First February Mow

On Saturday, I mowed the little lawn in front of Lyndhurst.  That has bermuda grass which literally hasn't gone dormant since last year.  It was getting a bit shaggy.  And I pulled a few weeds.  But I quit before doing anything else because there was an intermittent smell of creosote from smoke.  It wasn't clear if there were any actual forest or prarie fires.  It could have been BBQ or more likely fireplace.  On Sunday I watered the potted plants and Palmie in front.  Once again I smelled just a trace of smoke. I figured it might have been coming from neighbor across the street, the "Bar" neighber who has beer signs around his back yard pool and parties (not too loud anymore) on weekend nights.  There was nobody in his back yard so perhaps his party was inside by the fireplace.  That would have made sense on Sunday when it was cool and foggy but less sense on Saturday when it was sunny and 80 degrees in the afternoon.

Doorbell transformer in Queen's Room

The doorbell transformer is in the current Queen's room closet, the closet scheduled for demolition.  My friend suggested putting a cover on it.  But I find that it makes far too much noise for me to be comfortable sleeping in this room, particularly when the closet is removed.  It makes a hum: a very tonal noise, measuring around 22dB.  Even if I could cover it, it would be hard to cover up such a sound, and actually, it appears the electrical code requires doorbell transformers to be in free air.  Usually sensible builders put them in the garage or in the laundry room above the interior sub panel.  But I can see why my home's builder put the transformer in the kid's bedroom closet: because they could save a few feet of wire that way.  Even if this were a closet, I think this is a terrible design.

I could get a quieter transformer, such as this nice looking one from Craftmade.http://www.amazon.com/Craftmade-T1630-Transformer/dp/B001R5UU0W/ref=sr_1_5?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1359793416&sr=1-5&keywords=doorbell+transformer.

But in my experience, no mater how hard you try to make such things quiet, there's always a bit more noise.  And a doorbell transformer hanging out above the Queen's bed, with no cover?  That's purely unacceptable in my view.  It would be ugly and someone could hit it by accident.  BTW it has exposed wire terminals but those are low voltage.

So, the doorbell will go.  I can't remember one of my friends EVER using it anyway.  The button is in a poor position on the left side of the door.  Only church proseletyzers ever use it, as one did this morning.

In theory, I could have an electrician relocate the doorbell transformer to the laundry room, where it should be.  Or, maybe even better would be to just get a new wireless doorbell, whose button could be placed more conveniently and conspicuously on the right side of the door.

But for how little it actually gets used, as in not at all, I think I'll just get rid of it.  As soon as I can safely figure out how to shut off the power to it, I'll remove both the transformer and the outside doorbell button.  I tried several convenient circuit breakers but it appears it may be on the master bedroom circuit that will require special preparation before being shut down.

Thermostat set to 71

When I checked the heater on some cold morning this week, the thermostat was reading 69 degrees ambient, but with 70 degree setpoint the heater was not running.  Not only was it not running, it was cold, as if it had not run at all recently.

I changed the setpoint to 71 and the heater immediately kicked in.  Thinking that there might be something wrong with 70 degree setpoint, I decided to leave setpoint at 71.  Perhaps on some future cold night I can re-verify operation at the 70 degree setpoint.  But for now, 71 seems to work perfectly, tracking 69 degrees during the moderately cold nights since I changed the setpoint.  With no thermostat at all, just the heater thermostat by itself fell to 65 on a freezing night, but it was falling to 65 only with moderate cold and the thermostat set to 70.  So, mysteriously, the 70 degree setting doesn't seem to work as well, as if it were in some different range having different setback or anticipation, for example. Reading the instructions on Sunday, I saw no way the thermostat could be programmed to act different in different temp ranges.  Perhaps the two thermostats interact better with the 71 degree setting and the DeLonghi set to 1.5.

Door seals attached

January 29th I finally attached the new door bottom seals, which I had removed 3 months earlier.

I also hooked up the remote thermostatic controller, based on a unit made by Johnson Controls, to control the DeLonghi radiator heater (old version from 1997).  It was easily adjusted to setpoint of 70 degrees.  I left the thermostat on the heater set to "1" (which delivers a room temp range of 65-78 without external thermostat) and the heater set to minimum (350 watts or thereabouts) because kept the inside temp at 65 even with the outside freezing (even with the door bottom seals missing).

I had lots of reasons to do these things now, especially that I found some dead bugs inside Lyndhurst that had apparently crawled in through the doorway, and the electric bill for December 2012 was way higher than last year.

When I had previously removed the door bottom seals, I was thinking that one of two things was possible:

(a) the door bottom seals had picked up smells from the spray foaming, tiling, plastering, painting, etc.

(b) the door bottom seals blocked airflow from the bottom, however the lack of seals at the top of the door (fixed several weeks ago) created a negative pressure at floor level, sucking in smelly air from under the floor moldings.  By removing seals from top and not the bottom, I had created an unbalanced pressure situation which would normally produce undesireable negative pressure at floor level.

This was something of a moment of desperation because while the chemical smells did seem to be decreasing, and were often not noticeable at all, sometimes they seemed to come back at a significant (though still reduced from original) level.  So I wanted to try something new.

At the same time as I removed the door bottom seals, I also finished cleaning the undersides of all the wood shelving (where a lot of the smell seemed to be originating from, or maybe it was just that the smell had affinity for the paint on the shelving).

The combined result seemed at first to be the second most important smell reduction I achieved (the first being cleaning the top sides of all shelving).  But I could not determine whether the improvement came from removing the door seals or cleaning the shelf bottoms.

Later, there was one particular day when the smell was almost back to the level before those changes, and after that I wasn't so sure about anything.

Anyway, once the door seals were off, I also considered the possibility that having the door seals off was providing needed ventilation after November 1 or thereabouts when I officially ended the formal outgassing period and closed the doors routinely.

The seals around the top and sides of the french doors had actually been removed by the contractor when I pointed out they had paint on them.  I can't remember exactly how this went, but I might have told the contractor I would replace the seals (because I would buy new ones, whereas the contractor might try to use the old ones, just cleaned off a bit).

But I figured that with the top seal removed, the stack effect would force warm expanding air out the top of the door, but the seals on the bottom of the door would not allow new air to flow in, creating a small vacuum at floor level.  Whether or not this was true, I determined I should replace the top seals first.  I had purchased replacement seals in mid 2012 but finally installed the top seals a few weeks ago. About that time, I also purchased new door bottom seals, making sure they matched the ones originally on the door which I had stashed in Palmhurst.  They did match, almost exactly, but needed trimming.

Replacing the top seal did actually seem to reduce the smell somewhat (though I no longer have much confidence in such assessments because they are highly variable and related to outside and inside temperatures and humidities).

I tried to replace the bottom seals for the first time a week or so later.  I just brought some scissors into Lyndhurst to cut the new ones to size.  But that cutting turned out to be more difficult than expected, and then I found I also needed to cut the spine of the molding which holds it into place.  It needed to be cut back 1 5/16  of an inch to match the factory ones.  That cutting could not be done with scissors.

I finally did do the cutting on the same day as I was finally clearing out the Queen's Room in my house.  I had temporarily stored the new door bottoms in that room.  The cutting was done with a large wire cutter and was very messy because I had to cut off small pieces which flew everywhere despite my trying to direct them into the trash can.  That was OK because just after I finished, I vacuumed the entire room for the first time in at least 4 years.  I intended to do the re-installation the next week, but didn't get around to it until the following week.

The seals went on very easily.  I just pushed them up into the door, starting at the hinge side.  I then went side to side pushing the seals up as far as possible.  I kept doing this until the creaking noise it made while getting pushed up went away, indicating the seals could not be pushed up any more.

I had previously thought the door seals needed to be slid into place, and figured that might be rather difficult.  Or possibly they might need to be nailed into place.  The factory seals were stapled in place at the ends.  The instructions actually say you must remove the door to replace the seals.  But none of that turned out to be necessary.  Installing seals is actually quite easy, and people should know this because seals are one of the most important parts of energy efficiency.

I plan to do the door side seals later, or perhaps leave them off.  My thinking has been to leave a gap in the door seals on the sides, starting from about 4 inches up (to deter bugs) and then ending about 2 feet up (to prevent too much hot air loss).  This would be the passive ventilation plan for the building, which otherwise is far better sealed than most buildings.

Queen's Room ready for Succession

At 9:20 PM on Sunday January 20, 2013, I texted my lady friend "Queen's Room ready for Succession."   She was out for an inspection by 11:20 AM on the next day and was pleasantly surprised at how cleaned out it is now.  (She decided to leave the slippers I bought as a gift on the table.  She likes the table and lamp and intends to use them when she moves in.  Whenever that is--she doesn't know.  In the meantime we plan to make a number of changes to the room.)

Being able to clear out this room for my friend (or others) to sleep in was the #1 reason for building Lyndhurst.   This room hasn't been this well cleaned out since I bought the house in 1992, when it became my mother's bedroom.  When I returned from San Francisco in 1997 after the death of my mother, it got used as a storage room for old heavy tube-based electronic laboratory equipment.  I made a previous effort to clear out the room in May 2009 for my friend.  That time I simply moved junk temporarily into the Garage, with the plan that I'd build a backyard storage building real-soon-now, though the heavy electronics equipment got recycled at a paid recycler (I paid a fee based on weight, which came to $200 or so).  Even then, I hadn't really moved everything out, it was a cheat, I left stuff in the closet and under the bed.  When it was clear my friend wasn't moving in soon anyway, the junk quickly made its way back into the room so I could resume parking my car in the garage.

Fortunately the weekend of January 19 and 20 was a very pleasant weekend, with highs in the upper 60's, for moving stuff out to Lyndhurst.  It wasn't necessary to move much more stuff, given what I had already accomplished in previous weeks, but stuff did need to be moved, and I organized the stuff in Lyndhurst better so it now almost appears like a useable room.  Lyndhurst is beginning to get the appearance inside of a basement room.  The big thing moved on Saturday was the large bookcase-like cabinet for holding video and audio cassettes.  In so doing, I also sorted the cassettes leaving a certain class for inside-home-only (I'm still considering Lyndhurst one notch less environmentally stable for long term storage than my home, but it could actually be the reverse at this point) and replacing them with others in hallway cabinets to go out.

I also moved out the antique table, which had been positioned in the Queen's Room as a bedside table, but clearly wasn't a good bedside table being about a foot higher than the bed.

There were also boxes packed last week sitting in hallway and living room that needed moving out.  Two more large plastic bins were packed, one with stuff mainly from the bed and table, including CD-R's of me playing my Kurzweil synthesizer, and one filled mainly with hangers from the closet.  I cleared out the Queen's closet on Sunday by moving most clothes and ordinary spare plastic hangers to the King's Room and Laboratory closets.  That left special hangers of various kinds, and metal hangers, and they went into this box (which is currently in the Living Room actually, as by the time I finished packing it was 8pm on Sunday and I didn't want to go outside in the sub-60 temperature, and I haven't been moved to move it since, having time constraints ever since then.

One of the biggest ordeals in my mind was clearing the desk table, but actually the papers there were quickly placed into a new folder if they related to home improvements or the construction of Lyndhurst.    That job was done in less than an hour on Sunday night, and then the room was vacuumed, leading up to the 9:20 completion.

At this point the items left in the room can be numbered.  I've left the bed, which is perfectly useable, with minimal bedding including two pillows and a blanket.  They've been there all along, the sheets were probably last changed on this bed in the early 2000's, or possibly when I prepared it for friend usage (but nothing like now) in 2009.  My friend wants to bring her bed and mattress with her when she actually moves over, but nevertheless wants me to clean the bedding that's on the temporary bed now.

I left the desk with a desk lamp on top.  My friend likes the desk a lot, so it is going to stay.  It is a nicely made wood computer desk.  I can't remember exactly what she said about the lamp but she liked it too.

I left two artworks, a large meadow picture above the bed and another tiny meadow picture painted on a small wood piece, now hanging on the side wall.  My friend liked both of those.  Many other pictures were removed, including especially the Flapper Picture which was for my mom.  It was actually a framed copy of The Ladies Home Journal from September 1915, the month in which my mother was born.  It was treasured by my mother but wasn't particularly pretty or meaningful to anyone else.  It got repacked in the cardboard box that a new A/C intake grille was packed in.  That box with grill was another thing needing to be removed from the Queen's Room.  Removing the grill from its shipping box (it was placed in front of A/C intake but not actually attached to wall yet) and repacking the picture into that box was one of the bigger accomplishments of Sunday.  Another was chipping the small plastic edges off the bottom of a marble cutting block that had been stored in the Queen's room.  I did that chipping in the driveway, during which a pretty neighbor lady walked by and said hello.  I needed to do that chipping because previously every time I tried even to move that piece of marble (which I put underneath hifi components to lift them off the carpet generally and that was why I bought it) I cut my fingers on the edges of plastic underneath which had originally glued the long-since-removed feet from the base.  Once the marble was fully smoothed underneath, I simply carried it to Lyndhurst.  It had been stored out-of-the-way in the Queens Room for years simply so I wouldn't have to handle it and get my fingers cut again.

I left the antique white lamp on the floor plugged into the switched outlet.  Since the antique table it used to sit on had been removed, there was no alternative but put this lamp on the floor for now.  It will eventually be replaced by a floor standing lamp with arms.

The only remaining wall hanging is a mirror.  My friend didn't like it, so it will go.  It looks like an antique mirror but on close inspection the fancy carving is just moulded plastic.  So it is made of moulded plastic laminated on top of real wood.  So the mirror is a fake antique mirror, but now so old (probably from the 40's or 50's) that it is itself antique.  Still, fake things like this generally have little value.  I can't remember seeing this mirror in any previous family residence.  I think my mother picked it up at Goodwill.  To Goodwill it will be returned.

And I have left the vacuum and stepstool in the room.  Though I have vacuumed the floor, I haven't actually vacuumed all the way under the bed, and the stool is nice for reaching in the closet to remove the shelf hardware.  But those are really just excuses, I'm just keeping the vacuum and stepstool in this room because the garage room, the Gymnasium, is not ready for it yet.

And that's all there is now.  In case you forgot how it looked before, even after a week of clearing out, it had looked like this:

New Room Names

I've decided to give my bedrooms actual nice names to help keep them straight.  I've been thinking that one possible name for my house itself would be King's Castle, which is the name of the castle where Prince Charming lives.  I may come up for another name for the house itself, but I like the names suggested by that motif:

Master Bedroom becomes King's Bedroom
2nd Bedroom becomes Lab (shorter and more accurate than Computer Room)
3rd Bedroom becomes Queen's Bedroom
2nd Bathroom becomes Queen's Bath
4th Bedroom becomes Gym (more succinct than Exercise Room)

So, the new bedroom names are King's Bedroom, Lab, Queen's Bedroom, and Gym.

Alternate choices rejected

"Lord's Bedroom" doesn't sound any less stilted than "King's Bedroom."  Lord, which is the counterpart to Lady, has also gotten to mean something like God.

"Princess Bedroom" sounds demeaning.

"Mistress Bedroom" (the counterpart of Master) sounds even more demeaning.

And it's not so far out to use these names, considering we call our beds "King Size" and "Queen Size" and so on.  Actually the King's Bedroom now has a Queen sized bed, and that is the size that fits best into the room.  The Queen's Bedroom now has a twin sized bed, that will probably also stay the same.  These are not large rooms, in fact they are smaller than the bedrooms in most houses built after 1965, like my whole house.  But the comparative smallness helps keep the house efficient in many ways.  The fancy names are a nice complement to the small rooms.

Looking better

The 3rd bedroom is getting close to being entirely cleared out, and the other 3 bedrooms are looking much neater also.  It was cloudy but with temperature near 70 degrees Saturday January 12 was an ideal moving day and I spent 6 hours moving stuff.  Sunday it got cold again and so I only moved one more box on Sunday.

The biggest part was that I moved out all the stuff that was packed underneath the bed.  That was quite a lot of stuff.  I removed the remaining items from the closet shelf, including the PS Audio PowerPlant 300, and a burnt-out stepdown transformer I used to use as a dimmer in the master bedroom.  After removing the transformer, I carefully cleaned the shelf twice to remove any possible residue.  However, there was no visible residue from the transformer anyway.  I also removed a cube full of LP records and some other items.

I also finished sorting all of the electronic cables which I had temporarily moved from the 2nd bedroom (aka the Computer Room) into the 3rd bedroom.  Now the computer room has 3 boxes of cables, and they are neatly organized and not spilling out all over the floor.  There is a new box of cables in the 4th bedroom (aka the Exercise Room) for outlet strips, and there is a new box of old computer cables also.  Some RF cables got packed into the box of RF cables that was already in the exercise room.

Some lightweight stuff remains, including a previously undiscovered bag of papers and magazines.  However I will almost certainly get the 3rd bedroom all cleared out this coming weekend, and I am greatly looking forward to that.  The biggest and heaviest thing is the case full of VHS and cassette tapes.

Actually I plan to leave a few things in the bedroom for now, including the bed itself (until replaced with a nicer one) and the small desk.  The antique table next to the bed is not good for a bedside table and will be moved.  I will leave a couple of desk lights and a couple of clip lights. that could be attached to the bed.  I'll let my friend decide which lamps, if any, to keep in the bedroom.  I will move the remaining clothes in the closet by relocating to other closets.

I moved some speakers in the closet shelf in the master bedroom into their factory box and then into Lyndhurst, making room on the shelf for stuff that used to be taking up space on the floor.