254nm germicidal lamps

Had HVAC biannual maintenance on Thursday.  Technician pointed to stained looking rubber moulding inside blower cabinet.  First he asked if I had any bleach to wipe it down.  I said no.  Then he said I needed to get an anti-microbial UV light system.  I asked for and he provided an estimate, $475 plus bulb replacements every two years.  It looked rather high until I looked online to see people quoted as much as 4 times more.

There are a large number of companies making lamps specifically for HVAC blower cabinets.  There is research published by government authorities on the proven (though limited) efficacy of such systems.  There is also word against the use of such systems by the likes of CARB (the California Air Resources Board) as they are said to be ozone generators (and, by a common description, that is how they work).  Ozone generators are probably the last thing you want in your hvac system unless there are high levels of biological activity and no other way to stop them.  Ozone is very toxic.  The common way to stop such things is to reduce humidity, which is said to be high inside blower cabinets.

It turns out that the system I was apparently being quoted for, Fresh-Aire UV AHU, is not an ozone generator because it uses a 254nm light (unless you order the "odor control" option which includes additional 185nm bulb(s).  A 254nm light looks like a good idea to me.  If you look at the CARB list of suspect UV lamps, you will notice the Fresh-Aire UV model they have listed is different, not this one, and probably an older if not discontinued model.  It is apparently possible for UV germicidal lamps not to be ozone generators.  It's funny that Fresh-Aire's manufacturer does not tout the non-ozone-generating character of this system, though they decided do make non-ozone-generating aspect a major feature of their more expensive Purity system.  Some manufacturers tout the ozone generation as a desirable feature.

Now in winter, an HVAC should not be a locus of high humidity.  In fact the typical problem I'm facing is too low humidity, as dry cold winter air is heated inside making it even drier.  So I add humidity with a room humidifier located right next to the main HVAC air intake.  (Aha, ,this could be the thing causing rubber parts inside to stain.)  I use this humidification only when the humidity gets very low, as I've dcciddd to minimize the use of supplemental humidification precisely because of the risk of mold, etc.  But because I do sometimes add humidity, I should probably be adding the germicidal light inside.

In summer, it's different, the HVAC system is removing humidity, and when the blower is not running, indeed water evaporation from the coils can very well make the inside of the air handler high humidity.

Quick fix for air leak and door knob

At first I thought the Queen's Room was much better sealed than the rest of my house, especially compared with the old master bedroom (before remodeling).  But now that cold weather has hit, it's clear that the new King's Room is tighter and warmer than ever before, thanks to the remodeling.  And the Queen's Room has been a bit colder.

It was clear that the issue in the Queens room is the new closet.  Standing in front of the closed closet door is the coldest place in the room (and it's even colder inside the closet).  I measured temperatures as low as 20 degrees below house temperature on the closet floor.

Feeling around the closet itself, the primary source of coldness is the exterior wall side, which is less than two feet.  There might have been air leakage from the garage sides, but the garage itself is under constant depressurization from the new exhaust fan, and it didn't feel cold along those two sides of the closet floor as it did on the exterior wall side.  I could feel a draft from the gap under the shoe mold trim in the closet on the exterior wall side.

After discovering all this, my first plan had been to rip out the baseboard trim (which builder Rob nicely put around the inside of the closet floor) and then seal the drywall to subfloor gap with acoustical caulk (as was done in the King's room, and likely the reason it is so much improved).  But this is "serious" work for an amateur builder like me.  I was thinking of looking for videos and such pertaining to removing baseboard trim.

Then I was also thinking I might wait until I have Tom back to do some other work, and add this little project to that bill.  This could be Jan-Feb.  Meanwhile, I could use mortite or something to seal up the gap under the baseboards (in the close) as they are now.

I started looking at what I had on hand.  Mortite, if I had any left, is out in Lyndhurst and I did not feel like going outside in the 35 degree temperature to get it.  I did have some Blue Tack, but probably not enough to fill the gap and I'd like to see the MSDS for blue tack before using it as a sealant.  I could use regular caulk to seal the gap, but it would be smelly and messy and would make a permanent mark on the closet flooring.  Since the long term plan is to remove the baseboards and caulk behind them, a temporary fix would be better.

I tried using some wood door shims, thinking I could break them off piece by piece under the moulding.  This worked for the first two pieces, but after that the thicker size of the shim required wasn't breaking off easily.  I might well break the shoe mould trim.

THEN I found the solution: using the polyethylene door seals that came with the two acoustical doors.  Those are top quality, ISO, made in Europe to high standards.  I could squeeze pieces of door seal under the trim, and the polyethylene flaps of the sealing strip would push and seal just as if the trim were a door and the floor was the jamb.

So that's what I did, I cut several pieces of the door seal and pushed it under the shoe mold.  I tried to get the pieces as close together as possible.  In most cases, I had to trim the seal back differently in each piece to get it to fit in the gap available.  Doing this, I was able to seal that entire side of the closet floor.  The appearance is OK for a closet floor.  I don't notice it at all when standing up, but when sitting down you can see some white plastic peeking out from underneath the shoe mold in parts.  I did not remove the paper backing on the door seals, so they are not adhesively applied, but they are held in place very strongly by friction.

The difference is considerable.  The feeling of draft on the floor has been eliminated.  The cold floor of the closet is not as cold as it was.  When you open the closet you no longer feel the cold air with your feet.  There is considerably less cold in the corner when the closet door is closed, though that is still the coldest part of the room.  I think the whole room is a bit warmer, though I could be fooling myself.  Still, it was a worthwhile improvement considering the investment in time (about 30 minutes) and material (none).

*****

Still thinking about the Queen's room (and my friends suggestion she will sleep a bit there on Wednesday after work) I'd been bugged by the way the expensive Baldwin passage knobset sometimes sticks as if it were locked.  This happens when the door latch button is pulled as far out as it can go in the strike plate, so the back of the latch is rubbing against the inside of the strike plate.  That's unfortunately where it ends up because the pressure from the door seals pushes the door out as far as it can go.  It also ends up that way when you stop pushing the door closed the instant the latch closes, rather than pushing it all the way into the door jamb (about another 1/8 inch), which is also a natural thing to do.

I examined the latch and the strike plate carefully, and noticed that there was some bent metal inside the strike plate on the top side.  It could be this very metal which was sticking on the latch button.  I pounded the metal up, first using a hammer and a big screwdriver, and ultimately using a big center punch.

Now this could be my imagination even more than the seal fix described above.  But it seemed to me the door was sticking far less as soon as I started bending the excess metal (which probably resulted from a forced installation of the strike plate into the jamb) upwards, and continued to get just a little better with each further bend.  Now one could also go to far with a hack like this.  If I pounded too long or too hard I could break the strike plate off.  Then I'd be in big trouble.  So I didn't push it too far, but clearly the top of the inside of the strike plate is open up to the very edge of the strike plate, when it wasn't that way before.

So I think this is much better now.  Usually I don't notice the knob sticking at all anymore.  Even when I push against the door hard to simulate the problem, even though it does then stick a bit, I can still turn the knob with a reasonable amount of extra force.  Previously it needed a bit more than a little extra force, it seemed as if it were actually locked, and the only way to get the door open was to push the door toward the outside first (which, in a panic, you might not think of doing).

So with these two quick fixes, I think I've made the room much more habitable.

*****

Last week I bought the lowest priced Craftsman 5 drawer tool cabinet ("standard duty") for an incredibly low $85.  I set this up last weekend by clearing the work table in the Laboratory into a big plastic bin I also bought last week, and then moving the cabinet into place.  This is a big practical piece, but not fancy.  The sheet metal feels like thin sheet metal, but it works.  I would not want this piece in a room where I play loud music, for fear of the sheet metal ringing with the music.  Unfortunately it takes up about half of the working area on the table now.  I think it should eventually go on top of a similar or higher grade tool cabinet bottom part in the corner of the room.  But that corner of the room is now filled with "junk" which I'll have to clear out first.  (Some of that junk is just stuff I don't use often, not that I necessarily want to move it out to storage, so there is some thinking to do.)  I am only slowly moving tools from the old box on the floor up into the new cabinet.  Redundant tools will eventually be put in the garage working area.

*****

I finally got around to labeling the switches in the Queen's Bath.  The switches were in an old fashioned (I think it's from the '60's) layout, with a vertical light switch, and two horizontal switches, one for the fan and one for the "heat lamp."  (Though they are falling out of fashion, I *like* heat lights, not the red kind (it makes little difference if heat lamp is red wrt the heat it emits) even a 100W white spot light provides noticeable warmth when you are getting out of the shower, and the extra light is nice too.)

The problem with this switch arrangement is that it's not intuitive.  Even after living in the house for 20 years, I could not tell you whether than fan switch was on top or on bottom.  Almost always I flip the wrong horizontal switch if I want only heat lamp or fan, and then have to switch the other.

So I got out my new Dymo labeler with the clear tapes (most attractive IMO) and made simple labels for all three switches, LIGHT, FAN, and HEAT.  Actually, I first tried making the horizontal switches labeled like this:

"OFF     FAN    ON"

To make it clear which side of the switch is ON (even that is not entirely intuitive, as it tends to be with vertical switches in the country of your birth).  But all that extra lettering looked clumsy.  And the truth is, you can generally intuit which side of the switch is on or off pretty quickly.  (I have never had any trouble with that, at least that I can remember.)  What you really need to know is which switch is for the fan and which is for the heat lamp.

So after trying the more complicated labels I went back to the simpler ones.  If you were very chic, you still might find it tacky.  We'll see what my friend things about the new labels.  While not as elegant as I might like, I still think I prefer the new labels to none.

Moving the City

It's been a good week.  The biggest accomplishment was getting the City to turn off the water that had been flowing down the street for over a week.  It was flowing because of some leak inside a house at the top of the street that looked abandoned.  I called the City on Wednesday.  First I called 311, then they told me to call the water company (SAWS).  SAWS told me that a problem had already been reported and they gave me a case number (after I asked for it).  That night I still saw water running, so I emailed my city councilperson.  I got a call the next morning from someone who had been contacted by councilperson's office.  He told me that SAWS cannot shut off water of a paid-up customer without an order from code compliance, but he would get that done.  Actually, right about then I noticed that my water taps were flowing very slowly.  It turned out that SAWS had put a notice on my door a few hours earlier telling me that water would be off while they did repairs.  Later in the day my household water had come back on in time for me to take a shower, but the water was still flowing in the street.  But by that night, the flowing water in the street had stopped.  I also found out that a neighbor or two had also called SAWS.

In all this, I can't determine whether my email to the city councilperson made any difference.  It was possible my first call the day before, or a neighbor's call, had already set wheels in motion and it was just a matter of time before the fix was made.  But also it could have been that SAWS would have done some repair and still not shut off the water.  Things often go like that.  Anyway, the combination of actions taken by me and neighbors fixed the problem.  I also sent thank you to city councilperson, giving them full credit since I don't know for sure otherwise.

The water flowing down the street actually had a slight tributary that ended contacting my front lawn.  I walked around that area and did not feel any mushy ground, but a friend also did that and she did feel mushy ground and warned that it might damage my foundation (about 35 feet away).  I thought that very unlikely, but when I emailed my city councilperson I said the water was flowing into my yard and could cause damage to my home.  It is probably a good idea to mention such adverse possibilities when trying to get something fixed.

I think I may investigate building up the yard in that spot where the water entered which is a slight depression (though mainly the issue is that the sidewalk drops a bit).  I will get some sand and dirt and fill it in a bit.  My friend suggests putting a decorative boulder there, but my feeling is the water would just flow around the boulder, but the boulder might be nice to cover up the added sand.

*****

I've been getting used to the new adjustable bed.  With the "head" (which is actually the last 30 inches of the mattress) lifted up, the remaining flat portion of the bed is much smaller.  So when I left my down comforter at the foot of the bed as I used to do while watching TV, I simply kicked it to the floor.  I then tried using a fluffy throw instead, and I kicked that to the floor as well.  So finally I got a new relatively thin black coverlet on Monday, washed it on Tuesday and was using it on Wednesday.  The trick is to actually make the bed (well duh, but I previously hadn't usually bothered).  I fold the top sheet and coverlet back at the half way point in the bed.  Then, if I lay on top of it all, I don't kick it to the floor, and when I tire of watching TV I can stick my feet and legs under the covers even without lowering the head.  Though I've also found I like lowering the head to about 20 degrees for sleeping, or about 40 degrees for watching TV.  I don't like to have the bed perfectly flat, even for sleeping, at least that's my feeling so far.  A slight head tilt even seems to help when I'm sleeping on my side, but it especially helps when I'm sleeping on my back.

I no longer need the down comforter at all.  A thin coverlet is sufficient.  The King's Room feels substantially warmer now, probably mostly thanks to the sealing that was done during remodeling.  The room was sealed around the top with mud (there was lots of cracked mudded paper that got replaced with solid mud) and sealed with acoustical caulk at the bottom.  Even Tom didn't much want to do that sealing with acoustical caulk but I got him to (and then, I did some additional sealing on top of his quick pass which had some crucial weak spots).  The Queen's room didn't get that treatment.  When I complained to my previous builder Rob about the gap between floor and drywall, he simply said it would be covered up with baseboard.  He seemed somewhat irritated by my complaint and I decided not to press him further.  But now I notice that the floor near the southern wall, and especially near the new closet (and moreso within the closet itself) gets cold on cold days.  I'm thinking it's precisely the floor sealing which builders hate to do (they just like to cover things up) is what needs to be done.  I may remove the baseboard in the closet and seal it with acoustical caulk myself.

*****

 On Thursday I got a 5 drawer tool cabinet from Sears.  I've always lusted after the big cabinets on wheels and wanted one, but though they were too expensive.  This month they had about 8 different cabinets on display, all the way from "Standard Duty" to super premium heavy duty.  The Premium Heavy Duty and above are quite expensive.  But standard duty was not.  I could have gotten a complete 6 foot high cabinet for $209.  But since I don't have room for the whole thing yet, I just got the 5 drawer top unit, which was a steal at $85  That will go on the worktable in the Laboratory, replacing the plastic bin that's there now.  Currently the entire Laboratory is a huge mess, including the work table, partly because I've had to dig through all my tools in my tool box several times in the past few weeks.  It always seems the tool I need is at the bottom, no matter how many times I try to put the most useful tools on the top.  So it was clear I needed a multi drawer unit.  I was happy that Sears was able to sell me just the top cabinet at the discount price (at first the salesman tried to charge me the full price, but I showed him the display where it showed the discounted prices for each separate piece).  On Friday it seemed like they were trying to hide the Standard Duty storage cabinets behind stuff they were moving around.

Thanksgiving Surge

Quite often my Thanksgiving holiday weekend (and right now I give thanks that I've always had the good fortune to enjoy these, which unfortunately my friend doesn't anymore, she worked two unscheduled double shifts during this 4 day period) hasn't been very productive, except for adding to my middle line.  But this Thanksgiving weekend was very productive, as I measure it, I got lots of things done and crucially, these were finishing-things, finally-getting-around-to-things, as well as exactly the things I had hoped and planned (that is, I thought of them a few times) to do.

First and most important, I got the new Queen size bed for the King's room completely put together, and even slept on for the first times (Saturday and Sunday nights).  When the weekend started, I had barely unpacked the last two boxes of mattress foams, and still needed to carve out the questionable spots with an exacto knife, and attempt to vacuum out the larger spot.  I was beginning to wonder when, as in what week, I'd finally get the new bed together.  I did the spot carving and vacuuming, and even put the mattress completely together twice.  The first time under the incorrect assumption that the base layer's of the king's side were unexpectedly soft, too soft it seemed by a finger test, to be the kind of "firm" mattress I wanted.  So I put the firmest D95 (box labeled as XX Firm, not the X Firm I had ordered) in the middle, hoping it would firm things up a bit.  It did firm things up a bit, and then it was immediately clear the moment I laid on it that it was way too firm.  Well I paused then and decided to put off the final assembly, possibly until Monday, I got right back to it that evening and reassembled the mattress in the "correct" order, with the firmest layer on the bottom, and decreasing firmness up from there.  The result has been a mattress that initially seemed like it was too firm, but working especially great in the tv-watching mode, which is the way I have subsequently decided to keep my mattress all the time, as I sleep nicely that way as well.

I also got the new DVD cabinet secured to the wall.  I certainly intended to get that done before sleeping in the bed, and amazingly enough, I did, though I later figured it was stable enough without the wall brackets so long as there were no DVD's in the upper half.  I skipped the wall anchors provided by the cabinet manufacturer and used 2 1/2 inch screws, which I carefully screwed right into the wall studs.  Because my cabinet is several inches from the wall the included bracket wasn't really long enough, so I attach the much longer screw I used about 1 inch from the actual wall.  To keep the rack from moving backwards, I wrapped electrical tape around the screws.  This sounds hokey but is remarkably effective (I can't see how it could possibly fail) and it allows the cabinet to be slightly decoupled from the wall so that wall vibrations (not uncommon from music played by very effective speakers at 46 inch tall subwoofer) don't transfer to the cabinet.  I also kept the screws sticking out just a tiny bit (1/8 inch or so) of the bracket, and twisted a piece of electrical tape into that gap as well, so providing some acoustic isolation on both sides.  As a result, I have not noticed any vibrations in the cabinet at all, even when playing very loud bass music.

Along with securing the cabinet to the wall, I also covered up all the visible grooves (which shouldn't have been visible) in the cabinet panel, which had been provided folded twice over.  Those grooves had been filled with tiny bits of styrofoam which had broken during shipping.  I had been unable to vacuum or otherwise remove all of the styrofoam debris from the groves still visible when the pieces were unfolded.  So I had planned to use electrical tape to cover the grooves up, but hesitated because it sounded like it would look tacky.  Actually, once I started covering up the grooves with electrical tape, I actually thought it looked nicer.  The black shiny tape actually gave the cabinet a more luxurious custom look, where previously the slightly scruffy looking grooves were looking very tacky.  Anyway, many of the grooves would have been covered up by the shelves anyway, and ultimately by the stored items (dvd's, cd's, sacd's, dvd-audio's, vhs tapes, and even beta tapes).  And just so, the electrical tape is covered up as well, which is fine.  But none of that styrofoam dust will be entering the airstream.

And I also got all the shelves installed in the cabinet as well, which was no small feat considering the number of shelves.  And then, I moved all my dvd's and other items from the two previous racks into the new cabinet.  I could probably move another rack's worth of items into the cabinet now as there is so much room left over.  I put one of the now unneeded racks with a FREE sign on the sidewalk at 5pm on Sunday night (worried that it wasn't the best time to do that) and it disappeared in 2 hours.  I put the other rack into Lyndhurst.  Finally, the King's Room was getting cleared up again (the racks had been hogging all the extra space).

And I installed the new mower blade in the mower, and tested it out (but not much testing...).

And, I got the new iRobot Scooba 390 charged up and had it clean all three new vinyl plank floors (Queen's, King's, and hallway).  After doing the King's room, and the first pass on the Queen's (because it stopped in a kind of non-standard way, I figured it had not actually completed), it needed a 3 hour recharge.  After the recharge, I ran it a second time in the Queen's room (it still stopped with blinking power light rather than empty tank symbol) and then ran it once in the hallway.  I could have run it a second time in the hallway, but I figured not charged enough, so I cleaned it up and set it back to recharging in the King's room on it's pad.  Though another pass on the hallway would be nice, all 3 floors are much much cleaner than they were before, which I can feel with my bare feet.

So all that, and I also had a nice thanksgiving dinner with friends on Thanksgiving Day, and had a very nice meeting with my friend on Saturday night (she tested out the new bed), and I would have had very nice meetings with my friend on Friday and Sunday nights as well, and I had been ready for that, but she got assigned those unplanned second shifts.

arranging the latex foam bed layers

All 6 pieces foam pieces have arrived from Sleeping Organic.  The last two latex layers were discovered on Monday morning, following the delivery which had happened on Friday.  They were discovered tucked between the trash can and the garage.  The weather had been cold (down to 40's or even below) and rainy.  The boxes were turned on side (which was probably best) and the top box was quite wet, bottom box partly damp.  The driveway slopes downward from the garage so there had been no pooled water, and there was partial protection from rain from the trash can itself and from the 12-20 eaves over the garage door.  I took the 2 wet boxes off inside the house and dried off the inner bags inside the house all day.  Then I opened the plastic bags: two very heavy acrylic bags taped and twisted at the ends, and several inner large trash can bag layers.  There was no specific evidence that water had entered the bags, or condensed within.  The mattress labeled XXFirm on the box (which Chris Mullins called X-Firm, but the official label is D95, and Sleeping Organic calls this XXFirm on their website, along with D100) has 2 or 3 dime size spots, which could have come from minuscule water entry (though even I'd say this is unlikely), internal condensation (somewhat more likely), or manufacturing (probably most likely).  My plan is to cut these small edge spots out using an exacto type (actually Stanley) knife I purchased during the week.  That's on the agenda for today (Black Friday).  I will using a cover to protect the remainder of the mattress from cut latex dust, and vacuum afterwards.

3 of the 4 pieces which had been taken into the house on Friday within a minute of delivery were visually perfect.  The D90 among those 4 has a 7 sq in light spot (about 6 inches long and just over 1 inch in width) along the top face, which could be dust or grease from the shipping floor, or it could be a manufacturing flaw.  I asked Chris Mullins and he said that spots are normal in natural or organic mattresses, and come from slight burning that occurs when the latex is poured or shaped by hot rollers.  Since 3 of the 4 mattress pieces looked visually perfect, and the one that has the spot seems to have been made and cut in a more sloppy fashion.  It could have come from a different manufacturer.  OK, this additional evidence does suggest manufacturing rather than packaging flaw.  But I still wonder.  There's even a remote possibility that it could be something like mold, but it doesn't particularly look like mold.  It is a very light spot, and what it most looks like is dirt.  I haven't yet tried vacuuming it but now that I'm likely to keep it (since Chris says he cannot guarantee any other piece will look better, and if I return this piece I might very well get a worse looking piece) I will try vacuuming it now.

I was thinking of putting a small piece of paper or cloth above the funny spot.  But now I've decided to move the spot to the bottom of my side of the mattress pile.  I will be putting the D90 foam on the very bottom, with the spot on the "top" side actually turned down and resting on the bottom of the mattress cover.  That way, there will never be air blowing through it.  Then, I'll put the perfect looking D95 from the Friday set in the middle.  Then, the Medium Firm Organic.

Putting the firmer D95 on top of the D90 will add a slight sense of firmness, I believe, as compared to the more typical ordering of having the D90 on top.  Turning the D90 upside down will also do that more slightly.  I'm finding that even the D95 is not quite as firm as I would have expected for the X-Firm that I ordered, so a slight increase in apparent firmness would be welcome.

Another feature from putting D95 on top of D90 would be a slight increase in resonance, aka bounciness.  The latex foam is very damped feeling, I'd say over damped, compared with an innerspring mattress.  Having the densest piece in the middle of the stack would create a natural resonance system, like having a rock tied to a rubber band.  Now in the case of the over damped latex foams, and only a slight change in density, this resonance will probably be just barely noticeable, if at all.  But I think this slight feeling of bounciness will be a good thing for someone like me who likes to play in bed.

The other side will have the second D95 (the one that was taken inside on Monday) on the bottom, the medium firm that was taken inside on Monday in the middle, and the Talalay Soft on top.   Thus no piece with any visible imperfection or shipping goof is on top on either side, and the pieces with the worst visible flaws are on the bottom on either side.  I figure the other side will be used by a lighter person, who plays less in bed also, and this will minimize the airflow through the shipping goof pieces on that side, which are most likely perfectly fine anyway.  My worst regret about what Chris shipped is actually that he sent a Soft talalay rather than the medium I ordered.  But my friend tested it and likes it.

An alternate arrangement would be to put both D95's on my size, leaving the other side to have D90 (with spot turned downwards), medium firm, and soft.  I'm thinking that would make the other side be too soft in comparison with my side.  And it wouldn't give me the opportunity for bounciness.

***** Update

I've tried both the standard progressive and "bouncy" arrangement.  The chief problem with having D95 on top of D90, with medium firm on top, is that the resulting bed is too firm even for me.  Whereas to my finger tips the D95 seems fairly soft, as a bed it is very firm indeed, and to have it as the #2 layer makes for an oppressively firm bed.

So I've gone back to having D95 on bottom, D90 in middle, and medium firm on top.  This has an overall feel not unlike my old mattress, but slightly firmer.  This is not totally deficient in bounciness either, in fact it's hard to tell if it's any different in bounciness than having D95 in the middle.  It might even be more bouncy, because having the D95 in the middle does add significantly to the firmness, and the firmness seems to oppose the bounciness after all.  The additional firmness is the most obvious thing about having D95 in the middle, but next to that is non-linearity.  As you push down on it, it's very firm up to a point, then seems to give away slightly.  Not good, actually.

Sheets for Adjustable Beds

It's surprisingly difficult to google for sheets for adjustable beds because "adjustable bed sheets" could also mean sheets that are adjustable but intended for flat beds, and such "adjustable sheets" are quite common.

I emailed Chris Mullins from SleepingOrganic.com and he was very helpful as he has been all along (having answered about 20 of my emails so far...well, he got my big order for the adjustable bed and mattress too...I don't bug businesspeople if I'm not serious about making a buy, and if they answer my questions ok they get the order).  He suggested a sheet with 13" pocket would be fine, and that the SleepingOrganic sheets came that way.  (I'm not sure if he meant they ALWAYS come with 13" pocket, or whether this is a special order.)  I emailed him back asking to buy a set.

I also found two websites with sheets specially made for adjustable beds.  GoldenRest has a large number of options, including Organic sheets (at an even higher price than SleepingOrganic).  If I were to buy from them, I might go straight for the highest priced 600TC sheets.  Their ordering process requires you to specify thickness of mattress.  I might want to have my mattress on hand for that, or add 1 inch to the nominal 10" thickness it is supposed to be, or maybe 2 inches.  But unlike Chris' recommendation, GoldenRest uses wings and anchor straps.  I'm not sure if that method is as good as the large pocket method.  The "wings" especially sound funky...what's going to pull the sheet back under the mattress if it pulls out?  Still, I might try their offering later.

BeyondBeds.com offers the sheets made by Leggett and Platt for adjustable beds.  Just as Chris advised, these sheets simply have an extra large pocket (though I'm not sure if it's the 13" he recommended).  Now the Leggett and Platt home collection is available elsewhere, but just as I described in the first paragraph, it's incredibly hard to find retailers who sell the ones made specifically for adjustable beds because Leggett and Platt makes flat beds too.  The offering by BeyondBeds sounded just right (though, not Organic fwiw) in quality and price and brand-name (of a leading adjustable bed manufacturer) as well, so I have just now ordered a set from them.

I'm not sure I've ever had a Sateen sheet set before.  I've always gone for Percale, which is smoother than Muslin.  I think of my mother's favorite muslin sheets which to me were like sandpaper.  But Sateen is said to be the smoothest, so we'll see.  We'll also see about the durability.  My current two sets of sheets are from Mervyn's, a store that no longer exists.  I think I bought them in the mid 1990's.  So they're at least 15 years old, and as far as I can tell as good as new, not that they were all that special when they were new, but still a fairly smooth percale, in black.  I haven't found any sheet sets made for adjustable beds in black, so I'm ordering an "ivory" color instead, (or "natural" from SleepingOrganic).

The new King's Room Phone Line

On Monday night and until around 2am on Tuesday morning, I finished installing the new (restored) phone line in the King's Room.  I attached the wire around the southwest corner of the room and up to the builder-installed phone jack.  From 20 years ago, I had drilled a small hole in the plate of the builder-installed jack panel to run a wire through it, but it was too small for the new wire, so I drilled out the hole to 1/4 inch.  Stapling the wire to the wall just above the victorian baseboard was easy and fun with the Acme 37AC stapler.  The hard part was wiring in the new cable to the old wires in the wall.  That was especially tricky because the old wire was cheap and very thin.  So much so, I broke off pieces of bare copper wire from the old line 3 times doing the installation and had to re-strip the old wires.  Fortunately, I strip wires just about as well as I ever have with my primitive wire stripper.  The new wires are twisted with the old wires on the Green and Red lines, then screwed down to the screw terminals on the jack panel.  On the second wire, which I broke twice, I twisted the two wires together starting with the insulated portion of both wires, to provide additional strain relief.  The actual old wires follow the new code (which the electrician called Canadian but I'm not sure) so that Red is Blue and Green is White/Blue.

After screwing the panel back in firmly, I hooked up the original King's room phone, and called my cell phone, and it worked perfectly and I detected no extra noise either on the phone or from the recording.

I continue to like the almost invisible appearance of the Acme 37AC staples and the way they permit the black wire to run nearly invisibly on top of the black baseboard.  I decided to replace 3 of the first staples I used (the Arrow T59 6mm black insulated staples) with Acme staples along the east wall where the new night stand will go, because they will sometimes be visible.  I left in place 5 Arrow staples around the corner and starting on the south wall because those staples are going to be hidden by the new CD rack anyway, and I'm loath to create more tiny holes in the wall from removed staples.  Though the holes created by the removed Arrow staples are themselves so tiny as to be nearly invisible, I worry about gypsum dust coming through them, and was thinking about putting drops of paint on them to seal against that.  It's amazing how much I can worry endlessly about such tiny details.

Assembling the Atlantic Oskar DVD Rack

I knew this Atlantic Oskar CD/DVD rack has assembly and sturdiness issues.  But there just wasn't anything else I could find online that had the same enormous capacity (1080 CD's is the headline number, but more important is the number of DVD's it can store, 504) and would fit into the 40 inches available along the already crowded south wall of the King's Room.

The previous weekend I assembled the Ameriwood nightstand (very easy to assemble, and satisfying result) I had wanted to assemble the Oskar as well, but spent 3 hours merely cleaning off the broken strofoam bits and dust off of all the pieces and the floor afterwards.

So this weekend, I had to do the assembly, if for no other reason than to satisfy my need to make progress (i.e., catching up with all the stuff I've bought).  I hadn't even realized it, but I REALLY had to do the assembly because my monthly party is next weekend.  Somehow it didn't seem like a last-sunday-of-the-month party would fall BEFORE Thanksgiving, but it does this year.

But the first thing I did on Saturday was actually to pick up my new pants at the tailor (I had skipped that last weekend), then I picked up two kinds of natural steak at Sprouts (I got one steak "all natural from USA" and another "certified organic, grass fed, and free range," from Ecuador).  I made a home cooked meal (first time in more than a decade) with pan fried steak and served my friend (before she had to go back home for a nap before going to work 3rd shift).  She has been looking too thin to me, so making a first class meal for her and me was my highest priority.

Only then, and it was about 8pm or so, I got to the rack assembly.  It started fairly quickly and easily, but the pieces were installed in a peculiar order so finding the correct pieces became one of the most difficult parts.  And while I didn't over tighten the screws were it said "be sure not to over tighten",  I possibly did overtighten some of the screws on the bottom where it did not give that warning.  Nothing became free-spinning or loose, however.  I was trying to get the bottom screws more level with the bottom panel, but apparently that isn't possible.  The unit will essentially stand on it's own bottom screws, no matter what you do.

Once I got all the frame pieces together, around 11:30 PM I decided to call it a night.  I had heard that one of the trickiest bits is where you turn the unit upside down and nail the back on, because before the back is on it's very flimsy.  In fact, it's rather flimsy even after you get the back on.

On Sunday I got back to the assembly work on Sunday afternoon.  Turning the unit over was not as hard as I thought, and I spent about an hour lining the back pieces (and nudging the frame a bit) so the back lined up perfectly with the frame.  Strangely, several of the nail holes seemed covered as if the manufacturer had changed their mind about whether nails were appropriate at those spots.  As there were many leftover nails anyway, I went back and nailed the "covered" holes also, and added a few more to the bottom as well, since I had been concerned about overtightening some of the bottom screws.

Finally I get to standing the unit upright, and it nearly comes apart in half (as several posters complained).  The top piece had come a little loose around the metal tightenters (some of which pulled out of the particleboard on the screw side, not the tightener side fortunately, the metal tighteners were still good).  I pushed it back on, and it was standing and leaning on the living room bookcase OK.

But then I noticed that in the parts package (an unwieldy piece you can't turn upside down or have all the nails spill out) there were some wood dowels I hadn't used.  I went back through the instructions and found they were used in the middle and top pieces.  I had overlooked them because those steps had two parts, the first part involving setting the tighteners in place.

At first, I didn't think I'd bother with the dowels.  Too much trouble to take everything apart, and I had already stripped the phillips head groove on the tighteners, possibly they wouldn't stand up to a loosening and re-tightening anyway, then I'd have junk.  But I also thought about the possibility of the unit top falling off.  That shouldn't happen anyway, since the top is going to be secured to the wall, but I didn't want to worry about it.  Also, the notable flimsiness in the middle, it really should be better.  So I decided to take the unit apart and do the dowels in the middle piece.  But not bother with the dowels in the top piece, which is also held in place through nails in the back, and doesn't face the same kind of twisting tension as the middle.  (If I were to add the dowels into the top, I'd have to remove the nails and itw would be a big mess.  But the back is split in the middle, so no nails would have to be removed to add the dowels in the middle.)

Taking the upper and lower assemblies apart was fairly easy (just loosen the screws).  Putting the dowels in was very easy too.  But getting the two completed halves back together was very very tricky, and I tried doing it with unit laying down (impossible), standing up (it seemed impossible again), on it's side.  Finally I got the two halves together with the unit standing up.  The trickiest part was alighning the tightening nuts beforehand.  I had to use a flashlight to see the now-worn markings on the screws correctly.  It was critical that these tightening nuts were all alighned correctly.  Then the two halves came together well.  The unit is much more solid (still not exactly solid) with the dowels in place.  Funny, the dowels are not screwed in or anything, they only provide a little bit of friction, but that little bit is enough to make the whole assembly much better.

By this time, it was 7pm, and I actually had to rest a bit before getting enough energy to cook dinner, the Organic Free Range Grass Fed Beef steak, which was wonderful, and I saved some pieces for my friend who loved it too.

Sometime around 8:30 I got to work moving the dresser and other CD rack around so I could fit the new DVD rack in place.  I also started on running the phone extension wire from the permanent jack near the window in the King's room to the night stand.  Remember last week I bought Radio Shack Indoor/Outdoor phone wire, and ordered a new staple gun and staples to do the job like a professional, I thought.  Once the new rack is in place, I would not be able to staple the new phone wire behind it, so I had to do this job now.

I like the way the Radio Shack phone jack box has big screws to screw down the wires, instead of the push-down jacks used by professional installers (which never seem to work with any push-down devices I buy).  The phone jack recepticle fastens to the wall either with adhesive (not tried) or screws, I just pushed and turned the small screws right into the drywall which holds fairly firmly but would not stand up to a strong pull (ok, no kids in household).  As weak as that might be, it's still probably less likely to fail than the adhesive back.  As the phone wire comes out of the recepticle it is also stapled to the wall right there, that's probably at least as strong as the screws.  The phone wire is then stapled to the wall using the new Arrow T59 stapler and 6mmX6mm insulated staples, which looked like the best solution for 7/32" wire just slightly less thick than Cat5.

But after using these new staples, I decided the installation did not look as professional as I thought it would.  The big black insulated staples look funky, and the wire still isn't held tight enough to be perfectly straight.  I took out an alternative stapler which I've used for years to hang Cat5 wire, an Acme 37AC.  That can actually hold several Cat5 wires or coaxes per staple.  I decided to switch over to using that along the south and west walls.  The Acme 37AC staples are far less visible because they need no insulated portion--the staple gun simply insures that the staples will not go too far.  Even though the room under the staple is larger, the wire seems to run just as straight, or even straighter, as the wire falls to the bottom part of the space available within the staple, so it is then resting right above the baseboard.  The Acme staples seem to grip the wall tighter also, it's fairly easy to pull out the Arrow staples.

I did not quite finish running the phone wire along the south wall by the end of Sunday night.  I did get it run completely past where the new rack will go, and behind the dresser and the CD rack however.   And I adjusted the location of the dresser so the new DVD rack will fit perfectly in place.

Meanwhile I've been running the new ceiling fan in the Kings Room continuously to help outgas the foam rubber smell from the new adjustable bed frame.  It does seem to have gotten better after a few days of being set up.  I also unboxed the Scooba 390 floor mopping robot, but did not start charging the batteries yet.

LED lamp runs 20 years? But only 2000 hours?

I replaced the 3W LED lamp in the wood shade pole lamp I use for background lighting in the King's Room (nice for watching TV) with a 7.5W incandescent.  The 7.5W incandescent gives much more pleasant background light, which seems to require no more than 50 lumens.  The LED lamp emitted 100 lumens, as I found looking it up online.

But then I noticed something peculiar in the specs.  The bulb is said to be good for 20 years at 2.7 hours a day.  Since I run this lamp at least 7 hours a day, I guess that would mean less than a 10 year lifetime.  That isn't what I'd consider a 20 year lifetime.  Who runs a lamp for only 2.7 hours a day?

But it gets worse.  The lamp is also shown as having a 2000 hour lifetime.  That doesn't add up if you can run it 2.7 hours a day for 20 years.  The latter would require this many hours:

365 days/y * 20 yrs * 2.7 hours/day = 19710

That's more like a 20,000 hour lifetime, which is a lot more than the 1000 hour lifetime of a typical incandescent.  But 2000 hours would be only twice as much as the incandescent.

Insteon vs Z-Wave and other home control protocols

Here's an interesting dialog including proponents of several well known home control systems, Insteon, Z-Wave,  Zigbee, and UPB.

Here's an interesting article about a somewhat outlandish ADT Pulse installation (which uses Z-Wave for home automation functions) following by a long dialog between professional installers of Crestron, Lutron, and other high end home control systems.

Just when I thought Crestron and Lutron were about the only names in high end home control, here's some news about more than a dozen others, including the likes of AMX, Bitwise, Control4, and Elan.

Just browsing around you can find endless other "home control systems" though many of them are simply extensions to or re-brandings of the systems mentioned above.  For example, Nexia is a packaging of Z-Wave components and an internet based service that lets you control the Z-wave components remotely.  I don't have much need for controlling my lights and appliances from miles away, and I wouldn't pay a monthly charge for that kind of service.  When I'm away, I'm fine with timers and the like automatically determining what lights should be on, etc.

I got started long ago, late 1970's or early 1980's, with X10 remote control devices.  Notably I put an X10 dimmer module in my master bedroom (in a different house in a different city).  I liked that because I could control it from the bedside.  I thought the X10 dimmer design was very funky and unintuitive.  There were no up or down buttons, you held the button or something like that to dim after turning the light on first.  There was a tiny hard-off switch below the push button.  If you turned the switch off there, you could not use remote control.  The full-on-first-then-dim approach of the original X10 dimmers meant that I could not program my dream light system, which would wake me up by bringing the light up slowly.  I discovered that even with a CP132 computer interface I could not get around that.

Neverthess, I was hooked on remote control, and didn't see a reason for anything beyond X10 for a long time.  When I moved into my current home 20 years ago, I deployed X10 modules almost immediately to turn stereo on and off from bedside, likewise the table lamp, and before long the corner lamp in the living room which runs automatically during dark hours.  But by the late 90's I was having more and more trouble with modules not responding.  It had to do with the increasing use of small solid state power adapters and computer power supplies.

While the X10 company as it existed by then seemed to have no interest in solving old problems (instead moving on to flaky video senders, video cameras, and security systems) another company, Smarthome, seemed to have higher quality X10 gadgets and a variety of filters and other devices to make X10 more reliable.  I went down that path for a long time, and am still doing it today.  I've managed to find a configuration of remote senders (it matters which outlet you plug wireless X10 receivers into...it matters a lot) filters, phase bridges, and so on, and my X10 system as it exists today with about 10 devices works OK mostly.  But it seems I can't add anything more and get X10 to work any farther than it does now.

Smarthome made cool dimmers (like the one I have in the kitchen) and also the powerful Keypadlink switches.  The multiple programmable buttons made it possible to have something like a cheap control panel for $50.  In contrast, what would a full blown Crestron panel cost?  $1200?

So I became a Smarthome junkie because they seemed to have the best in X10 (either in their Smarthome brand, or another brand sold through the very large and helpful Smarthome online store), but I was reluctant to jump onto their Insteon system when it was introduced.  I certainly liked the idea of dual band (powerline and RF) and greater reliability it promised.  I couldn't imagine that there was anything wrong with it.  But I didn't like the comparatively bulky control units and their limited number of preset unit controls.  I very much liked the streamlined X10 mini pads with 9 rocker switches and a dimmer switch.  Those small mini pads fit in key locations like my nightstand.  The big Insteon controllers did not.  I waited and waited for Insteon to make a smaller controller and it seemed like they never did.

Finally, when I was adding the new back patio light this year, I found that I could not simply order another X10 Keypadlink as I thought would be nice.  Smarthome didn't make X10 Keypadlink anymore, only an Insteon equivalent.  However, I learned it could be programmed to understand X10 also.  So I got the new Insteon Keypad, and to be sure all would turn out OK, I also got an Insteon ethernet interface (which Smarthome had on sale).

It turned out that single-band ethernet interface could not make the single 10 foot hop from a kitchen outlet to the back patio light.  Not from anywhere I could plug it in having ethernet access.  And I had lots of other problems with the software.  About the best part had been the iPhone software, but that only worked about a month, and then I couldn't remember how to log in anymore.

I did program the new keypad to understand X10, but that didn't work from my main X10 timer interface.  Once again, the line was too noisy.  So my solution?  I simply leave the outdoor LED lights (which consume about 2.5 watts apiece) on all the time.  So much for home control.

Now when I went back to Smarthome to complain about the Ethernet interface I had purchased, I couldn't even find it anymore.  Though it had been a Smarthome mainstay (apparently) for about a decade, it quickly disappeared from their website about the same time as I was having trouble and wrote my first scathing review right in this blog (which I'm not sure anybody actually reads).

Now it seems Smarthome only sells a dual band ethernet interface.  Well that's certainly what I should have bought in the first place.  And it sounded like the software might be better too, or I could get something different.  So I bought the new interface.  That was sever months ago, but it's been so low on my priority list I haven't opened the box.  I'm not even sure exactly what I ordered anymore.  Was it an ethernet interface or a USB interface?  Perhaps it was a USB interface I needed to get the better software.

Anyway, with one foot in the past stuff that still works OK, it's been hard to jump too far out past X10, and before I had any experience with it I couldn't imagine why there'd be anything wrong with Insteon.

But it may be worth considering other alternatives now.  Z-Wave is an RF-based system supported by many manufacturers, including Leviton and GE (and even ADT, in their new Pulse system).  That sounds like the major alternative.  However, it turns out that even Z-Wave is not an open standard, fwiw.  All makers of Z-Wave devices have to buy the Z-Wave chips from their only manufacturer.  And it troubles me that Z-Wave is only RF, though it is also a mesh system like Insteon.  Still, on the face of it, it's not immediately apparent that Z-Wave should have more reliable transmission than dual band Insteon:

Insteon    Z-Wave
900mhz   900mhz
linecarrier   no linecarrier
mesh        mesh

The Insteon protocol seems to have everything Z-Wave does, PLUS it adds linecarrier and X10 compatibility.  And Insteon devices are generally cheaper.  Smarthome has generally seemed like a good manufacturer, too, and nice retailer, though not without problems or questions, as I said, the first Insteon Ethernet interface I bought was useless and awful.

But NOW I find out about the endless number of additional systems, including Zigbee (a more sophisticated RF system, but one which unfortunately relies on the crowded 2.4Ghz band), UPB (apparently an improved and open linecarrier system), and so on.  Of course I don't have the megabucks to buy a full blown Crestron or Lutron system.  I had been thinking that with a Vera or Vera-lite controller I could control Z-Wave, Insteon, and X10, and that might be the way to go.  Smarthome sells the Vera controllers and also Insteon and X10 interfaces for them.

Housecleaning service begins, adjustable bedrame arrives

On November 14, the housecleaning service I contacted last week came over and cleaned both bathrooms, the entry mirror, the kitchen floor, the sliding glass door, and the outside glass table.  I decided not to have them touch my new vinyl plank flooring in the hall and two bedrooms, or anything in the living room, or anything else not listed, to be safe from accidental damage.  They did a nice job, even doing lots of little unexpected things, like cleaning the soap dishes in the bathrooms.  They worked hard for 2 1/2 hours and charged $80.  I gave them a $30 tip and should possibly have tipped even more.  We talked about doing my housecleaning just like this every month, on the Thursday preceeding the last Sunday of the month (when I have my party), and that's now the plan.  This was a family business with husband and wife, but the wife has cancer and had surgery yesterday, so the husband works with a hired lady who only spoke to her boss in Spanish but otherwise seemed nice.  I couldn't have imagined nicer cleaning people.  Hopefully this is the beginning of a new clean home lifestyle.  I hope to get my Scooba 830 to clean the vinyl plank floors and leave them germ free.

(Speaking of germ free, my germ paranoid friend came over shortly afterwards and wiped down the faucet handles and door knobs with sanitizing wipes.  You can get terrible germs from cleaning services, she said.  She is also paranoid about electricity, and asked me the night before how the stuff in my computer room was supposed to be safe from starting a fire.  We've been through that same question before.  I may have a ton of collectible audiophile equipment on 90" of Scandia shelving, but hardly anything is actually plugged in, just two printers and a router.  The rest of the stuff in the computer room is awaiting repair, sale, or future use.  I'm very very careful about electricity.  I never overload circuits, I know how much current each thing plugged in actually uses, and it's always far less than the wiring can handle.  I had the 20A breaker (installed by the home builder in 1983) downgraded to a 15A breaker (which code now requires for 14g wall wiring the home builder used) to be extra sure the breaker will catch anything bad before a fire could start in wiring.  Despite using vast arrays of equipment since I was a kid, I haven't blown a breaker in over 30 years.  I did get shocked once about 40 years ago and remember it well.  My surge suppressors often have their own circuit breakers, but I never plug surge suppressors into surge supressors; only non-surge strips should be plugged into surge strips, and I pay careful attention to which is which.  Everything in all three bedrooms has GFCI protection through key GFCI outlets following my vision (but actually installed by electricians, except for the first GFCI outlet which I myself installed over 20 years ago and it still works fine).  What all that means is you basically can't get injured from shock.  But I'm so careful, I've never even tripped the GFCI's (sometimes it happens anyway from power surges).  How many people even know about all these things?  I say all this, but she still seems unimpressed, she looks at me as though I were some careless teenager, and I don't like that.  I should have 3 or more PhD's for all my areas of expertise, including electrical design, but I get no respect  from women, going way back to my own mother (though I felt mother gave far too little respect to my freethinking ideas and personal ideals, it was my mother who had me doing electrical installation and plumbing when I was 16 years old--and I'll admit, I really wasn't qualified then).  I once worked as an electronic technician in an audio store where I routinely repaired high voltage tube equipment, and believe me, I was the most cautious of all the techs there by far.  Nowadays, I don't do electrical installation myself because I prefer having the best electricians do it, and less for me to worry about.  But I continue to learn more and be far more knowledgeable than most people and their mothers about electronics as well as electrical safety.)

While the cleaners were operating, a "logistics" company came and delivered the new Ergomotion 400 bed frame.  I had paid $150 extra for "white glove delivery."  After scoping out the room, they removed the adjustable frame from it's packaging outside on the street.  They carried the frame in it's own padded cover to the door, but then slid the frame down my vinyl plank hallway.  I almost stopped them, but noticed the frame cover was padded and likely wouldn't damage my floor.  When I spoke to the dispatcher the day before they said that the bed "would be carried by two men" so it would not drag on the floor--and then that's what they did anyway.  I didn't think about possibly damaging the padded frame cover, which it did--just a little.  When they left there was a finger sized black smudge on one side of the frame cover, and a few small tears on the headboard side.  I brushed off the smudge with a dry cloth so that it all but disappeared (it's now about the size of the edge of a nickel) and rubbed the loose threads so they are mostly blended in with the cover.  It could have been worse, but it was not as good as I had hoped.  They almost trashed the warranty card (I fished it out of trash they were going to throw away) and one guy came back from the truck with the manual--after they had formally left.  They were at my house a total of about 20 minutes.

To me, it's pretty obvious where the greater respect is due among these service people.  And quite possibly this proves the power of relationship, the cleaners are hoping to establish a long term client relationship with me, the logistics people were hired by someone else, all they wanted from me was the signed release of liability.  I sometimes wonder if I'd get more respect from women if they could imagine being on my payroll too, rather than imagining me as an overgrown kid needing a motherly nag more than anything else.

Progress on many fronts

Two weeks after mowing front and sides lawn perfectly AND edging (on the weekend after I got a warning from the city to cut my lawn within 10 days), I did it a second time.  I'm getting used to the country club look in my front yard; I've never had a house with such a perfect lawn--largely thanks to RainBird irrigation installed last year, I haven't done any chemical treatment and hope to avoid it.  And I was also worried about getting another warning.

I probably wouldn't have gotten the first warning had I not slacked off for 4 weekends following my cataract surgery.  The week before surgery I had given my lawn a very good mow, knowing the risk of city citation.  Then we got several good rainy days.  Most of the lawn wouldn't have attracted attention, because it's now almost entirely slow growing St Augustine, except in the very front near the sidewalk where crab grass shot up to 3 foot height in 4 weeks.

The back yard didn't get as much attention, but on the first mowing weekend I cut the shoulder high crab grass around the oak tree.  I did some trimming around the patio on the second mowing weekend two weeks later.  But that second time I mowed one of my solar-powered accent lights (which had become invisible becuase it was buried in thick grass).  The lamp is injured seriously and I'm not sure I can repair it.  Speaking of lamps, I did repair the wires relating to one pair of Frontgate lamps--using soldering iron and heat shrink--just before my surgery.  The mower worked, but with much more vibration than usual.  I ordered a new mower blade online from Sears with express shipping and it arrived just before last weekend, when I didn't get around to install it.  Soon I will, I hope.  Fortunately, there probably won't be as much need for mowing as the weather has turned sharply colder.

Instead, last weekend I focussed on assembling the new bedroom furniture, a new night stand (for the second person) and a new giant DVD tower rack which I hope will replace my two existing DVD racks and then some.  I did assemble the night stand on Saturday, and then went to hear the Symphony with my friend on Saturday night.  When we came back to the house she liked the new nightstand and put it to use right away holding her wine glass while we watched a documentary.  I had done all the assembly very carefully and had even re-mounted the handle a second time to avoid the exposure of any unfinished surface.  The Black Forest color has some grain in it that you might think comes from it being a thin coating on the particleboard.  I'm thinking that the grain is mostly in the plastic coating itself, but it also helps hide imperfections.  I had chosen this particular piece not because it was about the cheapest nightstand you could get (though it was pretty close to that, at $49), but becuase it was the only one I could find in two days of web browsing to meet the fairly strict dimensional requirements, it had to be very small yet still have a nice shelf and height.  As I was completing the assembly, which took about 3 hours, I had been thinking about my mother's saying, often sarcastically, "a thing of joy and beauty to cherish forever," and re-wording it to "a thing of joy and beauty until it can be replaced with something better."  But it may actually be good enough for a long haul.  The manufacturer Ameriwood might be the same that made my bedroom dresser, which I've had now for about 16 years, and still have no plans to replace.  What is particularly nice about both units are the smooth gliding shelves.  The plastic finish is only so-so in both cases, but better than any attempt merely to paint particleboard.  I don't like formaldehyde emitting particleboard, but in the case of the nightstand there isn't much anyway, and it's close to the floor any formaldehyde emissions would sink to.

But I made no such progress on Sunday.  When I started unpacking the 1080 DVD rack (actually the 1080 number is for CD's, not DVD's) from Atlantic, I noticed that the styrofoam package inserts had broken and there were tiny stryofoam balls and styrofoam and cardboard dust over everything.  Every single piece needed to be carefully vacuumed off to remove the styrofoam dust.  Some of styrofoam crud is now permanently stuck to the cardboard piece that forms the back of the rack, at the seams where the adhesive material that holds the 3 pieces of cardboard together has adhesive exposed.  I tried very hard to get all of it out of there, but some remains still.  Finally I cleaned up the box itself and put into recycling.  Then I cleaned the floor.  All that cleaning work took about as much time as assembling the night stand had taken.  I carefully placed all the pieces on the couch.

One motivation for assembling those furniture pieces NOW was that I had just finally ordered the new adjustable bed for the King's Room from Sleeping Organic during the previous week, and I thought it would be good to have the new furniture in place.  Well the adjustable frame is now going to be delivered tomorrow (Thursday) but it actually won't be a problem to move the DVD rack around it just as I would have moved it around my existing bed.  I hope.

Meanwhile, I'd also ordered a Scooba 830 floor mopping robot to keep my new vinyl plank floors clean, and it arrived today.  I'm having housecleaners come out Thursday to clean the bathrooms and the kitchen floor.  I've decided not to have the housecleaners mess with the bedrooms or the bedroom floors or the loving room.  I'll do my usual vacuuming in the living room and have Scooba clean the bedroom and hallway floors.

Previously I had ordered two Gallo A'Diva speakers for the Queen's Room, and just last week I bought longer screws than had been provided so I can be sure they bolt securely to wall studs.  I wouldn't feel secure with the wall anchors that came with the A'Diva wall mounts.  Last week I received the new Audiosource A100 amplifier to drive the speakers but haven't unboxed it yet.  I also got flat white adhesive speaker wire which can be attached fairly invisbly to walls.

Electricians installed the new Casablanca Stealth fan on Monday, and fixed the loose outlet near where the adjustable bed is going to be.  I was going to have them put in two new phone lines (one for each bedroom) because the original wires I had put up had to be taken down for the new baseboards during the remodeling.  But when they quoted me $450 per jack, I decided to have them do just one jack.  That'a a high price anyway, google says that a phone installer would charge $135 per jack, but the electricians earned it, attaching to the laundry room telephone hub through the attic, and making the new jack appear from nothing at the best location in the wall, and wired with Cat5 wire which is the current standard for telephone wire, they said.  I will install the new jack in the King's room myself, much as I had installed the earlier jack 20 years ago that had to be removed.  I've purchased nice black Radioshack indoor/outdoor phone wire that will be run right above the black baseboards and held in place with black Arrow insulated staples applied with an Arrow T59 stapler.  I ordered the stapler and staples on Tuesday night after deciding it would be much neater, and just like a professional installation to use staples rather than the various styles of clips I had purchased from Home Depot on Monday.  The Radioshack wire has very thick black plastic outer cover, and the 24 gauge copper wire is probably at least as good as the wire that comes to the existing outlet in the King's room which was placed inconveniently near the window by the homebuilder.  Nevertheless, the Radioshack phone wire might not be as good as the Cat5 wire installed to the Queens room, but it is good that the Queen's room has the best wire of all from the central hub because the Queen will need a Fax.

I had also intended the electricians to install the new Legrand video doorbell (after I had discovered that it would be necessary to drill pilot holes for all the screws into the fiber cement siding) but after they quoted me $180 for that job, I decided to do it myself, though who knows when.  But hopefully not too long as I already disconnected and removed the old doorbell button.

Another change which helped get the Queen's room cleared again was that my friend offered to take the pedestal hunter fan I got as a "free gift" when ordering the Casablanca Stealth for the King's Room. I was happy to help load the 55" high box into her car.  I already have two nice pedestal fans, though the Hunter is different in that it appears to be a real metal fan.  But the plastic ones I have may be easier to move, and I may not even be needing the nicest remote control one in the King's room as I now have an even nicer remote control ceiling fan.

Just before my end-of-the-month party in October I cleared out the living room which was stacked with junk which went into Lyndhurst, which itself had to be re-organized a bit.  Not much more was cleared out until the last couple weeks, when an additional large box of VHS tapes had to be moved out, along with more books and dvd's from the King's Room.  Also in the last 4 weeks I've set up the heater inside Lyndhurst, but also gave it some more adjustment a few days ago.  The remote thermostat seems to work better at 70 degrees than 69, and because of the remote thermostat the lousy thermostat on the heater itself can be set high, currently to #4.  I've set the air conditioner up to 87 but the A/C still seems to run occasionally even when the temp is in the low 70's (though it's hard to tell when it may only be "sensing" the air by running the fan), so the A/C is now timed only to run between 1 and 7 PM, along with the 87 degree setting.

 

Casablanca Stealth also has some noise under vaulted ceiling

On Monday November 11, electricians installed the second fan I purchased for the King's Room, a Casablanca Stealth in Graphite with Dark Walnut blades.  Though not quite as thin and sexy as the Haiku fan, it is also very nice looking and contemporary.  The Walnut blades matched the color of the Haiku Bamboo blades as exactly as I could determine.

But when the fan was powered up to top speed, I heard a small bit of chuffing noise.  Chuffing was also one of the ways I described the Haiku fan at it's 4 highest speeds.  The noise had some similarities, but was also quite different, mainly from being far lower in level.  I'd guestimate the noise to be 20-30dB lower, or about 100-1000x less energy.  It also didn't have the peculiar double-chuffing sound that's characteristic of a helicopter.  This was more random, less complex, more like flipping a deck of cards.

There also seems to be a little instability at the top speed.  The gap between the motor housing and the lamp changes rapidly, and it almost seems like the motor itself is shaking a bit.  But you only see that movement close up, from 8 feet away the fan looks perfectly stable.

I worried for the first evening that maybe the electrician had not attached the blades with perfect alignment, and that perhaps there was some imbalance.  However, the instability occurs only at the very top speed.  At lower speeds, the fan is perfectly stable.  If there were any static imbalance, it would actually become more visible as the fan slowed down.  Then I also observed that at the second-from-top speed, the fan is perfectly stable looking, and the chuffing sound is almost undetectable, being perhaps another 20 dB lower.

All this evidence fits the interpretation that there is something constant about the room that was affecting both fans, and I now strongly believe it is the vaulted ceiling that puts a strange load on the fan blades, and that is the underlying cause of the noise.  With a perfectly flat ceiling, both fans might be much quieter.  The DC motor of the Haiku is servo controlled and electronically reacts to the strange load, resulting in the double-chuffing heliocopter sound.  The AC motor of the Casablanca also reacts, but at the level of the laws of electromagnetic forces, hence a simpler single-chuffing sound, and possibly greatly reduced by the much higher mass of the Casablanca Stealth.

The Casablanca Bel Air fan is quieter than the Stealth, and much more stable looking at top speed, but if I were to move the Bel Air into the Kings Room under the vaulted ceiling there, it might well be noisier and equally unstable at the highest speed.  Or worse!  The Bel Air is significantly lighter than the Stealth, and so it might react even worse to the vaulted ceiling than the Steath.

Anyway, I'm quite happy with the second-from-top speed of the Stealth, and it probably provides most of the cooling I need.  It is far quieter than my pedestal fan at any speed.  A good ceiling fan is a wonderful luxury in an already fully climate controlled house.

Haiku Divorced

I gave it a shot.  I spent $1400 for a Haiku Bamboo fan for the King's Room with all the accessories (LED light kit and wall controller).  It arrived, and I spent nearly another $300 to have it installed by my electrician on a Friday morning.  It looked incredibly beautiful, and was about as powerful as my Casablanca fan in the Queen's Room: powerful enough!  But it had a peculiar sound that I didn't like (more about this later).  I tried to fix the problem by removing and reinstalling the fan blades following the directions exactly (which the electrician did not think necessary).  According to the directions, the fan blades are supposed to be installed with the fan motor turned upside down and before it is hung to the ceiling.  The electrician had always installed the blades after hanging the motor--less likely to damage the blades that way.  I removed the fan and reinstalled the blades and then re-hung the fan on Saturday evening.  All my work made little difference, if any.  About then I noticed that the Haiku had been sold with a 30 day satisfaction guarantee.  So I took down the Haiku fan on Sunday and called Big Ass Fans on Monday.  They told me that the sound I described was not normal, and that they would be happy to send me a replacement fan.  But I did not want to take another chance, so I asked for a refund, and they graciously offered a full refund and to skip the restocking charge.  That divorce was the best part of all!

I'm still working on the re-packing, though, with no diagram or picture provided (I asked but they didn't provide anything).  The fan has many parts which don't quite fit into all the openings in the styrofoam that goes into the shipping box.  Not to worry, I've done a lot of very careful packing over the years, but I still worry obsessively until it's all done and the box out of my hands.

Now about the sound I heard.  It starts with the 3rd lowest speed and got louder to the top speed (10).  It's a pulsing, chuffing sound.  I eventually plan to post a recording and/or movie, but it turned out to be very hard to record...masked by the noise in my smartphone microphone, but still audible in my best recording.  In practice, laying on the bed with the fan on speed 10, it was very audible to me...audible to the point of distraction, and I kept hearing it in my mind for hours.  I have characterized this sound as being "like a helicopter" but that's being far too harsh because it's not very loud and many people either wouldn't notice or wouldn't object to it.  But if you can imagine a heliocopter 1,000,000 times softer, that's what it's like.  The fairly low level was why it was so hard to record.  My friend didn't notice it at first until I asked her to listen from close to the bed, then she did hear it.

Now there were several reasons why I decided to try the Haiku instead of just ordering another Casablanca fan, which had been my first plan (following on the success of the Casablanca Bel Air in the Queen's Room).  I did like the looks better, that was for sure (and I liked the looks even more when I had it in my room).  But the #1 reason why I decided to buy the Haiku fan was that it had been advertised as being quieter than any other fan.  I wanted a fan that would be quieter than the Bel Air.  I slept in the Queen's Room for a couple weeks while the King's Room was being remodeled, and I came to love the incredible output of the Bel Air.  What an incredible luxury to have wind blasting on you and at your command!  And the Bel Air is fairly quiet (ignoring the simple hiss of the rushing wind).  But it does have it's own noise, a motor hum noise, that increases with speed (until drowned out by the wind at higher speeds), and worse--the hum warbles a bit with every AC line fluctuation, such as when the HVAC kicks in.  That warbling was the part that bothered me the most.  I was thinking a DC fan might not have that problem, and when I saw the ad for Haiku claiming to be the quietest fan ever, I quickly decided that was what I wanted.

But unlike the gentle hum of the Casablanca, the pulsing chuffing sound of the Haiku was intolerable to me.  I could hear it in my mind hours later.  I could hear it doing things like running the faucet.  (BTW, if you look at a high speed slow motion movie of water coming out of faucets...it does indeed come out in pulses because of the way water pumps and water systems work.  But normally these pulses are imperceptible.)

Now it could also be that my slightly vaulted ceiling aggravated the Haiku fan motor a bit.  I used the standard downrod, which put the blades mostly about a foot from the ceiling, but on one side the blades might have been only 8 inches from the ceiling.  That could have been a major factor, and it might have been fixable with a different downrod (which didn't seem to be on offer).  The Haiku had come with a relatively short (6 inches) downrod and a very long (18 inches) downrod.

But I have another fear, that the pulsing chuffing sound (which I did hear at speeds as low as 3) might be part and parcel of the high efficiency of all DC motors.  AC motors are inefficient precisely because they put a lot of energy into creating a shifting magnetic field.  The motor armature rides in this field, taking as much force from it as it needs to keep up, but leaving the rest.  All this happens without any electronic intervention, the motor armature basically a passive piece of metal riding on a magnetic field.  The complexity is in the magnetic field itself, at the level of physical properties, and so the adjustment that occurs as the load varies happens as a law of nature--instantaneously.  The Casablanca motors use a very large number of magentic poles to be as smooth as possible.  The unused energy in the magnetic field  ultimately becomes waste heat in the motor and things attached to the motor.  But in order to work properly, and smoothly, that extra energy has to be there.

A DC motor works very differently.  By design, it only puts as much energy into the magnetic field as needed--and from moment to moment.  It requires some kind of feedback mechanism, combined with a servo mechanism, to put more or less energy as the situation demands it.  For example, when the blades face greater wind resistance because they are closer to the ceiling, the motor has to put out a tiny bit more energy to deal with that.  As a result of this fundamentally interacting nature, the energy ultimately has to come out in pulses.  Thus, it may not be surprising if a DC servo motor sounds "pulsy".

I've seen this whole game before, back in the 1970's, when DC servo turntables were introduced, mainly by Japanese manufacturers.  These motors had impressive specs, and the ultimate best ones were and still are quite good by most standards.  But right away audiophiles began complaining that they could hear the "servo hunting" and other anomalies as a result of the way DC servo motors work.  I myself have never heard this, but I only bought the better units, such as my current Sony PSX-800, a high end turntable that could have been described as Sony's 3rd or 4th generation best turntable drive.  Some turntable manufacturers eschewed DC motors altogether...notably the industry leader Denon did this, and bragged about their AC servo motors as being fundamentally superior to DC servo motors.  But to this day some of  the most highly regarded turntables do not use servo motors at all, they use plain old AC synchronous motors connected to the turntable platter by a belt or idler wheel.  That approach is considered to be superior to DC servo motors by most audiophiles even when the DC motors have far better specs.  Ordinary AC synchronous motors have a significant amount of vibration, but the motor vibrations are damped out by using a soft belt or a very massive platter, or both.  And while AC motors have vibration, they lack the peculiarly annoying "servo hunting" or pulsing sounds that audiophiles complain about.

Now while you don't think of listening to your music through a fan, a fan is basically just like a loudspeaker, with response to DC (one way wind).  A loudpeaker fundamentally moves air, and so does a fan.  DC wind is what you want from a fan, but you are likely to get many additional sounds from motor variations, which are essentially amplified by the system of blades.  I kid you not, one of the best subwoofers ever is basically a very sophisticated fan--and most likely one with a custom DC servo motor!  BTW, it costs over $15,000.

Interesting, you can find retro fans that use some kind of flexible band to transmit the driving power from the motor to the blades.  When that was first being done, it was probably done to make quieter fans (otherwise they would have made a racket).

So anyway, my whole experience with the Haiku has made me leery of DC fans in general.  Perhaps it should not, I don't even know if my particular Haiku might simply be defective, let alone indicative of how other DC fan motors would work.   But I like to stick with proven technology for my household fittings, which I hope to last for a very long time, and AC fans have been around since Tesla invented the AC motor, a very proven technology, and Casablanca has made high pole fan motors since the 1980's.  So I've decided to order another Casablanca fan with proven AC motor, which was one idea I had in mind before I came across Haiku, though at that moment (just before ordering Haiku) I had decided to go with the newer DC technology.  Now, I think I'd like to hear another DC motorized fan before buying one again.  A DC motor will have to prove to me that it doesn't sound pulsy.

I'm also wondering if the push for efficiency has temporarily outstripped the technology, much as it did with the first 1.6 gallon toilets.  Perhaps the end game for efficient fan motors will be low voltage AC motors, as used in the 1970's by Denon turntables, not the DC motors they are using now.

Adjustable Frames: Reverie vs Ergomotion

Many online mattress dealers sell the ErgoMotion adjustable frames.  By all accounts, they are good.  But the Reverie adjustable frames may be slightly better--they are the ones recommended by Phoenix, the moderator of MattressUnderground.

The highest end Reverie apparently available in Split Queen is the 5D.  The corresponding ErgoMotion is the 400.  You really have to look carefully at a comparison chart to see the differences.  And you also need to go beyond that chart, though it is a good place to start.

A couple of small differences, the Reverie apparently has two presets whereas the Ergomotion has only one.  Then the Ergomotion has a backlit wireless remote whereas the wireless remote for the Reverie is not backlit.

Possibly the most important difference according to the chart is the Ergomotion 400 having a maximum head adjustment of 70 degrees.  That's among the highest (even other Ergomotion models don't go that high, 60 is typical).  The Reverie has a more typical 58 degrees.  Well, I might like the higher height, but I might worry about it damaging mattress as well.  On the other hand, I don't know if I trust this chart.  Sears, for example, lists the Reverie 5D in Split Queen and lists 70/47 as the head/foot degrees available.  That is identical to what the previous chart lists for the Ergomotion 400.  Strangely, Sears also lists the ErgoMotion 400 but does NOT list the degrees of head and foot lift.  The Reverie website does not give any numbers.  Nor, in fact, does the Ergomotion website give any numbers.

(Update: Chris Mullins at SleepingOrganic has been very helpful in providing addtional information about adjustable bedframes.  He had to call people to get this information.  The Ergomotion frame does have more head tilt, an industry leading 70 degrees, and he thinks that's a very useful and important feature.  The Reverie has less tilt, 58 degrees, as most online specification say.  He says the Ergomotion is lighter in some sizes because Reverie uses more legs--the added weight is in the legs, up to 12 legs in a split queen frame.  The Ergomotion uses a frame engineered to require only legs at the corners, and he says it is a very strong frame.  I'm now planning to get a regular queen, not a split queen, for which the Ergomotion actually weighs more than the Reverie, according to what I have seen.  As you might have guessed, I'm now planning to buy frame and mattress from SleepingOrganic, but the project has been delayed a few more weeks due to fan replacement.)

What about Craftmatic?  Craftmatic does not list any prices on their website.  You have to call to find out.  Years ago, you couldn't even call to find out, you had to have a Craftmatic salesman come out to your home.  This is obviously a hard sell, and reportedly Craftmatic prices are very high, and their products not especially distinguished (and possibly rebadged).  Their prices would have to be high to cover the advertising they are most famous for, as well as the salespeople.  I'm not sure if I want to bother to find out more.  Unlike many online adjustable bed sellers, their starting model (in fact, the only model available in Split Queen is Model One) comes standard with an innerspring core mattress.  That's elsewhere described as cheaper or inferior to a natural latex core.  An adjustable bed innerspring has to be made without the usual reinforcement bar on the edge.  That means there might be a tendency to roll out of bed (which is why that bar is usually there) as compression near the edge propagates to the edge without further resistance.  Latex, on the other hand, is a point resistance mattress type in which compression doesn't automatically propagate, similar to pocketed coils (the most expensive and rare form of innerspring mattresses...the type used in the original Beautyrest of 60 years ago).  Kudos to Craftmatic, however, for showing a cutout of their mattress composition, and admitting they use Bonelli coils, which are better than some but not as good as pocketed.

Adjustable Beds

Funny, I thought I had already written pages on this.  I wanted to check out all my links from a few months ago, and now I don't see them.

The upshot was I had steered away (rightly or wrongly) from the well-known (through endless TV advertising...) Craftmatic adjustable beds, and the high priced Beautyrest, to buying, separately, an adjustable bed frame (I forgot the brand, I thought I had posted it) and natural latex mattress (I had picked one out of hundreds of US latex mattress manufacturers).

Now I'm trying to remember what I had picked out before, and possible re-think a bit more, since I'll be ordering soon.

In the course of my previous investigations, I discovered the Mattress Underground, which once had a post listing many of the known-best latex mattress manufacturers.  Well, it turns out that there's a bit of a conflict of interest in that those listed manufacturers are also members of the Mattress Underground.  So while I'll still take it as a list of interesting ones to check out (which I have mostly done already) I won't take it as the ultimate short list.  I decided I liked the one I had picked out prior to discovering the Mattress Underground better, based on stuff I learned at Mattress Underground and my own ideas/feeling/intuitions.  Actually, though, it was Google that picked out the mattress company I had previously decided on, because in my first recent search for natural latex mattresses they were featured near the top--a privilege they must have (once) paid for.  But anyway, that's how it goes, one way or another I've checked out the sites for a dozen manufacturers, and am about to do so again.

Doorstops

Today I ordered genuine Baldwin Estate 4045 3" Wall Bumper (aka doorstop) and a Baldwin Estate 4050 3.75" Wall Bumper, both in Lifetime Polished Brass (just like my Baldwin door knobs).  The Baldwin doorstops seem to have fairly uncommon (in high end doorstops) feature of a hex portion of the stem which makes it easier to tighten.  Of course there is also the advantage that it will match my Baldwin doorknobs in finish, brand, and prestige.

I also looked at many of the Whittington doorstops over at Signature Hardware but I only liked the Pawn style (which I visually liked only slightly better than the Baldwin's), and I figured it would be easier to get replacement bumpers in the future for a genuine Baldwin product, and the Whittington's lacked the hex stem portion.  Another plus for the Worthington's was the slightly wider 1.75" base, I fear the 1.18" base of the Baldwin's may put too much stress on my cheap drywall, but, I will hope for the best.  The Baldwin Estate doorstops were cheaper than Whittington, but the difference may have been made up in the rather high shipping charge (they note in a disclaimer that the actual UPS fee might differ).

It's hard to figure whether I'll need the 3" or the 3.75" since that depends on where I'm actually able to mount the stop, which depends on where the studs are.  The door knobs are 2.5" but the doors on the hinge sides are much farther out from the wall than that (up to 5 inches).  If I had to mount the doorstop at a stud only 16 inches from the hinge...it would certainly need to be longer than 3 inches, and the next stud, at 32" would be too far out. So I bought both sizes.  The shorter ones have the advantage that less stress is put on the wall due to leverage, etc., and given my (cheap) walls that's a big plus.  So if a shorter one can be used, it should be used.  I'm thinking I may be able to use the shorter one in the Queen's room (where the non-load-bearing wall has 24" oc studs, a mere 6" from the end of the 30" door) but then the longer one in the King's room (where the load bearing wall has 16" studs, which would put the closest stud about midway on the door, and the next stud past it).

Here's one of the Whittington styles that just looks too much like you know what.  I liked the Pawn style better than the plain-vanilla Baldwin's, but none of the others.