the service department at Brighton Honda again and Rob said he expected to get the new door lock mechanism back from the locksmith tomorrow morning and to have the car ready for me to pick up by the end of the day.  It will be nice to finally have it back.

The cloudy weather finally broke today and we saw some blue sky with brighter light levels than we have had recently.  The day was lovely but a little on the cool side by late afternoon so we both had a cup of hot tea.  Linda took advantage of the light to work on her counted cross-stitch project, a holiday stocking for grand-daughter Madeline, and I went back to the bus to sand off the last traces of the old wallpaper from the outside wall in the hallway.

I used our Porter-Cable 1/4 sheet palm sander with 80, 120, and finally 220 grit sandpaper.  The sander has an integral dust collection bag but it does not capture all of the dust.  I used the vacuum cleaner to pick up as much of the residual dust as I could and then used a tack cloth to wipe down the wall.

For dinner Linda made pan-grilled tofu with caramelized onions in sweet barbecue sauce.  She served it open-faced on rye bread, because that is what we had, and steamed some fresh green beans as a side dish.  Yum.

After dinner I drove to Lowe’s.  I needed something I could use to plug the two heater hoses to keep them from leaking as I pull them back through the HVAC duct and out through the new slots I made for them today.  I ended up buying two 3/4″ barbed plastic plugs.  While I was there I looked to see if they had any bleeder valves but they did not.  They do not sell parts designed specifically for hydronic heating systems and I will have to go to Northwest Plumbing and Supply for such items.

While I was in the plumbing isle I looked to see if I could figure out some combination of parts to make a fill valve for the system but did not see anything that inspired me.  I would love to have one or more high point expansion tanks on this system but I do not have any easily accessible places for them from which I could also run overflow drain lines.  There is a good sized volume of unused space behind the drawers on the passenger side of the bedroom but it would be a very difficult place to install anything.  Perhaps Northwest Plumbing and Supply will have something.

On the way home I stopped at the BP station and topped up the fuel tank in Linda’s car.  I drove home with greater consideration for fuel economy than usual and managed to get the average MPG up to 56.7 before it dropped back to 55.4 as I pulled in the driveway.  It will drop into the upper 40s as soon as Linda starts the engine tomorrow morning but it was fun to get it into the driveway with numbers above 55 MPG.

 

2015/10/06 (T) Trimming & Stripping

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We did not get an early start to our day today.  I got up a little after 8 AM and Linda got up 15 minutes later.  Even so, she still had our granola and berries ready before I had the coffee made, but in my defense I had the extra step of transferring the three pounds of coffee we bought yesterday from their paper bags to our metal containers with the air-tight lids.  We were wondering about whether grapes are berries so Linda Googled the topic.  Botanically, grapes are berries but strawberries and raspberries are not.  Also included among the “true” berries are bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplants.  That’s right, tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplants are fruits.

Linda left at 9:30 AM to meet Diane at Kensington Metropark for a 10 AM walk.  Mike from Bratcher Electric showed up at 10:30 to revisit the wiring project I needed his company to do.  They are going to install a 100 Amp disconnect switch next to the transfer switch in the southwest corner of the garage, run power to the disconnect switch from the transfer switch, and then run a 4-wire service entrance cable (SEC) from the disconnect switch through the garage attic to the electrical distribution panel in the closet with the HVAC system for the library.  The electrical panel is currently a 60 A sub-panel of the main distribution panel in the basement and this project will convert it to a 100 A main panel while still allowing it to be powered by the generator if the utility power goes out.

When Mike left I gathered up the two metal cutting tools I borrowed from Chuck, our corded 1/2″ Craftsman drill (which I needed to power one of the nibblers), the small Rigid drill kit, and my telescoping inspection mirror.  My plan was to cut one or two openings in the passenger side HVAC duct for the heater hoses but I decided to do some yard work instead.

We still had some bushes growing out over the drainage ditch by the mailbox and I wanted to get them trimmed up and add the waste material to the timber pile before Phil hauled it away tomorrow (hopefully).  I was still working on this little distraction when Linda got back from her walk so she got a pair of gloves and helped.  The bushes and trees in this area have an extensive system of vines running through them.  I got a lot of the smaller vines cut and pulled free and I managed to trim one bush back enough to create an “entrance” to the inner part of this stand of trees.

Once I was “inside” the grove I found one of the main sources of the vine, a massive thing that looked like something out of a Harry Potter movie.  It was easily 10″ in diameter where it came out of the ground and had 4″ to 6″ pieces branching off in different directions.  I have no idea what kind of vine this but I suspect it is a wild grape vine.  Given its size I surmised that it has been there for a very long time gradually chocking off the trees.  I will have to eventually cut it out, but I would like to find out first just exactly what it is.

Linda helped drag all of the clippings over to the disposal pile where we cut some of them into smaller pieces before adding them to the pile.  We noticed a small tree hanging out into the space above the driveway that Phil is about to build.  We thought the tree was dead and decided to cut it down.  It was 5″ in diameter 6″ above the ground–big enough to require the chain saw–and also had a lot of branches that were large enough to be more expeditiously dispatched with said same machine.

After felling the tree and de-limbing it I was not so sure that it was dead.  We had a half dozen other trees along the northern edge of this stand woods that looked to be similarly dead but I decided not to cut them down.  One in particular had a lot of obviously new, small branches.  We will wait until spring and see which, if any, of these trees develop leaves.  If they are alive I will trim them instead of cutting them down.

We put away the yard tools and took a break to have a light, late lunch of vegan cold cuts sandwiches and black grapes with a glass of beet juice.  I like beets on salads and as a side vegetable.  Beet juice is OK but a bit more of an acquired taste.  We have added it into our daily food plans because of its ability to control blood pressure.  Linda is adding ground flax seed to her granola for the same reason.

Measuring and cutting wallpaper on the dining room table in the house.

Measuring and cutting wallpaper on the dining room table in the house.

At 2 PM we decided to hang the wallpaper in the hallway of the bus so we gathered all of our tools and took them to the coach.  I measured the wall and determined the lengths (30″) and widths of the four pieces; two full width (26.5″) and two partial width (15.5″), one for the left end and one for the right end.  We cut the four pieces on the dining room table in the house where we could unroll over six feet of wallpaper, measure more accurately, and cut more easily.  We cut the two full pieces out of the end of the first double roll and cut the two partial pieces out of the beginning of a new double roll.

Linda took the pieces to the bus and laid them out on the bed.  I was getting ready to pour some GH-95 paste into the tray and roll it onto the wall when I decided to remove the trim board that separates the upper wall from the vertical mirror strips on the lower wall.  My intent was to avoid having to trim the bottom edge of the wallpaper by tucking it behind this board.  What I discovered was that the strip mirrors on the lower portion of the wall were glued to the wallpaper and some of them were loose.

The fact that the mirrors were glued to wallpaper and not to the plywood wall surface meant that they could be removed.  I unscrewed the four vertical pieces of wood trim that framed the mirrors in three panels and then removed the bottom trim piece.  I carefully removed each mirror by prying the underlying wallpaper loose from the wall using a large screwdriver and working from the top down.  When the entire strip was loose I cut the wallpaper to release it.  I handed them to Linda and she stored them carefully inside the built-in sofa.  I managed to get all of them off except one which fractured in several places.  We taped it up and vacuumed up the few glass fragments that were created when it broke.

At this point we were clearly not going to hang the four pieces of wallpaper we just cut as we needed to finish stripping the base layer of the old wallpaper first.  We also had to take a little time to decide how to finish the lower wall.  One option would be to wallpaper the entire wall and not put the wood trim back.  We probably have enough wallpaper to do that, even after cutting the four smaller pieces for the upper wall, but we did not think the wall would look right if we did that.

Another option would be to install wood panels to replace the mirror strips.  In this case we would use a light wood with a natural finish to provide an intentional contrast with all of the walnut trim.  The mirror strips are slightly beveled on their long edges and measure 3/16″ thick at those edges.  That means a 3/16″ hardwood veneered plywood should be a perfect fit, allowing all of the wood trim to go back in place.  Maple or Birch with a natural finish are the most likely choices.

The wood panels is the option we will almost certainly pursue and we do not have to resolve exactly what panels to use in order to finish wallpapering the upper part of the wall.  All told this will push our finish date back a couple of days, but we don’t really have a finish date anyway, and we will like the final result a lot better.  We really do not like the strip mirrors and wish we could remove or cover all of them.

It was only 4:30 PM when we quit working in the bus for the day but we had both had a relatively physical day and were ready to quit.  The lighting in the hallway was also a little dim due to the continuing heavy cloud cover which was having the added effect of lowering our energy level and enthusiasm a bit.

My last couple of e-mails to Lou Petkus of the SKP Photographers BoF had gone unanswered so I called Lou to make sure everything was OK.  It was; he and Val have just been very busy.  We know about busy.  We had a nice chat about cameras and RVing plans for the upcoming winter.

Linda always puts nice dinner meals on the table and tonight was no different.  She halved and cored a white acorn squash and baked it in the oven with a little vegan butter and brown sugar.  She had a few Brussels sprouts left over and some baby carrots so she added onions and sautéed them to make a very good vegetable medley.  Finally, she heated a package of mock chicken in orange sauce.  The trio of dishes was not only tasty but lifted my spirits; not that either of us are down, but the weather has been heavily overcast for several days and had a slightly depressing effect on our moods.

I got a call from Phil after dinner updating me on his availability to work on our driveway and French drain project.  The 2-day job he started yesterday morning is probably going to take him the entire week to finish so there is very little chance we will see him back at work on our project before next Monday.  He did, however, find time to call a company that can hydrojet the culvert under our road and find out their pricing.  He gave me the name and phone number and I will call them tomorrow and try to set something up.  The other upside is that we have more time to pull dead trees out of the woods in front of our house, cut them up, and add them to the disposal pile, if we so choose.

Linda’s favorite TV shows are concentrated on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday evenings so we watched NCIS and NCISNOLA followed by an episode of LIMITLESS, just to see what it was like.  I watched Two and a Half Men, which I happen to find very amusing, and then went to sleep.

 

2015/10/05 (M) Pondering Wallpaper

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I woke up to stay at 7:20 AM, got up shortly thereafter, and got dressed to work.  Today was finally wallpapering day.  I fed the cats and refilled the reservoir on their recirculating water dish.  Linda was still sound asleep, and I suspected that she did not sleep well last night, so I closed the bedroom door while I ground the coffee beans so as not to disturb her.  She is still fighting off a cold and/or allergies and so am I.  I used the last of the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans plus a couple of scoops of the Kenya AA.  We are a day or two away from being out of coffee and will have to get some more when we go out this morning to buy wallpaper paste and tools.

Linda got up at 7:40.  Phil had not shown up yet nor called to update us on whether he would be here so we were left to guess that he was on his way to the other last minute job that he said he would probably have to take care of today and tomorrow.  The temperature at 8 AM was 55 degrees F with light fog.  It looked very wet outside but I could not tell if it had rained overnight or if it was just heavy dew.  The high was forecast to be 72, and we have the electric heaters on in the bus, so the walls should be warm enough for us to hang wallpaper today.

We left at 9:30 to go buy wallpaper paste and a few tools at Lowe’s in Howell.  We stopped at Teeko’s on the way and ordered three pounds of coffee beans.  We got one pound each of the following, roasted to order:  1) Sweet Seattle Dreams (1/2 Seattle Blend and 1/2 Sweet Dreams decaf blend); 2) Ethiopian Yirgacheffe half-caff; and 3) 1/2 Sumatra Manhelding with 1/2 Sumatra decaf.  At Lowe’s we bought a gallon jug of Roman GH-95 Wallpaper Paste for Kitchen and Bath.  It is supposed to be more suitable for high moisture environments and since we tend to use the bus with the windows open it can get humid inside.  We also got a smoothing tool, a 24″ paint shield to use for as a trimming guide, a 1/4″ nap 9″ long roller cover, and an inexpensive paint brush.  We stopped at Teeko’s on the way home and Roger had our coffee beans ready for pickup.

Back home I gathered up the tools we already had and took everything to the bus.  I got a scrap of underlayment to use as a small work surface for measuring and cutting off lengths of wallpaper.  We did not have room to set up a work surface in the bus that was big enough to roll out the wallpaper and apply paste to the back side so we decided to apply the paste to the walls using a roller and brush.

Before we got started installing the wallpaper Keith showed up around 10:45 AM to cut the grass.  I wasn’t sure he would come today due to the wet conditions, but he did not think it was wet enough to be a problem.  It’s been two weeks since the last grass cutting and it definitely needed to be mowed, at least in some places.  We also cut up and moved a couple of downed trees so he was finally able to mow the grass where they had been.

I had just finished chatting with Keith when Phil showed up around 11 AM to pick up his small excavator.  He had been at another job since 7 AM.  It was supposed to only involve “moving some stone around” so he only took his front loader to the site.  When he got there he was shown a much more extensive landscaping plan and a job site that included removing tree stumps and other digging operations.  Even with that his plan is to be back at our place on Wednesday.

My first task was to sand the primed walls.  I used the Porter-Cable palm sander, first with 120 grit sandpaper and then with 220 grit.  Linda then wiped down the walls with tack cloth while I put the sander away.  There is not a lot of room to work in the bus so we try to remove tools that we are not using.

We finished gathering our tools and materials, including two big buckets of water (one with mild soap) and spent an hour pondering the wallpaper installation.  Part of the pondering involved measuring the three wall areas that were ready for wallpaper and deciding where we would start and how we would proceed from there.  By the time we were ready to cut and paste wallpaper it was 12:30 PM so we took a break and had a sandwich and grapes for lunch.

When we unrolled the first double roll of wallpaper we noticed periodic faint horizontal “lines.”  These turned out to be slight impressions from the outside edge of the end of the roll which was very tightly wrapped in clear plastic.  We decided to cut four shorter pieces to go behind the desk and behind the sofa just in case the impressions did not smooth out and disappear.  We cut two more short pieces to continue forward under the windows on the passenger side.  We then cut longer pieces for the corner behind the desk and the wall at the kitchen end of the sofa.

The last time we hung wallpaper was 30 years ago.  It was all pre-pasted and required reverse rolling the piece to be hung, immersing it in a water tray to activate the glue, and then slowly pulling it out as it unrolled and drained.  We then slid it into position on the wall, smoothing it out and removing the air bubbles as we went, and finally trimming it.  The wallpapers we used were thinner than the stuff we have for the bus and we created seams by overlapping adjacent panels slightly and cutting through both pieces half way between the overlap.  The free edge pieces were both removed and we had perfect seams.

The wallpaper we bought for the coach is a heavier vinyl that is washable and scrubbable.  We got the paper from Delux Drapery & Shade Co. in Ann Arbor but it did not come with installation instructions other than to follow the adhesive manufacturer’s directions.  The associate at Lowe’s, however, was very helpful and told us specifically not to overlap and trim the seams the way we had years ago.  The appropriate technique for the heavier vinyl wallpapers is to butt the edges together and roll them flat.

You always reach a point in every project where there is nothing left to do but to do it.  We poured some of the paste into a paint tray (with a plastic liner for easier cleanup later).  I started on the passenger side of the bus in the corner behind the desk on the back side of the pantry.  I used the brush to cut in the corners where the wall met the adjacent woodwork and used the roller to fill in the field.  We butted the right edge of the panel into the corner along its full length and then smoothed it towards the left and top as best we could.  The wall curves in as it goes up but I got the top edge tucked and trimmed.  I made a relief cut at the bottom of the window surround on the left which allowed us to finish smoothing the bottom portion of the panel under the window and get the upper panel tucked in, where the wall meets the surround, and trim it.  I then trimmed around the window release mechanism and along the bottom of the panel.

Wallpaper tools in sofa (seat removed) and wallpaper on wall behind the sofa.

Wallpaper tools in sofa (seat removed) and wallpaper on wall behind the sofa.

The vinyl wallpaper did not trim easily even with a new, very sharp, break-off style blade.  It also did not want to stick to the wall and we ended up peeling it back in places and spreading more paste.  We had primed the walls with Zinser 1-2-3, a water-based acrylic primer, so they should not have been very absorbent.  We hung a total of eight pieces, five on the passenger side and three on the driver side, and stopped for the day.  The wall in the hallway was prepped for four additional pieces but we decided to defer those until to tomorrow.  We cleaned up all of the tools and then relaxed for a while in the living room.

Linda prepared dinner while I worked on this post.  I could not figure out from the odor what she was making but it sure smelled good.  It turned out to be a tofu scramble, a vegan interpretation of scrambled eggs, and she served it with toasted raisin bread.  Very tasty and very satisfying.  It’s the one breakfast dish that she makes that does equally well as a dinner meal.

I drove to O’Reilly’s Auto Parts to get some door edge trim/guard and stopped at the Meijer’s supermarket for tissues and laundry supplies.  The door edge trim is a plastic U-channel that I will use to cover the edge of a hole (or holes) I will cut in the passenger side HVAC duct for the Aqua-Hot heater hoses to base through into the desk bases without making any sharp turns.

We felt like being entertained and settled in to watch several TV shows.  In-between two of the shows I made popcorn, a rare treat for us but one we really enjoy.

 

2015/20/04 (N) Family Trees

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I was awake at 7 AM and got up at 7:20, showered, shaved, and dressed for the upcoming visit by our son, daughter-in-law, and younger grand-daughter.  We did not have breakfast, as they were bringing bagels with them, but I did make a small pot of coffee to get the day started.  While it was brewing I gathered up a load of laundry and put it in the washing machine.

We finally turned the furnace on a couple of days ago so the house was cool but comfortable.  Even so we turned on the fireplace and enjoyed our coffee while we awaited our visitors.  Brendan sent a text message indicating a 9:30 AM arrival and it was only a few minutes later than that when they showed up.  Today’s visit was the result of specific request by Madeline yesterday to see her Grandma Linda and Grandpa Bruce.  She will be coming back on Friday after pre-school/day-care and spending the night.  She is then going to go see her Grandma B and Cliff in Denver while her mom attends a conference.

Brendan and Shawna brought five bagels, one for each of us, with cream cheese and lox for them and hummus for us.  They also brought sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions.  We provided our Melt non-dairy butter substitute, a large pot of Kenya AA (single origin) coffee, orange juice, a bowl of mixed fruit, and a bowl of honeydew melon.  It was a wonderful mid-morning breakfast.

After breakfast the adults took turns playing with Madeline.  At one point Brendan reminded her to ask me something and what followed was a request to take a tour of the bus.  So we did!  Madeline is not yet 3 years old, and the bus does not really mean anything to her yet, but Brendan and Shawna wanted to see the work we had done.  We are looking forward to taking Madeline with us for short trips when she is a little older.

Madeline normally takes a nap at 1 PM and Shawna was a bit tired too so they packed up and left around 12:30 PM and drove back to Ann Arbor.  There was a “block party” taking place later this afternoon for their block and they wanted to rest before it started.

We needed to get some yard work done yet today so we changed into our work clothes.  I moved the laundry to the dryer and then got busy figuring out how to start and operate the new Poulan Pro 18″ chain saw.  The quick start guide had 10 steps, numbered and clearly illustrated.  I followed the steps carefully and it started right up.  We gathered up our rake, hand saw, wheelbarrow, and compound pruning shears along with a face shield, safety glasses, hearing protector, and heavy canvas work gloves and headed down to where the dead tree fell across the road a few days ago.

The tree fell across the road and had been moved out of the road by a neighbor shortly after it fell.  I had gone out a little while after that and cleaned up the limbs on the other side of the road and the small debris that was still in the road.  The tree, however, was still in the ditch along the side of the road and need to be cut up and moved.  Phil said he would take it and dispose of it if we cut it into pieces not longer than five feet and piled it by all the other timber and yard debris.

This turned out to be just the first of five trees that we cut up this afternoon.  Once the first tree was done we cut down a second one that was still standing but very dead and leaning out towards the road.  Better to take it down now than have it fall during the winter.  This tree was only 20 feet from the first one and not quite as tall, the top having broken off some time long ago.  These were both ash trees, killed by the Emerald Ash Borer beetle.  It saddened me that all of this wonderful ash timber was going to a landfill instead of a sawmill, but we had no practical way to turn it into usable lumber.

While Linda acted as spotter for cars I made a “V” cut about three feet above the ground on the side where it was going to fall and then made a relief cut on the back side until it toppled under its own weight.  Once it was down I quickly cut it into shorter pieces and Linda got them off the road.

As long as we were working along the edge of the road I decided to prune or remove a few other saplings, bushes, vines, and deadfall so that Keith could mow the grass in the drainage ditch.  That turned out to be quite a bit of extra work but it needed to be done.  We encountered two different bushes with serious thorns and had to work carefully.  Without gloves, eye protection, and heavy weight long sleeve clothing and blue jeans it would have been dangerous and painful.

There is a complex of vines that runs all through this stand of trees.  We cut a lot of smaller runners and pulled them free form the other growth but I cut several at ground level that were at least 3″ in diameter.  A thorough cleaning and restoration of this particular stand of trees will take more time than we have to spend right now, but perhaps we can get some of this kind of work done next spring and early summer along with finishing the interior of the bus and redoing the water bay.

We have had a large tree down at the west end of our property for quite a while, and Keith has just been mowing around it, so we moved all of our equipment down there and worked on that area of the yard.  There were a lot of other small limbs scattered about and dead/broken branches hanging in several trees.  We gathered up the smaller stuff and cut it into manageable lengths and wheelbarrowed it to the disposal pile.  I then used the chain saw to remove the larger limbs and cut the tree up into four foot lengths.  It was 10 inches in diameter at the base and 30 feet long before we cut it up.  There is also a lot of pruning that needs to be done to the trees in this part of the yard, and some of it will require the pole saw and/or a ladder, and/or some careful climbing; but not today.

With that area cleaned up we moved our gear to the firepit (burn pile).  We have had a conifer tree on the ground next to the firepit for the entire summer and, once again, Keith has had to mow around it.  This tree was about 6 inches in diameter at the base and 20 feet long.  Linda found a second, smaller, tree and dragged it over.  I pruned all of the smaller limbs with the compound shears and then used the chain saw to cut off the larger branches and cut the trunk up into four foot lengths.  Rather than transport all of this material to the disposal pile we added it to the burn pile.  The pile is now about eight feet in diameter and four feet high so it should make quite a fire when we finally light it up.  I think we will wait for a chilly fall day to do that, if we get to it at all this year.  The longer the pile sits here the more of a problem it will be, however, as small animals will undoubtedly use it for shelter and to build nests.

It was 4 PM when we quit and we had only worked for three hours but it was very physical work and we were tired, or at least tired enough that we were not going to start working in the bus at that point.  By the time I cleaned off the chainsaw and we put all of the tools away it was 4:30 PM.  We changed out of our work clothes and I added them to my second load of laundry for the day.  We sat in the living room reading and writing for an hour or so until Linda pulled together our dinner.  In the interest of time she microwaved a couple of sweet potatoes (yams), steamed some Brussels sprouts, heated the last two mock chicken scaloppini, and poured a couple of glasses of Franzia Moscato.

After dinner I tended to the laundry and then settled in to work at my desk for a while.  I logged in to RVillage and saw that Curtis had posted in the Stakeholders group that he was holding Go To Meeting sessions today at 9 AM and 5 PM PDT.  That was noon and 8 PM EDT.  We had obviously missed the noon meeting, and would have anyway with company here but as it was only 7 PM we could still participate in the evening meeting.  We had an hour to wait so I decided to start uploading blog posts starting with August 1st.

I uploaded the posts for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, including a few photos, but something did not seem right as the photos did not corresponded to the posts.  I checked more carefully and observed that I had renamed photos from early September with early August dates.  I quickly edited the two posts that included photos and deleted the images from the posts.  I am two months behind again uploading posts and having to go back and select/process photos for my August posts will only delay the uploading further.  Ugh.

I launched Go To Meeting at 7:55 PM EDT and let Linda know it was time for the meeting.  Curtis was already online and we eventually had eight stakeholders checked in, some of which were individuals and some of which were couples.  Curtis, the founder and CEO of RVillage, gave us an update on recent development work, new features to be released next week, monetization of the site, and the progress of the current round of investor financing.  The meeting lasted about 45 minutes.

I was glad I caught the error with the photos for my blog but I was not in the humor to spend hours working on fixing it this evening.  Linda cut a couple of pieces of the vegan frozen chocolate torte that she made last weekend and that was reason enough to quit working at my computer for the evening.  We spent an hour relaxing in the living room eating our torte while reading and writing.  Yesterday Phil said he would call this evening and let us know whether he would be here tomorrow or at another 2-day job, but he did not call.

When we finally turned in a little before 10 PM we watched TV for a while before turning out the lights.  We caught the last half of a program on the glass blowing school at Pilchuck and “A Woman in Battle” about a Cuban born woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in the Civil War on the Confederate side but ultimately became a Union spy.  Tomorrow we hang wallpaper in the bus and we will need to be well rested so it was lights out by 11 PM.

 

2015/10/03 (S) Wallpaper Stumps

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Last night we discussed not going to breakfast this morning and that was sufficient to give us permission to sleep in.  We got up at 7:30 AM, too late to make it to South Lyon by 8, so I made coffee while Linda cooked oatmeal with nuts and dried fruits.

There was a hawk on the ground just behind our house.  It took flight but stayed in the area dancing with a crow.  In spite of seeing it repeatedly–on the ground, perched in a tree, and in flight–we could not identify it other than to be fairly certain it was not a red-tailed hawk.  Red-tailed hawks are the most commonly seen raptor around here but they are very distinctive due to their red tails.

I checked the bus and the temperature was 54 degrees F, too cool for wallpapering.  I had left two electric heaters on last night but obviously did not set the thermostats high enough.  The refrigerator freezer compartment was 24 degrees, which is way too high, and has me concerned that something has broken, perhaps as a result of driving on our very bad roads.  I settled in to enjoy my coffee (as best I could) and await the arrival of Philip Jarrell from Precision Grading.

Phil showed up at 8:35 AM.  The fact that he was probably starting work on our French drain and driveway extension project this morning was the main reason we decided not to go to our weekly ham radio club breakfast.  I left Phil alone long enough to get his equipment unloaded and then went out to chat with him briefly.  He had already communicated with me by phone during the week about what he wanted to accomplish today, and where he needed to start the work, but I always like to be on site when a contractor arrives and double check these things.  That is especially true when they have big equipment that can move a lot of earth in a short time.

Phil was using his smaller backhoe to dig up tree stumps and pull debris out of the woods along the area where the pull-through driveway extension will run.  He also pulled out concrete blocks, pipes, and other building debris that has been thrown there over many years.  I did not, however, have him pull out the two piles of bricks as I presume they are the same as the ones on the house and we might want to keep them for future repairs.

I needed to get the air-ride seat base back to Chuck this morning so I put it in the car and drove to his shop in Novi.  He was just pulling his stacker trailer out of the shop with his forklift when I arrived.  After he finished getting it out and positioning it I gave him the air-ride base and he put it in the trailer through the side door.  We chatted briefly about moving the two remaining windshields, during which time Barbara showed up, so I left them to their chores and headed home.

Back at the house we decided not to try hanging wallpaper today.  The temperature was in the low 50’s and it was drizzling lightly and intermittently.  Not wanting to waste the day we decided to straighten up the temporary workshop we have set up in the garage.  We had just started that when we got a call from our son and he put his daughter on the phone.  Madeline wanted to come visit her grandparents which we were all too happy to oblige.  A return call pinned down the day/time as tomorrow morning.  I helped Linda load the recyclables into her car and she took them to Recycle Livingston.  She stopped at the Meijer’s in Howell on the way home to pick up ingredients for a fruit salad for tomorrow’s visit.

Part of the reason for cleaning up the garage/shop was that when I went to pull out the tub with all of our wallpapering tools I could not find it even though we both remembered recently seeing the tools somewhere.  The more we looked the more it seemed that “recently” was either a long time ago or a product of our collective imaginations.  We still have a lot of stuff in boxes from our move 2-1/2 years ago and we have boxes stored behind boxes in the garage making it difficult to get to many of them.

We worked steadily except for a lunch break and a couple of quick chats with Phil.  Lunch was a half sandwich of hummus and onions on rye with leftover potato salad and collard greens Cole slaw.

Phil was working by the culvert that goes under the road and had dug away the earth in front of it.  I got down and looked in; it was completely clogged.  Phil said he knew a company in Walled Lake that could open it and clean it out using a hydro-jet system and agreed to give them a call on Monday.  He was setting up his laser level to shoot the grade and mark the route for the French drain when I went back inside.We did not get the garage completely cleaned and organized but by mid-afternoon it was a lot better than when we started.  I eventually spotted the dark gray tray that we have used in the distant past for wetting pre-pasted wallpaper.  It was on top of some upper cabinets, not down on a shelf where we had been looking.  Inside were all of our wallpapering tools except for a long edge that we used for guiding the razor knife when trimming corners.  The smoothing tool was falling apart and completely useless so we threw it away.  We will need to pick up a few new tools when we buy the wallpaper paste.

Linda made some hot tea and settled in to work on her counted cross-stitch project while I worked on my iPad.  I eventually went back to the garage to see if I could find my small gasoline powered chain saw.  Fortunately, it was where I remembered last seeing it.  We have a dead tree that needs to be cut down before it also falls across the road and several trees that are already down and need to be cut into small enough pieces so that Phil can use his front loader to move them to his dump truck.

As long as Phil is hauling wood debris off of the site we might as well take advantage of his willingness to take whatever will fit in his truck.  The alternative is for us to haul it to the fire pit with our (currently non-functioning) lawn tractor and burn it.  Unfortunately I could not find the small red plastic gasoline container that I use for gasoline mixed 40:1 with 2-cycle oil for use in small, air-cooled 2-stroke engines such as the chain saw.  I also could not find our Ryobi multipurpose trimmer/saw and figured I had lent all of this to one of our children, probably our son.

Our 13″ McCullough chain saw has not seen regular use over the years but has always been willing to run when needed and proven to be very handy.  It’s a nice size for cutting down small trees and de-limbing larger ones.  In order to use it I needed a small gasoline container.  I would normally go to Lowe’s in Howell but much of the drive is on dirt roads.  It had been drizzling all day and the dirt roads were sloppy so I went to The Home Depot in Brighton.  The entire route is paved except the first/last mile from/to our house.

THD had quarts of pre-mixed gasoline and oil in 40:1 and 50:1 ratios.  Although expensive compared to the cost of gasoline at a filling station, I did not have to buy a new container, a bottle of oil, stop at the filling station on the way home, deal with mixing everything in the correct ratio, add Stabil fuel stabilizer to the container, and then remember what was in the container or label it.  Sometimes the price of convenience is a price worth paying.

When I got home I added the fuel to the tank of the chain saw and set all of the controls according to the starting directions.  I figured it would take a few pulls of the handle, perhaps quite a few, to get it to start but I did not expect the engine to be locked up.  On a couple of tries I got the crank to turn slightly but mostly it would not budge.  I have no idea what is wrong with it but I suspect that something is rusted or bent.  Whatever the case I have no intention of taking the time to try to disassemble it to find out.

Dinner was salad and leftover pizza with a small glass of wine.  I went to Lowe’s after dinner and bought a new chain saw.  Lowe’s sells at least five different brands of chain saws but they feature Husqvarna.  I bought a Poulan Pro 18″ model figuring the longer chain bar would be useful for cutting down and/or cutting up slightly larger trees.  I got it for 1/2 to 2/3 of the comparable Husqvarna models.

Poulan is Husqvarna’s less expensive product line and it seemed good enough for the occasional use it will get.  We have too many trees on our property to be without a functioning chain saw, however, and Phil will be done cleaning and hauling timber at the end of his next day here.  I will probably take the little McCullough somewhere to see if it can be repaired but that may not be until next spring.  Even if I took it someplace on Monday I would not have it back in time, assuming it can even be repaired.

Back home I turned on the natural gas fireplace and we relaxed in the living room reading, writing, and playing games on our iPads.  With the new iOS 9 Apple changed the Game Center so the login screen pops up every time you open any game.  It is REALLY annoying and apparently we are not alone in that view.  Linda was checking online to see if there was a way to disable it and saw a lot of chatter on the subject, none of it positive (but no way to disable the “feature”).  She did find something that said it should stop popping up for any game where you have clicked “Cancel” three times in a row but she has canceled the login more times than that yet is still getting the screen.  Interestingly, the login screen has stopped popping up on my iPad.  The only difference between them is that I used mine the other day while waiting at Discount Tire without any connection to the Internet.  Maybe that confused it.

We turned in just before 10 PM hoping to watch a little television but did not find much on that interested us even on PBS.  We searched through the channels and happened on a program titled “If You Build It” (on one of the three PBS affiliates we can pick up) about project-based learning.  It was interesting.

 

2015/10/02 (F) Tire Nibblers

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It dropped into the mid-40s last night and the house cooled off proportionally.  It starts getting light at 7 AM these days and cool mornings are just another reason to stay under the covers a little longer.  I finally got up at 7:30 AM, got dressed to work, and made our morning coffee.  After our breakfast of fresh mixed berries and homemade granola I turned on the fireplace and we enjoyed our coffee to its dancing light and warmth.

Chuck called to let me know he had set out one of his sheet metal nibblers for me to pick up at the shop.  I left around 10:30 AM and drove Linda’s Honda Civic to Discount Tire in Howell.  (My Honda Element is tied up at Brighton Honda until the middle of next week to get a broken driver-side door lock replaced.)  I noticed last night while we were out that several tires on the Civic were under-inflated and the sidewalls were badly weather-checked.  They still had plenty of tread but the paperwork indicated they were put on five years and 80,000 miles ago.  Time for a change.

At Discount Tire the sales associate confirmed that the date code was from 2009 and corroborated my observations.  The tread was probably good for another 20,000 miles but I do not mess around with old tires with cracked sidewalls.  Michelin no longer makes the Defender, at least not in the P195/65R15 size, so I bought a set of four Continentals that should perform equally well and last for 90,000 miles.  That means they will age out before the wear out, which is fine with me.  It was going to be a two hour turnaround time so I texted Linda and Chuck and settled in to wait.  Thank goodness for iPad games.

The technician pulled the car in at noon and a few minutes later asked me if I had the key for the wheel locks.  I had looked for it earlier and not found it.  He wasn’t sure he could get them off at all and would certainly ruin them in the attempt.  That sounded like a bad situation getting worse so I had them set the tires aside while I took the car to Brighton Honda and had them remove the special lug nut from each wheel using their master key set.  I bought a new set at the Honda dealership (so any Honda dealer can remove them in the future) and had them put those on and made sure I had the key when I left.

While I was there Rob gave me a quote on four Continental tires.  The installed price, including a rebate in the form of a Visa gift card, was 30% lower than the price I paid at Discount Tire so I showed the quote to the guy at the counter when I got back.  He said the quote was for a different, less expensive, discontinued tire.  I had no way of knowing if that was true or not but he also asked if the guy who wrote me up gave me the rebate form for the tires I bought.  I said ‘no’ so this guy printed out an extra receipt and gave it to me with the rebate form.  That narrowed the price difference to 20% and I was satisfied with that.  I liked the tires I had purchased and did not want to undo and then redo the sale.  I have also had good experiences over the years with Discount Tire, including their nationwide free rotation and balancing policy.

When the tires were finally mounted, balanced, and installed I headed for Chuck’s shop in Novi.  He was there when I arrived and had three different metal cutting tools laid out to show me.  One was manual, one was electric, and one was powered by a drill.  We decided that the manual one and the drill powered one were most likely to work for what I needed to do.  He put them in a cardboard box along with cans of three different chemicals he was getting rid of.  His trash, my treasurers.

On the way back to the house I stopped at the Shell station at Beck and Grand River Avenue to top up the fuel tank.  I texted Linda and then headed for home.  I arrived home at 3 PM to find lunch on the table.  That was a nice surprise.

After lunch we uninstalled the desk in the bus and set the pedestals on part of a large blanket in the center of the kitchen floor.  We draped the blanket over them and then uninstalled the hinged sofa seat and set it across the pedestals.  We folded the blanket back over the seat and set the desk bases on top of it.  We now had clear access to the wall behind the desk and the wall behind the sofa.

I got a 3″ brush from the basement and then got the Zinzer 123 Primer, opened it, and stirred it.  It was still in good shape as it has been in the library since last fall when we repaired and repainted the west wall after Darryl was done installing the new HVAC system.  Rather than pour it into another container I found a lid from a copy paper box to put it under the one gallon can.  Linda finished masking off the woodwork and counters in the bus and then helped me spread painter’s plastic to protect the floor.  We spread out an old bathroom towel, put the box lid on that, and then put the can inside the (upside down) box lid.  I set the can lid aside and worked directly out of the can.

I started in the back of the hallway and primed the upper half of the outside wall as I worked towards the front.  The lower half of this wall has vertical mirror tile wainscoting.  We wanted to remove it but assumed the pieces were glued directly to the plywood wall, as they are elsewhere in the coach, in which case removing them would have done a lot of damage.  We repositioned the plastic, towel, and paint and I continued up the passenger side priming the plywood next to and (mostly) under the windows.  Completing that side up to the cockpit required one more repositioning of all the stuff.  I was working in close proximity to the new living room captain’s chairs so we wrapped those in painter’s plastic as well.

Bruce primes the bare plywood behind the sofa and under the driver side living room window.

Bruce primes the bare plywood behind the sofa and under the driver side living room window.

I moved to the driver’s side and primed the area under the window and up the left side.  Even though Linda had masked off all of the woodwork with painter’s tape I worked carefully and stayed away from the tape.  We are not sure that the priming is even necessary and I did not want to risk getting any on the woodwork.

By the time we finished it was 5:30 PM and we were done working on the bus for the day.  We had only worked for a couple of hours, and only accomplished a small task, but it was a critical path task that stood in the way of getting a whole chain of other important things done.  Tomorrow we will sand the primer with 220 grit paper using the palm sander and try hanging the new wallpaper.

Linda made a pizza for dinner using the gluten-free almond meal recipe she got from Mara.  She topped it with greens, onions, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, and Daiya non-dairy cheese.  There is also cheese in the crust along with garlic and other good things.  We had a nice salad first with walnuts, beets, and sun-dried tomato vinaigrette.  The salad was very good and the pizza was outstanding.

Philip Jarrell called to let us know he would be here at 8 AM tomorrow to start our French drain and driveway project, weather permitting.  Detroit Public Television shows classic movies at 8 PM on Fridays and tonight’s selection was “Bullit” starring Steve McQueen and Jacqueline Bisset.  We watched This Old House and a couple of travel shows after that and then went to sleep.

 

2015/09/27 (N) Super-Harvest-Blood-Moon Eclipse

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We were up at 7:30 AM.  I got dressed to work and made coffee.  We had our usual breakfast and coffee and then got busy.  I worked in the bus while Linda picked up the house.  We had company coming in the early afternoon and wanted the house and the bus to be presentable.

I sanded the wall behind the sofa using the Porter-Cable 1/4 sheet palm sander we bought yesterday at Lowe’s in New Hudson.  I started with 80 grit paper, switched to 120 grit, and vacuumed up as much dust as I could see.  I then gathered up tools and materials and put them in the garage.  I wanted the steps to be safe so I removed the three rusted screws from the old step between the copilot floor level and the main floor level and temporarily reinstalled it.

With Linda’s assistance we put the sofa platform back in place and screwed it down.  We moved the desk pedestals out of the way and I brought the bases out from the garage.  We set the bases in place, put the pedestals on top, spread them apart, and inserted the connecting cover that goes between them.  We aligned the parts so they looked OK but did not screw them back together or to the wall and did not put the temporary plywood top back on.  We removed the painter’s plastic and towels from the chairs and disposed of them or stored them as appropriate.  Linda vacuumed thoroughly and then I took the vacuum into the house.

I showered, shaved, and dressed while Linda vacuumed in the house.  I was settling in to work on my iPad when she informed me that the display on the main thermostat was blank.  I assumed initially that it needed a new battery but it turned out that this thermostat does not have a battery, at least not one I could find ad replace.  This thermostat controls the heat for the living room, dining room, and kitchen and the air-conditioning (cooling) for the entire main floor.  It is also Wi-Fi enabled so we can monitor and control it via the web when we are away.  We are not running the furnace or the A-C at the moment so the loss of this unit was not a crisis but it was still troubling.

I did not want to get involved in diagnosing and fixing this problem at that exact moment but I checked the other three thermostats to see if their displays were working.  They were, and since all of the thermostats get their power from the same transformer it was clearly not a failed transformer or open circuit breaker.  Thus it appeared to be a power supply problem to this particular unit.  I tightened the wire connections on the solenoid valve for this zone but that did not fix the problem.

At least three possibilities occurred to me at that point: 1) the thermostat had failed, 2) The power is routed to the A-C air handler before going to the thermostat and a wire/connection got disturbed when Rebecca was in the attic, and 3) the solenoid had failed and was no longer passing power.  Although the system is simple enough I am not an expert on how it is wired so there might be other possible explanations and I did not have a way to determine the likelihood of each possibility.  Cooler weather is coming this week so I will have to get this resolved in the next few days.

I settled in to use my iPad to finish Friday’s blog post, write Saturday’s post, and start today’s post.  Bill, Karen, Mike, and Catherine showed up around 2 PM.  Bill and Karen are members of a couple of bus groups we belong to and Cathy is Bill’s sister.  They are from the greater Toronto area of Ontario, Canada and are staying at the Jellystone RV Park in Frankenmuth from mid-September through mid-October.  After greetings all around Bill and I went to the bus so he could see what we have doing while everyone else settled in.

When Bill and I came back in everyone else was sitting on the deck behind the house munching on grapes and pretzels while chatting and swatting hornets.  A week or so ago we left one of the hummingbird feeders on the table and the hornets had discovered it.  Even though we removed it and fogged the area this morning they kept returning.  Linda had me fetch the fly swatter from the bus so we could deal with them more effectively.  She brought out some of our ICE brand fruit flavored water.  Our guests had not seen this product before but seemed to enjoy it.  At least they each finished the bottle they had selected.

Linda started final dinner preparations with Karen’s assistance.  Dinner was cheese burgers, vegan potato salad, and collard greens Cole slaw.  Linda bought real beef patties and real cheddar cheese for our guests but everything else was vegan, including our burgers and cheese.  She cooked the burgers on the grill but we ate inside.  Linda made a frozen chocolate torte for dessert and served it with fresh strawberries.  We did not realize that Catherine does not eat chocolate or strawberries so we felt bad that she did not get dessert even though she said she was not hungry at that point.

We retired to the living room to sit more comfortably and continue chatting.  Jasper appeared from wherever he had been hiding (sleeping) and made friends with everyone.  Tonight was the rare conjunction of a Supermoon, Harvest Moon, and a full lunar eclipse that was also a blood moon.  It was cloudy at sunset/moonrise but gradually cleared off.  When Bill, Karen, Mike, and Catherine were leaving at 10 PM the eclipse was near full and fully visible we watched it for 15 minutes during which time the last wisps of clouds moved off to the north leaving a clear, star filled sky with a large, dark, reddish moon.  The next full eclipse of a Supermoon occurs in 2033.  I will be 81 then and fully intend to see it.

We relaxed for a while, reading and writing and checking on the moon, before going to bed.  By 11 PM the earth’s shadow was passing and the sun was once again illuminating the left edge of the moon.  I checked again at midnight and the eclipse was mostly passed.  It had been cloudy most of the day and we were fortunate that it cleared off in time for us to see this relative rare event right from our yard.  Relatively dark night skies is one of the advantages of living a little ways out in country.

 

2015/09/26 (S) A Step in the Right Direction

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We missed our ham radio club breakfast last week because we were at an RV rally and we plan to be at another rally three weekends from now so in spite of all the work we still have to do on the bus we went to breakfast in South Lyon.  After breakfast we went to the Lowe’s in New Hudson, which is close to South Lyon, and bought a Porter-Cable 1/4 sheet palm sander.  The sander is small enough to get into corners but has an integral dust collection bag.  The bag can be removed for sanding in really tight spots, but it cuts down on airborne dust while sanding and reduces the amount of cleanup afterwards.  We have several other Porter-Cable power tools and I am generally pleased with them.

Back at the house we took care of a few chores and then got to work on the bus.  Linda continued working on stripping the old wallpaper behind the sofa while I pondered for a while about what to do before deciding to concentrate on rebuilding the landing at the top of the entry stairs.  This landing is where the pneumatic entry stairwell slide cover was installed.  Without all of that “stuff” in place the last step up to the landing was now too short and the step up to the copilot level was too tall.  More importantly, the step heights were all different, and would be a built in trip hazard if not corrected.

I determined that the 2.5″ wide poplar boards installed on edge with a 3/4″ thick plywood floor and a top layer of 3/16″ SurePly underlayment would match the top surface of the plywood in the driver’s area.  That would (should), in turn, allow me to install the new vinyl floor tiles so they bridge that seam.  I will have to reuse the plywood in the driver’s area, but worst case that will require using adhesive remover followed by floor patching compound and sanding before installing the tiles.

The landing was not “square” (of course) so I made and rechecked measurements several times.  I then built a four-sided frame that fit snugly and had the front board aligned with the face of the plastic riser.  I am going to tile the steps and I am not going to use underlayment so I needed these surfaces as aligned and flat as possible.  I will probably use floor patching compound, however, to fill the gaps before installing the tile.  I used screws to secure the frame to the adjacent vertical wood that forms the riser to the copilot level and to the base of the landing with angle brackets.

I needed a piece of 3/4″ plywood approximately 31-1/8″ x 27-5/8″ for the new landing as the old piece I took out was not in good shape and I did not want to reuse it.  I did not have any other 3/4″ plywood pieces that were large enough so I went to Lowe’s.  They did not have 3/4″ half sheets (4′ x 4′) but I bought some more angle brackets while I was there.  I then went to The Home Depot.  They also did not have 3/4″ half sheets, but they had full sheets of 23/32″ sanded plywood that looked like it would work and a nice panel saw with an employee available to operate it.  I waited while he built a complete set of closet shelving for a couple and engaged in some domestic counseling.  He then cut the plywood sheet into two 4′ x 4′ pieces and helped me load them into a cart.  I was able to get them into my Honda Element by myself and close the back hatches.  I had a nice QSO with Steve (N8AR) on the drive home via the South Lyon 2m amateur radio repeater.

Linda had long since finished working on the wallpaper and busied herself in the kitchen preparing collard greens Cole slaw and vegan potato salad.  It was somewhere between late afternoon and early evening but I still had enough light to work outside.  Linda was still busy cooking so I decided to go ahead and try to cut the plywood for the new landing.  Again, it was not a rectangle, i.e., an equiangular quadrilateral (four right angles and four sides with opposing sides parallel and equal in length) so getting the shape exactly right was tricky.

I determined that the right front corner, as viewed from the entry steps, was a right angle, or close enough to one to provide a known starting point.  I put the plywood on 2″x4″s on the flat in the driveway to elevate them so I could clamp a saw guide in place and provide clearance for the saw blade.  I measured the lengths of all four edges as best I could and placed the right front corner at a factory corner of one of the 4′ x 4′ pieces.  I marked the length of the right side and the front on the two factory edges.  The left side was longer than the right side and the rear side was longer than the front side so I marked arcs for the left and rear lengths and found their point of intersection.  If the right front corner was, in fact, a right angle them this had to result in the correct shape.  The key word in that last sentence is “if.”

I tried to confirm my layout by measuring the lengths of the diagonals on the plywood and on the bus but I could not get accurate measurements in the bus.  I triple-checked my measurements and layout then marked the guide lines for the setback on my circular saw; 6-5/8″ to the inside edge of the teeth on the blade.  Truth be told I initially marked the guide lines on the wrong side of the cut.  I started to adjust my guide board to the outside of the blade and then thought better of the idea.  The guide needed to be set up so that if the blade wandered off course it would cut into waste material rather than the finished piece.  I re-measured and marked the guide lines in the proper place, checked their location with my small square, checked with the saw, made minor adjustments, and finally made the first of two cuts.  I then repeated all of that and made the second cut.  When I set the piece in place in the bus it was a perfect fit.  I was so pleased that I had Linda come out to see it.  Sometimes I amaze even myself.

I like to quit on a high note so that was the end of our bus work for today.  We did not make dramatic progress but we kept moving and got things done that needed doing.  My work today involved a certain amount of pondering and on-the-fly engineering combined with careful, repeated measuring and accurate cutting.  This kind of work is never fast.

A beautiful sunset had developed, which meant it was getting dark, so I put a few things away and closed up the bus while Linda prepared our dinner.  She made a nice salad and heated a couple of Amy’s vegan (non-dairy) lasagna entrées.  A glass of Moscato was a welcome accompaniment and we enjoyed a second glass as we relaxed in the living room.  We got a Rockler catalog in the mail today so I looked through that.  If you are into woodworking it’s the adult equivalent of the Sear’s Christmas catalogs of yesteryear.

I called Butch at 10 PM.  It was 7 PM in Bouse, Arizona and I figured they would be done working for the day and probably already had their dinner.  The daytime highs there have been reaching 110 degrees F so Butch and the other RV Park employees have been starting work between 6 and 7 AM and trying to finish up by 1 PM.  He did not elaborate but said the situation the first two weeks has not been exactly what they signed up for.  He had already responded to an e-mail from Linda with more details so we let it go at that and talked about other things.  We wrapped up our conversation at 10:30 and I went to bed.  I was going to play a couple of games and then go to sleep but there was an update available for the iPad OS so I installed it.  9.0.1 was a big update and took quite a while to install.  I was very sleepy by the time it finished and turned out the lights.

 

2015/09/21 (M) Back to Bus Work

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We were up a little after 8 AM.  I showered while Linda prepared our breakfast fruit–blueberries, raspberries, and peaches–to go with our granola.  I made a pot of coffee, using up the Costa Rican half-caff, and then sat down to eat.  After breakfast we sat in the living room enjoying our coffee to the warmth and glow of the fireplace while Linda downloaded and installed iOS 9 on her iPad.  The download was 740 MB so I waited until the installation was done on her machine to start it on mine.

When we finally got to work our first task was to unload all of the wood from the car and store it in the garage.  My next task was to call Ferman Miller at Countertops Plus in Shipshewana, Indiana to make sure he got my message on Friday with the dimensions for the Corian top table.  I got his voice mail again and left another message.  I then called Josh at Coach Supply Direct to bring him up to date, got his voice mail, and left a message.

Linda planned to get a few things at Whole Foods Market as she needed to drive to Ann Arbor anyway to pick up our wallpaper from Delux Draperies and Wallcoverings.  While she took care of that I started figuring out what parts I needed to reconfigure the heating system.  Before making a run to the store I found all of my plumbing tools and supplies.  I got 20 feet of heater hose and 10 band clamps from O’Reilly’s and various copper fittings from Lowe’s.  I also got a drain hose and a clean bucket to catch/hold antifreeze.

Back home I removed the seat and back cushions from the sofa and stacked them on the chairs.  I removed the temporary plywood top from the desk and stored it in the garage.  I then uninstalled the desk pedestals from the wall and from their bases.  There wasn’t much else I could do without Linda’s help, so her return soon thereafter was timely.  We had a light lunch and then moved the pedestals to the sofa.  That left the bases free for me to work with.  I still did not have all of the parts I needed to install the fan-coil heat exchangers in the bases.  I also needed to remove the heater hoses in order to mount the heat exchangers and replace the hoses with different lengths and angled fittings.

As I was contemplating all of that I got a call from Chuck Spera.  He was in the process of setting up an appointment to have the lower windshields replaced on both of our rigs and wanted to make sure I was still interested and check my availability.  He called back a little while later to let me know we were set for next week Tuesday in the morning.

I then got a call from Joe Cannarozzi.  Joe has done a lot of work on our bus over the last five years, especially the chassis.  He called to confirm that I still wanted him to stop at our place on his way back to Chicago around Halloween and discuss what I needed done.  Yes, I did, and what I needed was routine maintenance; lube, oil, filter(s), brakes, and possibly axle hub seals.

When we first started working with Joe he had an active, full-time mobile bus repair business, specializing in Prevost chassis service.  The last couple of years he has worked a regular gig in upstate New York from April through October.  He still services a few buses, like ours, starting in the north in the late fall and working his way to Florida for the winter where he tries to get to the Keys and take 4 to 6 weeks off before working his way back up to New York in the spring.  When we wrapped up the call I texted Chuck to let him know that Joe would be coming this way.

I called Ferman again and this time he answered the phone.  He had gotten my two previous messages and I was correct that there was not enough material in the large sheet of Corian to make the table.  He had not had a chance to check his stock to see if he had any more of the Sandstone.  I mentioned that Josh had another vendor with a 30″ by 40″ piece.  Ferman indicated that if he doesn’t have another piece he would be willing to work with that piece if Josh got it.  I called Josh and he answered this time so I walked him through the current status.  He called the other vendor and called me back.  The piece is 30″ by 48″ and he was willing to sell it for $175.  Josh and I agreed to give Ferman a couple of days to check his stock before pursuing it.

Linda was working at her desk on a proposal for the bakery and preparing a bank deposit for our GLCC chapter.  I went to the garage and began soldering 3/4″ copper plumbing fittings.  I need to route the 3/4″ rubber heater hose around corners that were too sharp to just bend the hose so the copper fittings will take care of that.

Linda called me to dinner at 6 PM.  We had a nice salad, vegan Italian sausage with onions, and Brussels sprouts as a side.  A small glass of Moscato made a nice accompaniment.  After dinner I checked my e-mail and took care of the cats’ liter tray.  I then drove to Lowe’s for two more 45 degree street elbows.  On the drive home I talked to Mike (W8HX) on the South Lyon 2m repeater.  We discussed getting me back up our tower sometime in the next 9 days if my work on the bus progressed to the point where I could afford the time.  We went to bed early enough to watch a few TV programs and then fell asleep.