Depends On Your Definition of "Progress"

Documenting your life's work outside of work is really time-consuming. Let's play catch up.


Remember way back in last year when we dug up half our yard to uncover the large pieces of driveway underneath? Well we finally did something with some of the concrete amalgam: enter the fire pit. Perhaps fire pit is a misnomer, considering we're not sure if it's legal to start large fires in our yard here. We'll just call it the decorative hole in the ground for now.

Now, also remember from that same old post where the squirrels had eaten through some of the insulation on the power mains into our house? There's more where that came from. In fact, just a week ago we woke up after a particularly ornery storm had come through to find that half of the electrical circuits in our house didn't work. Did the usual checks, no breakers were tripped, no lines were loose, no water damage, no squirrel damage....then I got out the digital multi-meter to start probing (yeah, that's right).

First checked an outlet that was working and saw ~121 VAC (volts) as normal. Checked an outlet that wasn't working and got ~20 VAC...so they were still getting power, but not enough to run anything designed for 120. Went back to the breaker box and discovered that every other breaker exactly in order was reading 120-20-120-20-120-20 (-ish). Traced it back to the two big mains coming into the house. Every house has two 120 mains coming in and one ground. The breakers are wired such that each main services every other breaker so when you add breakers they end up evenly distributed between the two mains. The other reason is so when you put in a double breaker for a 240 VAC outlet (to run your dryer or range for example) it will take the two separate 120 VAC lines to be able to essentially add them together and get 240 at the appliance. As a result, our dryer and range were only getting ~140 VAC...

Anyways, this means the problem is outside of our house. The two possibilities are that we have a problem inside our power meter box, at the weatherhead, or in the lines to the transformer up on the street poles. For reference, pretty much every electrical company says the customer is responsible for anything from the weatherhead IN to the house (except for the meter, which you aren't allowed to screw with). We called the power company to come check their lines before I started scaling our house and electrocuting myself.


As it turns out, our mains are routed through a couple decorative trees that were planted in our front yard. Over the years the three lines that are twisted together had rubbed up against tree branches so much that it had worn through the insulation and one main and the ground started to fuse together, creating a resistive short, which made the wires get even hotter and melt together (they were permanently one piece) while corroding due to atmospheric exposure. They replaced them with all new lines from the pole to the splice outside the weatherhead and we were back in business!

And that catches you up on everything in the past 5 months. But not really.

Tom

Currently listening to "Lost" by Avenged Sevenfold

Time-Suck Theater: 3rd Time's a...Something...

Let's shoot back to last week for a moment, when we were going to transform the random concrete landing strips on the backyard into a beautiful garden space by planting a bunch of tulips and lilies around the concrete. My awesome sister-in-law had already helped us out by getting rid of the overgrowth on top of the concrete. Working together this should only take us another reasonable 2 hours. Dig holes, plop in bulbs, cover them up. Easy, right?


Wro......well, actually yeah, it was pretty easy. We got half the bulbs planted when I pulled out the shovel to dig some 6" deep holes for a batch of bulbs that required it. Then, clunk.

Wrong! (You see what's happening here?) All we wanted to do was plant pretty flowers! Apparently this house has other plans...namely, to dig up the parking lot under the entire yard. That might be a bit of hyperbole, but here's the first chunk of concrete I dug up. This is just the beginning. On all sides of the random visible strips are about 5 to 6 feet of buried concrete (with some brick mixed in). I think we'll be leaving the rest of it in place...except for the areas that need to be dug up to plant things. Here's the pile of giant amalgamated concrete and brick blocks we dug up that afternoon...are you kidding me?!?



There were even some random pieces of terra cotta block in here. Yes, this real. In case you don't remember what that is, it's the very strange offspring of cinderblocks and bricks that are used as foundation walls in the mid-20's...like in our basement (as demonstrated by Jessie). Some other shards of ceramic looked a lot like pieces from an old clay smokestack. We just so happen to have roughly 40% of one left in our attic above the kitchen. Sweet.

Task #3: Success! It only took us 4 hours to almost finish a 2 hour job. Yeah. House: 3, Tom and Jessie: 0.

So...we lose. But wait! We did manage to get all of the door sweeps installed. That means no more light and wind gusts coming in under every door to the outside world. w00t. House: 3, Tom and Jessie: an emphatic 1.

However, while I was installing the door sweeps Jessie was filling in some cracks in the foundation with Great Stuff...then she asked me to come look at this:


That half-eaten sheath around those two giant wires is supposed to be protecting the main power feed into our house. The squirrels have other plans, which is not cool. No problem, I'll grab some extra thick dielectric tape and wrap it up before it gets any worse, just a 5 minute delay....right?



Wrong. What is going on here? This is a giant collection of flies just hanging out on the inside of this one basement window next to the electric meter. Words cannot express...I mean seriously, what is this crap? After cleaning that up, it's another 10 minutes of delay...bringing the final score to House: 4...no, 5. Tom and Jessie: 1.


That's all for this edition of Time-Suck Theater. Join us next time...we try to do anything. Yay us.

Tom

Currently listening to "Midnight" by Blindside

The Best Laid Plans of Jessie and Tom...

...often go awry. That's one of few true literary references you'll see me make, so enjoy it. Currently I'm trying to find a poignant saying to describe a phenomenon that we experience almost daily in our home. Steinbeck said it pretty well I think, but it's not nearly depressing enough.

Maybe you remember me discussing this problem when installing the dishwasher back when we moved in. Here's the idea: every job, no matter the scale or complexity, ends up taking 5 to 10 times as long as you plan. Every time. No matter what. Can somebody come up with a catchy phrase to describe our torment and frustration?

We've got a few things to catch up on, but I'm going to run this theme into the ground in detailing this weekend's events in three exciting installments....aaaaand begin!


So, first my mom took the initiative to search on Craigslist and find us a dryer for cheap so we could take care of our laundry in the cold, wet days of winter because it's not as much fun then as it is in the picture above. She went to check it out and paid, all we had to do was pick it up, which we are both extremely grateful for. From the description and sale cost we weren't sure what to expect, but the dryer looks about 10 years newer than it apparently is which is a fantastic surprise. We load it in the back of the car, drive to dinner, then on the way home we get rear-ended. Naturally.

As the story goes, a couple of stupid kids were running across the street while we were turning right, Jessie yelled and I saw them NOT stopping so I slammed on my brakes, avoiding totally wrecking their entire beings. The car behind me slid as it was just starting to rain, hitting us in the bumper, causing almost no damage, but freaking us out and wasting a good bit of our time.

We regroup, come home, unload the washer into the back corner of the dungeon next to the washer, start a load of laundry in the washer, then try to hook up the dryer. All we have to do is hook up a vent line (two screws) and stick a plug in the wall and we're done, right?


Wrong. This house was setup for a natural gas dryer. Thus there is only a 120V outlet and a really poorly placed, completely unsupported iron natural gas pipe hanging down about 8 feet from the ceiling (it's the black pipe on the left).

Ok, no problem. Some previous owner wanted to have the laundry in the mud room between the kitchen and the deck (not our ideal choice, but we'll roll with it for now). Jessie and I try to lug the dryer out of the basement and try squeezing it up the deck stairs, but to no avail. So we walk around the house, in the front, through 3 more doorways to the mudroom and plop it down next to the outlet. Now we can just plug it in, right?

Wrong. Apparently, this dryer is too new for this house at 11 years old. 4 prongs does not equal 3 prongs. Newer dryers have a case ground wire on the 4th prong, not to mention a different physical layout to the plug. The only two solutions here are: (1) rewire the outlet to the new 230V, 4-wire standard outlet in the location we want it to be or (2) put a 3-prong adapter cable onto the dryer and hope it doesn't burn the house down. Guess what we did.

Jessie picked up a cable, all I had to do was remove three nuts and put the new wires on...so of course I drop the ratchet socket into the dryer on the 3rd nut. In case you didn't know, dryers are almost completely sealed boxes, requiring me to tip it upside down on the corner next to the wire connection to get the socket to fall out.

Great, now the wire is on and I plug it in. The outlet is, of course, positioned in the corner right next to the door. Ok, so the door to the deck will officially be just for show until we rewire this outlet. Whatever, it works...finally......just three days later.

Task #1: 3 days vs. however long it takes to stick a plug in the wall (for argument's sake, let's call it a 5-minute job). For those keeping score at home, that's House: 1, Tom and Jessie: 0.


Tom

Currently listening "The Twilight Zone" by Golden Earring (seems appropriate)

Time-Suck Theater: Installment #2

Our main goal for the weekend was to get some weatherizing done. Looking at our financials and places that need it most, we decide that insulating the walls inside the staircase to the basement would be the best place to start given that our basement is almost open to the outdoors. Finishing the basement will take a ton of time and money and it's not conditioned space anyways, so the cheapest way to seal up the upstairs is to seal that not-so-surprisingly porous entrance for cold air.
We pick up some inexpensive rolled insulation to line the walls (and this kiddy-extinguisher to keep it from acting as kindling), along with sweeps and some seals for the door. Installing rolled insulation is easy: cut it to the right length, stick it between the studs, and staple the brown paper to the stud faces. This whole job should only take us a reasonable 2 hours.

Wrong. Where are we installing this insulation again? In the 10-foot-tall walls overlooking the shoddy 10-foot staircase to the basement? Hmm...I guess we need to figure out a way to reach the top of the walls since there is absolutely nowhere we can set up ladder. My brilliant solution: death ladder. Just like the original construction ladder to the attic, I'd just take a couple sturdy scrap boards and screw them into the studs to give me one step and one handle to hold onto, then allowing me to reach out and staple in the insulation.

I liked my solution, Jessie thought it was stupid and dangerous. Her brilliant solution: platform of unspeakable horror. She grabbed some scrap 2x4s riddled with nails and tossed them over the divide. "So now I have a bed of nails to fall onto?" I asked. Then she takes a piece of 3/8" plywood and puts it over the top. "Oh, that's much more secure."

Well, like many things in a good marriage, this is a matter of compromise. Our compromise: use both brilliant solutions. This way, when I fall through the pile of scrap wood and nails I'll be doing so from at least three feet higher up. After that little delay, we're back to work and moving right along, three strips in place. They'll all go in this easy, right?

Wrong! First, we need to remove these several blocks of scrap wood used to support an electrical outlet. Then, we need to figure out what to do with the stove hood that's venting directly into the staircase. Awesome, right? Of course this takes some time because each scrap piece of wood is nailed to the next. Wow, do I hate nails. Now that that's done, we'll reroute the vent......actually, let's not. We'll just cut the power to it, block it off, and just not use it (being that it was use-less before the insulation anyways). Back in business! Funny, some of these strips are just a wee bit tighter than others. Didn't we measure this ahead of time to make sure they're normal construction?

WRONG! I mean, yes. Yes we measured two studs. They were indeed 16"-on-center. Those two. Here are the on-center measurements for the rest of the studs in these walls (in inches):





16 - 15.5 - 19 - 16.5 - 16.25 - 16 - 12.5 / 12.5 - 12.75 - 9.5 / 10 - 12.75 - 14.25 - 14 - 14 - 14.25 - 14 - 4.75 - 16.5 - 17.75





Ugh. What happened in here? I could get the spacing more accurate blindfolded. Maybe not much more accurate, but ignoring the studs on the end, the spacing varies by as much as 6.25" from smallest to biggest gap. So we made it almost halfway around with several gaps to be filled in later. Only took us most of the day with no simple solution to the stunning 1923 building standards.
Task #2: This isn't done yet and it will certainly be another day of work. Scoreboard - House: 2, Tome and Jessie: 0.

We drowned our sorrows in our family favorite: grilled cheese and tomato soup. Optimus was intrigued, but ultimately disappointed.

Tom

Currently listening to "Ice Cream Man" by Van Halen

Wait, It's October?

It was my plan all along. Just when you were thinking, "is Tom even doing this stuff anymore? Where is he? I miss him..." I come storming back, a triumphant return to this blogmotron with my first post in over two months.





So...here.





Straying from my typical long-winded, inanely detailed, chronicles of overexertion and inflated expectations, this is just a quick update on our continuing quest (NOTE: this is not true, this post is stupidly long andI won't be offended if you don't read it, really). Last Friday, I flew up to Michigan to meet Jessie to go to our awesome friends' wedding (it was awesomely awesome). Before I left, it was exactly 81 degrees inside our house (yay for no exterior wall insulation!). Skipping ahead to Monday night at 10pm, we arrived home to a house that was 63 degrees at the thermostat. Again, yay for 1923 building standards. How did summer disappear over a weekend?

At any rate, we switched the thermostat to heat, turned the temperature setting up to a balmy 66 degrees, and voila! Nothing, naturally. No noise, no fan, nothing. All we want is to not be frigid all night (mainly my lovely wife wants that), so into the dungeon we go, heading straight for the furnace.

We have a Trane XE60 gas furnace installed in the late '80s. It's not particularly complex (or clean), but it works...or so we think. No problem, should just need to spark up the pilot light. 5 minutes, tops.

Yeah. After 16 hours of driving (plus another 5 or so sleeping in the car) our mental capacity was quite diminished. Fail. Let's grab some blankets and hunker down for the night.

The next night I come home from work and set a task list to get done, starting with (1) fix the furnace. I walk down the stairs, ducking under the way-too-low floor joist, taking a few steps on the uneven concrete floor while noticing some small bits of pink insulation on the ground. Strange, but those are probably just from the HVAC flex pipe that got torn up by something of unknown origin, no big deal. Side note: this is not an efficient way to add a vent in your unconditioned basement.

Another step, then CRACK. My feet freeze. My head slowly angles down, my foot twists out of the way to uncover a half-eaten pecan. Funny, I thought the pecans fell off the trees outside, not onto the basement floor. Then...a squeak.

I sharply dart my eyes to the left, around the furnace to see my worst nightmare: a cute little squirrel. Only this time, he's pissed. "Oh, that's who tore up the insulation, awesome," I think to myself. Squirrelly McGee there was squeaking and hissing up a storm, so I grabbed the remains of the pecan and threw it at him. Brilliant! Now he's hiding behind the septic drain in line in the corner.

Apparently, I was blocking his exit, which I later found to be just above the pile of empty cardboard moving boxes near the ceiling in the hallway. Steve (that's the squirrel's name) came out and ran to safety when I went upstairs to get a some wooden skewers to help light the pilot. At some point I would have to stop that noise, so I wedged one of the aforementioned boxes over the hole leading to the underside of our porch. "There," I said, "Problem fixed forever." (Problem vs. Ingenious Solution shown below)









Finally, I can light the pilot. The front panel just slides down and off the furnace, revealing a bunch of wires, some pipes, and a big bulky valve with a knob on top. In order to light the pilot in this particular furnace, you need to have it powered on, turn the knob to where the "Pilot ->" part lines up with the marking on the front, press and hold down the knob, while sticking open flame into the opening below the valve. There will be a little poof from the gas built up in there igniting, then it should calm down.

If you're like me, you will have completed this step, then let the knob up, and the flame will go out. Do it again, only this time, HOLD THE KNOB DOWN. The flame will go out every time until the temperature sensor heats up. This sensor is what tells the valve it's ok to let out more gas, because if it's not hot, then there's no pilot, which means gas would just start filling up the entire furnace, then the whole room, then the house goes kerplooey. So I do it again, letting up when I think it's fine, and it goes out again. Third time's a charm, as this time I hold it open for a good 30 seconds. Behold: fire.
At this point you can rotate the knob back to the "ON ->" position, which will let gas out to the burners if the system is on, and you'll have heat. After heating up for a little bit, the fan kicks on and starts blowing hot air to the all the vents (and to the "new vent" in the basement). All fixed, right?

Wrong. Anyone else sick of this crap? Ugh. Well after about 15 seconds, the fan stops. 15 seconds later, the fan kicks back on. Off, then on, then off... Man this is annoying. Check the thermostat: mode = heat, temperature setting = 66, current temperature = 63, fan = auto. No problem there. Go back to the furnace and poke around some more. That's when I see this fancy little gizmo.
Note the warning that says "Don't turn the dial, you have to hold the dial while moving the tiny pins, idiot." Having never actually messed with this in a furnace before, I was trying to make sure I knew how it worked before I kerplooey-ed the house, so I watched it. The burners turn on and start heating up, so the dial starts turning clockwise until the middle pin is at the mark in the bottom middle, which triggers the fan to turn on. Then, the fan blowing cold air past the heating element cools it down, so the dial turns back counter-clockwise until the left pin meets the mark, where the fan clicks off. Rinse, repeat.

The point of this temperature control is just that, so that if the burners aren't getting enough gas or getting hot enough, the fans won't keep pushing air out that's not actually warm. However, this dial was set so the air temperature had to be at least 100 degrees, which is too high, so I move the lower limit pin down to about 80-ish degrees and see what happens. The furnace reaches a stable temperature in the 80 to 100 degree range, so now the fan stays on until the thermostat the house has reached the desired temperature.

Hey wait a second, it's working. Nice. That only took 10 times as long as it should have (that's half as long as the usual 20 times). Oh, also this happened...


..but I'll save that story for another time.

- Tom
Currently listening to Fantasy Focus Football on ESPN Radio Podcenter ('tis the season)

Stage Two: The Hole

Come on in. It's warm and cozy.

What you are looking at is a hole that was poorly cut in the original roof boards between two joists to get to the rear gable. The front half of the attic has windows on three sides, which is great for having to do wiring work up there (though not really useful for heating/cooling efficiency). Well, The Hole is the entrance to the back half, which has exactly as much natural light as will reflect through said hole, which is not a heck of a lot. Thankfully, I have a propensity to put high-efficiency LEDs in everything, so we had plenty of light available. That being said, still not fun.

At least there were only two fans/light fixtures, plus a couple switches to wire back there. Just for the record, this picture was taken with a flash, which is why it looks bright and inviting. That is incorrect. There's also an old chimney back there that is capped and doesn't appear to have any purpose whatsoever. Also also, we found the smokestack from an old wood stove in another portion above the kitchen.

For each fan that was not properly mounted (6 of the 7) we had to cut a hole for a new junction box. In drywall, this is super easy. In plaster, this is an adventure. Plaster walls and ceilings are essentially thin wooden strips with tons of caked on brittle plaster which falls apart like cheap concrete. You can crack a hole in the plaster layer, but then you get to the lathing strips (as seen in the picture to the left), which are nailed to the joists. The big problem is if you have any type of vibrating or reciprocating saw to cut it, it bends the strips of wood back and forth at high speed, which ends up rattling the plaster until it falls off in major chunks. Once you get through one side it's just easier to grab the strip, push it up and snap it, rather than try to cut it. You end up with holes like this one that require a serious amount of joint compound, among other things.

Each fan has a switch in a wall in their respective rooms, so we have to run one wire to the fan (hot), one wire from the fan to the switch (traveler) and one wire to the next fan in the sequence. Now, pulling cable through uninsulated drywall-clad walls is fairly easy because everything is empty and smooth inside the walls. Not so with plaster, all the walls have the ridges of smooshed plaster pushing through the lathing strips for the wire to get caught on as it's being pushed through. Next we have the knob-and-tube wire that has knobs every two feet down each stud. There are literally hundreds of nooks and obstacles for the wire to get caught on. As if this wasn't fun enough.

Sometimes, wires are run in really stupid ways, like, out through a floor joist, up through a floor, and out through another wall, all of which are concealed. Cue the crazy tricks and trade secrets. In comes some dish soap that may have actually been a prop in a TMNT movie to make the wire a little slicker and easier to pull through. We knew that some of these outlets were on the old knob-and-tube because they were the original 2-prong, ungrounded outlets. Even better, they were literally disintegrating. Take a look at the picture on the right and see if you can tell me which one doesn't belong. Of course, several of these outlets were just screwed into the wood molding with no wall box, so we had to break out the sawzall and open up the holes to fit in new plastic wall boxes to properly mount them.

Then some circuits were obviously routed through walls that were not original (so, before the wiring was run through studs prior to covering it with drywall, or plaster...or beadboard), so tracing wires became a matter of guess-and-check by flipping breakers and disconnecting outlets. Then there are some even more exciting developments, like ants.

I'll explain: most kitchens that have been updated in older houses are wired into a specific GFCI-protected circuit with 12-gauge Romex equivalent for safety and to give enough current capacity to power modern appliances like 1,100-watt microwaves. Well, our kitchen was updated, so it was all run on 12-gauge from one main outlet. Problem is, that outlet was not a GFCI, so nothing was protected anywhere down the line. Even bigger problem is, they ran 12-gauge wire to all other outlets from the main one, but the power feed coming from the breaker box was 14-gauge (for those unfamiliar, larger gauge wire = smaller diameter = higher resistance = lower power handling capacity). This comparable supercharging your car, installing a race-tuned suspension, and then putting bike tires on it. It's dumb, it's not safe, we re-did it.

Oh right, the ants. So about 5 minutes after we energized the circuit, we noticed this constant stream of ants coming out of the back of the molding, going directly into the outlet. Apparently, ants are attracted to the electromagnetic fields created by current flowing through wall circuits. That was a nice little surprise. Speaking of which, there are a few more of those coming in the next installment. Happy 4th of July everybody.

Tom

Currently listening to "3's and 7's" by Queens of the Stone Age