Tag Archives: Roese Construction (natural gas)

2014/09/15 (M) Congratulations, You Have Gas

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As I reported in the blog post for this past Saturday a natural gas hookup crew was at our house in the early morning but it was the wrong crew (trench/plow) installing the wrong size gas line (1/2″ id).  The correct crew (directional boring) showed up today around 9 AM and started boring the line for our neighbor’s yard across the street.  I chatted with the crew briefly and they said we were next.  They had placed a large role of the proper size gas line (1″ id) in our yard, so I knew they knew what they were doing.

Ed, who had stopped by on Friday and runs the hookup crew, was not sure whether they would hang the meter and connect the line at both ends today, but if not, tomorrow for sure.  Their presence on site, however, meant that I would need to be in contact with three contractors fairly soon to follow up on arrangements to get them out here ASAP, and in the following order:

  • DCM Heating and Cooling, to disconnect the propane from the house and tie the new 2″ black iron pipe together with the pipe into the house and connect them to the consumer side of the gas meter.  Also, to start up the new library and garage furnaces.
  • TOMTEK HVAC to convert the hot water base-board heating system to natural gas.  Tom was going to check today with Weil-McLain on the parts needed for the conversion and let me know.  Our own research suggested that a natural gas orifice plate was the only part needed, but a number of steps were involved in the installation and I doubt that W-M would sell me the part directly.  (I did find it later online for $31 plus S&H, so I could buy it if I wanted to.)
  • Bratcher Electric; to convert the whole house generator, do the annual maintenance, and run the new service entrance cable for the garage panel.

Mike Bratcher was here a month ago to look at the job but had not gotten a price to us yet for the work.  They have been slammed with repair jobs as a result of late summer storms.  The generator is the least critical component at the moment as it is on its own propane tank, but we want to get it switched in a timely fashion so we can call AmeriGas and have both tanks removed at the same time.

(Ed told me later in the day that Consumer’s Energy requires us to be switched over to natural gas within 30 days of having gas to our meter.  He also said that a recent Michigan law (last year) made it illegal to have multiple fuel sources to a house.  Since the generator is on its own propane tank and that tank is not connected to, or provide propane to, the house or anything in the house, technically we would not have two different fuels going to the house even if we left it hooked up.  Still, we are not looking to create a “situation” with Consumer’s Energy.  Presumably the multi-fuel prohibition does not include electricity and wood.)

Keith showed up around 9 AM to cut the grass.  I chatted with him briefly about cutting the new grass, which had gotten long enough in many spots that I thought it was probably time for the first cutting.  I picked up some small tree branches that were scattered about the yard from recent storms, and warned him about the trench at the southeast corner of the house.  I chatted with him some more as he was finishing up with the string trimmer.  He said the grass was “April grass, not September grass.”  The grass itself (internally) was very moist, not just the soil.

This is how Keith cuts over 4 acres of grass in a few hours.

This is how Keith cuts over 4 acres of grass in a few hours.

Linda had reserved Doc Martin, Season 5, at the Howell Library and had an e-mail that it was available and needed to be picked up by the end of today or we would go to the end of the waiting list.  She needed to be at the bakery by 11 AM so she left around 9:45 AM to be at the library when it opened at 10 AM.  I would have gone to get it but I was “stuck” at the house as long as contractors were, or might be, working here.  I also needed to be here to pay Keith when he finished cutting the grass.

Linda met with the folks at the bakery (where she was the Controller and Treasurer for the 10 years before she retired) on Friday regarding a major software conversion project that she is going to do for them and was finally feeling like we could afford a new range.  She is a very good accountant/CPA and has always worked hard for what she earned, but has always been reluctant to spend money.  We grew up in very different circumstances and that reluctance on her part has provided a good balance over the years as I tend to be less concerned about what things cost and more focused on making sure we have what we need and are getting good functionality and quality for what we spend.  One component of my formal education and work experience was engineering, and that developed a certain way of thinking about things that has stayed with me ever since.  Need is, of course, relative.

We had been deferring a decision about the new kitchen range but decided on Friday evening that, with the natural gas hookup imminent, we would get a new one rather than convert our old one.  We decided on the model we wanted, a G.E. JGB870DEFWW, and knew the price, delivery time, and installation charge from Lowe’s.  I also talked to Curt at D. R. Appliance, a local family owned appliance store, on Saturday and expected to hear back from him today with pricing and availability.  That call came late morning and their price, while a little higher than Lowe’s, was close enough to be worth the possible end-of-week delivery and installation so I told them to go ahead and order it.

By 3:30 PM the gas line to our house was in the ground and the meter was mounted on the side of the house but a crew was still digging out by the street trying to clear access to the main line so the fuser could tie our line and our neighbor’s line into the 2” main line.  My camera battery went dead while they were installing the meter so I grabbed a few shots on my cell phone while the camera battery recharged.  Linda got home around this time and got to see some of the final steps in the process.

I followed the process closely all day and tried to get photos of most of the details, especially as they hung the meter, tied the line in, and pressure tested it.  All was good, so they tapped the main line and we finally had gas in our branch line.  They purged the line, reconnected it to the meter inlet, tested the meter and connections for leaks, and then verified gas availability to the outlet connection.  At 5:30 PM they plugged the outlet, put the hang tags on, and handed me the door knocker tag that said “Congratulations, you have gas.”

We always seem to have interesting things in our yard.

We always seem to have interesting things in our yard.

Linda took a call from Bob at Country Squire Fireplace and Lighting regarding our quick disconnect for the Broil King outdoor grill.  She indicated that I was busy with the gas crew and would call them back tomorrow.

Late last week we received an invitation to a political fund-raiser for Brian Robb, an incumbent councilman in Ypsilanti, Michigan.  We do not live or vote there, but Brian is Kate de Fuccio’s significant other, and Kate is a former co-worker of mine and continues to be a very good friend of ours.  I called DCM Heating & Cooling and left a message for Darryll that we had gas to the meter.  We left around 6 PM and arrived at the Tower Inn Cafe around 7 PM.  We made a donation to Brian’s campaign and Kate ordered a small vegan pizza for us.  We visited for about an hour and then took our leave.

When we got home we relaxed in the living room thinking about how nice it will be to have our natural gas fire logs while we had some fresh strawberries and nectarines for dessert.  I also had a mug of hot apple cider which put me in the mood to go to bed.

 

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.

 

2014/09/12 (F) Posted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2014/08/19 (T) Horizontally Boring

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

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

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

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

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

 

2014/08/13 (W) Bad Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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