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.