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.

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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.

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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.