Updates

January Slough

For the most part, this winter has moved along briskly. For whatever reason, Christmas didn’t feel like Christmas. December came and went in a flash, and now Feb is waiting on the doorsteps. If we can hold off on major snowfalls from here on out, things should be smooth sailing.

The temps the past couple weeks have been downright bone chilling, a real contrast to last year. It might be 10F, or 14F, or somesuch outside right now, but it feels like a solid zero out there, and has all week. In the Lodge, with the plastic up, we do okay. This time of year I can’t turn the fridge any warmer without bumping up against “off”, which is a shame, because the vacation setting yields solid blocks of Diet Squirt. I suppose I could leave 2-liters’ on the other side of the downstairs plastic, but this tends to be even colder than the fridge.

Out of Control

 Construction is an expensive proposition. It’s even more expensive when there’s a contractor in the middle, padding the numbers. Thankfully, I haven’t had to deal with much of that. But eventually, you become numb to the numbers. When you’re a kid, $20 seems like a lot of money. By Jove, that’s 2000 Fruities! Eventually, just as you adjust to swiping your debit card at the gas pump for another $75 tankful, you start to lose touch with the “value”.   And so it is that I recently found myself looking at $600 toilets.

Now, hear me out… I have an interesting little challenge regarding the bathroom for CS3. My intention is that this will be the last thing wrapped up as part of CS3 as a whole. The challenge is that the bathroom is little more than 24” wide, approx 100” long, and must contain a toilet, sink and shower! The idea being utility in the smallest “reasonable” footprint. This means rejecting some extremes, like the Euro approach of making the entire room a shower stall, or semi-absurd thoughts of leaning over the toilet to use the sink. Because shower stalls don’t come this small (excepting motorhomes), this will be a custom job.  The custom job will visually tie into the floor and the sink both having sleek, angular styling cues that follow the general theme of the building. The problem is the toilet I have, one of those economy toilet-in-a-box, types, is of typical bland styling. (I bought it when the idea for this bath was basic utility). While it’s returnable, the alternatives I’m finding run 5 to 6 times as much. This, by itself, would be madness. I’ve bought cars for less. However…I’ve found some clever solutions in this price range that free up additional interior space by putting the toilet tank inside the wall, and hanging the bowl off it. For some reason, paying this much for an engineered solution seems “reasonable” to the inner-engineer..but ridiculous to the guy that says, “it’s just a toilet?!” In the interim, I think I’ll just put this on hold to simmer. Like I said, this is a project for next winter.

Speaking of justified “unreasonable” expenses…

This is my 2^nd Gen Nest Thermostat.

Shortly before Christmas it arrived to replace the temporary Honeywell Round t-stat in CS3. Every bit the iPod experience, everything from unboxing to setup was a snap. You simply screw the baseplate to the wall using the provided screwdriver (the plate also has a built-in level). Next, you connect your wiring to the spring terminals, and snap the unit into place. When the furnace went in, I knew a Nest was in my future and made a provision to provide +24v from the furnace into the regular wire bundle. But apparently I didn’t have this wire on the right terminal. On powerup, the Nest had a color snapshot on its screen of the backplate and the suspect connection.

After fixing that, I was in business. My “Away” temp is 40F which keeps everything in the building above freezing. The furnace now only runs a few hours a day to maintain this (and it keeps track of its usage), and when I’m working out there, I bump things up to 50 or 55F. Other advantages include adjusting the temp, scheduling, and tracking energy usage remotely. So on a Saturday morning, I can wake up when I want, grab the iPad and warm up the other building while I shower. Or if I change my schedule for the evening, I can make an adjustment from my work PC. There’s lots of other neat advantages but more has been written by others on that. The current problem…no internet connection at the Lodge.