April 22, 2012: Successful project completion

Being a Process type, I don't care much whether things are completed or not, it's the process, and continual progress, that counts.  And don't make me use the word "finished!"  Things are never "finished."

But I think April 22 counts as the date of successful completion of my backyard workshop building.  Why?  That is the day I finally got the knob and lock installed.  It wasn't easy (to be explained in next post).

After the lock was installed, I was finally able to call insurance agent to come out to take photos for full coverage up to building cost of $25,000.  So that's when it's official.  I had to quote them a total cost, otherwise the default coverage would only be $7500.  It added about $60/yr to my policy.

Now the door is locked by default.  Insurance agent should see it that way.  Previously I kept the door open to allow outgassing all VOC's.

Let there be light!

Light bulbs, three 60 watt equivalent LED lights, were installed on Wednesday night.  The first bulb was installed in dark.  Then, after installing two bulbs, I decided all bulbs should be re-installed w/o electricity so I can do it tightly and cleanly.  So I got a flashlight and reinstalled the bulbs.

The Hunter lamp assembly has ceramic bulb holders, but somehow they don't seem as good holding as ceramic bulb holders used to be.  It seemed like I could barely screw in the bulbs at all before they couldn't be tightened any further.  It seemed like if I tightened too hard, I could strip the threads in the ceramic and the bulb would fall out.  I tried not to do that, and to make sure all bulbs were fully tightened and square into their sockets.

I the Hunter fan box in recycling and the foam inside it and all the debris left by elecrician into trash.

With all 3 lights blazing at 60W equivalent, the room is quite bright.  The dim on the Hunter switch isn't as dim as I would like.  The reddish wood fan color helps moderate the white balance and make the cool "daylight" color have some warmth in the room.

Electrical Completion!

Just before 1pm, I paid the electrician, giving a check for $893.25 as final payment.  Last thing they did was to install GFCI outlet in kitchen next to refrigerator.  That new kind of GFCI has a bypass for the refrigerator, so even if the GFCI trips the refrigerator will keep on running.  The refrigerator is grounded and any electrical fault will trip breaker while the user always touches either plastic or grounded metal.  The new outlet gets a fancy stone plate.  The old outlet looks like a spec grade Pass & Seymour which I can use for bedroom audio, or maybe it's just a Hubbel.

Before that, JJ demonstrated the fan, it has no wobble.  He warned me that the light chain may need to be pulled (I have not yet installed the LED bulbs) before the light switch will work.  Earlier he showed me how the panel was layed out, as I requested, the air conditioner and heater are on one leg of the 220, and the equipment outlets on another.  My 5600 BTU air conditioner draws only 5 amps so this is OK, and hopefully will never run heat and A/C simultaneously.

The electrician used all nylon unbreakable jumbo size covers.  The A/C and heater have single outlet receptacles.  The equipment outlet, under the window, has a Pass & Seymore spec grade outlet, selected as the best for audio by the late audio guru Bob Crump.  I gave that to the electrician before he started work, along with the Hunter fan speed control.

While the electrician was working, I started sealing the outside of the A/C.  There was a fairly large gap in back, made far larger by the corrugations on the bottom of the A/C unit.  First, I stuffed in the foam provided by A/C manufacturer.  Then I plied on Mortite a minimum of two layers thick so that no foam was exposed.  This took about an hour.  Now looking from the inside, there are gaps outside of the area I sealed, so I need to do more outside.  It was nice working while the electrician was working because it was still before high noon at 1pm, and still shady.

April 18, Electrical finish

Weeks, months of preparation, and here it is.  My preferred electrician, John Jones, called around 8:30, arrived around 9:40, and at 11am is busy at work installing electrical outlets and switches.

Monday night I hurredly washed off all the small parts for the Hunter fan that were smelly.  They were in small plastic bags, and included bolts, screws, and grommets.  I first washed them in alcohol, everclear.  The everclear quickly got a charcoal tint, and after some rinsing, was flushed down the drain.  Then the parts were washed off in gallons of plain water, then individually hand dried with paper towel, then allowed to dry.

I did this all because Tuesday was the last full day of sunshine, for giving the smelly parts the sun treatment, which is about the best thing.  Or at least it makes them seem to smell better, the smell having been baked off, and hopefully not just transmuted into even more toxic chemicals.  I had hoped to do this earlier, but the weekend was plagued by rain forecasts without the rain actually showing up.

Add to this, I had to get to work at special early time for a photograph.  So Tuesday was a very complicated day, putting the parts out in the sunshine before racing to work, coming back home after 4 hours for a nap and dinner, then taking the parts back inside, then going back to work, then to store on way home just before 1am (my cupboards were bare), then back home, and to bed by 3:30am expecting call from electrician at 8:30am.

Actually, one more thing, on the way back to work the second time Tuesday I stopped at Lowes to see if they had identical grommits that wouldn't have any smell.  I didn't see any grommets that looked like the ones that came with the fan.  I decided not to bother with Home Depot thinking this was probably a custom part I wouldn't find there either.  So I checked out some fast food places in the strip mall, feeling strangely hungry again after two Healthy Choice dinners, but one had a pair of police cars in front and the other had gone out of business, so I just ate nuts when I got back to my office.  But driving there, cars in the left lane wouldn't let me in, so I had to drive an extra mile and loop back around to get to the night entrance.  But the worst trip was from home to Lowes (near work) because the sun was was setting  during the last 10 minutes of the drive.  It was especially bad just as I needed to change lanes.  I had to miss my exit so I could wait until I could see safely enough to change lanes.  Then I was able to exit and took a detour on surface streets.  That added another 15 minutes.  All this happens when you're trying to do many things in limited time.

Anyway here I am, work is in progress, and I'm thinking I could do some mortite sealing around the AC before it gets too hot.

Weekend of April 5th

Installed RainHandler at the southwest corner of my house, replacing the one that was knocked down during construction of slab.  I deliberately installed it slightly farther south than the original, so it extends just beyond the southwest drip edge.

Checked out the ceiling fan box sealing, very nicely cured, no more work needed.  Duct Seal is sticking in place.  Electrician is scheduled for Wednesday.

Took canopy cover out of workshop and inspected.  It was completely dry now, so I folded it up, put in garbage bag, and placed in garage which has some continuous ventilation.

Took out plastic tarp used while caulking and put in trash.  Moved equipment such as lawn mower to corner; it would have to be taken out temporarily to clean floor.

Secured ADT sign in front of my house with two stainless steel washers.

Smelly parts for Hunter fan were washed and left out in sun for a day and have little remaining smell.  Screws and rubber gaskets also washed off, first in alcohol, then water, and left out (screws and gaskets done on Monday night and Tuesday morning).  Alcohol immediately got black haze from soaking these parts.  I thought of keeping a vial of the alcohol so some chemist could analyze this black chemical that apparently Chinese manufacturers use as some kind of preservative.  It has a chemical smell like diesel fuel.  But if I kept it, someone might drink by accident, so I flushed it down the drain with lots of water.

Backyard trimmed, ready for electrician

Relatively small cluster of weeds in front yard whacked first weekend; I forgot to take picture of back yard which was completely covered with weeds.

On the second weekend of April 2012 I managed to get the back yard completely trimmed.  Trimmed so completely it almost looks as though it was mowed.  Also finished the mowing and trimming in the front, got the workshop electrical box sealing done, and filled a ground hole created by erosion.

On the first weekend, I had put away the canopy (after 6 months!), mostly weedwhacked the front and the lawn got mowed, but I had only trimmed a couple dozen square feet of densely packed weeds 4-8 feet tall (!) in the back.  The string trimmer had great difficulty cutting some of them, so I also used the tree branch cutter.  Many of these weeds were so woody they weren't easy to cut even with the 2 foot handles of my branch cutter.  But I had constant problem with the string in the trimmer which I just bought last year.  It kept either getting stuck, or, at the end, it just all reeled out for the last few weeds I did that day, so I quit.  I figured I'd buy some more trimmer string during the week, no point in wasting 3 hours on a weekend to do that.  When I go to Home Depot to get something, it often takes 3 hours, counting the time to get cleaned up and dressed first.

So I did get new string, but I had the same trouble, even worse, with the string on Saturday April 7.  Finally I decided to look at the instructions on the package.  It was only then I realized I had purchased the distinctive double line spools for the GH700, and my machine is the GH1000.

OK, it was now getting too dark to do much outside (because I had gotten started so late) but this time I decided to head off to Home Depot.  That way, at least I would be able to get the job done on Sunday.  I did, and as usual it was about 3 hours before I got back home, this time because I also stopped at the grocery store and got enough to fill my empty cupboards and refrigerator for $110.

I was able to resume, this time very early for me around noon on Sunday (Easter Sunday).  With the new correct string, the GH1000 trimmer worked very well, I was able to cut almost all of the weeds except a few of the most woody ones.  I charged through about 250 sq ft of solid tall weeds along the back of the yard and wrapping around the back and side of Lyndenhurst.  I was feeling a bit like the terminator, wearing a full face protecting respirator, and watching the weeds being torn apart by the string.  The weeds seemed like a threatening enemy until they got cut down.  Then, cut down, they almost seem invisible, as if there hadn't really been anything there at all.

I also cut through the tall mint or whatever it is that has displaced most of the actual grass in my back yard.  While that can be mowed just like grass, it was averaging about 3 feet high over most of my yard, and the mower wouldn't like that.  So I whacked it all down to about 3 inches.  Then I trimmed all around the front (with my old trimmer, I'd require a whole weekend just for that) and finished the mowing on the side of the front yard.

I also managed to finish the sealing of the electrical box for the ceiling fan.  I got out the new Duct Seal I had managed to find at Lowes a few weeks earlier and plugged up the holes in the top of the electrical box.  All but one of those holes were backed by framing, but not making a perfect seal.  I pressed in as much of the clay like product as I could, then cleaned it off flush to the plastic.  One of the holes just kept taking more and more clay.  THAT must have been the hole that most of the leakage was coming from.  At some point, I just stopped pushing in clay and just cleaned it off.  It's a small hole, and the sticky Duct Seal seems to be holding.  Then I  put some more acoustical caulk around the shrunken (but gapless) previous caulking.  I didn't bother to do that in the tight areas near screws, those are a big hassle and looked good enough anyway.  Finally the sealing is done!  Now I need to call the electrician.

During the previous week, I washed off three of the small fan parts that seemed to have the most oily smell, including the attachment bracket with small vinyl feet.  I then put them outside in the sun for a couple days.  When I checked them on Saturday afternoon before putting these parts back in the house and out of the way of the trimming operations, they seemed to have much less smell.

I also filled in some of the erosion in the back yard.  Way back, one of the contractors had removed the last RainHandler quasi-gutter on the back fascia board of my house.  His ladder had gotten stuck in it, so he just took it off.  With that Rain Handler removed, the erosion by the south west corner of my house was definitely noticeable. I filled it in somewhat with a bag of topsoil and raked it into the grass.

I was planning to get some aluminum screws to reattach the one Rainhandler that I have, but today I just ordered a whole new rainhandler and a couple extra sets of brackets from the Rainhandler company.

This does do what they say it does, and since I originally installed the Rainhandlers in the back in 2002 the erosion in back was stopped.  But I have one issue with it.  It basically converts the water falling off the edge of the roof into mist.  That mist, unfortunately, doesn't water the ground quite as well as the water.  So the grass hasn't grown quite as well under the rainhandlers as it did before.  (Not really possible to do a controlled experiment, we also had terrible drought last year that killed a lot of lawns here anyway.)  So with the grass not growing quite as well, if you then remove a rainhandler, and you start getting some heavy rains as we did this year in February and March, things go from bad to worse quickly.  But I hope I've caught it early enough.

Right now in the southwest corner of my house the soil is very low around the beam of my foundation.  In fact, at the very corner, there appeared to be no soil underneath it (this has happenened before) so I pushed some dirt down there.  Possibly it needs to have gravel packed in again.  But the worst thing of all is to have an open hole that simply feeds rainwater under the house.

The Ceiling Fan Bracket

A couple of weeks ago I finally took my new Hunter fan out of the box.  It turns out this is a "Type 2" Hunter fan, not the original "Type 1".  It doesn't hang from a mounting bar like the "Type 1" fans.  It has a flat plate that connects to the electrical box, extending slightly out beyond it, with 4 vinyl pads that contact the actual ceiling sheetrock.

As I explained before, it is assumed that the fan might rock or move a bit.  The fan mounting plate transfers some of this force and vibration directly to the ceiling sheetrock via the 4 vinyl pads.

I'm no more fond of this than the original design in which the circular ceiling cover was the part of the fan allowed to rock against the ceiling.

Worse, the 4 vinyl pads have a particular smell that I've noticed before on cheap Chinese manufactured goods (bads).  They have a chemical smell somewhat like diesel fuel.

I plan to wash the pads off in a multi stage process.  First, use Q-tips dipped in alcohol.  Then soap and water.  Then leave out in the sun for several days.

I personally think it would be better to have much larger cushion.  Urethane foam might be nice, but it is highly toxic if burned, and tends to disintegrate over a decade or so.

I've just been too busy recently to get started on this.  Last weekend was devoted to clearing out the weeds and tall grass in front and back of my house.  At least the front yard got fully snapped into shape, I ran out of trimmer string for the back yard.  I also finally folded up and put away the canopy cover (that had originally been used to protect the concrete slab from intense summer sunshine and heat) that had sitting on the north side of the back yard since it was moved off the concrete slab in October prior to beginning contractor interviews.