Tag Archives: Steve (VLD)

2014/08/01 (F) Schmoo Returns

(Note: I have posted two photo galleries dated August 1, 2014, one for the front sidewalk and stairs project and one for the rear retaining walls and drain lines project.)

We took a break from personal construction projects today to get ready for another 2-night sleepover by our grand-daughter Madeline. Her folks (our son and daughter-in-law) needed to do some painting on their rental house over the weekend and the most efficient use of their time was for Brendan to bring Madeline to our house late this morning. That allowed him to return to Ann Arbor to work on their front porch this afternoon and will let them get an early start on Saturday morning and work as late as they want/need to. It will also give them the option to work on Sunday morning if needed before coming to our house for dinner and to retrieve their daughter. Brendan and Shawna both have birthdays in early August, and Brendan’s happens to be on Sunday. Our daughter (Meghan) and her husband (Chris) will join the celebration gathering.

The landscapers were here early for what they hoped would be their last day on this job. Linda left early to do some grocery shopping and was back well before Brendan and Madeline arrived or I had to leave for my dermatology appointment. I got back on my computer for the first time since Monday, checked e-mails, off-loaded photographs from our digital SLR, and installed updates on four WordPress websites.

Today was also the first day to log in to edX and start the free Introduction to Linux course, but I did not have time to deal with that. The course is self-paced and should take 40 – 60 hours to complete. I would like to spend two hours each day on this and have it completed by September 1st. The timing has turned out not to be that good, but I am under no obligation to take/finish the course; it’s simply a free opportunity that I would like to take advantage of while it is available.

I left for my doctor’s appointment with time to spare and ended up needing it. There is a lot of road and utility construction going on in our area and I did not have a good way out. I still made it on time, but not by much. I did not have to wait very long to see Elizabeth, the dermatology PA. I got a thorough looking over and a clean bill of health.

On the return trip from the clinic I stopped at Teeko’s to get some coffee. Jeff had the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe in both regular and decaffeinated, so I got our usual 50/50 blend. He was out of Sweet Dreams (a decaf blend) that I have him mix 50/50 with his Seattle Blend to make Sweet Seattle Dreams. He did, however, have the Seattle Blend in decaf so I got a 50/50 regular/decaf mix.

Madeline was still napping when I got home. Linda said she fell asleep a little later than normal so she let her sleep until 4:30 PM. Once awake, she was go go go right through dinner until bedtime.

Steve (Village Landscape Development) worked on the front sidewalk in the morning, laying rectangular brick pavers in a herringbone pattern and then cutting it all the way around for border bricks. He finished placing boulders on either side of the top steps by the front porch and had one of his crew mix up a small batch of concrete and place it along the two long/free edges. Another crew member finished grading out the soil on either side of the sidewalk, spread grass seed, and covered it with straw.

Steve, Linda, and I did a walk-around, and the project has come together very nicely except for the leaking drain line(s). Steve spent much of afternoon digging in very muddy conditions and ultimately unearthed about 30 feet of plastic drain line that was punctured or completely crushed. He replaced what he believed was all of the damaged line, but until we put water down them we won’t really know. They were not able to finish the grading because the clay soil was so wet that it was unworkable, so they will be back next Tuesday (or later) weather permitting. They had to come back anyway as they needed a bit more egg rock to finish a bed that we added at the last minute. As a result of the walk-around we added another bed of egg rock at the east end of the deck to tie in with rock under the deck, and two more downspout drain lines, all of which they will do the next time they are here.

2014/07 – Retaining Walls & Drains

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Panorama of retaining wall project drain lines (looking N from deck).

Village Landscape Development of Fenton, Michigan was at our house (off and on) for the entire month of July working on two projects. The larger project was tearing out two stacked block retaining walls by the basement walkout and replacing them with boulder retaining walls. This involved significant regrading of the area and the installation of drain lines for the downspouts from the roof and the sump pump. This gallery post contains a selection of photos that show the highlights of the work from beginning to end.

: The trench for the sump pump and NE downspout drain lines.

: Basement walkout with old retaining walls removed.

: The east slope with old retaining wall removed.

: Clearing out the east slope under the deck.

: The new boulders were dumped just west of the main driveway. The bus is in the pull-through driveway behind.

: The stacking blocks from the old retaining walls. We will use these for garden edging projects.

: Steve worked late one night placing large boulders under the deck so his workers would have something to do the next day.

: The Kobelco excavator unloading boulders and letting them roll down the west slope.

: The excavator at walkout level placing a boulder. Te bucket has a claw that works like an thumb.

: A row of large boulders being formed under the deck on the east slope.

: This is the machine that does the heavy lifting. Some of the boulders weighed 1,000 to 1,500 lbs.

: The trench for the drain lines runs out into the yard 150+ feet from the edge of the lower deck.

: The trench for the NW downspout drain line joins up with the one from the east side and the trench into the yard.

: It’s surprising how much dirt comes out of an 18″ wide, 12″ deep trench.

: The downspout drains get connected. The sump pump drain (left) is separate.

: The drain tile behind the boulders is slotted pipe with a mesh “sock” covering to keep stuff out.

: In order to move he work along the rented a Bobcat for one day to move smaller boulders, egg rock, and topsoil.

: The boulder wall takes shape under the deck on the west slope.

: The east slope under the deck starts to fill in.

: Using the excavator to dig out and re-grade the east slope.

: There was a surprising amount of “junk” used as fill material in the east and west slopes.

: The old tree stump on the top of the west slope proved to be a real challenge to dig out.

: Steve decided to add a row of small boulders at the bottom of the west slope as it was steeper than the east slope.

: The east slope starts to fill in out beyond the deck.

: On the east slope smaller boulders were used below the large ones and egg rock above.

: The west slope nearing completion.

: The upper part of the east slope clearly showing the egg rock.

: Using the excavator to push dirt back into the trench.

: Using the excavator to push and tamp dirt back into the trench.

: The excavator filling the trench (front view looking uphill towards house).

: The end of the line; literally. The drain lines end in elbows to form “bubblers.”

: Two workers spreading topsoil over the re-filled trench and raking it smooth.

: The area west of the main driveway was used to stage material and pile up debris. Extra soil was put here to fill in low areas and topsoil was added to help the grass seed.

: While there were here they installed some short (10 ft) drains to get water away from the other corners of the house. This is the SW corner of the garage.

: This drain comes off the SE corner of the house.

: Oops. After connecting the sump pump discharge line to the drain line a small lake formed near the Y connector. Something is amiss.

: No choice but to dig it up and find the cause of the leak.

: They ran water into the lines to make sure it came out the bubblers (grates removed).

: This is what the bubblers normally look like; grates at ground level.

: The problem was in this area. They found 30+ feet of drain pipe that was crushed from driving the excavator here after it was installed.

: The drain pipe has been replaced and covered. The “pond” is almost gone.

: Not part of the original project, we had them place egg rock around the east end of the deck to match the west end of the deck.

: View of the finished retaining walls from atop the east slope (looking west).

: The stairs from the east end of the deck showing the egg rock on both sides and around the end.

: The finished retaining walls from atop the west slope (looking east).

: The egg rock at the NE corner of the deck (looking south).

: The egg rock at the NW corner of the deck surrounds the weeping dwarf Norway spruce (looking SW).

: The low contour has pockets that fill with water and does not slope as steeply as it should. The drain lines should have been buried in pea gravel to form a “French drain.”

2014/07 – Front Sidewalk and Stairs

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Village Landscape Development of Fenton, Michigan was at our house (off and on) for the whole month of July, 2014 working on two projects. This gallery post has a selection of captioned photographs from the front entrance sidewalk/stairs project.

: The old half-circle step. It was 12″ down from the porch.

: The new front stairs get delivered.

: The excavator is used to rough out the area.

: The first step to be placed is the third step down from the porch.

: Setting the first step the correct distance out and down from the porch.

: Marking the drop for the bottom steps.

: Adding the crushed limestone base behind the third top step.

: The 2nd & 3rd top steps installed and the base prepared for the 1st one.

: Steve cutting the top step so the treads are the same depth.

: The cut-off saw makes quite a bit of dust.

: The precast concrete steps are 46″x21″x7″. This is how they are moved.

: All nine steps installed. Preparing the base for the brick pavers, which are piled in the driveway.

: Using the excavator to set large boulders by the top stairs.

: Steve trimming the brick pavers, which are laid in a herringbone pattern, for the border bricks.

: The front yard graded out around the new sidewalk and stairs, seeded, and covered in straw.

: Decorative boulders to the right (facing the porch) of the top stairs.

: The herringbone paver pattern with border bricks.

: The finished front entrance stairs and sidewalk. The flair on the bottom steps makes it easier to go either direction in the driveway.

2014/07/31 (W) Wrapping Up?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2014/07/30 (W) Winter In July

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2014/0729 (T) Utility Closet

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It was in the mid-40’s when we got up this morning so Linda made oatmeal with walnuts, dates, raisins, cinnamon, and a little brown sugar. It was a hardy and satisfying breakfast on a chilly morning. I checked in with some of the blogs I follow using Feedly on my iPad and then, as we were getting ready to work, Steve showed up with four workers (Kyle, Tommy, Spencer, and Mark). Steve did not stay and work today but Mark operated the excavator and the guys got a lot done. By the end of the day we were finally able to see how it was all going to come together.

Our focus today was the utility closet in the garage. Much of what we did required two people, and we made a long day of it. We finished framing the west wall, stood it up, got it into position, plumbed it, and secured it. We then framed the south wall with the rough opening for the door.

The installation of the door was challenging. All the framing was plumb in two directions but our first attempt at installing it resulted in the bottom latch side not closing by almost an inch when the top latch side was seated correctly. Everything was plumb on both jambs, the door was level and plumb, but something was obviously wrong.

As we started to break for lunch I got a call from Darryll. He was wondering if we could run the 2” iron gas pipe through the attic from the east end of house to the west side of the garage. I told him I would check the access and call him back. While he was on the phone I got clarification on the size and location of the HVAC unit and the ducts for the conditioned air supply and return. As a result I will have to move a duplex outlet I installed the other day, run a new/longer wire up the sub-panel, put insulation into the lower half of the wall cavities, and install/finish a piece of drywall.

We spent the afternoon trying to figure out what was wrong with the door installation and fix it. Everything was plumb and we thought everything was square. It turned out that the two ends of the wall were out of alignment which was forcing the bottom of the door out. (The inside angle between the west wall and the south wall was less than 90 degrees.) Once we realized what was wrong we were able to fix it.

We had a green salad and Amy’s roasted vegetable pizza for supper at 6:30 PM. After relaxing for a while on the deck with a glass of Leelanau Cellars Summer Sunset wine I secured the plywood platform to the base with screws and then caulked the two edges where it met the back and right side walls.

We drove to Lowe’s at 8 PM to get a box of steel cut masonry nails. I need two or three to secure the free end of the bottom plate of the west wall. While we were there I got a set of new blades for the Milwaukee Sawzall reciprocating saw but forgot to buy more shims. We always like to leave a reason for a return trip to the home supply stores.

2014/07/28 (M) Reprieve

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I was awake early, fell back asleep, and finally got up at 7:30 AM. By the time I had the coffee made Linda was showered, dressed, and starting to assemble breakfast. We had barely finished eating when we heard the happy sound of landscape workers. Steve had five young men on site to do the hand work and was here most of the morning and part of the afternoon running the excavator. By the time they all left for the day a little before 5 PM they had made a lot of progress with the retaining wall project behind the house in spite of the muddy conditions from yesterday’s rains. It’s amazing what can be accomplished when people and equipment show up and work all day. If that happens the rest of the week they might actually get done by Friday. Linda and I figure it will be Labor Day.

As planned, I resumed work on the utility closet in the garage after breakfast and a brief chat with Steve. I cut a 48″x48″ piece of 3/4″ plywood down to 46″x40″ and did some minor trimming to get a clean fit on the base we built yesterday. I then cut the top and bottom plates and the end studs for the west wall from 8′ long 2″x4″s. I ran out of the 3.5″, 16d nails I needed so I drove to Lowe’s to get a 5 pound box of them. While I was there I also picked up some primer and paintable caulk. I assembled the outer pieces of the wall and added an additional stud to the free (south) end but did not cut/install the other three intermediate studs.

The wall is taller at the north end than the south end because the concrete garage floor drops slightly towards the north wall of the garage. I stood the wall up to make sure it fit snugly (it did) and to force the top plate into alignment. I was pleased to see that the free end will plumb quite well in both directions. I will measure the other three studs tomorrow, lower the wall down to install them, and then stand the wall back up, plumb it, and secure it to the north wall, the platform base, and the ceiling. Once that is done I will secure the plywood platform to the base using screws and caulk the edges along the north and east walls. When the caulk has cured, hopefully later in the day, I will prime the plywood and the exposed 2″x12″ base board.

I quit working on the construction around noon, got cleaned up, put a load of laundry in the washing machine, had a bite of lunch, and withdrew to my office. I searched through my Outlook inboxes for all of the e-mails related to today’s FMCA Education Committee meeting only to discover that the meeting was scheduled for next Monday and would be an informal work session rather than a formal meeting. That was a lucky reprieve for me and allowed me to catch up on other e-mail and work on the roster and financial records for our FMCA Freethinkers chapter.

I had hoped to spend the evening selecting and processing a few photos and uploading a few blog posts but I ran out of time and did not get to these tasks. We streamed last week’s episode of Endeavor on our Apple TV device and then turned in for the night.

2014/07/27 (N) Attic Access

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We had a long day of work today. We were up just after 7 AM, had a light breakfast of toast, fruit juice, and coffee, read a few blog posts, and got to work. My first task was to apply a second, light coat of drywall compound to all of the divots in the wall.

Our main morning task was the installation of the fold-down ladder for the garage attic. It was definitely a two-person job. Per the instructions, we installed temporary installation boards to support the assembly while we secured it in place. The installation required one of us to be in the attic and that job fell to me. We put the assembly on top of a plastic shelving unit to get it close to the ceiling. Once I was in the attic with all of the tools I would need, including a headlamp, Linda slid the shelving unit so the assembly was directly under the rough opening. It was still too far from the ceiling for me to reach from above so she placed two footstools under it. I was then able to reach one end from above and pull it up into the opening while she lifted the other end into position from below.

We read and followed the directions carefully so we already had the pull string and T-handle installed. That allowed Linda to move the plastic shelves out of the way, carefully open the door from below, and position the step ladder. I dropped her the cord for the worklight and then had enough light to work comfortably. We temporarily secured the unit with deck screws. They were cheap screws and the heads tended to strip easily, but we got them in far enough to hold the unit in place while I installed the lag screws.

The 10 lag screws got installed through pre-drilled holes, six of which went through metal hinge plates. The instructions said to drill through these holes into the trusses and headers, but the folding ladder hardware made that difficult, and my drill buts were all a bit short to do much. By cutting the zip ties and partially unfolding the ladder I was able to get all 10 lag screws most of the way in with my drill. They all had to be shimmed. The final tightening was done with a socket and ratchet.

We took a break for lunch around 1 PM and had leftover miso soup, tofu hot dogs, and fresh apples. I made a quick run to Lowe’s to get some additional electrical parts I needed to install lights and a light switch in the garage attic. While I was there I also bought a baby gate for our basement stairs. Up until now we have blocked the landing for the basement stairs with a couple of chairs when grand-daughter Madeline has come to visit. Now that she has successfully spent the night at our house we anticipate many more such visits and wanted a more permanent solution.

The device I bought had a gate with a latch. It was designed to be installed under tension, but the directions said it had to be anchored to the walls if used at the top of a flight of stairs. We were not thrilled about mounting it to the walls, but we did. The installation took about an hour to complete.

Back in the garage I found an old, unopened drywall sanding/finishing sponge. It had a 1/4″ thick coarse pad on one side for sanding. The regular sponge side was used to wipe off the drywall and slightly wet the areas to be sanded. I let the sanded areas dry, wiped everything down, and applied a coat of white exterior semi-gloss to the area of the two existing walls and the ceiling that will be inside the utility closet.

The probability of rain rose steadily though the day and finally resulted in thunderstorms around 4:30 PM. Steve said yesterday he would be here today and I tried to get him to understand that based on the forecast he needed to be here early. He wasn’t. He showed up with the excavator about an hour after the rains, by which point the retaining wall work site had turned to mud.

He took the excavator back there anyway and we watched him work while we had dinner, which consisted of a very nice green salad with strawberries and the rest of the Pad Thai from last night. (Even left over it was still exceptional.) He was moving boulders and a lot of dirt trying to get rid of the small mountain range that blocked the flow of water away from our lower deck and was spreading the dirt around in an effort to create some of the final grading. He brought a helper with him and they had long lengths of drain pipe that I think the intended to install. But the skies darkened, the rain started, the wind came up, and the warning sirens came on. He shut off the machine and the two of them made a run for their truck and left. More rain is forecast for tonight with a chance of thunderstorms, possibly severe. The probability for rain on Tuesday is currently 60%, and stays at 40% through Wednesday. At this juncture it appears that they won’t get much work done here this week, and their machine may be stuck here until it dries out.

After dinner Linda and I finally built the base for the platform where the library HVAC unit will be installed. It’s a 40″ deep x 46″ wide box with center cross bracing. It’s made of pieces of 2 x 12 on edge. We set it in the northeast corner of the garage, leveled it with shims, and secured it to the studs in the walls with 3.5″ nails. I had to make all of the cuts with my Rockwell 8″ circular saw as the chop saw won’t cut something that wide. I did not cut the plywood platform as I need to install it after the new (west) wall of the utility closet is in place so I can nail through the base into the wall studs. I will, however, cut the plywood tomorrow before the wall is built as I will be able to set it on the base and trace around it on the underside to get a perfect fit.

My goal for tomorrow is to cut the platform, build the west wall, set it in place and anchor it, and install the platform. Linda has a 12:30 PM dentist appointment, so I will have to do most of this work by myself. By that point I will need to get cleaned up, shift gears, and get ready for a 4 PM FMCA Education Committee work session.

2024/07/22 (T) A Quiet Day At Home

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We ran the air-conditioner all day yesterday and well into the evening. It cooled off into the mid-upper 60’s overnight so we turned the A-C off when we got up this morning and opened up the house.

Ron and Mary were mostly packed before breakfast. We all had some of Linda’s yummy homemade granola with fresh blueberries for breakfast and everyone agreed it was superior to any store-bought granola they had ever had. We visited until 9 AM and then helped them load their car for the trip back to Pennsylvania after an all-to-short visit. Still, it was nice to see them for the time they were here and they got to see our grand-daughter for the first time and chat briefly with our children. They had a nine hour drive ahead of them, plus or minus, depending on traffic, construction zones, and number/length of stops. The day was forecast to be sunny and very warm, with a high temperature at our house of 90 degrees F, but with no precipitation along their route.

Only one landscaper (Spencer) showed up this morning around 10 AM. Steve had some hand work for him to do. I checked to see that he had water and he assured me that he brought plenty to drink. With the outside air temperature rising, we closed the house up and turned the A-C on.

We were both surprisingly tired but wanted to get something useful accomplished today. Linda worked at her desk while I cleaned the concrete driveway leading up to the garage from the street. The landscapers have been using the driveway to stage some of their bulk materials such as crushed limestone and egg rock. They got all of that material moved to other parts of the yard over the weekend but there was a layer of dust, small rocks, and other debris left behind. I swept most of it off the driveway with a large push broom and then finished the job with a leaf blower.

There was a lot of crushed limestone left so over the weekend I had Steve push it into a 8′ wide by 15′ long parking pad 4″ – 6″ deep off the west side of the driveway and adjacent to the woods that run along the road. The pad still had tracks in it from the excavator treads so I raked those out, filled in some dirt around the edges of the pad, and tamped the edges down. The pull-through driveway from the front stairs to the concrete driveway was also rutted from the Bobcat front-loader being driven on it so I raked that out as best I could. By the time I was done it was noon, it was hot, and I was sweaty and thirsty. I decided I’d had enough for the day, closed up the storage container and garage, came in, and drank a bottle of ICE brand water. This water is lightly carbonated and lightly fruit flavored, and I find it very refreshing.

I had a phone message yesterday from Darryll of DCM Heating and Cooling with some information I needed in order to prepare the corner of the garage for the library HVAC unit. There were a few things I still needed to know, so I put in another call to him and left a message. For lunch Linda served the left over salads from last night’s dinner along with hummus and chips. We sat on the back deck for a while enjoying the slight cooling effect of a warm summer breeze, but eventually went back inside to escape the heat.

We did not do much the rest of the day. I apparently broke our grandfather clock on Monday while winding it and spent a little time looking for information online. I found a Sligh manual that included some troubleshooting tips but did not get as far as trying to diagnose and fix the problem. We were both tired and took naps in the late afternoon. That was unusual for us but could easily become part of our daily routine, especially on hot days like we had today.

I worked on bus barn drawings while Linda prepared dinner. I then called John to see if I could borrow his chop saw and if he had time to look at the drawings. Linda went along and visited with Diane. We stayed until almost 10 PM.

2014/07/18 (F) Tracing Circuits

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When I talked to Steve from Village Landscape Development (VLD) yesterday he explained that they had not been out to work on our project because one of his employees had not shown up on Monday or Tuesday and late Tuesday informed him that he was done for the season for personal reasons. Unfortunately for us, that employee was the crew chief for our project. Steve said he spent Wednesday rearranging his crew assignments and assured me there would be people and materials at the house today. When I left at 10 AM there was no sign of either, and no phone call letting us know when we might expect to see them.

I stopped at AAA Appliance to pick up the HVAC filters I ordered yesterday and then went to Lowe’s and bought the Square D Homeline electrical panel value pack. It’s a 100 Amp main breaker panel with 20 slots and came with five 20 Amp single pole breakers. I bought two ground bar kits, as well as a 20 Amp and 30 Amp 2-pole breaker (for 240 VAC devices).

As I was getting in the car to come home Linda called to see if I remembered to buy the weatherproof outlet covers for the outside outlets by the deck. I had not, so I went back in to get them. Apparently I forgot to buy some other electrical things I needed because I ended up with a non-contact voltage sensor, an outlet tester that works with GFCI outlets, and a system for determining which breaker supplies an outlet with having to turn breakers off and on until you find the right one.

When I finally got back to the house we installed one of the new filters behind the large return air grill in the living room. We had to trim pieces of foam weather seal and pack it in to the small gap around the filter to force air to flow through the filter rather than around it. We turned on the A-C to check the airflow and decided to check all of the registers. There turned out to be return air ducts in all three bedrooms, which actually makes more sense than a single return in the living room.

The return air duct in the master bedroom had fiberglass insulation stuffed in it, presumably to cut down on winter heat loss, but there was no filter material. Of the two supply ducts only the one farthest from the air-handler seemed to have airflow. We removed the return air grill and cut a piece of the old living room filter material to fit and screwed the grill back on with the filter material behind it.

The return duct from the small bedroom had a thin piece of filter material behind the grill and adequate airflow from the supply duct. We removed the return air grill, cleaned the filter material and re-attached the grill with the filter material behind it. The middle bedroom had good air flow from the supply register but nothing to filter the air going into the return air duct. We cut another piece of the old living room return air filter and installed it behind the return air grill.

I think we now have filter material on all of the cold air returns. It strikes me as very odd that all of these air return ducts do not come together and then feed through a single filter. We turned the A-C on and let it run while we had a quick lunch. Except for the poor airflow to the one of the two supply registers in our bedroom, everything seemed to be working so we turned our collective attention to our next task.

The Coleman compressor/condenser unit was noticeably out of level. Linda weeded around the base and trimmed back the rhododendron as the leaves of the closet ones were being sucked up against the heat transfer panels (radiator fins). Once we had a little space around the base of the compressor we lifted the low side with a 3′ crowbar and slide a couple of bricks under that edge to hold it. We had an old, unopened, bag of paver base so we used that to fill the large gap under the compressor base. I scooped and placed it with a garden trowel and packed it with the end of a 1 x 2. We raised the unit a little and pulled the bricks out. A minor tweak and we had it level.

We used the circuit tester to finish checking all of the outlets in the garage and the library and map what each circuit breaker supplied. We discovered that the switch to the left of the sub-panel controlled an outside outlet mounted very high on the wall just under the soffit. We have no idea why that outlet is installed where it is; perhaps it powered deicer cables or some other roof/gutter-related system at one time. I was getting some very strange voltage measurements at the switch and at the outlet so I replaced both of them, but that did not change the readings. I put a weatherproof cover plate on the outlet while I was at it.

Steve showed up mid-late afternoon with the excavator, his nephew Spencer, and a large role of plastic drain tile. He used the excavator to move a couple of large boulders around back and then dig trenches for the drain tile. He assured me there would be a crew here all day tomorrow, and he would be here to supervise them.

I needed to trim a stud in order to install the new electrical panel in my desired location but was unable to cut it with any of my existing tools. What I needed was an oscillating cutter, so I headed back to Lowe’s and got one. I was about to use it to trim out a section of a stud when I double checked a measurement and realized it was supporting the drywall that formed the northwest corner of the library. Removing it was definitely not a good idea and that forced me to rethink the installation of the new panel box. I do my best thinking when I’m asleep, so that was the end of my work for the day.

2014/07/16 (W) Rat Packing

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Today was not a trip down memory lane, although some good Rat Pack music would have been a nice accompaniment while working. Tim called around 8:30 AM to verify the delivery details for our 16-foot Pack-Rat storage container and confirm that we would be home around 10 AM.

We wanted to get the container as close as possible to the garage while still being able to open the doors. In that location it would also be out of the way of the pull-through driveway in case we wanted/needed to get the bus out. The potential problem with this location was that the container had to be unloaded underneath and then behind the main phone line that hangs across our driveway. The vertical clearance from the driveway to the phone line is just under 12′ 6″. I was told when I ordered the container that they needed 13′ 6″, minimum.

We had not seen any landscapers by 9:00 AM so I called Steve at VLD and left a message. The previous owners of the house left a large (bulky) projection TV which we had the movers bring up from the basement and put in garage when we moved in last year. Linda called Alchin’s, our trash collection company, to see if they would pick it up. They said they would so we rolled it out to the curb with the rest of the trash. I called Steve (VLD) on his cell phone and found out he was in our backyard. Apparently he arrived just as we finished putting out the trash and went back in the house. The landscape crew was supposed to have been there at 9:00 AM. He called them and then left. A Two-man crew showed up a little while later.

I placed our 8′ fiberglass (non-metallic, non-conducting) stepladder under the phone line and used an 8′ 2×4 and some short pieces (as blocking) to temporarily raise the line to 13′ 7″. Tim showed up right on time and, after taking care of the paperwork, surveyed the situation. He said it would not be a problem placing the container where we wanted it and it turned out that lifting the phone line was not necessary. Here’s why…

The truck that delivers these containers is very specialized. It has a built in crane with two long arms, kind of like a forklift, that extend down the sides of the truck and then make a 90 degree bend and connect to the main telescoping mast. The mast is normally just behind the cab when the container is loaded and ready for transport. To unload the container the arms are swung out away from the sides of the truck a couple of feet and then raised. Four lifting bars are inserted into the base of the container, two on each side, and attached to the arms with chains. The arms are then raised, lifting the container free from the truck bed (after it is un-strapped). The entire crane assembly then slides backwards until the container is clear of the rear bumper, allowing it to be lowered. Before final placement, however, the truck can still be moved back and forth. (This is only true if the container is empty. If it is loaded, the rear stabilizing jacks on the truck have to be lowered, preventing the truck from moving.)

I helped Tim position the truck so the crane mast was just in front of the phone line and the front of the container was just behind it. We are only using the container for on-site storage so it will be empty when we finally have them come back and pick it up. Positioned where it is they can retrieve it without raising the phone line so we won’t necessarily have be here at the time. We will be, but it will still be less work for us.

With the container in place we started moving things out of the garage. Some went into the container, some went into Linda’s car to go to the recycling center, some got set aside for donation or sale on Craig’s List, and some got designated to go in next week’s trash pickup. I really hate throwing anything away that might be useful, but our limited experience with things like Freecycle have not been good, and selling things on eBay or Craigslist has never seemed worth the effort the small monetary return.

Around noon the landscapers wanted to know if we knew of an urgent care facility nearby. That’s not a question you want to be asked on a construction site. One of the guys was bitten by a spider and thought it might have been a Brown Recluse. When they first started working on the retaining walls in the back they identified what they thought was a Brown Recluse (fiddleback) spider. Although Michigan is farther north than their normal range they do occur here, so it was possible that’s what bit him. The nearest medical facility we knew about was a hospital about five miles away, but Steve wanted them to go to an urgent care facility because he through they would get quicker service. (They had called Steve before even asking us for assistance.) Linda got on her computer and located one in the same area as the hospital. They left to seek treatment and did return.

We did a little online research and found that there are a lot of spiders that resemble the Brown Recluse, which can range from gray to almost black and from the size of a penny to slightly larger than a quarter. The name “fiddleback” comes from a pattern on the dorsal (upper) side of the spider, but is not a definitive identifier. The most definitive characteristic is the six eyes; most spiders have eight. Unfortunately they crew did not have the spider, so a positive ID was not possible.

After lunch Linda went to the recycling center and did some grocery shopping while I continued to work in the garage. We had cleared out the east wall and the northeast corner which allowed me to remove wire shelving that was installed there. I also had clear access to the electrical sub-panel so I removed the cover to have a look inside. There were 11 load wires connected, nine to single-pole 120 VAC breakers and two to a double-poll 240 VAC breaker. The power feed from the main panel in the basement was three-wire (2 hot, 1 neutral) not four like it should be, and all of the branch circuit ground wires were bonded to the neutral conductors. This may have been OK at one time but is absolutely not current national electrical code (NEC). Grounds and neutrals in an electrical system should only be bonded (connected together) at one point, usually in the main panel or at the service entrance. For remote sub-panels, such as in a separate building, the ground wires can be connected to a pair of ground rods at least 8 feet long driven into the earth, but this is not an ideal arrangement. If the resistance is not low enough it will limit the current flow through the ground wire to something less than required to trip the circuit breaker.

After dinner I got a phone call from Gaye, the chair of the FMCA Education Committee. We talked for quite a while about the committee and RVing in general. The whole committee has never met for a face-to-face meeting and many of us do not really know each other, so this was a chance to get better acquainted.

20140711 (F) Nice Weather Lately

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Steven’s nephew, Spencer, was here a little after 8 AM and spent some time cleaning up the driveway. He was joined by Tommy, who was only available for the morning. Tommy got instructions from Steve by phone and they tried working on the retaining walls, but I’m not sure what they accomplished. One of the large boulders Steve positioned yesterday on the lower west wall had dropped 6 inches and they were unable to re-position it.

It was another pleasant day, so I decided to work outside during the morning. I cut up some previously trimmed tree limbs and then started pruning our apple tree. I tried to cut all of the dead limbs and branches I could reach from the ground using our new Fiskar’s ratcheting lopper. With that material removed I was able to use the pole saw and compound lopper to remove some larger and/or higher limbs. By noon it was getting warm and I knocked off for the day and had lunch. Linda made the chickpea (garbanzo bean) salad that we both like so much and served it on a bed of greens with red grapes and sweet Bing cherries on the side.

Tommy had to take off for the afternoon and left Spencer to start moving smaller rocks onto the slope of the east retaining wall. We would occasionally hear one thud against the foundation and I decided I should check on his progress. He was doing a fine job of tossing rocks into place, but I did not like the way the earth was pitched as it appeared to slope back towards the house. I examined the west wall and it appeared to have the same problem.

Since the whole reason for this project was to get water to flow away from the house, I asked Spencer to take a break while I called Steve. I told him that something just did not look right to me and that I could not see any evidence of a drain tile behind the upper wall on the west side. He was running the excavator at another job site and wasn’t able to come look at our job so he sent Kyle over to pick up Spencer, who did not have a car. With a chance of rain in the forecast for Saturday through Monday it is looking more and more like this job will not be done until the end of July.

In the afternoon I continued working on configuring my Windows 8.1 laptop. My challenge today was getting Outlook 2013 to preview PDF files. I used the search feature on the Start screen to locate information, some of which indicated I would have to create and/or edit the registry. In the end the solution only required two steps: installing Adobe Reader 11 and then setting it as the default program for PDFs.

With that problem solved I edited my blog posts for July 1 through 9 and started uploading them. I managed to get the posts for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd uploaded before dinner. I also got a return call from Darryll at DCM Heating and Cooling and we agreed he would come to the house tomorrow at 10:30 AM to finalize the work we need done and pin down a start date to prep the house for natural gas and install a small HVAC unit for the library and a furnace for the garage. We also need the main air-conditioner serviced. Luckily it has been a cool summer so far. The conversion of appliances will have to wait until the natural gas line is connected to the meter and turned on, which could be as late as early October.

I got a call from Gary at GM Construction sometime in the last few days. He finally had all of his supplier quotes for our pole barn / bus garage project and had a price for us. It was higher than I would have liked, but less than the quote from Morton Buildings, which was for a much smaller barn. Last night I called Phil from Precision Grading to update him on the status of the project and to see if he would swing by and look at the pull-through driveway which the landscapers have torn up more than I expected. My best guess is that we will get a barn up somehow, but I’m not sure when or how.

For dinner Linda made pan-grilled sliced tofu with onions and Bar-B-Que sauce served on a toasted sandwich bun with a side of lightly oiled and baked potato wedges and a few fresh strawberries. Of course, that meant ketchup with Tabasco sauce. We split a can of cold Yuengling beer which was the perfect beverage for this meal. Sometime in the last two days Linda made a raspberry sauce from frozen raspberries we picked last year. Earlier today she made a vegan chocolate cake and this evening the cake and raspberry sauce came together for dessert.

2014/07/10 (R) Home And Garden

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On Tuesday I agreed to demonstrate the new SLAARC WordPress website at our ham radio club meeting this coming Sunday. I would like to spend some time working on the site between now and then but it is well enough along at this point to give folks a preview at the meeting, time permitting. My current goal is to unlock the public portions of the website by the August meeting and then supply each of the members with their username and password shortly thereafter. My “stretch goal” is to have the site set up so a member’s username and password also allows them to edit their roster record in the Participant’s Database. It’s a stretch goal because it is unlikely I will meet it unless I really stretch myself, which is to say, I put aside a lot of other tasks to concentrate on this on, or I work more/harder and sleep less. Yeah, like that’s going to happen.

In fact, it was a nice enough day today that we both decided to work in the yard. I concentrated on pruning branches, mostly dead, from two fir trees and cutting them up into manageable size pieces for the fire pit. Linda took some time to weed the plant beds on the east end of the house and the juniper beds behind the garage. By mid-afternoon I’d had enough of this work for the day and turned my attention towards reorganizing our RV-related computer files.

Steve (Village Landscape Development) showed up mid-afternoon with the excavator and re-positioned several large boulders on the west retaining wall so one of his crews could continue working on the walls first thing tomorrow morning. He also brought samples of three different color bricks so I could select one for the front sidewalk. The one I selected is slightly darker than the pre-cast steps and similar to the reddish color mortar used on the main house bricks. The pavers will be solid, rectangular, and installed flat in a herringbone pattern on a 45 degree bias. We also discussed placing one or two medium size boulders on either side of the upper steps to keep folks from stepping off of the porch or the side of the stairs.

For dinner we had a large salad with lots of “extras” and then opened a bottle of NV Cesar Florido Moscatel Dorado. This is a sherry from Jerez (Spain) that our son and daughter-in-law got me for Father’s Day. It was recommended by their friend, Jorge Lopez-Chavez, who manages the wine department at The Produce Station in Ann Arbor, MI. We each had a small glass (it is 17.5% alcohol by volume) served at ~50 degrees F and agreed that was very good.

After dinner I finished re-organizing our RV-related computer files, backed them up to our NAS units, and the copied them to my Windows 8.1 laptop. We watched the last episode of season four of Doc Martin using our Amazon Video account.

2014/07/07 (M) Needs And Wants

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My first task most mornings is to make coffee and my second task is to eat breakfast. Linda puts a lot of thought, time, and effort into our meals so I take my responsibility to eat them very seriously.

Bruce operating the excavator!

After breakfast I called Steve at Village Landscape to check on their plans and he said they were headed our way shortly. He was bringing the excavator so I let him know that the retaining wall worksite behind the house was a muddy pond from last night’s rain but the front of the house looked suitable for working on the sidewalk/stairs project. We would really like to have a front sidewalk and stairs before Ron and Mary get here on the 20th of this month.

My first computer task of the day, after starting my machines, is always to log in to RVillage and my second task is to check e-mail. Those tasks usually recur throughout the day. Beyond those tasks it’s whatever else needs to be done that I also feel like doing and there is often a considerable lack of congruence between those two ways of considering the tasks at hand. At the top of both lists this morning was installing the Jetpack plug-in on the other two WordPress websites I run; the FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches and our personal one. I actually managed to get this done today, but not until the afternoon. Go back to any of the previous gallery posts and click on one of the images to see how much nicer they are to view now.

When the power flickered last night it interrupted our viewing of Doc Martin. I was momentarily confused by that until we realized that Linda’s iPad was connected to the Amped Wireless access point in the basement which was not plugged in to a UPS unit. It was at one point but that UPS unit failed and I had not yet replaced it so I went to the Best Buy store in Brighton this morning and bought a small APC unit. It will be adequate to maintain power to the access point and also provide surge/spike protection for the audio equipment. And it was on sale. While I was out I picked up a new pruning lopper at Home Depot (a Fiskar’s ratcheting model) and some soy milk at Meijer’s. Such is the way with tasks and errands.

The landscapers had not yet arrived by the time I got back from my errands but did arrive around noon. Steve brought the excavator and a crew of four and they worked all afternoon on the front stairs. They removed the old half circle step from in front of the porch, excavated for the new steps, back filled with crushed limestone, leveled and compacted it, and set the top three steps and the bottom step. The steps are precast concrete 46″ wide, 19″ deep, and 7″ high. They are being installed with a 17″ tread depth which is very comfortable for walking up and down the stairs. The stairs flare out at the bottom by the driveway, so the bottom step is three of these precast units set end-to-end. The next step up will use two of these precast units. All of the other steps are a single unit in width. The area between the upper steps and the lower steps will be a brick paver sidewalk.

Before Steve left for the evening he positioned the excavator over by the trash pile and walked me through the controls. After dinner I spent a couple of hours “practicing” with the machine by picking cinder blocks, bricks, and cut up trees out of the woods and putting them in a trash pile. The controls were “touchier” than I expected and I had a tendency to jerk the machine around rather than operate it smoothly. I also found it tricky to coordinate the two joysticks to make it move in certain ways. There wasn’t anything intuitive about most of the controls; certain functions are simply assigned to the two joysticks, and the buttons on them, and you have to operate it enough that it becomes second nature. As fun as it was to play with, you would be pretty sore at the end of a long workday if you had to run this machine for a living.

Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard of Technomadia hosted another live video chat this evening for the Mobile Internet Aficionados (MIA) private/membership group. We were going to participate but did not because I was playing with the excavator, a task that wasn’t even on my list this morning. Membership in the group was one of our premiums for contributing to their Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign. They used the campaign to finance the re-write of their Mobile Internet Handbook. This is THE definitive resource for people, especially RVers, who are mobile and need to be online. The technology is changing so rapidly that a re-write and expansion was already needed just a year after the book was originally published.

I did not accomplish all of my computer tasks today, but I did accomplish the one at the top of both my need and want lists. It happens; sometimes. I also got to play with a life size Tonka toy, which was very cool. I think that is the first time I have operated a piece of construction larger than a two-person posthole digger.

2014/07/02 (W) Trees And Rocks

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Steve arrived at 6:45 AM and got right to work using the excavator to place additional large boulders for the rear retaining walls. He was done by 8:30 AM and loaded the excavator back on his trailer to take to another job site. I noticed that one of his trailer tires was very under-inflated so I got out my large portable air compressor to inflate it. This tire turned out to have a puncture in the tread and was not going to hold air. Steve knew the tires were not in good shape but I discovered that they were not an adequate load range for the weight he was carrying even if they were inflated to their maximum cold pressure, which they were not. I inflated all of them as high as I was comfortable given their age. If it had been my trailer I would have taken it, unloaded, immediately to a nearby tire store and had them put on four new tires with an appropriate load range. I am not a tire expert, but we have been to enough seminars on RV tires and weight safety, that I have a better understanding of the subject then most people.

The excavator working on the rear retaining walls.

Linda made her yummy vegan pancakes for breakfast after which I decided to trim trees in the southeast corner of the yard. It was cooler than yesterday but still a bit humid, so the working conditions were not ideal. I worked until mid-afternoon and got one tree pruned of all its deadwood and took some low dead limbs off of several other trees. I enjoy the pruning; it requires some thought about ladder placement, choice of tools, and where to cut, and I have a nicer/healthier looking tree when I am done. Taking the small branches off of the larger limbs, cutting the limbs into shorter lengths, and carting everything to the fire pit; not my favorite thing to do. Linda assures me that cleanup has never been my forte.

Two landscapers showed up around 10 AM and worked on the retaining walls. There were supposed to be three of them, but one guy could not make it. The hand work they were doing really needed three guys, so it was hard for them. They got to a point where they were waiting on a delivery of sleeved plastic drain tile that wasn’t showing up in a timely fashion so I gave them directions to the Lowe’s at Grand River and Latson Roads where they bought a 100 foot roll and tied it to the roof of their car to get it back to our house. They were then able to place the landscape fabric behind the first course of boulders, across the bottom of the shelf and up the back, lay the drain tile in the trench, and back fill the trench. This gave them a place to stand as they worked on the next shelf.

Linda spent the morning cooking a batch of her amazing granola and her equally amazing vegan potato salad. She boiled and then cubed red potatoes and mixed them with vegan mayo, apple cider vinegar, celery, onion, dill pickle, and dill weed. We have been having tofu hot dogs for lunch with some regularity as it is an easy, tasty summer treat (with mustard, onions, and relish). The potato salad was the perfect accompaniment, especially as it was still slightly warm. Sweet cherries provided the finishing note for a tasty summer lunch.

Steve came back around 3 PM to check on the progress of his crew, gave them some specific goals for the rest of the day, and took off. The crew was here until 6 PM. Everyone has been working hard but we are at the stage in the project where there has been a lot more destruction than construction. We have been through enough construction projects over the years that we know what to expect, but it is still stressful to see everything torn up.

Linda made baked stuffed acorn squash for dinner with a side of grilled baby bok choy. The stuffing was made from carrots, celery, mushrooms, onions, sun dried tomatoes, bread cubes, raisins, walnuts, flax seeds, and sage. It reminded me of stuffing from a Thanksgiving holiday meal. We had a small glass of Franzia Sweet Red wine which paired well with the savory main dish.

2014/06/25 (W) Summer Start

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I am normally aware of the two equinoxes and the two solstices each year and take note of their passing. I just realized today that the summer solstice happened four days ago (on June 21^st). I checked several online sources and discovered that it occurred at 6:51 AM in the Eastern Time Zone, although it wasn’t clear if that was standard or daylight savings time. Since that time the hours of daylight have been declining slightly each day. Perhaps that is why I am not getting as much accomplished as I need to. Although the summer vacation season begins Memorial Day weekend and runs through the Labor Day weekend, and climatologically “summer” corresponds to this, solar summer runs from the summer solstice to the autumnal equinox.

Linda went to the bakery today while I sat at home and waited to see if the landscape contractor would show up. I left a message for him at 9 AM and had not heard anything by 9:30, so I headed to South Lyon to help move the SLAARC Field Day equipment out of the water tower and into Steve’s (N8AR) trailer. We were done by 11:15 and I was about to head to Scotty’s (AC8IL) shop to return a couple of chargers when the landscaper called to let me know they would be at the house around noon.

Steve, who owns Village Landscape Development, showed up with four young men who looked up to the initial tasks that needed to be accomplished. Three of them were not long out of high school, but the forth one, Lucas, was a few years older and more experienced. He was the crew chief. I indicated that we wanted to save four hosta plants, a large group of day lilies, and a large decorative grass plant, and had to show Steve where I wanted them re-planted. I also had to indicate where I wanted the blocks from the existing retaining walls stacked. Once that was sorted out I went inside and left them alone to do their work.

Mid-afternoon I heard the sound of Keith’s riding lawn mower and went out to check on his progress as well as the landscaping crew. I had loaned our string trimmer and wheel barrow to the landscaping crew to clear the two slopes above the retaining walls and move the plants they were transplanting, but they needed Keith to mow the flat grass areas where they be working. I flagged Keith down and got that sorted out with him and then went back inside and left everyone to their work.

I was not as productive during the afternoon as I would have liked to be. I worked at my desk dealing with e-mails, RVillage groups, and computer apps, but having people at the house working is always somewhat distracting. Linda eventually got home from the bakery and we settled into conversation about our days that took my mind off of the landscape work and other projects, at least for a while.

Steve had indicated earlier in the day that he would be back in the evening to check on the progress of the work. His original target was 7 PM but he called around then to say that it would be around 9 PM. He typically has 3 or 4 crews working, weather permitting. The persistent rains this spring have carried over into summer and created big challenges for builders and landscapers. To catch up, he puts in 14 -16 hour days. When he got to our house at 9:20 PM there was just enough light to see and we made a quick inspection of what had been accomplished during the day. Considering that the work did not really get underway until 1 PM, he seemed satisfied that the crew had put in a good effort and followed the directions he gave them. That was good enough for us too.

2014/05/07 (W) Plumbing

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After breakfast Linda headed to Ann Arbor to babysit our younger grand-daughter. I had a long list of things to do at my computer today, and planned to spend the day inside at home doing them. I did not manage to do most of them as I ended up doing other things instead; so much for plans.

Wednesday is trash day (sorry, Prince Spaghetti), so I got the trash to the curb. (I know, I know, how have I managed to arrange such an interesting life?) A box of Bus Conversion Magazines arrived yesterday, so I opened it to check the contents and then e-mailed the publisher that all was well.

We do not have curbside recycling at the house the way we did in the previous one, so we have to take our recyclables to a drop-off center run by Recycle Livingston. The center is open Wednesdays and Saturdays. On her way out the door Linda reminded me that I had to take the recyclables to the center. We keep a set of cardboard boxes on the floor in the pantry and sort our recyclables as they become available. I loaded them in the car for later.

At some point in the past the shower diverter in the bathtub quit working, so that had been on my “to do” list for a while. Coincidentally, while we were in Florida I had seen an episode of “Ask This Old House” that dealt with this exact repair! I had to use a large pipe wrench to unscrew the old bathtub spout/diverter as the threads were corroded. With the old diverter off I now had a fairly good idea of what I needed in the way of a replacement part.

I had been putting off fixing the leaky dishwasher fresh water connection but today was finally the day to tackle that project. As I was thinking about heading to the recycle center, and then to Lowe’s for plumbing parts, I got a call from Steve at Village Landscape Development (VLD). He wanted to swing by and go over the front stairs and rear retaining wall projects again and get us on his schedule. We agreed on 1 PM. It was 11:30 AM, so I had just enough time to drop off the recyclables and get a new diverter from Lowe’s.

Steve (VLD) came by and we walked through the two projects. We were on the same page and settled on tentative start and completion dates, so we signed an agreement and I gave him a deposit. After he left, I called Wayne (KD8H), set up to get the tower tomorrow at 11:00 AM, and then e-mailed Steve (N8AR) to let him know the date/time. He had permission to use Bruce’s (W8RA) closed trailer to help me with the tower.

Back at the dishwasher I turned the water supply on and the connection didn’t just drip, it spurted. I redid the connection with pipe thread compound instead of Teflon tape but it did not help at all. I tried tightening it and it got worse. It was clearly time to rethink my approach.

I find that a good way to rethink my approach to a problem is to do something else, so I installed the new diverter for the bathtub/shower in the hall bathroom. It only needed to be threaded on hand tight as it is not a pressurized fitting. Water either flows out the spout into the tub or gets blocked and forced (diverted) up to the shower head; a pretty simple device, really. It was not quite the right length and left a 1/2 inch gap between the base and the wall tile. At least this way I could see if any water was leaking out the back end. 🙂 It wasn’t, so I let it go for now.

I returned to the dishwasher problem and took another look. It appeared that the rubber seal (O-ring) in the end of the hose may have gotten nicked or mis-shapen, perhaps from over tightening. There was no indication of a leak between the 90 degree elbow and the dishwasher inlet.

I headed back to Lowe’s for a new 8’ dishwasher connection hose. I could not purchase just the hose; it only came as a kit with the 90 degree elbow and another adapter, which turned out to be fortuitous. I noticed that the instructions did not call for Teflon tape or pipe thread compound and I verified that with the associate in plumbing. I also picked up a decorative filler plate for the diverter.

The flexible water line connects to the lower left front corner of the dishwasher, loops underneath the unit, goes through a hole in the adjacent cabinet at the lower left rear, goes through the other side of that cabinet into the space under the corner sink cabinet bottom, and finally emerges through a hole in the floor of the cabinet along with a water pipe. The only way to run the new flexible line, without removing the dishwasher and disassembling cabinets, was to attach one end of the new line to the dishwasher end of the old line and use the old line to pull it through. Zip ties have lots of uses, and this is one of them.

Before making any connections I read the instructions again. The connections at the end of the hose were to be “finger tight plus 1/4 turn.” Although “finger tight” is an incredibly imprecise term–some number of inch-pounds would be precise–these directions clearly indicated that over tightening was a bad thing to do. I connected the line at both ends following the directions as best I could and opened the supply valve a little. No more spurting but I still had a drip leak and shut off the water supply. I knew the hose was OK so it had to be the elbow. I had to pull the dishwasher part way out to get to the 90 degree elbow. (This why I installed an 8 foot hose.) After I got it out I examined it and did not see any obvious thread damage or cracks, but there was some pitting and one pit in particular looked like it might be a through pinhole. No matter, it was trash.

I installed the new elbow using pipe thread compound on the male NPT pipe threads that go into the female NPT fitting on the dishwasher. These kinds of fittings are always a bit tricky. They have to be tight enough to not leak, without overdoing it, and they have to be oriented a certain way to allow something else to connect to them; in this case the supply hose. I reattached the flexible hose, turned on the water supply, and voilà, no leaks! As long as I was on a roll I unscrewed the bathtub diverter, slipped the decorative spacer over the pipe, and screwed the diverter back on, lining it up carefully with the spacer and getting it snug but properly aligned. Even though it took most of the afternoon I had successfully completed two plumbing jobs in one day.

2014/05/03 (S) Ham It Up

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Today started with breakfast out and felt like we were finally starting to get back into the flow. We drove to South Lyon for the Saturday morning breakfast gathering of our South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club, as we do almost every Saturday morning when we at the house. Steve (N8AR) gave me a lead on someone who might be willing to build our pole barn. After breakfast we returned home and I walked Linda through the project I discussed yesterday with Steve for redoing the rear basement walkout retaining walls, drainage, and yard grading.

I worked on our blog and Linda worked on lunch preparations while we awaited the arrival of our daughter and son-in-law. They have had Linda’s Honda Civic Hybrid since December and were returning it, so they drove two cars. Linda got to visit with them in late February / early March, but I had not seen them since mid December. We had a nice lunch of mixed greens salad and vegan Sloppy Joe’s with sweet gherkin pickles on the side. Fresh strawberries and carrot cake cookies provided a sweet ending to the meal. We had a nice visit.

Steve from Village Landscaping Development stopped by with a brochure, business card, and the project proposal written up on a more official estimating form. We will take a few days to think about, but it’s a very good proposal and I am 99% certain we will hire him to do this work. It would be nice to get it done in late May to early June, between The SKP Escapade and the GLAMARAMA rallies, but it may not be dry enough by then. If not, it will have to wait until early July after we return from the installation ceremonies for Linda’s sister who is assuming one of the top leadership positions in the St. Louis Province of the Congregation (Sisters) of St. Joseph.

A little later Phil Jarrel, from Best Precision Grading, came by to take a second look at the site preparation and grading work for the pole barn. We walked the site and agreed that I could/should change the orientation of the building just a bit from where it is currently staked. We also discussed how to make sure the barn was located behind the front line of the house and talked through the permitting and construction process. He did not have any builders to recommend, but he did recommend a concrete contractor for the pit and floor.

We did quite a few construction projects at the previous house over the years but the pole barn involves elements that are new to me, and I now have to deal with a Township for a land use permit and the County for building and grading permits. I am fairly set on the size, location, and basic design/materials, but we not have settled on a builder or materials supplier. Consequently, we still do not have an accurate total cost estimate. Until everything is in place, and the cost is known, nothing can move forward. Meanwhile, the days keep flipping over on the calendar.

2014/05/02 (F) A Day At Home

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Linda went into the bakery today so she was up early and left at 6:30 AM to get ahead of the worst of the morning rush hour traffic headed into Detroit from the northwest. She took my new laptop to have some critical software installed. With the 17″ screen, the computer does not fit in any of our existing padded carry cases, so that is an accessory I will need to get. I also have my eye on an external BluRay/DVD/CD optical media drive (read/write). The BluRay disks will store anywhere from 25 to 45 GB of data which is more practical that CDs or DVDs for non-volatile /off-site storage of photographs and critical documents.

We only have one car at the moment, so I was stuck at home today (I don’t use the motorcoach to run errands). Being stuck at home on a chilly, overcast, rainy day is not necessarily a bad thing. After a light breakfast and my morning coffee I started a load of laundry and worked at my desk for a while.

I took a break from desk work and opened the front of one of our APC Smart UPS units that had died while we were away. I had replaced batteries in a couple of these units but could not recall if this was one of them. It was not. When I opened the batter compartment I found the batteries badly swollen and I was unable to remove them from the case. The tags on them indicated that they were from 2010. The only thing I can think of that would have caused this was a failure in the battery charging circuit which continued to charge the batteries after they were already fully charged. That would cause them to gas and swell as they are sealed AGM batteries. We were probably lucky they did not explode. Given this situation I will replace the whole UPS rather than put new batteries in it. APC usually offers a trade-in allowance (called Trade-Ups) for the same or larger UPS. Otherwise I have to dispose of the whole thing as electronic hazardous waste.

Steve Degenais of Village Landscape Development stopped by mid-morning to discuss two separate projects: 1) stairs to get from the pull-thru driveway to the front porch, and; 2) redoing the retaining walls on either side of the basement walkout.

When we bought the house last year it had a makeshift pull-thru driveway and no stairs or pathway to the front porch, which is the main entrance to the house. The previous owners used the Florida room, which is just an enclosed patio slab between the house and the garage, as an entry/breezeway. It was empty and they left it unlocked, entering the house through a door to the kitchen that locked. We use the Florida room as a library, so we do not leave it open. We also had the pull-thru driveway substantially improved last spring so we can park our bus with the entrance door opposite the front door of the house. Carrying things back and forth between the house and the bus on a steep grassy slope is an accident waiting to happen. There is a four foot drop in 18 feet from the front porch to the driveway and we need a proper set of stairs.

Although we have a walkout basement, the house is not set into the side of a hill. If you walk around the house it appears to sit on top of a mound. It appears that dirt was piled around the basement walls, except by the walkout, and graded away from house, more or less. In the back it slopes in towards the walkout. There are remnants of an old railroad tie retaining wall and it appears that sometime later someone tried to stabilize the two slopes with plastic held in place with small boulders, pieces of cinder block, used bricks, and whatever else was handy to throw in there. That apparently wasn’t working very well so they built two retaining walls, each about seven courses high (~3 ft), with blocks meant for decorative edging of plant beds. It’s also clear that they did not make any provision for water drainage behind the walls and yet two downspouts from the roof gutter system discharged into these areas before I used corrugated plastic pipe to carry the water away from the house. The pipes are still there, sitting on the surface right where I put them last spring. The earth behind the walls has obviously moved over time and the walls are buckling in places. Mud pushes through and around them. It’s not pretty on several levels.

Our sump pump runs quite a bit in the spring and we need to get rainwater away from the foundation as much as possible. Drainage and stabilization of the slopes are my primary concern but I always care about aesthetics. Steve and I discussed an approach using small boulders to make low retaining walls backed with fabric and drain pipes to capture and drain the water far out into the yard. The slopes would be re-graded to provide runoff away from the house, covered with landscape fabric, and then covered with small boulders and “egg rock.” The drain lines would all be buried and run to an exit point far out in the yard.

I spent much of the rest of the day working on our website and blog with the help of our cats, who were a bit needier than usual following their visit to the veterinarian yesterday. Sometime during the day a package arrived from Amazon. On Wednesday we ordered an Amped|Wireless SR20000G (wireless router/repeater/access point) to replace the one Mike (W8XH) gave us just before we left for Florida. The SR20000G worked very well for us in our bus and is now a permanent part of our on-board communications technology arsenal. We ordered it through Amazon Prime and had it in two days; no extra charge for shipping.

Linda picked up some groceries on her way home from the bakery and we had a simple dinner consisting of a very tasty spinach salad and an Amy’s Roasted Vegetable Pizza. After dinner she worked on food for tomorrow’s visit with our daughter and son-in-law. She made her fabulous vegan Sloppy Joe’s and carrot cake cookies while I worked with my new notebook computer. Updates were available and I had to “update and restart” the machine six times before there were no more updates to install. There were 24+5+20+4+8+10 = 71 updates in all. Allen, the computer sales associate at Best Buy, had alerted me to the fact that once I activated the machine there would be quite a few updates, so this was not unexpected.

The Phase Place

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Tag Archives: Steve (VLD)

2014/08/01 (F) Schmoo Returns

2014/07 – Retaining Walls & Drains

2014/07 – Front Sidewalk and Stairs

2014/07/31 (W) Wrapping Up?

2014/07/30 (W) Winter In July

2014/0729 (T) Utility Closet

2014/07/28 (M) Reprieve

2014/07/27 (N) Attic Access

2024/07/22 (T) A Quiet Day At Home

2014/07/18 (F) Tracing Circuits

2014/07/16 (W) Rat Packing

20140711 (F) Nice Weather Lately

2014/07/10 (R) Home And Garden

2014/07/07 (M) Needs And Wants

2014/07/02 (W) Trees And Rocks

2014/06/25 (W) Summer Start

2014/05/07 (W) Plumbing

2014/05/03 (S) Ham It Up

2014/05/02 (F) A Day At Home