Tag Archives: LED floodlight

2014/07/31 (W) Wrapping Up?

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We were tired and went to bed early last night.  Naturally, that meant we were up earlier than usual this morning.  Linda made her fabulous vegan blueberry pancakes to get us fueled up for a long day of work.  The landscapers were also here reasonably early and had a very productive day.  More on that later.

Our first task this morning was installing a switch controlled dual LED floodlight fixture on the back of the garage above and to the left of the door (when viewed from the outside).  The location was determined by the construction of the rear wall of the garage.  I measured and re-measured the location of the cable hole to make sure the surface mounted junction box ended up in the center (vertically) of one of the siding boards.  I drilled a 1/2″ hole through the back (north) wall of the garage just to the right of the back door (when viewed from inside the garage) and just below the top plate.  I ran a 14-2+g (NM) cable (that I had previously prepped and left in the wall cavity) through the hole in the wall and then through the hole in the back of the junction box.  This was the part of the north wall where I had to remove concrete backer board, a burned 2×4, and singed insulation, so the studs and back side of the exterior plywood sheathing were exposed and accessible.

We moved around to the outside and I caulked the hole around the wire, put a generous band of while caulk around the hole on the back of the junction box, and a half circle of caulk around the top back edge of the box and mounted it to the outside of the house with the center knockout centered over the hole in the wall.  I installed the dual LED light fixture and put a bead of caulk around the top half of the junction box where it met the fixture.  (The heads of the cheap machine screws that now come with electrical fixtures and plates strip very easily making it difficult to get a tight fit.)  I caulked the wire hole from the inside and then dressed and secured the cable.  I turned the circuit breaker on, and checked for proper operation of the switch and light fixture.  It was all good.  I like it when that happens.

Our next task was to install three round blue plastic junction boxes for bare bulb light fixtures; two for the garage attic and one for the garage end of the library attic.  I was originally going to install a switch near the top of the fold-down ladder to control the lights and run power to it from a new ceiling light fixture in the utility closet, but we came up with a better solution.

There was a three-gang electrical box in the east wall of the garage just inside the door from the library.  It had two switches installed and the cover plate had openings for a duplex outlet in the third position, but no device installed there.  We thought this would be a better place for the switch—as there was already power to the box—if we could get a wire through the wall from the attic to the box.  The drywall is missing from the lower half of the wall so we had good access to the underside of the box.  (The drywall was removed by the previous owner to repair the frozen hot water baseboard heat pipes.)  I checked in the attic and it looked like we had a good shot at making this work.  The icing on the cake was that we could install a switch with a pilot light that is designed to fit in a duplex outlet cover plate.  Not only would it be convenient, it would provide a visible indication that the lights were on.

I did the attic work while Linda took care of the garage end of this task, passing me parts and tools as needed and helping feed NM cable. We ran 14-2+g (120V, 15A) wire from the attic through the east wall to the existing outlet box.  I pulled the cable over to the location by the library attic, mounted the box, cut the cable, unsheathed it, stripped the wires, ran it into the box, and secured it to the truss.  I repeated that process with the end of the free cable.  The plastic light fixtures I bought very conveniently feature pass-through wiring terminals so all I had to do was hook up the cables, fasten the fixture to the box, and screw in the 100 W rugged service bulb.

I repeated this process for the next box/fixture which I positioned just to the west side of garage ridge 1/4 of the way in from the front (south) wall.  Finally, I repeated most of this process for the third and final (for now) box/fixture which I positioned on the east side of the ridge 1/4 of the way in from the back (north) wall.  Somewhere in the middle of all that we stopped for lunch.

With the attic lights installed I needed to pull the wire that supplied power to the outlets in the west half of the garage out of the rear/north wall and up into the attic.  Easier said than done.  The cable was originally part of the circuit that powers the outlets in the northeast wall of the garage (and now powers the new floodlights on the back wall) but I disconnected it a week ago knowing that I wanted to feed it from a separate breaker.  The cable went through a hole in the top plate and I discovered that the bottom cord of the gable truss had been set partially covering this hole with the cable pinched under it.  I cut the cable from above and ran it into a plastic switch box.  Linda was then able to pull the tail end loose from underneath.  I will run a new cable from the sub-panel to the junction box after I get more pressing work done.

On that note I also realized today that I do not have to get the cables for the new circuits through the top plates above the sub-panel, which was going to be difficult-to-impossible.  The sub-panel is surface mounted and I already planned to box around it.  With the supply air duct coming out of the new HVAC unit and running straight out along the ceiling above the utility closet door I will have 16 inches of clear ceiling space.  The sub-panel is about four inches deep so I will have about three inches of ceiling above the panel and in front of the top plates where I can run new cable into the attic.  Brilliant!

Our last attic task for today was to disconnect two telephone wires in the wall cavity to the right of the sub-panel, pull them up into the attic, reroute them, and reconnect them.  One of them turned out to be the main phone/data line coming into the house from the AT&T box at the southwest corner of the garage.  There was a telephone wall outlet to the right of the old sub-panel that this line ran to before continuing on to the rest of the house.  The wires are very small gage, are unshielded, and the cable is draped through the attic over multiple 120 VAC cables.  I need to replace this with a single run of much better (shielded) cable when I have time.  Perhaps we will get less static on the phone and faster Internet data transfer rates.  (Nah, probably not.  It will still be an AT&T landline.)

While I started working on re-wiring the three-gang box in the east garage wall, Linda made a run to Lowe’s to get a 32′ roll of 16″ x 3.5″ (R-13) insulation and a switch with a pilot light.  I got the box rewired, we energized the circuit, and everything worked.  Yippee!

The landscapers today consisted of Steve (the owner), Spencer (his nephew), and Tommy.  Steve used the excavator to place four large boulders on the sides of the new front steps.  That was the last work to be done in front that required the excavator so he used it to back blade (level off) and compact (with the bucket) the pull-through driveway.  He was not able to return it to its existing condition but did the best he could with the equipment he has.

He took time out to use his chain saw to cut down a dead pine tree, cut it up into 4′ lengths, and carry the pieces back to his truck with the excavator.  He then used it to fill/grade a large low spot just southwest of the garage.  This was the route they used to get the excavator to the back yard.  It was also where all of the construction debris was piled until yesterday, and the excavator really tore the ground up in that area over the last four weeks.

Spencer and Tommy worked in the back hand-grading the slopes beyond the retaining walls and the area that was trenched for the drain tiles.  They worked in a layer of good topsoil, spread grass seed, and covered it with straw.

Steve plans to lay the brick pavers for the front sidewalk tomorrow and have the whole project wrapped up by the end of the day.  It looked like they were on track to accomplish that until Spencer informed us that there was apparently a leak in the drain tile somewhere in “the valley.”  Leak was an understatement; we had an area at least 8′ x 12′ that had turned into a pond.

It appeared that the drain line for the sump pump was somehow discharging its water at this point rather than it flowing all the way down to the drains at the back of the yard.   Spencer dug up some of the line coming down the slope and found several holes on the top side, but it did make sense that these were the source of the problem.  Our guess is that that line, which is not one continuous piece of drain tile, has become disconnected at the valley floor allowing all of the water to escape at that point, and/or crushed, causing the water to back up through a connector (which is only designed for water to flow one way).  Fortunately we kept the original PVC discharge extension pipe from the sump pump outlet so we temporarily disconnected the buried drain line and reconnected the extension pipe.

Whatever the cause of the leak, we are sure it will be found and fixed, we’re just not sure that will happen by the end of the day tomorrow.  I had thought about “testing” the system by using a garden hose to put a significant volume of water into each of the drain lines.  As of now, I will definitely be doing that.

Our final task was insulating a section of the rear/north wall.  We got three of the four plus cavities filled and ran out of steam.  Besides, it was dinner time.  Linda made one of her “go-to” dishes; angel hair pasta with onions, garlic, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, basil, and mixed baby greens lightly sautéed in olive oil.  This is a dish she can throw together from ingredients on hand without a recipe and it is always delicious.  We had a small glass of Leelanau Cellars Summer Sunset wine while she cooked and a small glass of Meiomi Pinot Noir with the dish.  No salad and no dessert; just a great pasta dish and nice wine.  I got cleaned up and we watched the first episode of season five of Doc Martin.  As we were drifting off to sleep we thought we heard the distant howl of a coyote.

2014/07/30 (W) Winter In July

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By the time we started breakfast the landscapers were back.  Steve started to dig a trench for a drain line from the end of the lower deck and hit 2×8’s on the flat about 2-3″ below the surface, so he abandoned that work and moved the excavator around front to the trash pile.

The major construction work up in the back is nearing completion and the lads were picking up some of the smaller debris, the larger stuff having been moved around front to the trash pile yesterday.  Steve used the excavator to load some of the trash onto the trailer (normally used to move the excavator), where the crew covered and secured it.  He loaded more of it into the back of his pickup truck.  They are still having tire issues with the trailer so I charged up my 200 psi air compressor (150 psi regulated) and rolled it over so they could fill one of the tires.

Steve moved the excavator to the southeast corner of the house to dig a short (10′) shallow trench for a drain line to get water from the downspout away from the house.  I conferred with him regarding the exact location because the main propane line enters the house at that corner, the electrical service for the RV outlet runs under there, there is a tree about 12 feet southeast of that corner, and that corner is where the new natural gas meter will be installed. There will be a similar short drain line at the southwest corner of the garage, but it will be dug by hand as the main electrical service runs directly under there about 2′ below the surface.

The lads continued to work in the back placing egg rock.  They were about 1/2 cubic yard short and I asked Steve to order a full cubic yard and use the other 1/2 yard on the west end of the north edge of the lower upper deck to match what they had done at the top of the west retaining wall.  Steve gave the crew instructions on how to prep that area, add a piece of edging to define where the rock will go, and install landscape fabric.  He and I then looked at the boards he hit in the back while trenching and it turned out there were only three of them 4-6′ long and they appeared to be old construction material that had possibly been used as a step off of the lower deck.

Linda gathered up household trash and recyclables and headed off around 10:45 AM.  I finally got started on my projects for the day around 11 AM, opening the garage door so I would have light when the power was turned off at the sub-panel main breaker.  My first task was to move the new outlet I installed in the utility closet the other day.  The return air duct will be installed against that wall and would cover the current location.  When we installed the door yesterday we did not put any 2×4’s above the door and up to the ceiling.  Darryll is going to run the supply duct straight out from the furnace above the door and then angle it over against the east wall of the garage.

With the outlet relocated I cut some scrap insulation to fill the lower half of the open wall cavities and then stopped while I pondered getting a ground wire into that space.  Linda got back from running her errands about then so I decided over lunch to call Bratcher Electric to see if they could give me an idea of what it will cost to run a 100 Amp service entrance cable from the transfer switch in the southwest corner of the garage to the garage panel in the northeast corner of the garage.  (I estimated it would take 40′ of cable, but have no idea what the labor will be.)

The earliest I will be able to talk to Mike Bratcher is next Monday so I decided that I really needed to run a ground wire from the sub-panel to the main panel allowing me to disconnect the ground wires from the neutral wires in the sub-panel by removing the bonding screw in the sub-panel and giving us a code-compliant, and much safer, sub-panel until such time as it gets re-wired as a main panel.

Linda and I determined that I needed about 40′ of #10 copper wire to get from the sub-panel to the main panel.  Pondering sometimes leads to good things.  I really did not want to stop working to go get wire when I remembered that I had a length of green insulated copper wire I had used for grounding a ham radio and antenna mast at the old house.  It was coiled up on the floor in garage and when we uncoiled it we discovered it was … 40′ long!  I love it when that happens.  I checked the gage and it was #8, so it was actually larger than required for the 60A cable that feeds power from the main panel in the basement to the sub-panel in the garage.

I checked the approximate location for drilling a hole and then drilled a 1/2″ hole from the inside of the garage just above the base plate and out through the siding.  I fed the ground wire through the hole from outside the garage, pulled it up into the sub-panel, and secured it to one of the ground bars.  I dressed it and fastened it to the side of a stud and coiled up the extra outside on the lower upper deck.  I will complete the run to the main panel another day.

With the ground wire installed I was able to install the insulation I had cut earlier and secure it with our staple gun, which I had managed to locate in the tub of tools we took with us out west last summer.  With Linda’s assistance I cut and installed two pieces of drywall from an old scrap piece we had.  I then taped the seams and mudded the screw dimples.  By the time I finished it was 4 PM.  Spencer came to the garage to let me know that they would all be leaving around 4:30 PM due to a severe thunderstorm that was on course to hit our area around 5 PM.

By 4:45 PM we were hearing thunder and I decided to stop work temporarily and help Linda close up the house.  The storm came, a cold wind blew, and it rained hard, but only for a few minutes and we did not get any of the hail that was reported prior to the storm’s arrival at our location.  An hour later we had a lovely summer evening with blue skies.  Linda made roasted winter vegetables for dinner.  It’s the end of July, but we had overnight lows in the mid-40’s two nights ago.  The first six months of this year have been the coldest in 21 years, so winter vegetables were appropriate for dinner even though it is the end of July.

I had planned to do a lot of other electrical work today, but it was a full day and everything that got done was something that needed to get done.  It was also work that had to get done in the order in which it was accomplished.  My original plans were obviously too ambitious, and today’s work involved details that required time to figure out and execute.

 

2014/07/26 (S) Climbing Ladders

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We did not go to our usual ham radio breakfast in South Lyon today so I could get an earlier start on the construction work in the garage.  Before I even got started I got sidetracked by a small rain gutter project which led to further gutter projects.

I bought a downspout elbow yesterday and wanted to get it installed before the next rains, which are forecast for tomorrow at 20% in the early morning riding steadily to 90% by 6 PM.  The elbow is a replacement for a short straight downspout section that feeds water from the end of one gutter into a slightly lower gutter that is perpendicular to the first.  The second gutter has the main downspout at one end.  Rather than dumping water straight down into the lower gutter, the elbow will direct it towards the lower gutter drain hole and away from the house.  A picture would make this much clearer, but I did not take one.

While I was installing the elbow I noticed that both gutters had a lot of “stuff” in them and the wire mesh drain hole grates were mostly clogged.  I cleaned all of the gutters last year, although I do not remember exactly when.  I expect a certain amount of organic material to accumulate in the gutters—the house is surrounded by trees after all—but I was surprised by the amount of granular material that had washed off of the shingles.  There was a lot of granular material last year, which I assumed had taken many seasons to accumulate, and I had flushed all of it out of the gutters with a hose.

The guy who inspected the house when we bought it said the roof was “serviceable” without being much more specific.  I suspect it is approaching the end of its useful life, but is not a project we can take on this year.  We have a ranch house with a low pitched roof, probably not more than 4-in-12.  It would take me several weeks to roof it myself, but it’s something I am (still) capable of doing.  Perhaps next summer, after we build the barn.

Given the condition of these two gutters I decided to check/clean all of them.  In the process I found that the gutter on the front of the house had three mounting screws loose at the west end.  I tightened them up, completing my unplanned roof tasks for the day.

There are several interesting things about “small construction projects.”  One is that they seem small because you can conceptualize the outcome and visualize all of the major steps quickly and easily.  Another is that you assume they aren’t going to cost very much; they are, after all, small projects.  Having been educated and worked as an engineer at one point in my life I tend to design things rather than jump right into the building phase.  The design phase is where I usually get my first reality check as I start to consider all of the details of the project that I was not able to quickly and easily visualize.  The next reality check comes when I am finally ready to build, which means cutting and fastening wood, only to realize that I have many days of other tasks I must complete first.  The tricky part of construction is that stuff has to be done in a certain (correct) order.  If not, you end up having to deconstruct something and then reconstruct it, or engineer an entirely different solution which takes even longer and costs even more than what you planned to do in the first place.

So even though I worked all day I did not build the platform.  Here’s what I did instead:  removed some drywall to expose a wire that was a little too short to get the sheathing into the new sub-panel; installed an outlet box and duplex outlet using the old wire and ran a new wire to the panel; filled out the panel with circuit breakers I will eventually need for new or rewired circuits; patched holes in drywall; cut and installed two studs in the north wall to provide 16″ on center spacing for new drywall; bored holes through the new studs for an old wire; installed a switch near the rear garage door fed from the old wire; ran a new wire for a new outside light; went to Lowe’s and purchased a 36″ exterior grade door (steel), a fold-down ladder for the garage attic, an exterior LED light fixture, and a light fixture for the new utility closet; enlarged the garage attic access opening from 22.5″ x 45″ to 22.5″ x 54″; read and pondered the installation instructions for the fold-down ladder; and decided to call it a night.

Somewhere in all of that we had orange/grapefruit juice, Teeko’s Sweet Seattle Dreams coffee (a blend that Jeff does just for us) and Linda’s homemade granola for breakfast; tofu hot dogs for lunch with sweet cherries, and; vegan Pad Thai for dinner that Linda made from scratch.  The Pad Thai was a complicated dish but Linda’s efforts really paid off; it was outstanding.

By the time I showered, worked on this post, and caught up on some blogs I follow it was time for bed.  I was tired but, having exerted myself physically and mentally and accomplished tangible things, it was a good kind of tired.  I no longer climb corporate ladders.  Today I was up and down real ones.