Tag Archives: Meijer’s (Howell MI)

2015/11/22 (N) Repackaging

My lower back bothered me all night, so I did not sleep well, but we both got up at 8:15 AM, took showers, and got dressed. My right lower back seemed to have gotten worse overnight. I pulled a muscle yesterday and they tend to take quite a while to heal. Not good.

The view of our rear deck from our dining room the morning after our major snowstorm. It’s pretty if you don’t have to go outside to pack a bus or drive in it.

According to the National Weather Service newsfeed on The Weather Channel iPad app Howell, Michigan got 16.5 inches of snow from yesterday’s winter storm, the highest in Michigan. The highest accumulation in the country was 18 inches somewhere in South Dakota, so we were very close to that. The official amount was no doubt recorded at the Livingston County Airport about 11 miles west of us on the west side of Howell, but based on what we see on our deck we got at least a foot of snow here at the house. It was sunny but only 25 degrees F when we got up. The high temperature was forecast to only reach 30 and the low tonight is forecast to be 18.

Linda made vegan pancakes for breakfast. She cooked blueberries into hers but I had mine on the side. I think the blueberries add additional liquid to the batter and keep the pancakes from cooking properly, but Linda likes the way they turn out. I made a pot of coffee with the last of our Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans. I took some Ibuprofen along with my usual morning pills. Linda got the heating pad out and I sat with it against my lower right back on the living room sofa while we drank our coffee. In spite of having a lot to do between now and Thanksgiving Day, we got a slow start to our day.

Linda cleared our front sidewalk so she could get to the front door of the bus. She also shoveled a path to my car, which I parked behind the bus yesterday, and cleared the snow off of it. She checked the snow depth with a ruler at several places on our rear deck. It was 13 inches. Not 16.5 inches, but it’s still a lot of snow, and it could certainly have been deeper out in the yard.

Her agenda for the day was to vacuum the inside of all the cabinets in the bus, dust the woodwork, and clean the counters and mirrors. I exchanged some text messages with Chuck including a couple of photos. I sent one of our bus buried in snow and he sent one of the palm trees and lush vegetation on the unoccupied lot next to theirs at Pelican Lake Motorcoach Resort. Chuck said it has been too warm to play golf. I did not know that was even possible but I did not feel too sorry for him. I sent an e-mail to Butch to let him know I had delivered the antique SUN Electric distributor tester to Bill a week ago Friday.

I resumed working in the garage and spent most of the day repacking my tool boxes. My objective was to reduce the number of boxes from five to four while maintaining some sort of reasonable logic to how they were organized. I took short breaks throughout the day to get off my feet and had a few pretzels with hummus for lunch.

Sometime during the afternoon Kerry showed up and plowed as much of the concrete driveway as he could. Linda must have been vacuuming in the back of the bus and I was working in the garage (with doors closed) so neither of us realized he was there until after he was gone.

I decided that I needed some additional storage boxes for organizing small parts so I drove to Lowe’s hoping to find the Stanley boxes I already have. They had similar boxes from a different manufacturer but not the exact ones. I tried The Home Depot but liked the boxes at Lowe’s better so I went back there and bought six, three with 10 deep bins and three with 17 medium bins. I stopped at Meijer’s for orange juice and picked up a few other things.

When Linda was done cleaning the bus she started loading the things onboard that she had ready. She got almost everything on board that was staged in the middle bedroom and the kitchen. She then made three more batches of granola. That made nine batches since Friday evening, eight of which are in the freezer. Linda thinks a batch will last at least two weeks if have granola every other day. If that proves to be true we should have enough granola with us in the bus to get through the end of March.

By 5:30 PM we were both ready to stop for the day. I changed into my robe and sat on the living room sofa with the heating pad on my lower right back. We spent 45 minutes considering possible waypoints between here and Williston, Florida. We did not come a decision but it is very likely we will stop at two of the same places we used two years ago, the Oh Kentucky campground in Berea, Kentucky and the KOA near Cartersville, Georgia.

The Oh Kentucky RV Park in Berea is just west of I-75 at an interchange. It wasn’t fancy but provided easy in/out access and would allow us to plug in for the night. Just east of the Interstate at the same exit is a Walmart where our friends, Chuck and Barbara, stayed on their way south a few weeks ago. The RV park options north of Atlanta, Georgia are surprisingly limited. The Cartersville Castle-White KOA is convenient to an exit off of I-75 and also provided easy in/out access. Staying there Saturday night means we can drive around Atlanta on I-285 on Sunday morning, our favorite time to bypass major cities.

Our final waypoint before going into Williston Crossings on Tuesday, December 1st will probably be Mayo, Florida where we can boondocks for two nights at John Palmer’s place. This itinerary would have us traveling about 400 miles on Friday, 300 miles on Saturday, 340 miles on Sunday, and 75 miles on Tuesday. Friday would be a longer drive by about 2 hours than we normally plan, but very doable. Also, this time of year we like to get as far south as quickly as possible.

Linda opened a bottle of Leelanau Cellars Mixed Berry Winter White wine to have before, during, and after dinner. For dinner Linda cooked a squash and heated up some frozen corn and mock chicken tenders (vegan). After dinner I tried to check my e-mail but our Internet connection had slowed to an unusably slow speed. At 8 PM I participated in the SLAARC Information Net and then came back upstairs and went to bed. We both took some Tylenol PM at 11:30 and then turned out the lights.

2015/11/07 (S) Measure One, Cut Twice

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We were all up at 7 AM. I got dressed and left at 7:25 AM for the SLAARC breakfast in South Lyon. Linda and Madeline had toaster waffles and fresh berries for breakfast at home. The main reason I went to breakfast was to talk with Larry (K8UT) about a plug-in for WordPress that he recently found and though I might want to use for the SLAARC website. He purchased a five site license for the full version of a survey plug-in and was willing to donate one use to the ham radio club.

When I got home at 9:30 AM the girls were getting ready to leave. Linda’s plan for the morning was to take Madeline to the Howell Public Library. The library has a very nice play area for younger children and a good selection of children’s books. Apparently they planned to be gone for a while because they had a bag packed with snacks and other things for an extended outing. I changed into my work close and when they left I resumed working on the bus.

My first objective was to cut the final piece of SurePly underlayment for the entry landing and area under the driver’s seat. It was a large and complex piece that took me a long time to lay out even using the piece that goes under the driver’s seat as a template. When I finally had it cut and drilled with the holes for the seat mounting bolts I took it to the bus to see how it fit. Unfortunately I could not get it in. It had to go under something on the front and back and also had to fit around curves and angles, and it just was not physically possible to get it in place in one piece. It was immediately obvious that I would have to cut the piece into two parts but not so obvious how best to do that.

Linda and Madeline returned about this time (12:30 PM) and I was ready for a break. They brought in their “haul” from the library—eight books and five videos—and laid it out on the living room coffee table. The play market that Madeline likes so much had been replaced by a play kitchen. The librarian told Linda they rotate the playsets every three months to keep it interesting for the children.

After going to the library Linda drove to the Brighton Mill Pond so Madeline could play at the Playscape. Linda reported that Madeline has figured out how to pump a swing and is able to keep it going once someone helps her get started. As a special treat they went to the ice cream shop nearby and Ms. M got a scoop of ice cream. She did not tell me what flavor, but she said it had sprinkles on it.

It was going on 1 PM and seemed like a good time to have lunch, so Linda made hummus sandwiches with sliced onion for us and hummus on bread for Madeline. She washed off a big bunch of grapes and we all enjoyed some of those too. After lunch I read one of the library books to Madeline and then Linda read her a different one. At that point I excused myself and went back to work on the bus.

I pondered the situation with the piece of underlayment and finally saw what appeared to be a natural cut line. After considering where the tile would go, however, I decided against it. Unlike the tile on the main floor of the bus, which is installed on the bias, the grouted joint lines in the cockpit/entry are going to run straight fore-and-aft and side-to-side. I was not sure, however, exactly where they would fall. I needed to avoid having a grout line fall on a joint between two pieces of underlayment so I ended up cutting the piece that covers the landing at an angle. This gave me a smaller piece that tucked under the center console on the dashboard and a larger piece that tucked under some metal trim behind the driver’s seat. I was now able to get both pieces in but they did not fit properly.

I had used my last large piece of SurePly to make the original single piece, and it had taken me hours to do, so I did not want to remake it. I made any trips between the bus and the garage/shop, trimming a little bit at a time and rechecking the fit, until I finally got the piece to fit correctly. In the process the piece had changed enough that the smaller piece was now too small and could not be trimmed to fit. I searched through my scrap pieces of SurePly and found one that was almost big enough to remake the smaller piece, but not quite.

It was now 3:30 PM, and I still had some good daylight to work by, so I secured the floor patch under the driver’s seat. The patch consisted of a 1/4″ thick layer of SurePly with a 3/4″ thick layer of oak veneered plywood on top of it to make a 1″ thick piece. The SurePly was screwed to the 3/4″ plywood from underneath. With the patch in place I installed another piece of 1/4″ SurePly that covered the patch and extended out over the old surrounding wood, which was still sound, and filled in the area once occupied by a 1/2″ thick piece of plywood. I used 1″ self-drilling screws to secure the top layer of SurePly to the underlying wood, slightly countersinking the heads and pulling the underlying patch up tight while pulling the SurePly down tight to the old wood. I walked on it and it felt secure. There will be one more layer of SurePly and a layer of tile before the seat base gets re-installed. Bolting down the base will obviously pull everything down tight to the structure of the bus if it isn’t already.

Linda and Madeline spent part of the afternoon baking vegan cupcakes. Linda usually makes chocolate ones but I requested white/vanilla ones this time. She found a recipe that looked promising and used it. They needed frosting to finish the cupcakes so they bundled up and went to Meijer’s. They got back a little before 4 PM, frosting and sprinkles in hand.

I needed more SurePly to continue working, not that I was eager to; I had spent most of the day trying to make one stupid piece of wood and still wasn’t finished. The temperature had been dropping all afternoon and it was down to 55 in the garage, which was open so I could go back-and-forth to the bus. I still had the antique SUN distributor tester in my car and determined that I could not get 4’x8′ sheets of material in the car with the machine in there. Linda and Madeline put on their shoes and coats and came outside so Linda could help me get the tester out of the car. I then went to Lowe’s.

I had a nice QSO with David (W8DRD) from our ham radio club on the way to Lowe’s. At the store I was struggling to get the SurePly off of the top of the stack, which was above my head at the limit of my reach. A customer stopped and helped me which I appreciated. I needed one sheet to finish the driver/landing area and get the piece I need for the passenger seat platform floor, but I bought two sheets just in case the various scraps I have are not large enough to do the walls of the passenger seat platform.

I was back home by 5 PM and unloaded the two sheets of SurePly. I put one on the 2x4s across the sawhorses and the other one in the small bay with the other sheet materials. Linda and Madeline put their shoes and coats on once again and came outside so Linda could help me load the distributor tester back into my car. Linda said we would eat dinner around 6 PM so I started working on remaking the small piece for the front portion of the landing.

I used the original piece as a pattern for the edges that fit properly but cut it larger than needed for the edge that needed to match the other piece where I cut it into two parts. After getting it trimmed to fit correctly on three sides I put the larger piece in place overlapping the smaller one and traced the edge on the smaller piece. I took it back to the garage and used the clamp-on saw guide to get a clean, straight cut. When I took it back to the bus and set it in place it fit. Success at last.

By now it was dark and getting close to dinner time. I decided to leave the securement of this last layer of SurePly until tomorrow when I was refreshed and had better light. I had hoped to get this landing/driver floor finished today, as well as the floor for the passenger seat platform, but given the difficulties and frustrations of today I felt like I had ended at a good place. I locked up the bus and closed the garage door on my way in. I expect tomorrow to be another good day, but then if I didn’t, why would I bother?

I changed out of my work clothes and put on my sweats. Dinner was vegan cheeseburgers with a vegetable medley on the side and fresh pineapple. Dessert was vanilla frosted white cupcakes with sprinkles. After clearing the table I interacted with Madeline while Linda cleaned up a few dishes. She and Madeline then prepared the baked French toast, which has to sit overnight. As promised, once all of the stuff was done we went to the basement and watched one of the Daniel Stripped Tiger videos. When we had seen enough episodes we turned off the TV set and went upstairs. Madeline got into her pajamas and went to bed. I put a load of laundry into the washing machine and then settled in to my usual evening routine. I pulled the laundry out of the dryer at 9:45 PM and we turned in for the night at 10 PM.

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.

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.

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.

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. (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.

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.

2015/10/05 (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.

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.

2015/09/12 (S) Making It Usable

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In spite of all that we still have to get done on the bus we got up at 7:15 AM and went to our SLAARC breakfast. We did not get to go last week because our grand-daughter (Madeline) was here and we won’t get to go next week because we will be at an RV rally. We did not hang around like we sometimes do and left at 9 AM, but at least we got to go.

When I quit working on the toilet in the bus at 10 PM last night I had come to the conclusion that I had spent six hours trying to fix the wrong thing. I assumed that the leak was due to a faulty O-ring or a misalignment of two pieces with the slip fit, presumably caused by the 9″ piece of Qest pipe with 1/2″ NPT lavatory fittings on each end. After hours of effort and numerous attempts it occurred to me that the problem could be the threaded fitting in the first piece. The fitting is unusual in that it is hollow and has an inside hex shape. I got my SAE and metric Allen wrench sets but the largest wrenches, 3/8″ and 10mm, were too small and would not engage the fitting.

After dropping Linda at home I went in search of a 7/16″ and 1/2″ Allen wrenches. I stopped at our bank for a little cash and then went to The Home Depot as they are next door to one another. No luck there, but I did buy a 20″ flexible supply line with 1/2″ FIP threads. I tried Lowe’s next but that was another strike out. I tried O’Reilly’s auto parts store, the Tractor Supply store, and the Sears store across the street. Nope, nada, nothing. The guy at Sears suggested ACE hardware back in Howell so I headed that way but pulled into an Advance Auto Parts. They had a set of Allen wrench (hex key) stubs, with 1/2″ drive sockets. It included sizes smaller and larger than what I was looking for, in addition to the ones I was looking for, so I bought it.

Back home we installed the three large drawers in the rear of the bedroom. I then spent several more hours working on the toilet while Linda changed out the handles on all of the cabinet doors. She even figured out how to remove the handle on the built-in laundry hamper in the bathroom. As I have said here before, she is a clever girl. I unscrewed the insert with a 7/16″ hex key, cleaned off the old thread compound, wrapped the threads with Teflon tape, and screwed it back in. I mated the air/water sequence valve with the vacuum breaker and got them mounted to the support bracket, getting them aligned and snug in the process.

The last step was to attach the 20″ flexible supply line to the air/water sequence valve and water supply line. I attached it to the air/water sequence valve first, looped it around, and attached it to the incoming water supply fitting. Easy to say but tough to do. There is a lot of stuff crammed into the back portion of this toilet and there is barely room to get one hand in there to work, never mind two. To make matters worse (for me) the only hand I could get in there was my left one. Being right-handed that made a difficult task even more so.

I turned on the water and checked for connection leaks. I did not see any so I applied air pressure and initiated the flush cycle but it did not work. Nothing, nada, zilch, no movement of the valve, drain flapper opening, and no flow of water. The air-water sequence valve is mounted to a horizontal plate. It installs from underneath and is held in place by a large nut that threads over the top. I thought perhaps this nut was too tight and causing the valve to bind so I loosened it and the valve started working. I flushed it several times looking for leaks and did not see any. We made tiny adjustments to the location and decided to screw it down. It was 3 PM.

I found the four screws that were originally used to mount the toilet to the floor. They are very large and quite unusual. They are 2.25″ long with coarse threads and hex heads with large Philips screwdriver slots. The center of the heads, where the screwdriver slots cross, are drilled and tapped and there are four black caps with screws built into them that screw into them to conceal them and give the toilet a finished look. I was concerned, however, about their length. The underlayment and tile are somewhere between 5/16″ and 7/16″ thick, slightly thinner than the ceramic tile I removed, and the bus subfloor is (presumably) 3/4″ thick. Anything that penetrates the tile by more than 1″ risks coming through the bottom side of the plywood and potentially screwing into something it should not. I measured the base of the toilet and it was an honest one inch thick so I decided I would reuse the screws when we got to that point.

At this point we took about 45 minutes to clean up tools and put things away in the garage. We then turned our attention to getting the built-in sofa installed. I removed a piece of expanded metal mesh and cut a piece of aluminum sheet metal to cover a hole and used heavy duty double sided 3M tape to attach it to the HVAC duct. While Linda cut pieces of felt to go under any pieces of the sofa that touched the floor I cut and attached foam weatherstripping to the back edges of the two plenum/support boxes and the return air duct/shelf.

We put the two plenum/support boxes in place against the end cabinets and HVAC duct but did not take the time to cut and screen openings into the duct. We set the return air duct/shelf in place and put in the vertical front panel but the shelf held it out so I removed the weatherstripping from the back edge. We also did not take the time to drill the 4″ holes at either end of the vertical panel for the round diffusers as there was no point doing this until the HVAC duct was modified.

We secured each of the plenum/support boxes to the wiring chase with a single angle bracket and to the front panel with a pair of brackets. I drilled and countersunk a three foot length of 1/8″ aluminum angle and we installed it against the inside of the vertical panel and the top of the shelf. The shelf is 45″ wide (side-to-side) and there is a 3″ high by 44″ long piece of the vertical panel missing at the floor and centered side-to-side. The aluminum angle will transfer vertical loads on the central portion of the vertical panel to the shelf, which is 3/4″ plywood with full depth pieces along each edge and a slightly shorter central support piece.

We had been making a list throughout the day of parts that we needed. When we got to a point with the sofa where we did not have the screws we needed we took a break. We went to Qdoba in Howell for dinner, our first visit to this particular eatery since we moved to the Brighton/Hartland/Howell area, and both had vegan taco salads. The salads were good enough although the taco shell bowels were not the best we have had. The servers seemed a bit stingy with the various ingredients but in the end the salad was substantial and tasty. It was also a convenient and efficient location being on an out lot of the Meijer’s supermarket property and right across the street from Lowe’s.

After dinner we went to Lowe’s and bought felt drawer/door bumper pads, screws, and two more angle brackets. Back home we worked on the built-in sofa until 9 PM and called it quits for the night. I spent two hours at my desk and finalized a featured bus article for Bus Conversion Magazine on Larry and Carol Hall’s GM4106. I uploaded the article and photo files it to my Dropbox BCM folder, and then e-mailed the publisher, editor, layout person, and Larry to let them know it was there.

I try to finish these posts each night before I go to sleep or first thing the next morning. If I fail to do that I quickly lose the sequence of events and details. I tend to be up too late as a result, but if I fall behind by even one day it is very difficult to catch up while also trying to keep up. As much as I have enjoyed the remodeling project I will be glad to not be so busy this winter and be able to write shorter posts about the interesting people, places, and things we experience.

2015/09/09 (W) Move In Day

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We had a slow start to our morning. I was up at 7:30 AM, finished loading the dishwasher, and made a cup of organic English Breakfast tea. I fed the cats and then settled in to continue reading Oystein Ore’s Number Theory and Its History. Jasper wanted attention and sat on my lap until Linda got up at 8:30 AM. I made a cup of tea for her and brewed a second cup for me.

Linda developed a sore throat yesterday and did not feel like working last night so we deferred final cleanup of the grout on the new floor tiles in the bus until this morning. She was obviously still not feeling well and was tired from not having slept well last night but she was willing to help with cleaning the grout reside off of the new tiles. Before jumping into that task, however, we stripped the bed so I could launder the sheets and pillow cases. We needed a mop for the floor cleaning so Linda went to Meijer’s and got one and picked up some blue Scotch Brite sponge pads. While she was gone I went to the garage, smoothed the top surface of the return air shelf for the built-in sofa with 4/0 steel wool, and applied a second coat of polyurethane. I had just enough to finish it. I then started preparing for the tile cleaning.

I filled two 5-gallon pails half full of warm water and added 1-1/2 capfuls of Armstrong Once & Done concentrate. The other pail was clean water for rinsing. Cleaning the grout residue off of the tiles in the bus involved lightly scrubbing along and across the grout lines as well as the center of each tile. I then went over the area with the square edged sponge side of the pad. I went on to the next set of tiles while Linda trailed along behind mopping the area. It took us a couple of hours to do the entire floor.

Part of the kitchen and living room floor after being cleaned as viewed from the hallway looking towards the built-in sofa.

We moved all eight pieces of the built-in sofa into the bus and set them in place. They all fit nicely and I was especially pleased that the vertical front panel, which is walnut veneered plywood, would not have to be trimmed.

We needed to strip the wallpaper behind the sofa but could do that later. We also needed to strip the wallpaper behind the desk and really needed to do that before installing the desk. Ideally we would have the new wallpaper installed too but we do not have it in our possession yet. Linda also wants/needs to get back to work on cleaning/waxing the woodwork as we wanted that done before we put the drawers back in the cabinets. She was very tired by this point, however, and took a much needed nap.

The built-in sofa with the plywood seat raised to reveal the plenum/support boxes on both ends and the center shelf that forms the air return duct for the OTR HVAC. The empty space will be used for storage.

I had some electrical things to take care of before we could assembly and secure the desk so I worked on those. There was a 120V AC duplex outlet in a metal box on the wall where the left desk pedestal will go. There was also a flexible plastic split loom conduit with 11 wires in it that ran from the panel next to the passenger seat to the four switches in the triangular panel and to the first of two door chimes. This conduit was originally on the floor behind the furniture where it could not be seen but was now very visible and something needed to be done with it. I started with the AC outlet.

I shut off the power to the AC outlet, tested it to make sure it was off, unwired the receptacle, unscrewed the box from the wall, and got the wires out of it. I reenergized the circuit and verified which wire pair was the line (source, supply) and which was the load (power was fed from this box to another outlet by the passenger seat). I was thinking about where to relocate the box so I would have power available under the center of the desk when I realized I had not made any provision in the design of the desk for getting power to that location. I sat and thought about that for a while but an obvious solution did not present itself so I worked on the other wiring.

I made a diagram of the connections to the four switches so I could remove the wires and be able to put them back in the right place if needed. All of the connections were spade lugs, male on the switch and female on the wire ends, so they were easy to remove. The two switches with the most wiring originally controlled a motorized drawer and a motorized table. The two DC power supply wires also had spade lugs as did the cabling from the switches to the motor connectors so I was able to remove all of that wiring and set it aside after labeling it to match my diagram.

The two wires from the doorbell switch also ran through the flexible plastic conduit to the first door chime. Another pair of wires was spliced into the first pair and ran back to the bedroom where a second door chime was installed at the junction of the HVAC duct and dresser cabinet. I cut all the wires at the splice, labeled the pair from the switch, and wrapped the end of each wire. I wrapped the wires for the front chime around the box. I then determined that I could pull the wires for the bedroom chime from the bedroom end, after disconnecting them from the chime, and remove them along with the chime box. I coiled and taped the wires and set them aside with the box.

I now had all of the extra wires out of the way but still did not have a good solution to my electrical issues. Two of the four switches were still functional, so the switches needed to be installed somewhere, but it was not obvious to me where they could/should go or how to mount them. I also had two AC cables to relocate. I decided to go inside and work at my desk.

When Linda got up she wasn’t feeling any better but she was at least somewhat rested. We had simple, easy, but tasty meal of vegan riblets and corn-on-the-cob for dinner. I was anxious to see how the desk was going to fit so we moved the nine pieces from the library into the bus. It was getting near sunset by this time and we had a few moments of spectacular color before the world turned to gray and faded into night.

I folded the two AC cables down so they would be out of the way temporarily (they were still de-energized). We set the two bases in approximately the right locations and put the two pedestal boxes on top of them. I need to install a panel to cover the vertical mirror tiles before permanently installing the desk so I left an appropriate space for now. I need to make a decision about the panel, however, so I can give Jarel the final dimensions for the HVAC duct / wiring chase cover. With everything snugged up we put the drawers back in the right pedestal and sat on the sofa contemplating the new look and functionality of our bus.

I was also contemplating how I might “force” the pieces into alignment. My first thought is to use metal or wood plates attached to the back/underside of the two pedestals to position the knee space connector piece. I will probably also put a piece of 1×1 or a metal angle bracket on the wall to hold the back edge of the connector shelf as it will have a heavy UPS on it along with a NAS.

The installation of the new custom walnut desk may be temporary in that I may not be able to get the fan-coil heat exchangers for the Aqua-Hot hydronic heating system installed until after the upcoming GLCC rally. I need to attach some sort of screen material to the back of the air inlet and outlet openings. I also need to install new pieces of heater hose of the correct length and rig up some things to help get the hoses around tight corners. This, however, will require draining and then opening some of the coolant lines.

Linda was surprised both by how big the desk is but also by how much extra room she will have in the kitchen. I think that speaks to the inefficiency/inappropriateness of what was there before. We were discussing the problem of getting AC electrical power to the wall area between the pedestals when the solution presented itself. There is space at the inside rear of the right pedestal box so I can bring AC wiring from the chase through the bottom of the box, up the inside the left rear corner, and out through a hole just below the counter top and wire it to an outlet strip. It will be completely invisible unless you get down on the floor and look up in the knee space of the desk. It will also be conveniently located just below the notch in the center back of the countertop where power and data cables will drop through.

Linda went off to bed a little earlier than normal as she has to go to the bakery tomorrow. I went back to my office to deal with computer updates, e-mails, and off-loading photos from my camera to my computer and the NAS units.

2015/08/31 (M) A Major Sub-Project Done

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We both took Advil PM before bed last night as both of us were sore and tired from a long day of work and needed a good night’s sleep. We awoke at 8 AM to dense fog but it was not unexpected as I saw the advisory on the weather forecast before I went to sleep last night. I made a pot of the Costa Rican half-caff coffee while Linda washed blueberries and got our granola ready. We enjoyed our coffee in the living room with the cats on our laps and listened to Dr. Michael Greger’s daily research summary on NutrionFacts.org.

We were still a bit tired and sore but finally got back to work on the bus at 10:30 AM just as Keith showed up to mow the grass. After opening up the bus and the “workshop”(garage), and getting out the air-compressor and hooking it up, we got the piece of underlayment out of the bedroom that we cut last night but still needed to trim. I cut about 1/8″ off of the passenger side end and cut off the front corner on that end so it would clear the piece of vertical trim. With those adjustments it dropped into place and I stapled most of it to the subfloor. I would have stapled the whole piece but we ran out of staples.

We had already measured and drawn the second piece for the bedroom but without staples we were at a standstill. Linda needed to pick up a few things at the grocery store, so we closed up the house and bus and made an errand run. I dropped her at Meijer’s and drove across the street to Lowe’s. I bought another pack of 1,000 #18 staples, 3/4″ with 1/4” crown because that was the smallest quantity they sell. I also picked up a small bottle of pneumatic tool oil. I drove back to Meijer’s and waited in the parking lot for Linda to emerge. When she did she had eight grocery bags. I guess “a few things” is relative. She got a real hamburger patty and one slice of real cheese from the deli to serve to Kate tomorrow night.

Once we had the groceries unloaded and put away we got back to work on the underlayment. I laid out the next piece for the bedroom which had 11 angles. Even though I worked from a consistent reference point the numbers did not quite work out so I took additional measurements and made adjustments accordingly. When I was satisfied that the layout was close to correct we cut the piece out of the partial panel. I then cut it in half crossways to create two pieces each of which could be installed. We started with the half piece closest to the driver side.

Keith finished cutting the grass and came to get his check so we gave him the inside tour of the bus. He had seen the front part before but never been all the way to the back. He recognized that it was an ambitious project.

The other half of the back bedroom piece, towards the passenger side, took some tweaking but we finally got it in and stapled. The last piece for the bedroom should have been the easiest, a 42″ x 18″ rectangle for the aisle at the foot of the bed/storage box. It wasn’t a perfect rectangle, of course, so it also required adjustments. Things that should be at right angles rarely are and the flanges on the bottom of the HVAC chases do not have straight edges as I assumed they would. The adjustments are usually small but necessary to get the pieces to fit. So it was with the last piece for the main floor.

We thought we were done when Linda noticed a small “L” shaped area around the media cabinet behind the driver’s seat. We still had pieces of underlayment left over that were big enough to cut this piece. After measuring carefully and laying it out the numbers were once again not adding up. We still had the piece of art board that I used to create the templates for the base of the refrigerator alcove so I laid out the “L” shape on that but made it larger than needed. We positioned the template in the bus, trimmed the inside corner (not 90 degrees) and then marked where all the edges needed to be by tracing from underneath. I trimmed the template down and checked the fit. It looked good so I transferred it to the underlayment and we cut it.

We were finally done with the main floor underlayment so we cleaned up the bus by moving stuff to the garage/workshop. I disconnected the DeWalt 15 gallon air-compressor, moved it to the driveway by the garage, and opened the drain valve on the bottom, it had a LOT of water inside which reminded me that I really need to set up a water separator and inline oiler for use with this thing. Linda coiled up the power cord while I coiled up the air hose and stored it with the air-compressor in the front corner of the garage.

Somewhere in the middle of all this work we stopped and had lunch around 3 PM. It was now 6 PM, too early for dinner, so we decided to get cleaned up and go to Lowe’s to look for metal tile edging. As long as we were going to be out I thought we might drive over to Chuck’s shop in Novi to look at the air ride seat base. I called Chuck to see if that would work and he was headed that way anyway, so that is what we did. The Lowe’s in New Hudson did not have what we were looking for but the associate suggested that we try Blakely’s on West Road near Beck Road in Wixom. Chuck was still at his shop when we arrived so we had a nice chat, got the air ride base, and then went our separate ways.

It was 8:30 PM by the time we got home. I spent a few minutes checking e-mails and then we sat down to dinner at 9:15, a simple meal of mock fish fillets with vegan tartar sauce and fresh steamed Brussels sprouts.

I continued checking and responding to e-mails after dinner and then checked into RVillage. I posted a comment on a new topic in the Friends of Curtis YAY! group and a few minutes later got a call from Curtis. After catching up on each other’s activities and whereabouts he e-mailed me a couple of things to read and react to. When we concluded our chat I watched the 3rd installment of the video update series from Technomadia about the renovation of their vintage GM4106 bus conversion at MasterTech in Elkhart, Indiana. I sent them an e-mail regarding a pet friendly hotel that we used years ago when our Golden Retriever (Einstein) was still alive and went with us on a week-long visit to Elkhart to tour motorhome factories. (Einstein’s AKC name was Karie Jame Ricky Ricardo. We got him from the Karie Jame breeders and he was from the Latin Lovers litter.) It was then off to bed to write for a while before going to sleep.

2015/08/05 (W) No Mask Wednesday

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Linda was up at 6 AM and left for the bakery around 6:20 AM, I think. I was more asleep than awake and did not get up until later. I wanted to do a load of laundry but needed powdered detergent which I did not have. I also needed to make a run to Lowe’s so I left to take care of my errands without making coffee or having breakfast.

I picked up a couple of 2x4s at Lowe’s that I will use to cut a pair of support arms for propping open the fixed window in the bus while we exchange the refrigerators. I was going to buy a 4’x4′ (half sheet) of plywood to cut for the base of the refrigerator alcove but did not care for the selection. I also did want to wrestle with the size and weight by myself. I will have to go back to The Home Depot with Linda to get what I need. I got my laundry supplies across the street at Meijer’s and headed home.

After unloading the 2x4s I thought I would program the remote control in my car for the new garage door opener. The procedure is very simple but much to my dismay the remote would not connect with the opener. The remote is a 3-button model made by Chamberlin, and both garage door openers are identical Chamberlin models. We have four of these 3-button remotes, one for me, one for Linda, and one for each of our children. We got the 3-button model because we have two overhead doors on our garage and plan (hope) to have a barn someday with an overhead door. All four of the 3-button remotes programmed to the large garage door without a problem and the new door opener came with a single button remote that works just fine, as did the large garage door opener. I won’t know if the problem is the opener or my remote until I can try programming Linda’s remote. If her remote will program then I know it’s my remote, but if it won’t program I still won’t know where the problem lies.

I had originally planned to mask off the interior of the bus today so I could start sanding the floor tomorrow but decided to put it off. Not only would the painter’s plastic be difficult to manage by myself, I realized that it did not make a lot of sense to tape it up in advance of doing the refrigerator swap. I was on the phone with Chuck arranging to bring our bus to his shop this weekend to take care of the refrigerators when our USPS carrier, Michelle, came to the door bearing gifts. Well, OK, they were packages, but I did not expect them until tomorrow so that made them more like gifts in my mind. One was from Amateur Electronics Supply (AES) and the other was from Morgan Manufacturing, so it was all ham radio stuff.

I went to my ham shack/office and mounted the control head for the Yaesu FTM-400 on the stand that just arrived from AES. I e-mailed Steve (N8AR) to arrange a time to test the lightning arrestor before installing it in our cable entry box. I then e-mailed Jarel to start trying to arrange a day next week to drive to his shop in Logansport, Indiana to pick up the custom walnut desk. Finally, I e-mailed Josh at Coach Supply Direct to make sure he was going to be around. I was checking out the TVFool.com website, which Steve recommended, when the art frame shop in Howell called to let us know that three of our four paintings were ready to pick up. They would have all been done but he ordered the forth frame the wrong size and had to reorder it. Linda then called to let me know she was on her way home from the bakery. So much communication, so little time.

When Linda got home we discussed going out to dinner and researched a new place that had opened in Howell. As usually happens, however, there is almost no place that serves anything we choose to eat and we ended up staying home. Linda had a couple of Boca burgers in the freezer and we had those with corn-on-the-cob and fresh fruit (peaches, nectarines, and strawberries). We eat better food, and in smaller quantities, when we dine at home.

After dinner I caught Steve (N8AR) on the radio and we agreed that I would bring the lightning arrestor over to his QTH at 8 PM. I had an e-mail related to the draft of the July issue of Bus Conversion Magazine and checked to make sure a correction had been made correctly.

At Steve’s house my lightning arrestor tested better than the previous one, and should work OK in my system, but it was very clear that there is something wrong with the design and/or manufacturing of these VHF/UHF I.C.E. units. We also came to the conclusion that the quality control testing the manufacturer was doing (if any) was inadequate to reveal the problem. I expect, however, that this one will work when I install it so if it is typical of their units most hams would not have a reason to suspect that it was flawed. Someone would have a problem with it, however, as it is clearly not usable for all frequencies from 40 MHz to 1 GHz as stated on the label. My unit has a 0.31 dB loss at 445 MHz (it should be 0.01) but has an 11.59 dB loss around 635 MHz, which is a huge factor of 16 times loos of signal, and the loss from 500 MHz to 1 GHz is unacceptably large making it useless in that range of frequencies.

Steve captured all of the data and e-mailed it to me. He then tested one of his Polyphaser lightning arrestors and sent me that data file. He also sent me the link to the VNWA software from SDR-Kits.com that I needed to work with the data file. We spent a few minutes talking about the problem we are having at home with our ham radio transmissions interfering with our OTA TV signals. He sent me a link to the free student version of the ELSIE (“L”,”C”) filter design software.

I left about 9:45 PM and called my friend, John Rauch, to see if Saturday noon would work for him in terms of our refrigerator swap. He said it would and that he would check with his son (also John) to see if he could/would also help. I will let Chuck know tomorrow that it looks like Saturday is a “go.”

Linda was asleep by the time I got home so I worked in my office until after midnight. I captured the data attached to the e-mails from Steve and then downloaded and installed both the VNWA and the ELSIE software. I then uploaded my personal blog posts for June 28, 29, and 30. I logged in to the FMCA Freethinkers website, the FMCA GLCC website, and the SLAARC website and installed updates for the themes and numerous plug-ins. With that I came back upstairs and worked on this post in the living room so as not to disturb Linda and finally went to bed around 1 AM.

2015/07/18 (S) RV Shopping

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Madeline was awake at 7 AM and Linda got her up shortly after that. I slept in until 8 AM. They had already eaten breakfast by then so I made coffee and had cinnamon raisin toast. Metropolitan Baking Company makes a very tasty cinnamon raisin bread. We all sat in the living room while Madeline played with various toys and I worked on finishing yesterday’s blog post.

Linda and Madeline left at 10 AM for the Howell Library. The plan was to let Madeline play in the children’s area, which has a lot interesting things to do for children her age. After selecting some books and DVDs to bring home they were headed to Meijer’s to do some grocery shopping.

I continued working on my iPad until Mara came in the house. We had a chat about blogging and I showed her the Feedly app on my iPad. She has attended workshops put on by The Geeks On Tour and has their training materials. I think Blogger is probably the right tool for her and Picasa is probably the right way to manage her photos. They are both Google products so they work well together and they are free to use. There are downsides to that, especially for professionals, but for most people it’s a great solution.

Mara and I left around 11:45 AM and drove to General RV in Wixom. This was my first visit to their new facility and it is nice. The parts department is larger and better stocked than the old one and is bright with natural light from large south and west facing windows. We were asked several times if we needed assistance but we were never pestered. They did not have any of the white Dicor self-leveling caulk we were looking for but one of the employees checked their stock and brought out six tubes. Mara bought four of them along with a new Norcold refrigerator roof vent cover, a small roll of Eternabond tape, and some concentrated RV wash/wax. I picked up eight brown circular adjustable air vents for the bus. The ones in there now are black but I think the brown will look better with the new floor tile. We won’t really know, however, until we install them.

We drove to Lowe’s in Howell where I bought two pieces of 12″ x 18″ thin galvanized steel plate and three rolls of 3M double-sided tape suitable for outdoor use. The plan is to put one of these on the roof of Mara’s motorhome and possibly put the other on the roof of our bus to allow the use of the magnetic base cell phone antennas that came as part of the weBoost Drive 4G-X cellular booster systems. Once the steel sheets are affixed to the roof I will caulk around them. First, however, I will just set the sheets up there and see what sort of difference the system makes.

We stopped at O’Reilly’s auto parts store and Mara bought some 10, 15, and 20 Amp mini fuses. These fuses have a small LED that glows if the fuse opens. They were more expensive than the regular ones, but that is a very handy feature and I may stock up on these the next time I need to buy fuses.

Back at the house Linda informed me that when the storm blew in it pulled the sun umbrella out of the table on the deck. We put the glass top back in the table and re-installed the umbrella. This has happened a couple of times and we have been lucky that the glass top has not broken. Mara returned to her rig. She had left her patio awning out but it was not damaged.

Linda got Madeline up from her nap at 3 PM and read her a story about flying in an airplane. Madeline then played with her toys for a while. Around 4 PM Madeline wanted to bake a cake. Linda was planning on this anyway but it was nice that it was Madeline’s idea. They got busy in the kitchen and I sneaked off to my office for a while.

Madeline had dinner at 6 PM so I came up from my office while she ate. Meals are a social time and I was ready for a break anyway. After dinner Linda helped Madeline get cleaned up. I slipped back down to my office while they watched an Elmo DVD, but by 7 PM I was done working on the pantry design for the evening and went back upstairs. Linda was reading the airplane ride book (again), after which Madeline played (with) the organ after which they drew for a while and then played with the Play-Doh. Madeline is a busy girl.

I was just getting ready to go ask Mara what temperature to preheat the oven when she came to the house with an armful of ingredients for the pizza. She has a recipe for a wheat-free (gluten-free) pizza dough that she wanted us to try. It calls for cheese and eggs so to make it vegan Linda had her buy Daiya mozzarella shreds and gave her egg replacer to use. The other ingredients include almond meal, chickpea flour, golden flaxseed, onion powder, garlic powder, sea salt, olive oil (EVVO), and water.

It took another 25 minutes to get Madeline to bed but once Linda had her tucked in I opened a bottle of Nebiola wine from the St. Clair Winery in Deming, New Mexico. I often write that I am not a fan of red wines and continue to not like dry wines with lots of tannins. The Nebbiolo, however, is one of the nicest wines I think I have ever tried. That probably means it is too sweet for most red wine drinkers, but I did not find it to be sweet; I found it to be smooth and complex.

We ordered a couple of things from Amazon on Wednesday and they showed up yesterday. When I unboxed the Notier capacitive touch screen precision stylus I was surprised by what I found. It’s a 2-part housing that unscrews and the cover screws onto the other end of the bottom part, which is needed for comfort and balance. The stylus tip is small but has a 1/4 in clear plastic disc on the end. It was on sale for $11 and I decided right away I would not return it. Besides, I had not actually tried it yet. So I finally tried it while the pizza was cooking. It is an amazing little device! It is, indeed, very precise and works with a delicate touch so I will have to re-calibrate my “typing” style, but it just goes to show that you never know until you try.

I lost track of time but it was somewhere between 9:30 and 10 PM when the pizza was ready to eat. It was, however, worth the wait and might be the best vegan pizza I have ever had. The recipe is definitely a keeper. We each had a chocolate cupcake (with sprinkles) while we finished our wine. We then adjourned to the living room and talked until almost 11 PM. It was a very full day for all four of us and everyone was tired but satisfied. It’s nice having family and friends here.

2015/07/10 (F) Eye of the Beholder

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I was up at 7 AM and made coffee. This usually wakes Linda up, but not this morning. After waiting a reasonable amount of time I went ahead and started drinking. If someone tells you that 7:30 is too early in the morning to be drinking don’t believe it, and if someone tells you that you should never drink alone don’t believe that either.

Linda eventually got up but looked really tired. Unbeknownst to me she had awoken in the middle of the night and not been able to get back to sleep. Neither of us were hungry after the large meals we had last night for dinner so we just had a little juice to wash down our little pills (vitamins and an allergy pill for me).

I’ve been looking for a system to wall-mount multiple flat-panel LCD monitors above/behind the desks in the ham radio shack portion of the downstairs office. Linda was helping search for products and found AFC Industries in New York. Their website had a large variety of very serious looking products. The ones that caught my eye were a 72″ wall mount track with four articulated monitor mounts and a 48″ track with three mounts. They had an 800 number and the website said to call for pricing. That’s usually a bad sign but they appeared to have exactly what I needed so I decided to call them later.

I had planned to work on the custom desk design all day but Linda had other ideas. She had become frustrated with the clutter in the library and the inability to really clean that room and decided that today was the day to do something about it. Point acknowledged. Some of the clutter (but not all) is artwork and she thought the place for us to start was to get some of it hung on the walls. Again, point well taken and agreed. Doing this correctly is a slow process, however, so I knew my plans for the whole day had just changed. Sometimes you have go along to get along.

We have artwork that is not currently displayed which ranges in size from 8″ x 10″ to 2′ x 5′. Some of it is framed and ready for hanging and some of it is not. It is mostly paintings but there is some photography, a few poster prints, and some textile pieces. We went through every piece looking primarily for oil paintings that we liked and that would fit the spaces we had available to hang them. Before we were finished with this project for the day we had hung eight paintings. We also found four paintings that we liked but lacked frames, or ways to hang them, and set them aside for now. Most of the paintings were done by Ann Metzger, my late great Aunt, but one was done by my late mother. We had also moved a few items out of the library into the driveway to be donated to the Salvation Army. I tend to use drywall screws with large fender washers as hangers as they are strong and very secure. We ran out of stainless steel fender washers so that created a natural stopping point for our task.

For a change of pace I decided to climb the tower to measure the center sleeve inside diameter so I could determine what outside diameter mast to get. I got out Mike’s climbing harness, set up the step ladder, put on the harness, climbed up onto the roof, connected the waist strap around the tower, and started climbing. I alternately attached and detached the two safety cables and made good progress until I got to the DB8e OTA TV antenna. To go higher I would have to move from the west face to the northeast face and then undo the waist strap and reconnect it above the mounting point for the OTA TV antenna. I did not feel like doing that today. I was, however, able to reach the bottom of the sleeve by extending my tape measure. The tip of the tape fit inside the bottom of the sleeve with what appeared to be about a quarter inch to spare. I then climbed down and got off the roof, got out of the climbing harness, and put it away.

Back in the house the tip of the tape measured approximately 1-1/8″ across thus it appears that the sleeve is sized for a 1-3/8″ outside diameter mast. I checked Universal Towers website, since they are located in S. E. Michigan, but their selection of aluminum masts did not include this O.D. OnlineMetals.com has 1-3/8″ O.D. 6061-T6 aluminum tube in five different wall thicknesses and a large variety of lengths so that may be the easiest way to get one. But first I will check the usual ham radio places.

Next I called AFC Industries and was routed to Ewa who was very curious what I was going to use the multiple monitors for since I was not a company. I tried to explain why I would need at least three monitors in an amateur (ham) radio shack but she had never heard of ham radio and I don’t think I did a very good job of explaining it. She was paying attention to what I was describing, however, about where I wanted to position the monitors. She could not give me pricing on the phone so I gave her my e-mail address to send a quote. Ewa was prompt in the sending the quote but I did not see it until later as we had the leftover seitan stroganoff for lunch and then left to run errands.

Linda had loaded our donation items in the back of my car while I was on the phone. I brought seven paintings to the car and we left. Our first stop was the Salvation Army donation center between Brighton and Howell. We then went to the Howell Art and Framing Center, a frame shop on the east end of downtown Howell. The proprietor, Rick, worked with us quite a while as we selected frames for four of the seven pieces and played with his Jack Russell terrier, Rudy. These four pieces will go in the library when they are done in about three weeks. Our final stop was Meijer’s where we picked up fender washers, salad greens, and coffee filters.

Back at the house I went to my office to check e-mail and work on the desk design. The quote was there from Ewa and she had already made a follow up phone call so I opened the e-mail and looked at the quote. It was almost double what I expected which was already double what I wanted to spend. I e-mailed her back and asked for a simpler configuration but politely explained that her numbers were way out of my price range. The interesting thing about such experiences is that the Ziotek products I’ve been looking at on the CyberGuys website suddenly do not seem so expensive. It’s funny how that works.

While I was working I got a TXT message from Chuck following up on the refrigerator installation. I texted back that I had not yet checked whether we can open the fixed glass window frame but would do so immediately and call him back. I moved the 7′ step ladder next to the bus and climbed up to inspect the stop blocks as Linda pushed the window open. The two stop blocks on that frame were definitely contacting the drip rail immediately above them preventing the frame from opening more than about 8 to 10 inches at the bottom. The good news was that the Zip Dee patio awning would not interfere with the opening of the window. The bad news is that I was not able to remove the two Philips head screws that secured each block to the frame.

I called Butch to find out what the tool was that I used at his shop to work on my brakes. He said it was a manual impact tool. This nifty little device is a screwdriver that turns through a small angle when you strike the end of it with a hammer. This has the unique benefit of driving the screwdriver bit into the screw head while turning. Butch thought that any auto store would have these so I called the local O’Reilly’s but they did not have any in stock in the store.

While I was talking to Butch Linda was researching other places to buy such a tool. It turned out that Sears would be a good choice but the closest one was at Twelve Oaks Mall over 20 miles away. I was getting ready to drive there but called Chuck first. It turned out that he has two of them so I will borrow one tomorrow after our ham radio club breakfast. I spent the last couple hours of the evening working on the desk design. I then went to bed and worked on this post.

2015/07/02 (R) 100,000 Radios

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We were tired and did not get up until almost 8 AM. Linda prepared a tofu scramble for breakfast, as we were almost out of her homemade granola, and served it with some cinnamon raisin toast and fresh grapefruit. It’s the closest thing we eat to scrambled eggs and she serves it as an occasional change of pace from our standard granola breakfast.

I had my annual appointment with my dermatologist this morning at 11 AM. I needed to pick up a cable from Scott (AC8IL) at Adams Electronics, which was on my way to the Henry Ford Health System (HFHS) clinic, so I left the house a little after 9:30 AM. The drive was fine initially and I had a nice QSO (chat) with Steve (N8AR) on the South Lyon 2m repeater. As I was approaching Wixom Road, however, all lanes of eastbound I-96 were stopped. I was able to exit at Wixom Road and headed north a short distance to West Road which I took east over to Beck Road where Scotty’s business is located a little north of West Road. I had a brief chat with Scott about the antennas on my tower before I left.

Two miles north of Scott’s shop I turned east on Maple Road (15 Mile Road). The HFHS has many clinics around the greater Metro Detroit area and my dermatologist is located at the intersection of Maple and Farmington Roads in West Bloomfield. That should have been an easy trip but there was construction on Maple Road that had the road down to one lane with flaggers. There were signs advising motorists to seek other routes but I did not heed the warning. I patiently worked my way through and arrived for my appointment about seven minutes ahead of time. Good thing I left as early as I did.

My exam was fairly routine and Dr. Nydorf wrote out a prescription for Doxycycline. I will try taking it (again) three times a week and see if it helps. I headed straight for home after my appointment but took a different route. Once I was back at the house Linda went for a walk. While she was walking I removed the license plate from her car, took the protective (anti-theft) cover off, and cleaned everything. When it was dry I put the new registration sticker in the corner, reassembled the cover, and installed the plate back onto the car. I then started working with the various pieces of the new Yaesu FTM-400DR/DE mobile radio. When she got back from her walk she heated up a couple of tofu hotdogs for lunch. These are such simple fare but so tasty (with mustard, onions, and relish) and so appropriate for a summertime lunch. They are also a really easy lunch to get on the table.

After lunch Linda took her car to the Howell library to get some books and children’s DVDs and then stop at the Meijer’s supermarket to pick up a few grocery items for Madeline’s visit this weekend. While she was running errands I assembled our new Diamond X-300NA antenna. Once it was assembled it was over 10 feet long so I stored it by mounting it to the side of the tower. I put it up as high as I could reach from the ground to get the three counterpoise (elevated ground plane) rods above eye level. Moving it to the top of the tower as a replacement for the Diamond X-50NA will have to wait until next week or later. The exact timing will depend on the weather, Mike’s (W8XH) availability, and whether I have acquired appropriate standoffs by then for the X-300 antenna and/or the cellular booster omnidirectional antenna.

With the antenna taken care of (for now) I disconnected the coaxial cable for the X-50 from the radio side of the lightning arrestor and positioned it so I could pull it back into the sump pump room. From there I fed it into the ham shack, disconnected it from the radio, and coiled it up. I uncoiled the new 20′ LMR-400 cable with the N-male connector end positioned so I could feed it through the corner of the ceiling in the ham shack (by the ground wire) and into the sump pump room. From there I fed it through one of the 2″ conduits into the cable entry box. Back outside I shaped the cable (LMR-400 cable is double shielded and stiff) and connected it to the radio side of the Morgan VHF/UHF lightning arrestor and closed the lid on the box.

Back in the ham shack I attached the PL-259 connector to the SO-239 socket on the back of the Icom IC-7000 GoBox. I could have gotten away with a 16′ cable but the 20′ length gives me more flexibility with respect to equipment placement. I turned on the IC-7000 but did not hear anyone on either the South Lyon 2m or the Novi 70cm repeaters so I turned it off.

I disconnected Mike’s Icom IC-2820H and set it aside to make space for the new Yaesu FTM-400DR/DE dual band mobile transceiver. I moved the new coax to the new radio, powered it up, spent a few minutes configuring some basic things, and then listened to the South Lyon and Novi repeaters. I tried calling them but was not triggering them so I knew the PL Tone was not set correctly. I called Mike for assistance and left him a voice message.

Linda was back by this time so she came down to see the new radio. We then went out to the bus to make our final decisions about upholstery fabric and window shade materials. In the end we chose the Lambright Notion Linen fabric for all four chairs and the MCD B50 material for the dark out shades. We brought all the samples back in the house and I e-mailed our choices to Josh at Coach Supply Direct.

I had an e-mail from Scott Neader (KA9FOX) at QTH.com requesting an admin login for the SLAARC WordPress website so I set that up and e-mailed him back. I had the new radio on and was listening to a conversation on the Novi repeater. It had just concluded when Mike returned my call. He walked me through how to set up the PL Tone and Squelch Tone for both of the repeaters on the FTM-400. We were then able to verify that the radio was working on both bands.

For dinner Linda made a salad and pan-grilled tofu with caramelized onions and barbecue sauce which she served open-faced on hamburger buns. We had watermelon for dessert, which we have been doing a lot this summer. I did not care for watermelon as a child but it has become a favorite summertime treat. I had dropped a small lock washer while mounting the new antenna to the tower earlier so I went to Lowe’s to get a replacement and some spares. On the drive there I got a call from XPO Delivery Service letting me know that the new refrigerator for the bus would be delivered to Chuck’s shop in Novi tomorrow between 6 and 8 PM.

At Lowe’s I picked up some 6mm x 1.0 Nylok nuts in addition to the lock washers. I also got some grass seed patching mix, a few more bags of decorative broken brick pieces, and a hummingbird feeder with a red reservoir so Linda can use sugar water without red food coloring. When I got home the odometer on my car read 100000 so I took a picture of it with my phone. I then spread the patching mix over the bare dirt I had used to fill a hole and troughs left by the installation of the natural gas line to our house last September. The rest of the evening Linda read and I worked on completing drafts of blog posts.

2015/06/23 (T) Grounded

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As I wrote in yesterday’s post we did not turn off the lights last night until almost 1 AM because we were keeping a close eye on the weather moving across the lower portion of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Although strong to severe storms were still forecast from 1 AM to 5 AM they either did materialize at our exact location or we slept through them. We had the house closed up and the air-conditioning on, so that cut down the sound level of outside noises.

A cold front had pushed through by sun up and we woke to a cool morning with blue skies and noticeably lower humidity. We did not have any trees, or even big limbs, come down and there was no damage to our brand new roof. The forecast yesterday was threatening enough, however, that in the morning we took the potted plants, and as much of our outside lawn furniture as we could find room for, inside including our sun umbrella and trash cans. I planned to be gone most of the day, and Linda was leaving mid-afternoon to go to dinner and a movie with Diane Rauch, so our first chore was to put all the lawn furniture, plants, and other outdoor stuff back outdoors.

This week is mostly being devoted to ham radio with the ARRL Field Day as the crowning event this weekend. My specific focus for most of the week, however, has been the “communications tower” adjacent to the east wall of our house. As described in previous posts we installed a cable entry box (CEB), mounted the cellular booster in the basement, mounted the inside cellular antenna, and ran coax cables. The antennas will (hopefully) be mounted on the existing 40 foot tower tomorrow, cabled into the CEB, and cables run from there to devices inside the house. With any luck by the end of the day tomorrow we will have decent cellular service inside the whole house, the ability to watch OTA TV programs on two different TV sets, and finally be able to connect one of our radios in the ham shack to an antenna. Today, however, was planned to mostly address other things.

I had an appointment with our dentist at 10:20 this morning and left at 9 AM. I planned to stop at Chuck’s bus garage and check that the key he lent me worked, but I needed gas for my car. I did not have time for both and did not really have a choice; I would have to check the key some other time. I ordered two cables yesterday from Scott (AC8IL) at Adams Electronics. Later in the evening I was unsure if I had specified the connectors correctly so I called and left a message. I called again this morning to make sure the message got through. It did, and my original connector specifications were correct.

I arrived at the dentist’s office about 10 minutes before my appointment time. I called Rick Short at Isringhausen USA to make sure he was going to be in before I drove two hours to Galesburg, Michigan after my dentist appointment. I got his voice mail a left a message. “ISRI” makes very high tech air suspension driver’s seats that are used as original equipment in motorcoaches, semi-tractors, heavy equipment, and locomotives. I would really like one for our bus, but it is not proving easy to get.

Dr. Steve and his assistant, Leslie, made molds of my upper and lower teeth and a bite impression. The molds will be used to make a mouth guard that I can wear while I sleep. Dr. Steve has a strong suspicion that I am clenching my teeth and the mouth guard will reduce or eliminate the irritation it causes. I will have to ask if I can wear it during the day too as I am occasionally aware of clenching my teeth while I awake.

I had not heard back from Rick by the end of my appointment so I called the main number at ISRI and talked to the receptionist. It turned out that Rick was not in today and she transferred me to Jeff Woodworth. Jeff was willing to meet with me but thought it would be a better use of my time to wait until Rick was available. My next opportunity to drive to Galesburg will be Thursday and I will likely go as the ISRI seat is holding up our ordering of Flexsteel seats through Coach Supply Direct.

I stopped for coffee and then re-routed for Chuck’s bus garage in Novi. The key to the garage worked perfectly. I called Linda to let her know about the change in plans and headed for home. There is too much to do at the moment to waste much time so I installed the #4 AWG bare copper ground wire I bought yesterday at Lowe’s. I mounted an offset copper wire lug using the center support stud for the copper back plane in the CEB. I replaced one of the plastic hole plugs with a rubber plug with a small hole in the center. The hole I chose in the bottom of the CEB allowed the ground wire to come straight up into the lug.

Another view of the cable entry box on the east end of the house by the 40-foot tower showing the bare copper ground wire that runs to the ground rod and then to one of the tower legs.

Outside the CEB I routed the ground wire around to the existing ground rod and secured it using the new clamp I bought yesterday. There was an old ground wire connected from a clamp on the tower to the ground rod. I removed that wire along with some coax and control wires that I had clipped when we removed the old satellite dish. I then attached the new ground wire to the clamp on the tower. While we were at it Linda trimmed back a small bush that was growing between the tower legs and I pulled leaves, grass and other stuff out from around the Day Lilies that we transplanted last year around the tower base.

With the CEB grounded we looked at how we might get a video cable up to the TV/monitor in our bedroom. The wall where the TV is mounted has a hot water baseboard radiator that comes almost to the trim on the door wall. That end of the radiator has a copper pipe that goes through the floor into the basement and it was easy to locate the pipe in the basement. I determined that there was enough space behind the pipe to safely drill a hole but I had to drill it from the top side at an angle. A 5/8″ wood boring drill bit created a hole just big enough for the molded F-connector on the end of the cable to pass through.

We fed the video coax cable above the suspended ceiling in the ham shack area to the location of the hole. I then fed the cable up from the basement as Linda pulled it up into the bedroom. We adjusted the amount of cable in the bedroom to allow the wall mounted TV set to move through its entire range of motion. The other end of the cable was then routed into the sump pump room.

By the time we finished pulling this cable it was 3:30 PM and time for Linda to leave to pick up Diane. They were headed to Royal Oak for dinner and a movie as the movie they wanted to see was only showing at the Royal Oak Main Theater.

While I was out during the morning Lynch Carpet had called to let us know our Armstrong vinyl tile was available for pickup so after Linda left I closed up the house and went to get it. The 12 boxes of tiles, container of vinyl adhesive, and container of vinyl grout were all neatly arranged on a small pallet and tightly wrapped in shipping plastic. Rather than break this down and load each thing individually they used a fork lift to set the pallet in the back of my Honda Element. The rear suspension settled at least two inches when they transferred the full weight of the pallet to the floor of my car.

When I got back to the house I backed the car up to the garage. I cut the shipping plastic loose and unloaded the tubs and boxes of tiles. I put the pallet on the garage floor and then neatly stacked the boxes of tiles on it to keep them off the floor. Each box contained 14 tiles measuring 16″ by 16″ for a total area of 24.89 square feet. The Armstrong Alterna tiles are a “luxury vinyl” product, and are about 1/8″ thick. Even so, the boxes were heavier than I expected so I decided to weigh one. It tipped the scale at just under 42 pounds. That meant the entire pallet weighed close to 500 pounds, and, ignoring the weight of the cardboard box, that is about 3 pounds per tile.

When I drew out the design I determined that I would need 158 tiles, some of which would be partial. Figuring conservatively at 150 full tiles equivalent, and ignoring the weight of the underlayment, adhesive, and grout, the floor tiles will weigh about 450 pounds. I have no idea what the carpet and ceramic tile that I have removed weighed but the tiles were heavy. I also have no idea what the furniture weighed that we have removed but also have no idea what the new furniture will weigh. The intent was that the new floor and furniture would weigh less than old stuff but we will see.

I traded phone calls with my dad and we finally got to talk for a half hour starting at 4:30 PM. He turned 90 this past Sunday. Mike Fearer from Bid-Rite Concrete called at 6 PM and arrived about 10 minutes later to discuss the foundation for our 70 foot ham radio tower. I had printed off a page from the Universal Tower website showing their tower base. I also downloaded and printed their base and tower installation instructions. I had a set of these to give to Mike so he would have some idea of what the project is about. We looked at the proposed location for the tower and access for his dump cart. We also talked about the base, a rebar cage, a form around the top of the hole to allow the concrete to be slightly above ground, and a jig to make sure the base is level and the tower is plumb.

He said he was interested in the job and would work with me and Phil Jarrell (the excavator) to get it done. Rather than bid the job he would just do it for time and materials. He also said the current price of concrete was about $100 per cubic yard. We will need about six (6) cubic yards to fill the required 5′ x 5′ x 6′ (deep) hole. He thought he might be available the middle of next week but I don’t think I could have everything pulled together that quickly.

After Mike left I went to Lowe’s and picked up five 40 pound bags of topsoil, a 1-in/2-out signal splitter (rated for 5 MHz to 2.4 GHz), and a plastic snap cover channel for hiding the video cable we ran up into the bedroom from the basement for the TV set. I then went to the Meijer’s supermarket just across Grand River Avenue for soy creamer but they did not have what I was looking for. As long as I was there I had a salad for dinner at the in-store Subway.

While I was sitting there I called Mike Sharpe (W8XH) to confirm that he was available tomorrow to help with the antenna installations on our 40 foot tower. I mentioned that the only thing I lacked was a standoff with a pulley at the end of it for hoisting stuff up to me. He suggested that something like that was essential and I agreed, so I headed back to Lowe’s to see what I could figure out. What I ended up with was a three foot long 7/16-14 threaded rod, a pulley that had a closed eyelet on top (and was big enough for the 3/8ths rope I bought), some 7/16ths washers, and some 7/16-14 nuts.

When I got back to the house I unloaded the topsoil near the part of the east yard that needs to be filled in, took the other stuff inside, and then assembled the threaded rod pulley system. I secured the pulley on one end of the rod using two of the nuts, one on either side of the eyelet. I threaded a nut onto the other end, put on two washers, two nuts, two more washers, and another nut. I ran the first two nuts, with two washers between them, part way down the rod. I left the second pair of nuts, with washers between them, near the end of the rod.

I took the assembly out to the tower and adjusted the position and spacing of the two pairs of nuts and washers so they would bracket two of the horizontal tower members. In use I will secure the rod to the tower at each pair of nuts/washers using plastic cable ties. This arrangement will put the pulley at least 18″ from the tower which should be far enough out that we can hoist the DB8e OTA TV antenna to the top of the tower without it banging into the tower or hanging up on something. This antenna is the largest thing we need to hoist up. The old TV antenna is considerably larger and heavier, but it is coming down via gravity.

There was a message on our answering machine from Linda’s sister, Sr. Marilyn, who lives in St. Louis. She was listening to the news earlier today about the storms that went through our part of Michigan and wanted to make sure we were all OK. By the time we finished talking it was dark and I was done working for the day. Linda called shortly thereafter to let me know she was on her way home and I mentioned the call with Marilyn.

I finally opened the box with the vertical omnidirectional outside antenna for the cellular booster system and discovered that I should have opened it sooner. The mounting bracket was designed to be mounted to a vertical surface, such as the side of a house, not a tube, such as a tower leg. I did not want to postpone tomorrow’s tower work so I will have to get up early and figure out a way to adapt the existing bracket so I can mount the antenna to the top of the tower.

My initial thought was that an aluminum U-channel of the correct size might solve the problem very nicely. I could drill two holes in the bottom of the “U” to match the two holes in the bracket. I could then drill three pairs of holes through the sides of the channel. The antenna would be bolted to the bottom of the channel. With the open part of the channel held against a vertical tube I could secure it with three long plastic cable (zip) ties. Conceptually it should work and be easy to fabricate, but will take time which I won’t have a lot of in the morning. We have to get the two coax cables from Scotty (AC8IL), drop off my car at Brighton Honda for its 100,000 mile service, and be back in time to have the mount fabricated and all of the antennas and tools ready to go by 10:30 AM when Mike shows up.

Linda got home at 9:45 PM, earlier than she thought she would when she left. She and Diane ate at Luigi’s and had a very nice meal. They also enjoyed the movie. We had a big day on tap for tomorrow and we asleep by 10:30 PM.

2015/06/10 (W) Ron and Mary

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Same routine as yesterday; up at 7 AM, open up the house, feed the cats, clean the litter tray, start a load of laundry, make the coffee, and drink the coffee while using our iPads.

Our daughter’s 34th birthday is tomorrow but she is flying to Las Vegas today to meet up with her husband who is there on a company outing. We will celebrate her birthday when they get back, perhaps in conjunction with Father’s Day and Linda’s birthday, which is at the end of the month.

Linda left at 9 AM for Brighton Honda to have the 12 V battery in her car checked. The battery light came on the other day so we thought it might need to be replaced. Around 9:20 AM I heard thunder and a short time later we had a brief, heavy downpour. Linda called at the same time and said the battery tested OK. The problem could be the alternator, of course, but presumably the dealer service people know that and checked for that. If not, we will likely be back there sooner rather than later.

Linda headed on to Meijer’s to do the grocery shopping. Today was trash pickup day so I took the trash can to the street. After meeting with Brad from Chuck It Junk Removal the other day we decided we would rent their trailer for 5 days. For the same price as having them physically handle 1/3 of a truck of junk (5 cu. yd.) we can get rid of a full truck of junk (15 cu. yd.) by loading it ourselves. Deal.

I got a call from Phil Jarrell regarding my request for pricing to dig a foundation hole for a ham radio tower foundation. It was a useful conversation in that I had not previously realized that I will need a concrete contractor in addition to the concrete supplier. The only thing the concrete supplier will do is show up with a cement mixer truck and dump the concrete where they are instructed to. The concrete contractor will actually place rebar, build forms, provide carts or a pumper, and get the concrete from the truck to the hole. Phil recommended Mike Fearer of Bid-Rite Concrete as a good guy who would work with me to get this done.

I talked with Chuck about getting a key to his shop so we could have the new refrigerator delivered there and have the old one picked up without having to trouble him to be there. He agreed and suggested that we contact the guy down the street about removing the old windshield and installing the new one as part of the refrigerator swap.

Rather than dig into our bus interior remodeling project I have used the last couple of days to finalize decisions about various products and order them. One of the things I have wanted/needed for a while is a cable entrance box that will allow me to route transmission lines and control cables into the basement from outside. I talked to Chris Perri, KF7P, at the Dayton Hamvention last month and decided that I liked his custom fabricated cable entry boxes. I got his business card at the Hamvention and exchanged a couple of e-mails with him this week. I decided this morning how I want the box initially configured and e-mailed my specs to Chris. I would like to run the cabling for the cell phone booster through this box so I needed to get it on order. Speaking of which, the cell phone booster system arrived today via UPS so I am feeling more comfortable that all of the stuff I am ordering will actually get delivered to our house.

Wednesday’s and Fridays are when Recycle Livingston is open and the Wednesday hours are 11 AM to 5:30 PM. We had my car loaded up with recyclables and Linda drove over after lunch to drop them off. When she got back she made a batch of her yummy granola and I got a couple more loads of laundry done while continuing to work at my computer.

After doing my alternate tile layout for the bus floor yesterday I decided that I liked the way it looked better than the original ad that it would not involve any more cutting than the row/column layout. I also felt confident that I had an accurate enough tile count to go ahead and order the tiles. I drove to the Shell station to fill my tank and then drove to Lynch Carpet in Howell. I ordered 12 boxes of the 16″ x 16″ Armstrong Alterna Luxury Vinyl Tile in the La Plata Creme Fresh pattern, and a gallon each of the vinyl adhesive and Glacier vinyl grout. There are 14 tiles per box (24.89 sq. ft.) for a total of 168 tiles (just under 300 sq. ft.). The inside floor area of the bus is around 300 sq. ft. before subtracting out walls and cabinets but we will be using some of the tiles on vertical surfaces in the entry stairwell and cockpit and around the box that supports the bed platform. My estimate is that I will have 10 extra tiles. The guy at Lynch Carpet suggested that I use a scrap piece of tile as a spacer when installing the tiles but I may use the little plastic “X” pieces designed for this purpose.

From Lynch Carpet I drove to Lowe’s in Howell to see if they had a different portable air compressor that might be more appropriate than the 6 gallon Porter Cable we just bought. The Porter-Cable air compressor has a maximum regulated pressure of 150 PSI but that is also the maximum tank pressure. I will have to test it on one of the front bus tires to determine if it will get the job done and if not I will return it.

The guy at Lynch Carpet also suggested that I rent a handheld grinder from Abe’s or A-1 Rental, both in Howell. Abe’s did not have any grinders of any kind and A-1 was closed on Wednesdays. The gal at Abe’s suggested the tool rental service at the Howell Home Depot, so I stopped there. They also did not have a handheld grinder but they did have a floor model concrete grinder. It was so heavy that I doubt if we could have gotten it into the bus and it was too big to maneuver in the tight spaces where I need to work. They did have a lighter/smaller floor stripper and I may give that a try before I resort to grinding off the thinset with an angle grinder and diamond impregnated wheel and/or a belt sander with a very aggressive belt.

Pat Davidson called from Apex Roofing while I was out so I called him back. They will be able to start on our roof next week Monday or Tuesday and will deliver the shingles on Friday this week. I confirmed that we wanted two of the 14″ light tunnels for the living room. I also indicated that I had scrapped the idea of building a dormer or installing a roof hatch as I simply did not get this taken care of in time.

Linda had closed up the house and turned on the air-conditioning while I was out. It was pulling moisture out of the air but would not bring the air temperature lower than 78 degrees. Not good. This will be our third summer in this house and we have not used the air-conditioning very much. The first summer we were gone for most of June, all of July, and a few days in August. We had the unit serviced last year and thought it was working OK but perhaps did not really use it after that. We did install filters in the return air grills so perhaps they are restricting the airflow too much. It is also possible that it needs refrigerant. I will have to check our records from last year and then call TOMTEK to arrange to have it serviced again.

Linda’s brother, Ron, and his wife, Mary, arrived early this evening. They are on their way to northwest Illinois for a week-long organized bicycle ride. They have to be there on Saturday and will be spending the next three nights at our house. Visits from them are usually not more than once a year but we really enjoy their company when they are here.

For dinner Linda made a nice green salad and then made whole wheat angel hair pasta with onions, garlic, and mushrooms lightly sautéed in olive oil. Ron does not imbibe but Linda, Mary, and I had a glass (or two) of Moscato. We moved to the deck after dinner and had fresh strawberries for dessert. It cooled off as darkness set in and we eventually moved back inside. The other three were in the kitchen and I was sitting on the sofa when Juniper suddenly caught a mouse in the middle of the living room, or at least that is where I noticed that she had it. She took it downstairs and I got her to drop it in the bathroom sink but I was unable to get it into a container to take it outside and it escaped into my office. I closed the doors but I have no doubt it can go wherever it wants in the house from there. When I returned upstairs we chatted until 11 PM and then all turned in for the evening.

2015/05/23 (S) Radio Cabinet Company

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Today was “V. E.” testing day (volunteer examiner) so a half-dozen members of our amateur radio club were at breakfast even earlier than usual. (Our club does not test volunteer examiners, we have members who volunteer to give amateur radio licensing exams to people who want to get or upgrade an amateur radio license.) We were later than usual and ended up at the far end of a very long table arrangement, as there was a large turnout, but that gave us a chance to chat with a different group of people.

Mike Sharpe (W8XH) had a flyer he printed on his mother’s car, a 2005 Ford Taurus in excellent condition with only 21,000 miles. He was asking $5,800 which is slightly below the suggested Blue Book value. I texted our son to see if they might be interested in the car. Linda and I both had Ford Taurus cars starting in 2000. I had a beige station wagon with a beige interior and Linda had a red sedan with a gray interior. Our children eventually ended up with these vehicles, Brendan with my car and Meghan with Linda’s.

Back at the house Linda made a shopping list and headed to the grocery store while I changed into my work clothes and got to work in the bus. My focus today was deconstructing the cabinet above the refrigerator. I could tell from the dimensions that it was probably a box-within-a-box, but did not know how it was built. I removed all of the carpeting from the inside surfaces, labeling the back of each piece in case I decided to reinstall them. With the carpet out it became obvious that the floor, sidewalls, and back of the cabinet could be removed as I could see the screws and angle brackets that held them in place.

The cabinet above the refrigerator in our bus with the inside panels removed revealing lots of wiring.

The floor was in two side-to-side pieces which were narrow, each sidewall was a single piece, and the back was in two pieces. All of the pieces were sized to fit through the front openings in the face frame, a very clever design. There were cleats supporting the floor and spacing the back and side walls out from the larger permanent structure of the refrigerator alcove. The panels I removed served the dual purpose of getting the bottom and sides to line up with door openings and providing space to run wires while concealing them. Things got trickier after that.

The walnut face frame was assembled with glue and pocket screws. It had cleats along both rails and the two end stiles, all of which appeared to be glued and screwed to the face frame. In addition, the piece of walnut veneered plywood that separated the refrigerator space from the cabinet above was glued and screwed to the underside of the lower rail cleat. In other words, it was a solid and very professionally assembled cabinet. The bottom board was attached to the two sides with angle brackets and it appeared that I might be able to remove the face frame and bottom board once the side and top cleats and brackets were unscrewed. The top rail of the face frame, however, was tucked up behind some ceiling trim, preventing me from pulling the whole assembly straight out. I loosened the trim and found that pulling it straight out was probably not my best option. To get it out I would have to drop it straight down which will require the refrigerator to be out of the alcove.

The Aqua-Hot has been on with the thermostats set to 55 degrees F in case it got too cold. It was cool today so I turned the engine preheat pump on to warm up the main engine. When it was time for lunch I started the main engine and let it high idle while we ate. After we were done with lunch I moved the coach backwards (to release the brakes if they were bound up) and then forward enough to put the tires at a different spot. I set our electronic level on the centerline of the floor and then lowered the front and passenger side rear to level the coach. When I walked around it actually felt level, which it rarely did when trying to level off of one of the floor tiles or the kitchen counter.

I quit working around 2:30 PM as Linda was getting ready to prep ingredients for the risotto she planned to make for dinner and got cleaned up. I used to cook a lot but since we switched to a vegan diet Linda has done almost all of our cooking and, except for making coffee, tea, and popcorn, the kitchen has been her exclusive domain since she retired and we moved to the new house. But I offered to help and she agreed to let me so I diced an onion and five cloves of garlic while she sliced mushrooms and other things. By the time I was done I had about 40 minutes before Steve and Karen were due to arrive, so I updated my medical history for Root Canal Specialty Associates. I have a follow up visit with them in Wednesday.

Steve and Karen arrived at 4 PM and we settled in to conversation and munchies (they brought a mixed fruit salad, pistachios, and mixed nuts). We finished up the open bottle of Malvasia Bianca from Heart of the Desert Winery (Eagle Ranch) in Alamogordo, New Mexico. After chatting for a while about our respective winters—ours in the Southwest and theirs near Venice, Florida—we gave them a quick tour of the inside of the bus. It looks quite a bit different now compared to January 2014 when they spent a couple of nights in it at Williston Crossings RV Resort enroute to Venice, Florida. It will look even more different (hopefully) once we are done with the remodeling.

Linda eventually had to attend to the final preparations for dinner. Karen helped by stirring the mushroom risotto while Steve and I stayed out of their way chatting in the living room. Linda roasted refresh asparagus and sliced a baguette to go with the risotto. I opened a bottle of the 2013 Egri Merlot to go with dinner. Steve does not drink alcoholic beverages or coffee and Karen prefers drier red wines, but she seemed to enjoy the Merlot all the same.

The weather had been beautiful all day and we sat on the rear deck after dinner enjoying our last sips of wine. Once the sun dropped behind the trees it cooled off to the point where it was uncomfortable and we went back inside. I turned on the natural gas fireplace logs but left a window open which seemed to strike the right balance of temperature and mood. By 10:30 PM we had caught up on travels, families, and hobby interests. They had a 45 minute drive to get home and usually leave around that time. We had a long but very satisfying day and were quickly to bed once they were safely on their way home.

2014/09/21 (N) No Drag, No Drop

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We started our morning with a trip to Panera in Brighton for coffee and bagels. We got a table for two right next to the gas fire logs, which have seating on all four sides. I discovered the other day that we had earned a free daily coffee for the month of September. The month was 2/3rds over so we wanted to use what remained of the benefit. We took our iPads and read for a while. We have always appreciated the free Wi-Fi at Panera cafes. We then spent the morning running errands that included visits to Lowe’s, Walmart, the Howell Library, the Howell Farmers Market, Home Depot, and finally Meijer’s. It was after 1 PM by the time we got back to the house. Pre-retirement we would not have spent that much time running errands together but would have split them up. It’s nice to just be able to “hang out” together now taking care of the simple things.

We had hummus sandwiches and black grapes for lunch and then settled in to work at our desks for the afternoon. Linda put in a couple hours of work on the bakery software conversion project, went for a walk, and then worked on our personal accounting. I created a couple of new pages for our website and then created a photo gallery (several, actually) with images of the natural gas project that Roese Construction has been working on for Consumer’s Energy in this part of Livingston County since early July.

The drag-and-drop feature of the native WordPress gallery function is definitely NOT WORKING on my computer and I have tried it on two different WordPress sites hosted on different web-servers. I can drag-and-drop other things on my computer, such as file names, so I strongly suspect this is a WordPress 4.0 problem. Since WP 4.0 was released over a week ago I am getting a bit worried that there has not been a maintenance update fixing this problem or even a mention that the problem exists. I mentioned this to both Mike (W8XH) and Larry (K8UT) at breakfast yesterday and both agreed that it was almost certainly a WordPress problem, not a Windows 8.1 problem. Neither Mike nor Larry had not tried creating photo galleries since WP 4.0 was released, so that had not personally experienced the problem.

We are still experiencing what appears to be a brute force login attack on the two websites hosted by QTH.com; this one and the one for the Great Lakes Converted Coaches FMCA chapter. The more serious attempt is against the GLCC website, which is still under development and almost totally locked down. I decided to tighten up the security options for both sites in the Wordfence Security plug-in. I also changed the passwords for all of the administrative user accounts. It’s a pain, and although I like to think of myself as a peaceful and non-violent individual, I will not put into print what I think should be done with the people (or governments) that are involved in trying to hack other peoples’ websites and blogs either for fun or for more serious (criminal) purposes. The Internet (World Wide Web) may well be one of the greatest technological achievements in the history of human civilization, and it’s a shame that there are those who would like to spoil it for the rest of us.

I got an e-mail from Bill Gerrie letting me know that he and Karen had arrived at the RV park in Frankenmuth, Michigan where they like to spend three or four weeks each fall. That puts them less than an hour north of where we live so we are now trying to arrange for them to come down to visit and have dinner. I know they would love to visit but I suspect they are not looking forward to a whole-food, plant-based meal. I know Linda will do a great job preparing something really tasty that they will like, but for some folks the mere thought of not having meat plays with their head to the point where they can’t enjoy the meal. For others, like a good friend who will remain anonymous, they just genuinely do not like vegetables. Sad, but true.

I worked at my desk after dinner uploading a few more blog posts while Linda read a novel intermixed with playing Scrabble and Words With Friends online. These are what she likes to do to relax. No TV for us tonight as Linda had to be up early tomorrow to get ahead of the morning traffic inbound to Detroit.

2014/09/18 (R) Crown Prep Anniversary

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I woke up early and got up at 6 AM. A two hour nap yesterday afternoon meant I was not going to sleep as many hours last night. I had also set alarms to make sure I got up, which tends to make me wake up earlier than I might otherwise, almost always before the alarms ever activate. I awoke to find that iOS8 was now available for my iPad2, so I installed six other updates first, some of which emphatically wanted to be installed before the iOS8 update. I had some raspberry green tea while they uploaded and installed, e-mailed yesterday’s blog post to myself, updated the beginning of this blog post, and then initiated the operating system update.

I suppose “Crown Prep” might be shorthand for “The Royale Preparatory Academy” or some such place and Crown Prep Anniversary might have something to do with an important event at said place but, alas, in my case it meant, more or less, just what it says. We bought our converted bus five years ago today, a 1991 Prevost H3-40 VIP shell converted by Royale Coach (Monaco) and finished in the fall of 1992. I also had a dentist appointment today to prepare my recently root-canaled tooth for a permanent crown. The appointment was at 8:30 AM some 50 miles away in Dearborn, Michigan, which meant I had to be out the door around 7 AM to allow for the heavy traffic inbound to the metro Detroit area from the northwest. The traffic was even worse than I expected and I pulled into the dental clinic parking lot at 8:29 AM. I really hate rush hour traffic and avoided it even when I was working full time. It is such a colossal waste of time.

The U. S. Census Bureau considers Livingston County to be part of the Detroit Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). Locally, many people think of Metro Detroit as Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb Counties while the MSA includes Lapeer, Livingston, and St. Clair Counties as well. Washtenaw County to the south of us, where our children live, is not part of the Detroit MSA but is part of the larger Detroit “Combined Statistical Area” (CSA) along with Genesee and Monroe Counties. Having been “west siders” since we moved to the area from Missouri in 1976, Lapeer and St. Clair Counties have always seemed far away while the communities in Livingston and Washtenaw Counties were much more accessible to us. When I was working as an engineer I was employed by a company in Livingston County and by three different companies in Washtenaw County, specifically Ann Arbor.

I am not clear on the point at which communities, and individuals in those communities, do or do not think of themselves as living in the “Detroit Metro Area” (DMA) which is quite a different thing from the official U. S. Census Bureau boundaries. My guess is that Howell very clearly sees itself as distinct from the DMA. My suspicion is that folks in Brighton are split on this, although the community would no doubt like to be viewed as outside the DMA. The western half of Livingston County is certainly much closer to Lansing, the state capital in the heart of Ingham County, both geographically and culturally. Western Livingston County and most of Ingham County are rural/agricultural, except for the greater Lansing and East Lansing area (home of Michigan State University). The eastern half of Livingston County has long been a place from which people commute to work in metro Detroit.

The fact is that being associated with Detroit has not been viewed as favorable by many people and communities in southeast Michigan since the riots of the late 1960’s. Those events left deep scars on the people who were here at the time, and for many those scars remain to this day. Not for us, of course; we were not even here then. And we are the wrong people to ask about affiliations anyway. We lived in an apartment in Westland for our first two years here and then bought the house in Farmington Hills where we lived for the next 35 years before moving to the “Browelland” (Brighton, Howell, Hartland) area. Westland and Farmington Hills are clearly Detroit suburbs, like it or not.

I took a survey and Linda said she thought we still lived in the Detroit Metro Area. I suppose I think so too, but you won’t find many five acre parcels zoned RA (agricultural residential) in the true suburbs of the big city, nor the dark skies and bright stars we have out here on a clear night. No, we are clearly not in a suburb of Detroit, but that was not my question. We are kind of in the country but only minutes from all three of the aforementioned municipalities. For that matter we are not actually in the cities of Brighton, Howell, or Hartland. Even though we have a Howell mailing address we are actually closer to both Brighton and Hartland and if we had school age children they would attend the Hartland schools. And when we lived in the suburbs I did not have to drive 50 miles to get to the dentist, 30 miles to get to our vet or eye doctor, or 20 miles to get to our family doctor. Of course the drive is about the same to get to our ham radio breakfasts and meetings in South Lyon as it was before and we do not have to drive 40 miles to get to our bus, which is now parked in front of the house. We are also trying to “shop local” as much as possible, which means we are shopping at a wide variety of places we never patronized when we lived in the suburbs of Detroit. But I digress.

After I was done at the dentist’s office I drove to our veterinarian’s office, just a couple of miles from our old house, to pick up flea and heart worm medication for our cats. I took a quick drive through the old neighborhood. It was a nice place to live and has not changed, at least in appearance. I had a good experience with the local endodontist last week, however, and today’s drive reminded me that we should probably switch to service providers much closer to home for most of our medical and veterinary needs. But that is not a decision to be made simply on convenience. We have used our current providers for over 35 years and given how infrequently we use them we have not been motivated to change. We have been to the dentist a lot this summer, however, so that at least has us thinking about it more seriously.

I stopped for fuel and then at Lowe’s for a keyless door latch/knob set for the utility closet. They did not have distilled water and I tried two other places before ending up finding some at Meijer’s. Linda was preparing lunch when I finally got home and had sorted through and organized a large stack of installation and user manuals I had pulled out of kitchen drawer this morning. Some were left for us by the previous owners, some were for things we have bought since we moved here, and some were for things we no longer have, or have but no longer use. We went through a small stack of items she wasn’t sure about and then stored everything we needed to keep in a drawer in the small bedroom closet organizer.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening, except for dinner, editing photographs for our personal website/blog and the SLAARC website. I also took a few minutes to enjoy the last of the apple crisp and a glass of Alpha Rose wine with Linda. It’s been bugging me since yesterday that I could not positively identify the very distinct nose and taste of this wine, so Linda did a little online research on the King of the North grape. Both the University of Iowa and the University of Minnesota described it as a vine that grows very well in cold northern climates but is very acidic and has a very “grapey” taste that is not really suitable for making wine. That information helped me figure out the smell/taste. It was grape soda; really really good grape soda. Those descriptions did not alter my opinion of the wine. I like fruit and I like sweet, and I love the nose and the taste as well as the acidic finish is indeed very clean and refreshing.

Linda was watching episode 1 of Ken Burns’ documentary on the Roosevelts when I came up from the basement, so we watched that instead of an episode of Doc Martin.

2014/09/13 (S) Overnight Guest

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Linda’s sister, Sister Marilyn, called a couple of days ago to let us know she would be in the Detroit area on business this weekend. She wanted to know if we could fetch her this afternoon and if she could spend the night at our house? The answer was “of course,” of course. Her flight out wasn’t until Sunday evening, so Linda put the gears in motion and arranged a brunch with the local family for 10 AM tomorrow.

Being Saturday, we went to our ham radio club breakfast in South Lyon. Before leaving our neighborhood we drove to the other end of the street (dead end with turn-around) to see where the gas hookup crew left off yesterday. We knew they were working down there today because we saw the trucks leave sometime between 5:30 and 6:00 PM last night. There’s a chance they will be back today and we wanted to see how close they were to connecting our house to the main line. It looked like they had quite a few houses to do ahead of ours, so we went to breakfast.

We got home around 10:30 AM to find a crew working in our yard trenching in the branch line to our house. I was told yesterday they were going to bore it in, so something obviously did not get communicated. Not only that, they were running a 5/8″ line, which was way too small for the 425 meter we are supposed to get. I stopped the crew and the guy in charge pulled out his paperwork. It had “425” written on it big letters, but the drawing showed a 5/8″ line. He agreed that the 5/8″ line was way too small for that meter and that we should have 1.25″ line. They pulled the little bit of line they had already run out of the ground, raked out some of the dirt they had already trenched, and moved their machine across the street to trench our neighbors yard.

We were lucky we got home when we did. They had already cut through some tree roots that did not need to be disturbed and would have torn up a lot more of our yard unnecessarily if I had not interrupted their work. They were nice about it, but I still found it troublesome that I had spoken to two different supervisors face-to-face about this, one as recently as yesterday, but this crew showed up and did something different than what I had been told, and agreed, would be done.

I was finally going to try to remove the fogged window from the bus today, but we had a lot of rain overnight and woke to overcast skies, temperatures in the upper 40’s, and a forecast high of 57 degrees F with a strong chance of rain through mid-afternoon. That was not the sort of weather for removing a window from a vehicle parked outside. Besides, with Marilyn arriving mid-late afternoon I did not want to work on anything messy and then have to get cleaned up.

Linda looked up the kitchen ranges we had been considering. The GE 30″ 5-burner double-oven convention model (JGB870DEFWW) was on sale again at Lowe’s for $180 off MSRP and we would get another 5% off the sale price by using our Lowe’s credit card. If we ordered it today delivery would be September 27, longer than I would like, but it is what it is. We have to order this range because Linda wants a white one to match all of the other appliances in the kitchen and the appliance stores do not tend to stock white ranges with the features we want. I called our local Lowe’s store and confirmed the free delivery and take away of our current range. Installation is $20 plus a new flex gas line for $30.

I called TOMTEK HVAC and got hold of Tom. He seemed put off by the fact that I have someone else doing HVAC work at the house and will have the natural gas already tied in when he comes to convert the main house furnace from propane to natural gas, but he said he would check with Weil-McLain on Monday about what parts he needs to do the conversion. While on the phone with Tom he suggested that we try D. R. Electric Appliance Sales and Service in Howell for our new gas range. We looked them up on the web and got their (incorrect) phone number and hours. I got the correct number from 411 before I realized that it was also on their website. They closed at 2 PM on Saturdays, so we didn’t make it there today, but I called and got an answering machine, left my name, number, and the reason for the call. Curt called me back a short time later. I gave him the model number and he said he would call G.E. on Monday. He said he had been holding off ordering G.E. appliances waiting for Columbus Day sale pricing. He figured he would have the range three days from ordering and could probably install it at the end of the week or early next. They charge $25 for installation and haul away, and $25 for the new flex gas line if we need one, so it’s the same $50 as Lowe’s. (Lowe’s assured me that they were REQUIRED to install a new flexible gas line.) That all sounded good depending on the price of the range. Getting it sooner has some dollar value to us, we’re just not sure how much.

I stayed home while Linda went to Meijer’s for groceries. Finding the crew in our yard this morning doing work they were no supposed to be doing spooked me enough to not want to leave the house unattended the rest of the day. As long as I was stuck at home, I called Bratcher Electric to give them a heads up that the gas connection to the house was imminent. Being Saturday I got their answering machine and left a message. I also called Darryll at DCM Heating & Cooling and left a message regarding the gas connection. Once the meter is hung and connected everything else depends on Darryll getting his piece done first.

We checked the website for Country Squire Fireplace and Lighting in Howell and saw a 10% off coupon, so I printed that. I wanted to go there today and buy a set of high-efficiency vent-free natural gas fire logs but it will probably be tomorrow afternoon instead. These logs are more efficient than a typical kitchen range and are designed to be used with the fireplace flue closed, throwing most of the heat they produce into the room instead of up the chimney. Darryll said he would hook it up for us and add a shutoff valve when he came back to tie in to the gas meter, so we need to have it here before he comes back next week.

Marilyn called and said their flights were running a little behind schedule and that Linda should pick her up around 3 PM rather than 2:30 PM as originally planned. She called back again and said 3:15 PM would be better. Linda got back from the grocery store and we had a quick lunch of leftover Sloppy Joe’s.

With overnight lows in the 40’s, highs only in the mid-50’s, and the connection of our natural gas somewhat imminent, we decided we could afford to use propane to heat the house. We have been conscious of our propane use because we did not want to get in a position where we needed to have either of the tanks filled. I turned the furnace on and set all the thermostats a few degrees above ambient to take the chill off.

While Linda drove over to Lake Orion, Michigan to fetch Marilyn I decided to work at my desk selecting photos for gallery posts on the garage/HVAC project and natural gas work, and worked a little bit on the websites for the FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches and Freethinkers chapters. I really need to have the GLCC site usable in the next three weeks and the FTH site within a month of that. That sounds ambitious even as I write it down and I suspect it won’t happen.

Linda and Marilyn got to the house around 4:30 PM and after we got Marilyn settled in her bedroom we just sat and relaxed and talked for a while. We thought she might appreciate a good home-cooked meal but we ended up taking her to LaMarsa for dinner. She had the Koshary, which we had last night, and we split an order of garlic almond vegetable Ghallaba with green salad and crushed lentil soup. We all ate way too much pita bread with garlic spread and were uncomfortably full by the time we finished our meal, but it was delicious and we did not have to prepare it or clean up afterwards.

These days twilight now comes around 7 PM and it was dark by the time we got home at 8 PM. I made a pot of decaf coffee and we settled in the living room for a long chat. I set the thermostats back before we turned in for the evening as all three of us prefer to sleep in a cool room.

2014/08/29 (F) Sand Mud Press

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

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

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

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

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

20140827 (W) HVAC and Dentistry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tag Archives: Meijer’s (Howell MI)

2015/11/22 (N) Repackaging

2015/11/07 (S) Measure One, Cut Twice

2015/10/09 (F) All Charged Up

2015/10/08 (R) A Mighty Hose

2015/10/05 (M) Pondering Wallpaper

2015/09/12 (S) Making It Usable

2015/09/09 (W) Move In Day

2015/08/31 (M) A Major Sub-Project Done

2015/08/05 (W) No Mask Wednesday

2015/07/18 (S) RV Shopping

2015/07/10 (F) Eye of the Beholder

2015/07/02 (R) 100,000 Radios

2015/06/23 (T) Grounded

2015/06/10 (W) Ron and Mary

2015/05/23 (S) Radio Cabinet Company

2014/09/18 (R) Crown Prep Anniversary

2014/09/13 (S) Overnight Guest

2014/08/29 (F) Sand Mud Press

20140827 (W) HVAC and Dentistry