Tag Archives: sweet-sour collard greens slaw (WFPB)

2015/09/28 (M) Connected

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I was up at 8 AM, got dressed to work, gathered up the laundry, and started a load in the washer.  I was getting ready to grind the beans for our morning coffee when Linda got up.  She did not look at all well, having come down with what appeared to be a bad cold late last night.  But she’s a trooper and washed our breakfast berries, as she does most mornings, and got our granola ready.

Bus work notwithstanding my first task this morning was to figure out what had gone wrong with the thermostat in the main floor hallway of the house.  This is our “main” thermostat; it controls the heat to the living room, entry foyer, hallway, and kitchen/dining room.  It also controls the air-conditioning for the entire main floor of the house.  There is no air supply or return from the basement and the library has its own HVAC system.

I used my VOM to check the voltage at the secondary of the transformer on the furnace, at the input to each of the five motorized valves, and the voltage coming out and going to the five thermostats (four for space heating zones and one for domestic hot water).  Everything looked OK.  I pulled the main thermostat off of the base to check the wiring there.  I also got out the installation manual to make sure I knew what I was checking.

The wiring of the base plate matched the diagram for a 1H/1C-2T system, i.e., one heating system, one cooling system, and TWO transformers.  The manual was also very clear that the common wire had to come from the cooling system transformer.  The voltage from Rc to C was just under 15 volts when I expected it to be ~26V.  All of this pointed towards the air-handler.  I shut off the circuit breaker for the air-handler and reset it but that did not fix anything.  The evidence was confirming my suspicion that something happened while Rebecca was in the attic on Friday.  That meant I was going to have to go in the attic to figure out what it was.

Getting into the attic meant I had to empty the hall coat closet of all of its hanging contents and most of the stuff sitting on the floor and remove the wooden hanging rod, which fortunately lifts up and out easily.  I then had to lean a 6-foot step ladder against the back wall, climb up, and unscrew the 1/2″ piece of foam insulation that we use as a temporary cover until I can fabricate something more permanent (hopefully something that involves a self-storing ladder and hinged, spring-loaded door).

With the cover removed I was able to get my waist to about ceiling height, set my flashlight where I could reach it, and hoist myself up into the attic.  I do not have any permanent/switched lighting in the attic, but I plan to install some at some point.  What I should do is install a hatch in the hallway so I do not have to empty the closet to get into the attic, but that probably won’t happen.  I did this in our previous house and it made working in the attic much more convenient.  Flashlight in hand I crawled the 15+ feet over to the air-handler on plywood set across the roof trusses on a slope.  I was reminded than another attic project will be to rig up a walkway (crawlway) that is level and does not compress the insulation.  The insulation in this attic is a mess and needs to be straightened out, so that is another project for our “to do” list.  But I digress.

When I got to the air-handler I saw a surface mounted switch box on top of the unit partially obscured by one of the flexible ducts.  The switch was in the “Off” position so I flipped it to the “On” position.  I did not see a transformer so I presumed it was inside the enclosure.  I also presumed that Rebecca had either accidental moved the switch while checking/measuring the unit or had turned it off as a safety precaution and forgot to turn it back on.  It did not really matter as the result was the same either way.

I worked my way back to the hatch in the closet ceiling, lowered myself down onto the top of the step ladder, and climbed down.  The thermostat, which is on the wall across from the closet, now had information showing on the display.  The upside to all if this was that I now knew something about our HVAC system and Wi-Fi thermostat that I did not previously know, so at least I learned something in the process.

This thermostat is 7-day programmable model so I set the day and time and then went through the programmed values but could only access the settings for the cooling mode.  I activated the setup menu and walked through all of the settings, changing only one that had nothing to do with the programming.  I finally got out the user manual and saw that I had to select a mode in order to program its schedule.  I manually set temperatures for heating and cooling that would not cause those systems to come on and then programmed the times and temperature set points, four per day for each mode, for all seven days.

Keith showed up late morning while I was working.  We agreed to let the grass go for another week.  It has been dry and a little warm during the day for the last week and the grass has not grown much.  There is, however, a real possibility of rain latter today and into tomorrow.  Also, Phil is supposed to start tomorrow on the French drain and driveway work and with a little luck in the weather department may be done by next Monday.

With the thermostat issue resolved I turned my attention to the bus.  I thought about priming the walls but decided against it.  I would need to move the desk pedestals and bases, unscrew the sofa seat platform and move it on top of the pedestals, and then mask everything with painter’s plastic.  All of that was work that was much more easily and quickly accomplished with two people and Linda was sound asleep taking a nap that she obviously needed.

The other reason for not getting into the priming was that I have to take the bus to Chuck’s shop in Novi tomorrow morning to have the two lower windshields replaced.  That meant the bus had to be ready to move before the end of today and there were two things I had to do in that regard.  One was to reattach the desk pedestals to their bases and to the wall.  The other was to connect the loose ends of the two Aqua-Hot heater hoses together.  It had only just occurred to me that once I start the main engine the Aqua-Hot will heat up and the coolant will expand.  If these hoses are not connected the supply line will have coolant coming out of it and the return line will suck air into the system, neither of which would be good things.

I took care of the desk first.  I reattached each pedestal to its corresponding base using the existing screw holes.  I set the two assemblies in place with the connecting cover and then reattached each pedestal to the wall using the existing screw hole.  I thought about trimming down the temporary plywood top and reinstalling it but decided there was no point in doing that.  I cleaned up the rest of the interior making sure there were no loose items on counters or elsewhere that could fly around while the coach was moving.

The two bleeder valves were still clamped inside an old piece of heater hose that originally connected the two front heat-exchangers together with short stubs of hose on the other ends.  Working in the garage on our temporary workbench I unclamped and removed the hoses.  One of the valves was very badly corroded on one end and was not reusable.  The other one needed to be cleaned up but appeared to otherwise be serviceable.  Some of the inside of the hose was stuck to the metal of one of the pipe ends and was surprisingly difficult to remove.

I washed my hands, which were filthy, checked my e-mail, sent a message to Bill Gerrie, replied to an e-mail from Butch, took the dried laundry upstairs, folded it, and put it away.  Linda woke up while I was finishing the laundry and heated up some Amy’s mock chicken noodle soup for our lunch, which we had with sourdough pretzel nibblers and roasted red pepper hummus.  It was 2:30 PM by the time we finished lunch.  I called Josh Leach at Coach Supply Direct to see if he had followed up with Ferman Miller at Countertops Plus regarding our Corian tabletop.  I got his voice mail and left a message.  It felt like the day was slipping away and I had not done much but I had, in fact, accomplished quite a bit and all of it was stuff that needed doing.

I worked on this post for an hour and then completed the task of connecting the two heater hoses together.  I cut the ends of the old hoses off so I had clean material and square ends.  I slipped two band clamps over each hose and pushed them over the pipe ends of the bleeder valve.  They were very difficult to get on but I got them on far enough to put two clamps on each connection.  I did not turn the Aqua-Hot on as I would rather not refill these hoses with antifreeze at this time but I did start the main engine to air up the chassis and then let it run for 30 minutes to get it up to temperature.  It did not have any noticeable effect on the coolant in the Aqua-Hot in that short amount of time.

While the engine was running I closed the roof vents and made one last check that the interior was secure.  Once I shut the engine off I closed the various air valves, disconnected the batteries, locked up the coach, and was done working on/with the bus for the day.  I changed out of my work clothes and went to my office to edit blog posts from early August and get them ready to upload.

Linda called me up to dinner at 7 PM.  We had vegan cheeseburgers with leftover vegan potato salad and collard greens Cole slaw (inherently vegan).  It was yummy.  I went back to my office to edit more posts but got involved in e-mails from/to Bill Gerrie and Gary Hatt.  Gary sent me the BCM logo he is using for business cards and I spent over an hour trying to use Microsoft Publisher, and then Word, to layout a BCM business card that says “Freelance Author/Photographer.”  I did not care for the result and really want a card with the cover of the February 2013 issue as a full card photo.  The cover of that issue is our bus.

I came upstairs a little after 10 PM and watched the end of NCIS Los Angeles with Linda.  She did some online research and concluded that she did not have a cold but is suffering from an allergic reaction to something.  She went straight to sleep while I played a few games on my iPad before turning out the lights.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/08/15 (S) Steve and Karen

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As we were backing out of the driveway to go to our weekly ham radio breakfast we noticed a large mailbox sitting on the ground next to ours.  It was still attached to the upper half of its wood support structure.  The number was 593, which is not an address that occurs on our street.  We left it there and went to breakfast.

We had a mid-sized group of 15 people at our SLAARC breakfast this morning.  On the drive into breakfast we lost power to our GPS every time I transmitted on the 2m ham band.  The GPS and cellular booster worked fine all day yesterday with the new 12VDC extension splitter, but I did not use the mobile ham radio.

After breakfast we went directly to Chuck’s shop in Novi to see if we could retrieve the old refrigerator using our car.  A measuring tape quickly revealed that the fridge would not fit without removing the seats.  Even then it would be too long to close the rear gate and hatch on the Element.  At breakfast Harvey (AC8NO) offered the use of his van and labor to help move the fridge and I will probably take him up on it.

On the drive home I chatted with John (NU8M) on the South Lyon 2m repeater and we were joined by Mike (W8XH).  After John signed and dropped off Linda tried different combinations of power connections while I talked with Mike.  Based on that test the splitter appears to be the problem but we could not determine if it was a voltage drop issue or some form of RFI.

I stopped on the way home to fill the gas tank in my car.  When we got home I put the mailbox in the back of my car and we drove to the end of the street but it clearly did not come from one of our neighbor’s yards.  When we got back to the house we also noticed that there was a footprint on the side of our mailbox.  Closer inspection revealed that the post was slightly loose in the ground and the box was leaning (bent) slightly to one side.  Clearly someone had tried to kick it over (and failed) and there was a very high probability that it was the same person(s) who probably broke the other mailbox and left it on the ground next to ours.  We discussed whether we should report it to the Livingston County Sheriff Department but did not take the time right then to do so.

Linda needed to make a grocery store run and then prep the food for dinner and pick up the house.  With company coming later I did not want to get all sweaty working in the bus and garage so I worked in my office editing and uploading blog posts.  I quit around 3:30 and was writing blog posts when Steve and Karen Limkemann arrived at 4 PM.

We always have a nice visit with Steve and Karen and they are good sports about eating the vegan food that Linda prepares.  Linda made a sweet and sour collard greens cole slaw and vegan potato salad ahead of time.  She cooked corn-on-the-cob on the stovetop and heated vegan beer brats on the grill along with onions and green peppers.  Steve and Karen brought a Malbec wine which we enjoyed before, during and after the meal.  Dessert was fresh strawberries with cashew milk snickerdoodle ice cream.  Really, what’s not to like?

Steve and Karen have rented a house trailer in a trailer park near Venice, Florida for the last few winters.  I think they rented it for January, February, and March and split the time with another couple, but I may not have my facts completely straight.  The owners of the trailer are from England and decided after this last winter that they want to start using it during the winter so Steve and Karen lost the use of it.  They really liked the park and its location so they bought a trailer that was for sale and already set up.  We visited them two winters ago, but we were several hours north of them.  This coming winter we will be much closer to them while we are in Arcadia during January and February and plan to see them more often.  Venice is a very upscale place and there is an excellent vegan restaurant within easy walking distance (a mile) from their trailer park.

We talked about trying to catch the tail end of the Perseids Meteor Shower but the peak was earlier in the week, they would not be visible at our location until midnight, and then only low in the northeast sky, which is not an ideal viewing direction from our yard.  Steve and Karen had a 45 minute drive to get home and left around 10:30 PM.  By that point it had been a long but very satisfying day for us and we were straight away to bed once they were safely on their way.