2nd weekend of December

December is already flying by, seems like Thanksgiving was yesterday.

This weekend main household accomplishment was mowing front yard, which had a haze of crabgrass shoots in the front growing to 18 inches high.  The actual St Augustine was only about 4 inches high.  It had not been mowed since two weeks before the election.  Since I only got started around 6pm on Saturday, and it took some minutes to get prepared, including cleaning my full face respirator (which fogged up fast so I didn't use it) I did all the actual mowing after sunset.  Actual mowing was done between 6:20 and 7:20.  Ambient temperature was around 70 during this time.  Thanks to security lights, there was no problem with light, though I did have to think things in advance more than usual (which I should do more than usual).  If this had been summer, I might not have gotten started until past 7:30.  Front lawn mowing is important because it defines the appearance my house has in the neighborhood, which needs all the help it can get, and recently I had fallen behind with everyone else's lawn having been mowed in the past 3 weeks.

The main accomplishment inside Lyndhurst was sealing lower gap of the A/C.  I used the grey poly foam provided by manufacturer for sealing.  (Actually, when installed into a wall, the manufacturer doesn't say anything about sealing the bottom, only the top and sides.  But they provide two foam pieces in case you are installing into a window.)  I cut off two small pieces of foam for the gaps on either side I noticed last weekend.  I was undecided on whether it would be good to supplement the foam with the clear sealing tape I also got.  I worried about what kind of condensation, etc., might occur on the inside of the tape, and then cause mold on the foam.  So I didn't do the tape for now.  The foam by itself might be best.  There is a tiny crack in the solid sealing done by the contractor on one side which could get some caulk, but  it doesn't seem to be the source of actual air leakage.

I was unable to fit the A/C bezel onto the A/C.  I need to pound the A/C frame with a rubber mallett to get it back into shape first.  I also need to get some machine screws, possibly 4-40, to hold on the bezel since I don't know where the originals are.  In fact, i thought I already bought one set of replacements back in April or so, and I couldn't find those either.

Before finding it wouldn't fit, I spent about half an hour meticulously cleaning the A/C bezel which had gotten quite a bit of bug grime from sitting in the open building for 6 months on the floor.  I used vacuum, cloth, and Q tips.  Some live bugs had gotten behind the filter.  After failing to fit to the actual unit, I put the bezel on a box so as not to be sitting on the floor again.

I decided to power up and program the A/C anyway, since it works fine w/o the bezel.  I first programmed it for 12noon - 12 midnight operation at 84 degrees, and Energy Saver (otherwise fan runs all the time).  But before long, it started running, despite the cold day and the heater being set at 1.0.  So I turned the A/C thermostat up to 90 degrees, and turned the heater down to 0.9.  It didn't run anymore.

But the real plan is to use a digital thermostat for the heater so it doesn't run above 70 degrees.  Currently it is hard to adjust the heater so that it stays that cool, even at setting "1" the heater maintains a temperature of 78, and I fear that if I did set it much lower, it might not heat enough below 70.  I spent almost two hours searching for the digital thermostat which I bought a year ago.  I looked in the 3 storage containers already inside Lyndhurst, and noted their contents in a new Inventory list on my kitchen Mac.  I looked in the 3rd bedroom, requiring me to move stuff out of the way just to get into the bedroom.  That was the main source of the small amount of stuff I took out to Lyndhurst this weekend, the other was the box for the Immersion Edition of Dark Side of the Moon with all discs removed, but full of kitsch, which I kept tripping on in the master bedroom.  I looked through all the stuff on the bed and most of the stuff on the floor and was getting very frustrated thinking maybe it had been thrown out by accident, or was in my rental storage unit.

Speaking of Dark Side of the Moon, I listened to both 4 channel and 5 channel uncompressed BluRay versions in the kitchen during the weekend, for the first time.  Both are very nicely done, though the 4 channel version shows the limitation of my surround speakers more obviously--they lack HF response.  I also watched two Discrete Mathematics classes from The Teaching Company, and watched random Chomsky and Vidal videos on the kitchen TV coming from YouTube through my Mac and the adapters I describe below.  I watched a new Anime movie I bought last week.  I downloaded Phoenix Slides for the kitchen Mac and tried it out.  I had to do multiple google searches to figure out how to let the new Mac let me run something downloaded from the internet (instead of being purchased from the Apple Store).  I made a post to my political blog about Apple and closed systems.  I uploaded a private label music CD of ancient keyboard performances to the ztunes directory of my iTunes collection.  I hadn't uploaded any new CD's for about a year because I kept procrastinating on installing a new external harddrive for my old Mac.  For this privately made CD I had to fill in all the information.

Finally, I began thinking about what this thermostat actually looks like.  It has a thick orange 8 foot cord attached to the box.  Wait, I had been seeing a thick orange cord on the chair in the third bedroom.  Well there it was.  Thinking is always better than random digging.  That final discovery was made after midnight Sunday night.  So I'll set up the thermostat this week or weekend.

In other news, Saturday was my sister's birthday, so my brother-in-law called on Friday night and we talked for 2 hours, starting with his latest fave 3D TV (he happened to have a few extras for sale), touching on his recent negative results in the polarity test I scored a few months ago,  and ending up with arguing about physics, frustratingly, he seems to have views very much at odds with special and general relativity and quantum physics, and yet, smart as he is, he doesn't see the conflicts, perhaps to his continuous invocation of Wittgenstein.  I had to beg off several times to get the phone call to end by 2am.  I called my sister on Saturday and we talked for just over an hour, mostly about her new car and new issues with her eyes.  On Sunday I also forwarded some questions regarding relativity to another friend so I can get these things sorted out.

I had a very good movie date with my lady friend on Sunday afternoon, watching the 4th installment of Oliver Stone's Untold History of the USA.  She brought her own coffee (and forgot to take mug with her) and didn't want anything else but I provided some peanuts which she soaked in lemon juice...I've decided that kills the flavor for me.  We also talked by phone on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights.

I washed bathtowels on a very full cycle and then washed cleaning cloths on the full sterilize cycle which takes 3 hours.  I ran the dishwasher on Saturday morning and Monday morning using timer mode.  I opened the box of new New Balance shoes and wore them for the first time on Monday.

I tasted Estrella Damm Inedit, an expensive Spanish ale.  It was very rich tasting, almost like food, which it is intended to go with (but I just drank small glasses all night).  Unfortunately, I spilled the last bit from a wineglass, and then had to spend about 20 minutes cleaning the table, remote controls, and other stuff.

I did some more video tests with a downloaded test pattern showing that the Mac DisplayPort through Composite adapter interlace output seems to have some jitter in the first few dozen scan lines, on both Sony CRT and Samsung LCD displays.  It does actually appear to have the full 525 lines of horizontal resolution anyway, but the jittering effect in the top lines makes the picture seem soft.

This jittering went away entirely when I connected the composite output directly to my DVDO, either in 480i otuput or 480p output settings.  That would suggest it is caused by interaction of composite adapter and the input of my Sony DVDR-HX900.  I was disappointed to learn that I cannot input any resolution higher than 480p into my outdated DVDO unit, so to get higher resolutions than 480p out of my Mac I will need to do something with HDMI.  Fortunately, my Gefen HDMI gizmo arrived on Monday morning needing a signature and I signed for it, hopefully that will resolve issues between DisplayPort and my HDMI switch so I can get 1080i.  I also unwrapped and inspected a BlackMagic Extreme video interface, which I plan to try out, but did not yet get around to hooking it up.  I re-secured the 5-way HDMI switch I have in the kitchen with duct tape.

Then I played back some videos on the Sony that I had previously recorded using the S-Video output of my previous mac Powerbook.  Those videos had no jitter in the top lines whatsoever.  So the jitter thing is new.  My guess is that it is indeed some kind of blanket copy restriction applied to the Mac DisplayPort when outputing 480i.  Or it could be happening within the DisplayPort->Component adapter I am using, except the adapter doesn't do that when playing into the DVDO.  It does not appear to be Macrovision per se, but something like that making the sync unstable into recording devices--that's a common strategy.  The DVDO is insensitive to this just as a display device would be, but the DVDO also does not have any analog 480i output, so its output cannot be recorded either.  The Sony DVDR-HX900 is sensitive to unstable sync by design, to allow copy protection schemes to work.  My opinion is that none of this should be happening unless I were playing copy protected media on the Mac, such as a DVD.  But it is a typical strategy to make all duplication impossible even if some of it would be legal as fair use.

I tried setting up new connection for Lavry AD10 to Behringer 2496 DEQ for the output of the L-1000T in my audio system.  This would give me even better quality FM through my whole house Sonos system.  But after trying to set up the Toslink cable, it turned out to be the wrong kind and needs to be returned to Radio Shack.

Just as it was getting dark on Sunday night, and my friend had left, I pulled a dozen large weeds that had been growing on the north side of Lyndhurst.  I put a large trashcan liner from the garage into a trashcan inside Oakhurst.  I almost forgot to put that can back into Oakhurst before it started raining.  I watered the potted plants near the front door.

And yet, as usual, I write this because I sometimes felt I was doing little more than goofing off the whole time.

Last week I did a lot too.  I paid my property tax downtown (and found I need to pay school tax separately, before January 31, at the Judson office).  I called and had plumbers come out for the Angie's list inspection, which was worth what I paid, but not much more.  I brought pants, jacket, and shirt to my taylor for minor fixes.  The pants had needed fixing for 2 months (I've been wearing a slightly worn-out spare in the meantime) the shirt had needed fixing for about 2 years, and the leather jacket had needed shortening for 3 years.  On Friday we had 30th anniversary symposium of the Department where I work, where I also finished putting together the  draft version of computer code I'm working on for a collaborator.

More cleaning

On the first Saturday in December, I resumed cleaning the inside walls, starting where I left off at the north edge of the french doors, and around to the north side to the far edge of the air conditioner.  (Except for the floor level below the air conditioner, the ladder was there, so I will do that later.)

The cleaning of the oil-painted trim around the air conditioner  was important because it really needed to be done before I finish sealing the unit on the inside, with a strip of foam in the gap underneath the unit.  I also need to cut (from the spare strip I got with the A/C) two tiny pieces to jam in either side, where there are also small gaps.

As it was there, I also cleaned the wood shelf on the north side just to the east of the air conditioner.  Like all the other shelves, it had accumulated a second round of bug grime, or something like that, with lots of actual dead bugs too, and a few live ones.  This dark bug grime accumulated in the 5 months since I cleaned this shelf the first time, in July or thereabouts.  The top of the shelf was the last thing I cleaned, because I knew it would get my cloth and water dirty.  Most other surfaces I cleaned were not visibly dirty.  I also cleaned underneath the shelves, which had been done before also.

I finally decided to put up the window screen as I was keeping the window open for ventilation until 11pm and I wanted to avoid mosquitos and other bugs.  I had never put up the window screen before because it came with a factory defect, a small hole in one side, and I was planning to get that fixed.  But of course I didn't get around to getting it fixed.  Now I think I'll just put some tape over the hole until I have a convenient time to get it fixed.

To avoid mosquitoes, I also put out my Mosquito Cognito outside in front of the front door.  I was not bothered by mosquitoes, and though the temperature outside dipped to the mid 60's I was very comfortable inside, with the electric heater.

I examined the gaps on the bottom corners of the air conditioner, and added a little more mortite on each side for the inner gaps (which are in front of a tiny channel that goes all the way out the back of the A/C for drainage).  There was basically nothing I could do to block that channel on the outside.

The side channels between the A/C Chassis and the Sleeve are filled with the dark foam strip provided by the manufacturer (the installation was done hurridly by the contractor, I tried to stall him so I could do it myself).  There are tiny gaps where the foam doesn't reach on either side at the bottom.  I'm going to fill those with tiny additional pieces of foam leftover from sealing the gap at the bottom when I do that.

Which I was planning to do today, Tuesday, but I found that I had no clean pair of scissors to cut the foam, so I spent 20 minutes cleaning two pairs of scissors instead.

Temperatures inside Lyndhurst are typically about 80 degrees, according to wireless thermometer I can read in my living room.  The heater thermostat was set to 1.5 so I turned it down to 1.0.  I hope to install the digital thermostat soon.

More Victories

I was going to title this weekend's post "Declaring Victory" but I see that I already did that on November 5.  Of course, shifting the goal posts is endless.

This might be a good time to recap progress made in November.  At the start of the month, I'd still been keeping the doors open all day and night for outgassing.  The floor was getting muddy in front and was strewn with junk, much of it intended to go elsewhere (the Oakhurst tough shed), such as the solar lights which had only been temporarily installed then removed for mowing.  Temporarily stashing them in Lyndhurst brough in bits of dirt that fell on the floor, and that had not been the only source of dirt.  So on November 5, I cleared up the junk on the floor, installed some lights but boxed the rest and put in Oakhurst, and did a quick mop of the front area.  That was unsatisfactory, but enough for my first declaration of victory.

On November 18, I moved all the remaining stuff on the floor to the back, and thoroughly mopped the floor, rinsed, and dried with a towel.  I touched up some of the Mortite on the outside of the A/C unit.

On November 24, I washed the inside east wall starting at the north edge of the french doors, wrapping around all the way to just past the southwest corner on the west side.  The intent was to make it possible to move stuff from the first house bedroom that needs to be cleared out.  Such moving could begin today because no further pre-use cleaning is required in that area.  I also cleaned the top shelf (which was nearly black from bug dirt again), the exposed portions of the bottom shelf, and scrubbed by hand the southwest corner of the tile floor, which had previously gone uncleaned on November 18.  There was a rust stain in that area which I mostly removed with my Dawn and Baking Soda solution and scrubbing.

I also installed the LED lights as the last incandescent used for the outgassing phase burned out and the building turned dark on November 23.  I decided that running the LED's on the lowest dimmer setting 24/7 would be acceptable because it only uses about 10 watts.  Unlike the incandescent bulb, the Ecosmart LED's make no noise on the Hunter dimmer.

The key part that remains uncleaned in the north side wall, and wrapping around to the west side and the corner of the east side.  The north side wall is not intended for junk storage, so the lack of having that fully prepared is not important now anyway.

Another key achievement was setting up the 15 year old DeLonghi radiator heater.  I removed from the exercise room and vacuumed it off first.  It is very clean and new looking.  I mainly used it for the 8 months I lived in San Francisco in 1997.  Keeping the control near 6 was great on Saturday evening with the doors open and a 60 degree wind blowing outside.  After that, I turned down the temperature control to 3 and the heat level to minimum, which uses about 350 watts.  At minimum, it could probably run all the time without hurting anything, even if the thermostat gets stuck.

On Sunday morning I went out to test the temperature.  The room was warm, dry, comfortable, and there was no smell.  I set the control down to 2 and set up a remote thermometer sensor I can read in the living room, from which I noted that the temperature remained fairly constant at 78 degrees with the 2 setting.  So on Monday I moved the setting even lower, to about 1.5.

The previous week I also obtained new door seals for the bottom of the doors.  I think keeping the doors not fully sealed has been of further help in getting the smell to go outside, and I'm pleased it seems quite easy to maintain temperature even with the door not fully sealed so far, and I think that the current heat-on-inside-cold-outside condition can usefully be outgassed for awhile.

*****

Overall, this was a little less than I had hoped for the four day Thanksgiving holiday weekend.  However, I did not really have four days available, just 3 because Sunday was my monthly party.  Traditionally I then also require Saturday for cleanup of the living room.  And then Thursday itself was Thanksgiving.  I often find Thanksgiving very boring, but had a short and sweet Thanksgiving dinner because a friend brought some very good Turkey (in the short list for best ever).  Mostly, on Thursday, I was relaxing from my work (or, more precisely, recovering from excess partying to 6am on Thursday morning).

So then I could still have had a day or two to work on Lyndhurst, but I'll count this weekend's work as only one day.  I have a good excuse for not doing more than that.  My kitchen computer, the one I do most of my web browsing on, died two weeks ago.  On Monday (November 19) my new Mac Mini arrived.  Since it has the Fusion drive,  I had to order online, but instead of arriving on Black Friday, as promised by Apple, it arrived 4 days earlier.  I gradually started unpacking, but it soon became clear I couldn't do anything until clearing away the old computer and related stuff, so I held off until the quickly arriving holiday weekend.

By late Thursday night, I had started to get into this, getting all the old stuff moved out and the new computer moved in and connected.  I also ran the process of copying all 200Mb of uncompressed audio files (in three separate folders) from the old USB drive to the new internal 1.2Tb Fusion drive.  On Friday morning, after not sleeping very well, I was back at it, getting my iTunes and Sonos systems working with my newly audio files.  That was the main work.  I also spent much time tinkering with the new system to get it back to behaving like my previous one.

So this holiday weekend had many high points, of which the Lyndhurst cleaning became only a small part.

1) Wonderful thanksgiving meal brought by friend.
2) Setting up new computer (equivalent to 1-2 days work).
3) Cleaning living room and kitchen for party (1 day work).
4) Cleaning Lyndhurst walls and setting up heater (1 day work).
5) Sunday discussion and movie party (full day activity).
6) Cleaning up after party (including moving keyboard back to center).
7) Paying utility bills (often lost during party cleanup)
8) Shopping for weekly and party food
9) sterilizing cleaning cloths (before and after cleaning Lyndhurst, takes 3 hours per load)
10) second short visit by friend on Friday
11) mailing party announcement (done by temporarily using bedroom computer)

On Wednesday night, during my dinner break from work, I also managed to visit Gabriel's Superstore to get rare liquors including Rogue Double Chocolate Stout and Isle of Jura Single Malt Scotch) and have dinner at Aldino's.  That almost seemed like part of the holiday weekend as well.

The Lyndhurst cleaning was a small thing, but I'm glad it didn't get forgotten, and that I still have a sense that progress is being made on plan, the plan to have one bedroom cleared out by Jan 1.  That plan looks more do-able than ever right now.  But I also know December quickly evaporates into Christmas Parties and other activities, leaving very little time on the side.  So I could, and probably can start moving bedroom stuff to Lyndhurst this coming first weekend in December.

I also need to finish sealing the A/C area, and start installing door seals.  As well as finishing the inside wall cleaning.

Declaring Victory

I had set a goal of having Lyndhurst done, ready for moving stuff in, on November 1.  As of November 5, I'm declaring victory.

I mean this somewhat in jest, but I did clean out the building this Sunday.  In my all-too-typical-sounding boast nowadays, it was transformed...transformed from a garden junk pile to splendid little room.  It actually seems that way to me.

It looks like I could lease it out now, although I'm not really done cleaning.  I cleared away all the junk on the floor--which was making the whole room nearly impassible--and swept the floor, then did a quick mop on Monday afternoon. The quick mop got the most visible dirt near the door, and made the mop water very dirty, but obviously more mopping needs to be done.  And though the walls look clean, I haven't done my cleaning of them at all.  The top of the shelves could also be cleaned again, they've gotten dirty from bug grime, even though I already cleaned them in June.

The solar lamps (which had considerable soil dirt on their spikes) got put in a sturdy cardboard box and put into the Oakhurst garden tool shed, along with other garden-related items like string trimmer spools.  I put two of the lights up, which added some cheer after the sun went down.  The box used was a box (in which I had received an L-1000T tuner from Europe) which had also sat uselessly on the floor for months.  Three plastic bins which I had moved out of garage in July got moved up to the big back shelf.  There was some loose bug grime and dirt on the back shelf which I brushed off with a towel.  This isn't intended to be permanent--I intend to clean the wall behind the back shelf--but it could be semi-permanent for the forseeable future.

I kept on working past dusk on Sunday afternoon, with dusk coming early because of the change back to daylight loosing time (I like daylight saving time so much I'd like to see it year round).  I brought out the Mosquito Cognito and unpacked one of 3 refills I bought last month but didn't install.  I think I avoided getting any bites, though I was annoyed by some pesky flies or stupified mosquitoes.  I eventually quit working around 10pm when I otherwise would have mopped the floor, but I was beginning to worry there really was a mosquito or two after me and my luck might run out.

After re-opening the doors on Monday at 11am, I noticed essentially zero smell, an excellent result for having had the doors closed for 13 hours.

OK, there still is stuff in the room, including the ladder, the halogen lights, and the boxes for the Obelisk (that needs to be assembled).  But nothing on the floor looks out-of-place.  The room no longer looks like an abandoned junkpile.  It's staring to look like the storage room it is intended to be.  Victory!

Finally mowed the front again

How many weeks has it been?  2 or 3 at most.  The crabgrass in the very front of my front yard had grown to 20 inches or so.  Definitely not a good backdrop for my political signs.  Most of the rest of the front lawn looked OK, with just an occasional crabgrass sprout.  Squeezing this work in before going to my office on Friday, I did the minimum for good appearances, the very front section around the Palm and Mimosa back to the beginning of the garage, and the south strip just beyond the garage.  Took less than an hour, including the time needed to wash out my full face respirator.  With a picnic scheduled for Saturday and rain forecast for Sunday, this was the last chance, and possibly the best chance before Election Day.

Other things I did this week

I finally replaced the electrical switch cover in the bathroom with a Jumbo size Ivory color plate.  Home  Depot only sells the Jumbo plate I need (to cover up gaps in the sheetrock) in the white color, even through Home Depot Online.  I had been using the white color plate for the last couple weeks since I replaced the switches two weeks ago.  It is very nice to finally have the correct Ivory color.  I ordered it from Ace Hardware, and it arrived on Monday.

I finished cleaning the contacts on my living room clock.  That clock has been out of commission for about 5 months.  It stopped working, and just a month later I found the batteries had filled the battery compartment with terrible corrosion.  A month ago I removed the batteries and applied a heavy coat of Deoxit to the contacts and let them soak.  This week I cleaned off the Deoxit with Everclear (95% alcohol) using about 40 Q tips.  When the battery compartment was as clean as it could get (some contacts weren't shiny anymore) I applied a thin coat of Deoxit to the critical contact points.

Then I replaced the batteries and spent an hour going through the start-up ritual for this clock.  You have to give it 15 minutes before you press any buttons so it can establish radio contact with the outdoor temperature sensor (which I actually keep in the master bedroom, that's the temperature I care about).  And if you forget to do that, as I always do, you need to remove the batteries and then wait another 15 minutes before re-inserting them.  Then after inserting the batteries, and waiting 15 minutes, you press the buttons to select time zone, and key in the actual time.  Then it tries to set the precise time by radio, but that always fails during the daytime.  The clock did set time by radio that night.  So now it's back to normal.

October 26, 2012

Today I sent the final payment for my house to the mortgage company!  Twenty years to the month after I first won the bid to this house in a FHA auction.  It was purchased with a traditional 30 year FHA mortgage, though I put about 30% of the purchase price as down payment, and have been paying just a bit extra a month through the automatic payment system, and have given a few extra payments as well.

Most people would laugh, cry, or curse to hear the actual numbers involved.  This house originally sold in 1983 for $55,000.  I (and my mother) won the FHA auction for this house, which had been abandoned for 8 months, in October 1992 for $29,000.  I had intended to pay $11,000 or more down, but considering the closing costs, and the need for new A/C we were told by a neighbor, I lowered my down payment to $8,000, making for $21,000 financed.  (I was able to get the A/C working at first for modest repair costs.)  The minimum Principal and Interest per month was under $200, with total payment typically $350 or so including taxes and insurance.

You could multiply these numbers by 10 or 20 for an average house in California in that time period.

But that's only one side of the story.  I can hardly count the amount of money I've spent on repairs and improvements.  And there was the original sweat equity, making the place livable by repainting everything.  The siding in the front has all been replaced, all new A/C was installed in 2003 for $9000, the fence is all Fencecrete ($9,000 total cost), the roof, plus $5000 repairs on the chimney and gutters.  Most of the plumbing fixtures have been replaced.  The electrical system has been greatly expanded.  And then in the last two years I've spent around $33,000 on the back yard, with Lyndhurst, Oakhurst, 12 new trees, and the sprinkler system.  I've still got as much as $19,000 remaining debt from all those things, my most recent vacation, and other things, mostly financed on 0% credit offers (typically with 3% origination cost).  My typical revolving debt in recent years has been around $10,000, and I'm not worried about $19,000 since even that is but a fraction of my annual income.  One is supposed to feel badly about credit card type debt (as compared with serious debt to buy houses or cars) but the reality is that houses and cars can be taken away from you if you owe money on them, so it's best not to from a standpoint of personal security.  If you can get the low rates, unsecured credit is just as good or better.

Zillow tells me my home could sell for $66,000 or thereabouts.  The Zestimate was wavered around that same number +/-15% for 12 years.  There hasn't been much appreciation or depreciation.  You can't fall too far when you're already on bare dirt.  And pigs don't fly either.

Well, forget, that, I figure it's worth much more to me, in the $200K - $300K range.  I couldn't replace it for less than $200K, to get all the advantages that it has, and the effort in doing so would easily exceed $100K.  A house just like this could be $1M in a seedy subdivision of Palo Alto.  So I ain't selling for $66,000.  And nobody can make me now that I've paid it off 100%.

It is a very nice place to live, just for living's sake.  It's not awesome overall like homes some of my friends live in (though I think my new back yard is awesome) but it's very comfortable, very quiet, and yet I can play music as loud as I like for special reasons (good insulation, good separation, and no neighbor's windows face my house).

The downside by any calculation would be the neighborhood.  This neigborhood has developed a somewhat justified reputation for gun violence.  Now it's very very rare, even here, but it has happened.  Our rate for murders in this neighborhood is somewhat above average for Texas, maybe twice the average rate.  My corner of the neigborhood is occupied by very very nice people, but I'm only a few streets away from a street where a murder occurred last year, and a home burned out as well (it took awhile to get dismantled).

So the future of this neighborhood may be a question mark.  I think, given that this early development is now surrounded by higher priced developments and an all new high school, I think it's on the way up in general.  By and large most people who live here own their homes too.  So I think there's hope and potential.  A lot of people have a lot at stake here.  Some people obviously care a lot.  These homes were fairly well upgraded, certainly above the bottom level when built, with a mixture of wood, brick, stone, and stucco exteriors.  Maintenance has been mixed, but there have been signs of improvement there as well.

And by now I'm pretty well committed to it.  Barring miracles, or unknown unknowns, I'm staying here.  I've also developed a philosophical attitude toward the danger.  If not me, likely someone else would live here, perhaps a bunch of people or a family.  In which case, the probability of someone being affected by violence would be higher.  So I'm absorbing risk that would otherwise be greater for a larger number of people.

Anyway, given the layout of my house, with master bedroom in the back, and the quiet street I live on, and the good neighbors I'm surrounded by, I feel quite safe now.

This neigborhood is also special because it's where my lady friend has a home also, about half a mile away.  We've made the walk between our homes sometimes, it's not a scary walk, though she has become concerned about 3 of her neighbors who rent and do bad things like burning weeds in their back yard.

We talk about having her move over here.  We have talked about that for 4 years now, and she promoted and remains very receptive to the idea.  It will likely happen in the next few years, I believe.  But I have much house work yet to do to make that possible: moving lots of junk out to Lyndhurst while discarding some of it.  I've now moved the "second-bedroom-to-be-ready-by" date to January 1.  We'll see.

Tossing one of three outdoor lamps

[Corrections.  This post was originally written from a computer distant from the lamps, and I had made a few errors in my original examination.  All 3 lamps turn freely when their appropriate screws are loosened.  However the Kichler is still a problem in that it's far too easy to turn the knob just a little too far and have the lamp fall off exposing insulated wires not reinforced with mesh.  That is partly because you do need to loosen the knob so far to get it to turn at all.  On the others, you loosen a screw just a little and the lamp hinges nicely.  The Thomas lamp swings easily and smoothly from it's backplate so you can easily adjust to have the screws face outward.  I did that and found the lamp to hinge about as smoothly as the Craftmade.  The finish on the Craftmade is clearly spray painted on as I see ripples in the bronze finish now.  The finish on the Thomas is more perfect--such as it is--in crinkled white and aluminum.  The inner ring on the Craftmade is the opposite of a heat sink...it is a rubber seal.  This may be a good idea for an outdoor light if it is not being pointed straight downward.  I intend to point both lamps out to the yard.  The Miracle Bug LED lamp fit the seal with a little gap, perhaps intentional.  The Thomas lacks a rubber seal, perhaps it doesn't need one???  Or perhaps you can obtain such a seal separately.  I still plan to use the Craftmade the but the Thomas might be nicer in some ways.  I think the Kichler has a design problem.]

To replace the panoramic CFL security light at my back door with something less attractive to bugs, I bought 3 different brands of dual floodlight fixtures which will accept any brand of bug light with a standard bulb base.  I've decided I liked the Craftmade BF2 the best (the middle one shown with just one of two lamp bases above).  By my standards, it looks like it has the best construction even though it's also the least expensive one.  The Thomas SL-4942-8 is the runner up, which I plan to donate to Goodwill.  I am very concerned about the construction of the most expensive lamp, the Kichler 6052 AZ, so I decided neither to return nor donate.  I will see if UL is interested in looking at it because it is a UL listed lamp.

The Kichler 6052AZ (which I am judging unacceptable):

I started by ordering the Kichler which was the most interesting looking lamp with the staggered profile that has a distinctly 50's look.  It was the most expensive, but I was expecting a quality lamp as well as a cool looking one.  It arrived in a long box, with the flood lamps pointed in opposite directions to fix.  To correct that, I first needed to rotate one lamp, when I noticed that it had a nut held on with silicone, which seemed flaky, but I was able to rotate the lamp without damaging the silicone.  But then I had to straighten out the lamps.  Each has a knob which you loosen to adjust the angle, otherwise it is held in position by deep teeth.   But I quickly turned the knob too far and it simply came off, causing the lamp hinge to open leaving the lamp hanging from its wires.  Inside the hinge the plastic coated electrical wires were not covered with extra mesh reinforcement.  That's very strange, because the mesh reinforcement is used over the wire everywhere else in the lamp, including in the big surplus of wire available for connection at the back.  The hinge seems like exactly the point where you could damage the wire by doing something like I did: removing the adjustment knob.  Then you have to put the hinge back together and hope the un-reinforced wire doesn't get pinched, stretched, or otherwise damaged.

If they had done this with the mesh reinforcement used over the wire inside the hinge just as everywhere else, I think that would be marginally OK.  It is still a problem IMO that it is so easy to remove the adjustment knob and have the lamp come apart at the hinge.  Also, you HAVE to nearly remove the adjustment knob simply to turn the hinge, because the teeth are so large.  And although I like the idea of having a knob as compared with a screw if it were done correctly, the knob also invites people to fiddle with the lamp position, and if they aren't careful not to turn the knob too far, off comes the light.  Thus, it's an invitation to disaster.

I think the lack of wire reinforcement was not intended by the original designers, but the factory simply had some trouble doing it as intended.  It looks to me like the hinge may be too narrow to allow for both the wire and the reinforcement.  So possibly someone simply decided to leave that portion of the wire unreinforced so the wire would fit.  Another possibility is that the reinforcement is slipped over the wire from both ends, and simply got pulled apart by accident when the lamp was assembled.

Even if you don't remove the knob too far, the hinge moves rather stiffly.  The wire that comes out the back seems to provide resistance to twisting the hinge; it's easier if you simultaneously push or pull the wire out the back.  Of course that is not going to be possible once the lamp is installed.

Anyway, it looks wrong to me, and considering the possibility that I might have damaged the wire when it came apart, or that the fixture is improperly made, I will not be donating.  I will not be returning either because if I simply return this lamp it is likely to end up in someone else's possession, someone who might ultimately get zapped.  I will see if I can send it to UL for examination, and if not, I'll simply throw it away.

Another disappointment with the Kichler was that the staggered bulb cover is thin, much like sheet metal.  It does appear to be aluminum, or at least non-magnetic.  But it does not feel heavy like cast aluminum.  It was advertised as a "cast aluminum" lamp.  The only thing which definitely appears like cast aluminum is the hinge.  The other lamps I ordered were clearly fully cast aluminum construction as advertised, at least for the bulb cover.  You can easily tell the difference, the others are thicker metal which is obviously cast.

After realizing this lamp was not going to be acceptable for me, I ordered two other lamps, the Craftmade and the Thomas.  Both of those look OK to me, but the Craftmade seems a little better so that is the one I plan to use.

The Craftmade BF-2:

You can see immediately that the bulb cover is cast aluminum, much thicker than the metal of the Kichler.  I also dig the bronze finish.  It's a deep and rich brown color and it's so smooth it seems like it could be anodized rather than painted.  In contrast the other two lamps clearly seem painted, and I find the crinkly white on the Thomas lamp looks cheap from a distance (though actually, the white color might be quite practical, and the texturing must have cost them extra).

The wire coming out of the back of each lamp is the heaviest duty of any of these lamps.  Further, there is mesh reinforcement around each wire, as well as around the pair of wires.

The hinge on the Craftmade is larger than the hinge on the other two lamps.  In contrast to the Kichler, it is smooth as silk to twist the hinge into different positions.  The mesh wrapped wire moves very slightly in and out as you do this.  This is what makes me want to use this lamp above all.  The hinge also has some interesting degree marks.  The hinge is tightened with a large Philips screw.

The Craftmade lamp does not use a conventional ceramic base that would be required for the power level (150W).  Instead it has a bare metal base which is bonded to some kind of clear material, which is then bonded to an aluminum heat sink.  That is isolated from the outer shell with some kind of rubber material.  This does not appear to have been done to save money, but to make a better lamp.  Or maybe it was needed because of the compact rear of the bulb cover--but it is only slighlty narrower than the other two.

I suspect the rubber material serves as both electrical and thermal insulation so that the bulb does not transmit heat to the cover and vice versa.  Actually I was a bit worried about that at first.  I could see that the heat sink was bonded with some material to the cover and figured at first they were using the entire bulb cover as a heat sink.  That has the disadvantage that if the bulb cover gets hot from sunlight, it could transmit heat to my LED bulb and fry the electronics.  But further observation revealed that the material between the bulb heat sink and the bulb cover is rubbery, which suggests it would have both thermal and electrical insulating properties, and might even be better than the simple air gap used in the other lamps which could eventually fill up with bug debris.

Above all, it's the silky smoothness of the hinge, enabled by reassuring double-meshed thick wire that I like the most about this lamp, combined with the anodized bronze finish.  I don't really know whether the bulb socket is better than the others, but I suspect it's at least as good.  One potential issue is whether some LED bulbs will interfere with the heat sink on bulb base.

The Craftmade lamp was packed with the two bulb covers removed from the baseplate.  They leave it up to you to attach the bulb covers to the base plate, and so probably you can decided whether to have the screws facing outward for reasonably easy adjustment, or inwards for anti-theft in a high traffic area.

 The Thomas SL-4942-8:

The Thomas also looks like a well made lamp, with cast aluminum bulb covers about as thick as those on the Craftmade but coated in crinkly white paint.  As it comes in the factory box the two bare aluminum hinges are locked with Philips screws which are oriented toward the inside of the lamp.  That means it would be hard for someone to unscrew the bulb cover and steal it.  But it also means it's very hard to actually adjust the lamp.  So I haven't even tried to do that, to see how it would compare with the stiffly-adjusting Kichler and the smooth-as-silk Craftmade.  Actually I'm not so worried about someone stealing my lamp fixture and this is a big inconvenience.  Also the hinge is just as narrow as on the Kichler and so it might also be stiffly adjusting and might also have trouble with the wire flowing through the hinge point.  But I won't know, because I don't plan to loosen those !@#$ screws.  I could also loosen the nuts on the inside and rotate the stems so the screws would point outward.   I could, but I don't plan to bother.

I was thinking, however, just for a moment that I might be better off with the white painted fixture and its ceramic base which is isolated from the bulb cover with an airgap.  That would help keep the electronics of my LED bulb cool.  Now that I see the Craftmade does use a thermally insulating material between bulb cover and base, I'm less concerned about that.

What kind of clinches it is the color.  As it stands now, the white color of the Thomas wouldn't work very well on the back of my house, which is all earth tone colors.  The anodized bronze of the Craftmade is a perfect match for the earthtone colors on my house now.

I would have ordered the Thomas lamp in Bronze but it isn't normally stocked even at internet stores, I would have had to wait for several weeks estimated lead time, and I was curious as to what the white actually looked like anyway.

I might save the Thomas for some future project because in the future, I may be using more white paint in the back of my house, and nice lamps like this with ceramic base may be harder to find in the future.  I used a combination of pure white and Lyndhurst Estate Cream on my Lyndhurst garden house, and I eventually plan to repaint my main house in those colors as well.

Another weekend, another mow

I can't complain too much, I had a 3 day weekend with fun activities filling Friday and Saturday.

But by Sunday it was time to face the mower again, and tackle the back yard, which featured grass ranging from 6 inches to 4 feet high.  The worst was in the far west where I had to mow enough 4 foot high crabgrass simply to remove the solar lights before I could finish the job.  And the grass had wound itself around the solar light wires.

I only returned two solar lights this time, I will add more from my collection of 12 solar lights over time.  It occurs to me that after about mid November the grass will likely go dormant, so I won't have to be removing and re-adding the solar lights so much until grass growing re-starts in late February.  Whew!  I also intend to get the removal and replacement of the lights more easier, or find ways they don't always need to be removed.  But for now, I need to remove the lights before each mowing, and I am barely keeping up with mowing, which is why I haven't replaced most of them.

Hopefully, too, the crabgrass will eventually be overrun by St Augustine and other grass.  While the crabgrass grows 4 feet, the best part of the St Augustine grows about 3 inches.

I didn't trim around the fence or around Lyndhurst.  I also intend to do that over the next few weeks.  If I pull the crabgrass out, which is better than merely trimming it, but it is exhausting work.  Both are exhausting work, but pulling the stuff out is far worse.  This coming weekend I may do some touch up in the front yard instead.

I had an excuse for that.  I couldn't find my regular leather gloves, only my welding gloves.  The welding gloves are great for pushing the lawn mower, but not so great for doing work like pulling weeds.  I bought some new leather gloves on Monday night.

The same excuse also allowed me to avoid putting the Xeripave pavers in front of Lyndhurst, replacing the motley collection of pavers there now.  But moving any pavers definitely requires good fitting gloves.  It's easy to cut skin on fingers, which is terribly inconvenient when you are doing yard work.

Instead I hauled the trash can which has been sitting in the garden tool shed (Oakhurst) to the front, and also finally trashed the #3 rebar which has been sitting on the patio for two months.  The rebar needed to be bent enough to fit in a trash bag, and there's nothing better for that job than welding gloves.

On Monday afternoon I put ant poison on one new mondo ant mound in the back yard and around the tree in the front yard.

Last week I did notice some of the old chemical smell in Lyndhurst after the doors and window had been closed. I opened the window a crack, and after that it didn't seem as bad after that during the next few days, but that may be coincidence.  The smell is far attenuated from what it was in March, and doesn't even always come back when the doors are closed (which may be helped by the lack of door seals).  I think when I noticed the smell the strongest last week was when the wind was blowing from the north at about 10mph.  Perhaps that forces chemical smell out of the north building wall.  Still it's a bit disappointing when just a few weeks ago I had convinced myself the smell was completely gone.

Lyndhurst now needs a good floor and wall cleaning.  Even the shelves, which I have focussed my attention on, should probably be re-cleaned.  Now it's pretty clear I will not be getting to that by November 1.  But I want to get the building cleaned by December 1 and have the contents of my 3rd bedroom moved out there by January 1.

During October I've had the Lyndhurst doors closed mostly.  But re-smelling the smell leads me to want to open them.

Another concern is the bottom door seal.  Grass pokes through and it may be a good entryway for bugs also.  I noticed a walking stick bug inside last week, but it could have gotten in when the doors were open.  Next time I saw it, a few days later, it looked dead.  But there is some funny fuzz around the doors that looks like the evidence of some kind of bug.

Replacing the bottom door seal may require removing the doors from their hinges.  I intend to see if I can find out online.

Front edged, really!

It's been time for a month or so to put out my political signs for the November 2012 election.  But I've been stalling with the argument that I really need to make the front yard look nice first.  Where is the benefit of having a sign posted in the crummiest looking yard on the street?

Well finally, I was able to get the front yeard polished this weekend, and up went my signs on Sunday night.  A friend checked them out on Monday afternoon and was quite impressed with the work I had done.  "Chiseled" was her description of my precise edging.

For years, I've quite often had the worst looking front lawn among houses nearby.  Especially when there have been long periods in between mowing.  And then in the early spring when weeds often take over the lawn after the previous years drought.

Mind you, I think I have a nice looking house.  But for anyone walking down the sidewalk...  Well you couldn't actually walk down my section of the sidewalk for much of the time I've owned this home, because it was covered with crabgrass and dirt, sometimes with the crabgrass 3 feet high.

I have some excuses.  For one, my particular position near the bottom of the street means I have more excess rainwater than others.  Rainwater runs over my section of sidewalk in a heavy rain.  The dirt then builds up, and next thing you know (year or so later) it's covered with grass again.  Grass growing in the cracks makes it easy for the dirt to accumulate behind it.

One way I hope to change this dynamic is to seal all the gaps between the concrete blocks with a self-leveling caulk to prevent grass from growing there.  I have now purchased the caulk and the backing rods needed to install it, but we'll see how long it takes me to get around to doing this.

Meanwhile, no more excuses, running out of time before the election, so I got the front yard cleaned up.  I took the unusual step of mowing the front lawn on Wednesday afternoon before going to work.  I had previously mowed about two weeks earlier but the crabgrass in the front section was rising up again.

The weekend was reserved for the task of doing the edging, and doing it better than I have in 19 years of owning this house.  Often I'll do the front edging on one weekend evening, and whatever I get done, that's it.  It was better than not doing it at all, but far from exact.  This time I wanted to get all the grass off of the sidewalk.  Not just from the cracks in the sidewalk, but on the side, to actually cut back the lawn to just past the edge of the sidewalk--and on the other side.

To understand how much work this was, you have to realize the lawn was very nearly covering half of the sidewalk in places.  (And it's been far worse at other times this year.)

Maybe I didn't really do this very efficiently, because on Day One I simply did what I usually do...I whacked as much as I could out of the cracks in one day.  I did a little better (and I think this is very important if you want nice appearance) I cleaned up all the dirt afterwards.  Usually after cleaning the dirt you find more grass that needs to be edged, and I did some of that too.  But on Saturday night, when I packed up at 7:30 PM I had completely swept away everything that was loose.  I usually don't bother to do that.

Then on Sunday, Day Two, I tackled what I usually don't want to think about.  I got rid of all that overgrown grass.  Inch by inch, I jammed a shovel into the grass past the sidewalk, and separated all the grass and dirt on the lawn side from the sidewalk side.  This was very hard work and I had to take breaks after each few feet of progress.  Finally after doing one big section, I took a flat hoe and then pulled all the sidewalk grass away from the lawn and rolled it up like a carpet.  A very heavy carpet that I had to move in several sections.  I then repeated this a bit more.

I also re-did all the edging I had done on Saturday because the cleaning had revealed more stuff that needed work.

And then one final clean, I ultimately filled up my city trashcan and also a secondary trashcan which I'll have to discard next week.  Probably over 100 pounds of debris in all.

For all edging operations, and some of the sweeping, I used my full face respirator, both for impact protection (the edger can throw little stones) and air filtration (the dirty dirt on the sidewalk and street is about as bad as it gets, filled with pollutants from cars and yards).

Irrigation system...we need this

Nobody tells you that you need an irrigation system, the politically correct way to say "Sprinkler System", anymore.  I think this is because water authorities would rather have customers use less water, and one way to do that is to make it extremely inconvenient for you to significantly water your yard, since yard watering is the #1 residential usage of water, and greatly exceeds all other home uses of water for those people who do actually water their yards.  Even if a professionally installed irrigation system does save water compared to ad hoc sprinkler and hose methods of watering an entire yard, not watering at all uses the least amount of water at all, and without an automatic system, most likely you are not going to be watering an entire yard because it is a lot of work.

While I agree in part that it is desireable that water usage be kept fairly low, I suggest that mainly be done by keeping population and therefore the total number of homes fairly low.  Nowadays, water authorities seem to be in the political grip of developers, who would rather build new homes, often much fancier new homes than the existing median home.  These fancy new homes *sometimes* have expensive landscaping featuring xeriscaping, in the show models, to show the hoi polloi what they should be doing rather than just irrigation their plain old lawn.  But in the run of the mill fancy homes in the fancy gated communities developers like to build homes in there are more likely more ordinary and less costly lawn-based yards with automatic sprinkler systems because fancy home buyers would accept nothing less than full automation, and in fact they need it to keep up with the homeowner's association which mandates green grass.

I might also point out that the residential use of water is only a tiny slice, 10-20%, of the total water used in most places.  The rest is used, often wastefully, in industry and agriculture.  But of course, those activities are about making money, and making money by waste is just what we do.

So full sprinkler systems are fine, even mandatory in expensive new development, while the rest of us in older cheaper homes can rot.  Well no more, not for me!  In a year of making huge transformations to my home and yard, adding automatic irrigation has obviously been one of the biggest transformations.

It was doubly important for me.  Even if I were willing to let the lawn dry up and blow away, and I basically was--mostly, I need to keep the ground moist because the hard clay soil cracks and shifts frighteningly during long droughts.  So it was not uncommon that I would spend 2 hours a week from April through October.  And still, I missed enough weeks that I had signficant soil cracking and shifting, and with all that work I still had lawns that went from lousy to horrible.

I have a little crack in the master bedroom wall near the ceiling that serves as a moisture gauge.  Typically it starts getting wider (from about invisible to credit card thickness) in about April, and peaks around September, is back to narrow in January.

This year, the intense summer rain kept the crack from growing.  It was just barely starting to grow in August when the irrigation system was installed.  Now it is back to winter thickness.

Just after the irrigation system was installed, we entered severe Mosquito weather.  If I had to continue long sessions of late night watering, I would certainly have had to face them.

Plus I was having trouble, spending hours a day, just keeping 3 trees alive.  Now I have 12 trees, pretty much automatically watered (though I like the give the little palm in front a bit more than it gets from the lawn sprinkler there...that was a last minute relocation for the palm and it will be relocated again).

One more important point about all this, is that even though automatic irrigation makes it far easier to use more water by watering your yard consistently and fully, it saves a lot of water compared to what would be required to do all this by other means, even hose watering.

Hose watering is fairly efficient if you really know what you are doing.  But hose watering significant areas of lawn is very time consuming, and it's very difficult to do it uniformly.  So what you end up doing is watering more than you need overall, and still there are areas that don't get enough.

I was using about twice as much water the month after I planted my back lawn in 2008 than I used so far in 2012 after planting twelve new trees and watering front, back and sides with an automatic system.

This suggests to me that the automatic system is about four times as efficient as my previous hose and sprinkler methods.  Plus it really gets the job done, something I was never able to do before, and it does it consistently and uniformly.

I don't know how I got by without it.

Taking stock

Summer has ended, and we've already seen temperatures in the low 50's.  I've started keeping the doors to Lindhurst closed and locked for two reasons.  (1) the chemical smell is now gone, even if I keep the doors closed and check at night or during the day; previously keeping the door closed for a few hours would invariably bring the smell back up.  (2) Having removed the door bottom seal, there is considerable ventilation even with the doors closed.  This may be partly responsible for #1.  The side and top seals have long been missing, so even if the wind isn't blowing the stack effect causes an airflow through the cracks around the door.  And since the door is on the east side, getting the strong SE breezes, wind often forces air in through the door anyway.

I plan to restore the door seals incrementally, starting with the top.  That should reduce stack effect ventilation especially of the kind that causes heat loss, which may soon be an issue.  I have an idea that having the bottom seal on the door while not having the side and top seals--as they have been missing since installation--produces negative pressure in the room through the stack effect.  With the bottom gap open, the pressure is either neutral or positive if the wind is blowing.  Positive pressure prevents outgassing from under the floor mouldings.  The negative pressure to date may have been useful in accelerating outgassing.  But actually, since I've mostly had the doors open, the pressure has mostly been neutral.

The disappearance of the chemical smell, at long last, is a big relief for me.  I can now feel that this project is as successful as it looks, and not a Love Canal.

I could start loading Lyndhurst up with the stuff I plan to store in it now, other than I really do need to finish wiping down the walls (and ceiling maybe) and re-clean the floor.  I also need to finish sealing the A/C and set up the heater.

*****

I continue to be astounded by the transformed yard front and back with irrigation and trees.  It was very good I put in the irrigation at about the time mosquitoes became active.  I would have hated to do my foundation watering outside with mosquitoes around.

It's now been two weeks since the last time I mowed front and back yards.   The last two weekends went like this:  Rain, Trip to Fredricksberg, Concert date, Too Cold To Work Outside.  It needs mowing again especially because of the rain in the last two weeks.  I skipped the Thursday waterings last week, except for watering trees on Friday AM.  The crab grass in the front yard grows up annoyingly fast.  I pulled out one clump of crab grass last weekend.  I've cut the watering time of the front grass section from 30 to 20 minutes.

The trees are all doing great, and proving I did not plant them too early this year, except that the Crepe Myrtle near the gate that was planted above ground still looks too dry, and the nearby Pomegranate has increasing numbers of yellow leaves, mostly on the bottom, but recent a few leaves in the upper branches turning yellow also.  Those two trees suffer in different ways from the very hard clay soil.  The Crepe Myrtle has trouble getting it's roots into the real ground, and the Pomagranate has trouble sending roots into the hard ground that surrounds the rootball.  Both of these trees should have been planted in very wide holes filled with a better draining soil.  Now pretty much all I can do is hope they survive, and I have intentions to move the Crepe Myrtle lower in the soil in November or so.

The last time I mowed, I quickly pulled out most of the solar flood lights.  I have still not put them back.  The nice Frontgate lights near the gate would have been first, but I couldn't find the removable stake that got stuck into the ground for one of the lamps,  I've been avoiding working at night because of mosquitos and cold, and haven't had much time in the daytime.

I broke the wire on on of the Target store lamps.  I plan to fix it by converting it into an all-in-one solar fixture with solar panel and lamp all part of the same assembly.  In most cases, this would work fine, and is much more convenient for mowing.

I now have my mosquito cognito refills and a Dragonfly mosquito trap, but haven't set them up.  In the cold first weekend of October, one of my main accomplishments was replacing the guest bathroom light/fan switch.  Not it needs a slight wall repair also.

*****

I bought two outdoor floodlights.  I've decided I like the cheaper one better because it actually seems to be more solidly constructed.  Since I took apart the other one, which could have caused some damage, I will be keeping it, or possible sending to Underwriters Laboratory as I don't think it deserves the UL rating it has.  I also have the X10 compatible light switch I plan to use with the new outdoor light.

I also have new fan for the garage, part of my plan to negative pressurize the garage during cooler weather.

I am very much loving having Reverse Osmosis chilled water and ice.

Second Weekend in September

I mowed Front lawn, including north and south sides all the way to neighbor's house (so no Mexican Petunias left standing).

(Didn't do: edging around lawn, filling in sidewalk gaps with caulk.)

Installed rectangular zone spray head on last sprinkler, and tested operation (it succesfully waters Crepe Myrtle tree for the first time).  Also reduced water output on head near Pomegranate tree by 50% or so.  Reduced water output on head near Wild Olive tree by about 30%.  Especially wrt the pomegranate tree, I'm hoping this will slow the spread of leaf fungus.  So I changed one sprinkler head and adjusted two others, and it was a lot of fun doing so even if I had to get wet just like a real sprinkler guy.  I also tested operation of the adjustment screw on a spare head.  Possibly other heads could use output reduction also.

I tried several different positions for the Frontgate tree lights nearest the gate, and came up with an approach that works beautifully without causing glare.  Glare turned out to be a big problem with the lighting setup I had created last week.  The correct approach is to aim the light toward the fence but through the tree.  This lights both tree and fence and keeps the glare-y light from pointing at people.  These low power LED lights may have considerable glare.  All the first 3 lights nearest the gate are now adjusted this way, as well as the re-adjusted light on bamboo along the west fence.

When done this way, the tree lighting is beautiful!

I have temporarily put the rock lights on the patio.  I was hoping they would light the oak tree and/or Lyndhurst.  The light they produce is very diffuse and actually lights up the whole "courtyard" area of the back yard (around the Oak tree).  It's a nice light effect, but when you are actually in the back yard the lights have a lot of glare when you are facing them, and you can't even see what is on the ground.  I will move them somewhere else, with the light facing a wall or building.

I did supplemental watering on the pink Crepe Myrtle and the Palm tree.

I pulled some Mexican Petunias near the gate and lots of ivy along the west fence.

I removed the old musty Organ Chair from Lyndhurst and put it back in the garage, but near to the front of the garage so that any smell (it actually doesn't seem to smell much anymore) will not seep through the bedroom walls but mostly get ventilated by cracks around the garage door.  I also moved two bags of soil out of Lyndhurst.  I'm thinking of the possibility of closing the doors to Lyndhurst if the weather gets rainy or cold, so I wanted to get the smelly bioactive stuff out of there.  The official deadline for closing the doors of Lyndhurst is November 1.  Lyndhurst continues to smell fine, I think that cleaning the bottom of the shelves last week was the biggest win.  I have begun feeling, for the first time, that Lyndhurst is a successful project in it's own right after all.

The new back door light fixture arrived on Monday afternoon.

two more lights

I set up two of the Frontgate solar flood lights today, on the pink Crepe Myrtle and the Holly near the gate.  These lights are obviously much better made than the Smith and Hawken (S&H) lights from Target, at not much higher price.  But will they light for as long and as well?

I also replaced the S&H light on the Pomegranate simply by exchanging the flood light with another one.  This week I purchased some nuts which might be able to repair the broken S&H light later.

As I was setting up to do this, the new S&H flood light broke apart in my hands, apparently having not been assembled completely.  The base, glass lens, and lens retainer came apart.  I was able to get them put back together.

I have been worried about yellow leaves on the Pomegranate.  On Thursday afternoon, I removed a few.  But then I seemed to see even more yellow leaves on Friday afternoon.  The ground below it doesn't give a consistent moisture reading.  That is probably the underlying problem, which may mend with time as the roots get better, or need major soil remediation.  Online research suggests Pomegranates often get a fungus which produces yellow leaves.  It can be treated in the spring with a copper fungicide.

I don't think it's a matter of overwatering or underwatering, though it's more on the overwatering side.  But I've already cut back the Zone 2 cycle to 12 minute watering times.  I don't think I can water much less at this time, or cause underwatering damage to this or other trees.

The new 15x4 Rainbird spray heads I ordered arrived.  I'm hoping to install this weekend to fix the underwatering on the pink crepe myrtle.

Lyndhurst is continuing to smell pretty good now.

The big plan for the weekend is to mow entire front yard, which badly needs it now, and edge by the sidewalk.  I could also install all of my new solar lights.  If I really get going, I could install the self-leveling caulk in the gaps around the front sidewalk to prevent them from turning into mini-lawns like they are now.

New Lights

Above is a picture of the Kitchler 6052 Transitional Floodlights from the Islander Collection.  That is what I ordered, from LightingDirect.com, to replace the old back yard security light which I believe is a bug magnet.   The new lights shipped today.

The old light could only be fitted with one kind of bulb, a 27W bluish-white CFL from Lights of America.  The new light fixture can plain old incandescents and floods as well as LED's and LED floods, so there is a lot of room for experimentation, as I have described.  I can try both soft white and yellow bulbs.  Sylvania makes a number of suitable 2700K soft white bulbs.  Here is an example of a cheap LED buglight (I'd like to find something better, but this looks like at least it wouldn't attract many bugs):




The Miracle LED bug light uses only two watts.  They say it's equivalent to 50W of incandescent, but I doubt that.  The yellow color also means it might not seem as bright as it actually is.

*****

New solar light fixtures arrived on Tuesday evening, including 2 sets of 2 solar flood lamps from Frontgate, and 3 solar floods from Target.

I'd never seen the Frontgate fixtures before.  They are much nicer than the ones from Target's brand Smith and Hawken.  The Frontgate floodlights are much bigger and solid metal.  I've already broken the tightening nut on two of the Target floodlights.  (For the first one, I found a fitting replacement nut in my junk box, for the second one, I bought some 6-32 and 8-32 nuts at Home Depot tonight and hope to fix it soon)

The downside might be that the Frontgate flood lamps have two lamps powered by one solar module which apparently has two lithium phosphate batteries.  The Target lamp also uses two lithium phosphate batteries--but for just one lamp.  That might be why the Frontgate lamp has a two position switch, 6 hour or 10 hour.  To get the 10 hour duration (same specification as the Target lamp) it might cut the light level below that of the Target lamp.  We shall see.

Shelf bottoms cleaned

It doesn't sound like much, I know.  But this is the biggest project I have actually done inside Lyndhurst since June.  I believe it was in June that I cleaned the top surfaces of all shelves, after some friends pointed out that they seemed to be the smelliest thing.  That took two weekends, or perhaps 3 weekends in combination with also cleaning the baseboards and removing the smelly old canopy poles.

Then that was it, until Monday September 3, aka Labor Day, when I finally got around to cleaning the bottom of all shelves.  All except the one shelf on the right side, for which I had the foresight of cleaning the bottom when I was cleaning the top (while noting the difficulty of moving the ladder back there).

Same magic cleaning solution as before, at least as I remembered, two tablespoons of Dawn and two tablespoons of baking soda in a half bucket (probably 1-2 gal).  Each segment was rubbed down with a wet cloth, then dried with a large towel.  When I was suspicious additional cleaning would be a good idea, I did this twice, which was about 50% of the time.  However there was no visible grime, only occasional loose paint chipped off.

Now there was actually some grime on the top of the bottom row of shelves, which I had cleaned previously, possibly related to bugs.  I cleaned that back nearly all the way to the back shelf, but clearly all shelves will need an additional cleaning prior to first use.

I also cleaned around the window opening.  Then I realized the baking soda might not be good for the aluminum frame of the window, so I rinsed with a new cloth dampened only with water.  I did that twice with new cloths, and dried each time with a new cloth, to make sure no sodium residue.

The water which had taken on some darkness got dumped behind the power transformer.  All cloths were immediately washed on the 2:30 hour Sterilize cycle.

*****

Also, FWIW, on Sunday I removed the bottom door seals on the French Doors.  I have long thought it would be preferable to allow ventilation through the bottom door gap than try to block it.  It would be good, in fact, to have a hole about the size of that gap deliberately for ventilation and with a fan powering it.*

It might encourage less air intake under siding also.  My thinking is that air coming from the southeast (prevailing wind) pushes its way under the siding around the southeast corner of Lyndhurst.  If it has an alternative path, under the nearby door, it might not be forced to penetrate the foam insulation in the corner and pick up the insulation smell.

I have also been thinking that the rubber door bottom seals could have themselves picked up a lot of smell, or could even be the source of much of the smell.  But I did previously try to clean them off (I think that was in April or May) and I have not smelled much smell on them, even after I removed them.

They were only stapled on each side of each door.  Underneath, the french door metal has what appears to be an open seam.

(*A fan forcing air inside from the outside would be the right choice, I think.  Forcing air inside would create positive pressure which would prevent air from seeping in through the building insulation where it picks up smells.  Having bottom door seal removed is a cheap way of providing a similar positive pressure short circuit.  It is not as good, but was easy to do.)

*****

The main work on Sunday, however, was all the mowing and weeding of the new back yard garden.  And I installed one new solar lamp, uplighting the pomegranate.  Unfortunately, the lamp screw broke when I tried to reposition the stake.  So right now the lamp is just sitting on some weeds, but pointing in the right direction.  I need to get some new screws to fit the bolt.

Thinking the trees were looking a tad overwatered, I cut the Sunday cycle to 1/2.  But then I moved the Wednesday cycle up to Tuesday, thinking that made much more sense.  The trees get watered Saturday AM, Tuesday AM, and twice (AM and PM) on Thursday.

The pink crepe myrtle continues not to get enough water and got some hand watering on Sunday, along with Palmie and the potted plants.  Palmie got the crabgrass around it cut away, but otherwise there wasn't time or energy to mow the entire front yard this weekend.  It must be done next weekend.

I spend several hours relaxing on the patio over the 3 day weekend after sunset.  The back door light was kept off the entire weekend.  I did not notice any mosquitoes near the patio.  I did have one mosquito land on me inside Lyndhurst.  I think it had been affected by Mosquito Cognito and it didn't bite.

So mosquitoes were not a problem, and I continue to believe (despite protestation from a friend) that the fluorescent light attracts bugs including mosquitoes, and it does so because of higher wavelength emissions.

Lights, lights, bug lights

Still thinking about mosquito traps, could buy some outdoor traps any day now.  One issue is that all the units I am interested in require A/C power.  I have only one fully suitable AC power outlet on the side of Lyndhurst.  I could power one trap in that vicinity easily, but not other traps elsewhere, without adding additional outlets, an additional expense.  Although, right now I keep Lyndhurst doors open for outgassing, I can just run wire out, until I close doors sometime in October, then worry about additional outlet wiring next year.

But in a way the more bewildering decision is how to re-do the security lights, now that it has become clear the old security lights were a big part of the mosquito equation because they attract tons of bugs, including mosquitos.

I've already planned and purchased 12 small solar lights for lighting trees and such around the perimeter of yard.  Current backyard security light didn't even do that very well, but did do a good job of lighting out to 25 feet from house.

The front and back door lights need not even be security lights anymore.  I could have pole light somewhere in yards for that purpose, keep from attracting bugs near door.  But that involves a lot of planning, work, and expense.  I could easily imagine spending $2000 on front and back pole lights, including new electrical installation.

So in the short term, it makes sense to continue using front and back door lights with a continued security function, if not identical performance with existing lights, but using less bug attracting lights.

So soft back lit sconces are probably out.  But a open light taking standard screw in bulbs (which seems to be A21) either as a panoramic light-in-a-box or as quasi-spots would work using bulb bolbs, which are commonly available in A21 incandescent, CFL, and LED.  I had been thinking also of real spot-light type LED bulbs, but I'm having a hard time finding suitable outdoor "wet" lamps to hold them.

Here is a two A21 bulb quasi-spot bulb, very traditional, and traditionally inefficient with incandescent bulb.  Light is only emitted out of the type of the bulb cover, and A21 bulbs emit light all around, so much light energy is wasted.  Still, it could do the job with two bug lights of some kind.  With suitable LED bulbs, it would be quite efficient.

A friend liked my idea of modifying the existing panoramic lights with transparent yellow filters.

*****

Took a look at Lowe's today and they have standard outside dual floodlights in white or black.  Also available in both colors with dusk-to-dawn photosensor intended to work with halogen bulbs.  The non-photosensor variety is also available with short bulb covers or the full sized bulb covers.  The photosensor variety had full sized bulb covers, which I suspect are compatible with PAR38 lights.

I'm thinking the photosensor ought to work with dimmable LED floods.  They had some nice looking 15W floods by Sylvania in 2700K.  They also had GE's and a few others.  It didn't seem hard to find 2700K lights, though typically integrated CFL/sensor lights use 5000K and up fluorescents which I now know are bug magnets.

more mosquito and light links

I spent two hours on my backyard patio on Saturday night with security light turned off, and no mosquitos or other bugs bothered me, though I did notice a couple of disoriented mosquitos which could have been disoriented by Mosquito Cognito.

I turned on the light to watch the sprinklers when I cycled them on for a few minutes to check the tree coverage.  In just a two minutes, I had several mosquitoes after me, and ducked back into the house.

I am thinking this shows that the security light is bad for attracting bugs, including mosquitoes, and is better if it can be replaced somehow.  I set up my first 27 lumen solar powered wide angle spotlight from Target on the back of Lyndhurst as an uplight, and it works great.  I have purchased 11 more similar lights, including 5 more identical 27 lumen units, 4 different wide angle spotlights from Frontgate which might even be better, and 2x 20 lumen rock lights.  One idea is that with good enough perimeter lighting, need for central security light is reduced or eliminated.  And it looks much prettier too.  The big security light makes the fabric security shield around my patio opaque, so it doesn't actually improve visibility from the window, can actually see farther with the light off, though it might give intruders a sense of being watched.

I can see why Mosquito Cognito is not recommended for indoor use.  It's quite smelly.  And it gets much much worse if you turn the unit upside down to install the scent cartridge.  Then any part which has already been liquified will spill right onto the floor.  It was a good thing I did this in the garage, as I had only the hard garage floor to clean up, and I did that with scads of wet and dry paper towels.  The unit is designed so that you can install the cartridge right side up, then no spilling.  It took about two days for the smell to fade away from my garage.  Perhaps I got a bit of extra mosquito protection from that.  As I was cleaning up spilled Mosquito Cognito in the garage, there was clearly a mosquito in there.

The indoor Dynatrap 3 has been successful in catching a few mosquitoes inside my house.  But it failed to catch the one that was bothering me for several days in the master bathroom--a key test.  Finally, I killed that one with the Lentek Koolatron bug zapping wand.  I've decided you always need one of those close to hand.  I gave a couple of them to my friends.

Here's a link describing that you can grow lemongrass, marigold, and even citronella around your home to deter mosquitoes.

Here's the best link I've found arguing that warm white LED's are ignored by bugs, but not true for cool white.

Here is some discussion of natural mosquito and bug repellants.

No Mosquitoes Inside on Wednesday morning

I got home from work on Wednesday morning at 1:00 AM.   I closed the garage door using the remote in my car as soon as I had finished pulling in the car.  Usually I close the door only after I have gotten out of the car and shut off the security system, but why leave the garage door open longer than necessary?  Leaving the garage door open allows bugs, possibly including mosquitoes, to enter.

I then decided not to open the back door of my house (a sliding glass door that exits the kitchen and enters the patio).  I have a very bright 27 watt fluorescent security light above that door which always attracts lots of bugs.  I'm now thinking that when I go out there at night, and then come back into the house, mosquitos in the vicinity follow me back in.  I reprogrammed my Rainbird controller in the garage to water the trees at 3am for 15 minutes, and enjoyed watching through the bedroom and kitchen glass when it ran.  This was the first watering since the rainfall on early Sunday morning; I skipped the Tuesday AM watering.  Since I am now worried about mosquitoes, I appreciated greatly not having to go into the back yard to do the watering by hand.

I also put a towel underneath the front door of my house.  The gasket under the door is in very poor condition, and conceivably a mosquito could fly underneath the door.

But in order to get the mail, I did go out and return through the front door, which has the same kind of bug attracting security light as in back.  I could do better on that by getting the mail before I pull the car into the garage.

It occurs to me now that the security lights front and back are a key issue in allowing bugs and mosquitos to enter house.  It would be good to redesign them somehow so that bugs do not swarm near the doors of the house.  Here are some ideas:

1) Get new lights that don't attract bugs so much.  This much require new fixtures also.  I haven't seen anything yet that I'd like.  What I'd like is an LED light with brightness equivalent to what I get with a 27W fluorescent, with automatic lightsensing switch.  This would run on household AC.

2) Get new lights in a different location(s) so the lights by the doors can normally be turned off.  If a new light is positioned at least 10 feet from the door, I don't think bugs would be as much of a problem.  Then I could also put mosquito traps in between the new lights and the doors.

3) Put the door lights on an X10 switch so they can be turned off a few minutes before using the doors.  Then, at 9 in the morning, my X10 central controller can turn them back on again, ready to provide security the next day.  The problem with an ordinary switch is that I always forget to turn it back on until days or even weeks later.

For the front and back security lights, I do like always-on lighting, which I believe provides better deterrence than motion detector based.  Motion detector lights,  especially the solar powered kind, are great in a pinch, for temporary lighting, but not as good for deterrence I think.