Front edged, really!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Irrigation system...we need this

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taking stock

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

Second Weekend in September

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

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

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

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

When done this way, the tree lighting is beautiful!

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

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

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

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

The new back door light fixture arrived on Monday afternoon.

two more lights

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lyndhurst is continuing to smell pretty good now.

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

New Lights

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

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




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

*****

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

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

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

Shelf bottoms cleaned

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

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

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