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.

Winter

This is what The Lodge looks like this time of year. Too soon to head south?

21Dec2012

The Airport Express

In June of 2004, Apple released the original Airport Express. I’m pretty sure I ordered mine that very month, possibly that week.  The lure of streaming music remotely to your stereo, and at the same time, serving as a WiFi bridge, was too much to turn down. My AEX got used sparingly, mostly re-transmitting the wifi signal at my parents place so I could use my Powerbook G4 out on the deck, and it also came in handy streaming iTunes to my tube amp in the dining room. There was a time when I wasn’t living at home and it sat idle, unplugged most of the time. And then the W22nd apartment years where it served as a base station transmitting from the sleeping porch, which spent a good chunk of the time below 50F thanks to Iowa’s generous other 3 seasons.

This last tidbit is important. I had known for some time that AEX’s were failing, even when mine was serving up webpages from a low-temp area and had lead a charmed life. It seems that continuous use and high temps would cause them to fail (or fail more rapidly). As it stands, thousands of these units up and quit, with death occurring on average at the 16 month mark (the problem is so serious there are statistical websites on it). The problem is in the power supply. A power supply designed and supplied by Samsung. It seems that low quality capacitors were chosen, and to make matters worse, their operating environment in the sealed unit exceeds their ratings, leading to rapid failure, which in turn causes damage (and smoke) to the power supply and other components.

So it was with interest that I was revisiting this subject some years later….Wednesday, actually. And that night, in a Lodge-to-CS3 Wi-Fi transmitting experiment, I got out my AEX, reset and configured it, and perched it atop a bookcase with a long extension cord. To my surprise, Thursday after work I went to sort and organize in CS3 and the sucker was dead! Reeking of failed electronic components.   

Now, there’s plenty of repair info out there on these, but the big trick is getting inside. Dremels, saws, and soldering irons used as melting instruments are the most popular (and recommended) method. I was lucky. A flathead screwdriver and a hammer worked for me. Sure enough, same failure mode. Now the big Q. Try to repair the supply? (new caps, surface mount components, etc) Or take the easy way out with an external wall-wart supply?

Post-Break

Now that’s what I call a break! This is the only time of the year I’m able to just let it all go, and lose myself in a stream of non-days. Monday? Tuesday? Who cares. Except for getting up to drive Cara to her car in the mornings, then I know the end is near.

The first few years I was working, this was tough. For whatever reason, work was still on my mind. Next was The Lodge construction phase. Where each day was marked and metered. These were the apartment days where I would get up early, change into construction clothes, bundle up, and drive out to the Rotary for a cold walk in. I’d fire up the Kerosene heater which was enough to occasionally warm my hands, and a hot thermos of coffee to keep me going. Around 5 or 6 PM after the sun set, I’d walk back out, numb to the bone, with a full list of things accomplished.

Then came the factory days. Cold, dark, long hours, and a few days of heading into work over the Holidays. Did that for a couple years. Makes getting up at 6 and driving the truck out from the Lodge these days for work seem like a cake walk. Even if it’s 40F in the kitchen. I highly recommend it.

And here we are, 2013, things finally coming together on CS3 after the Big Move. I don’t feel over-worked, or physically tired. But I do realize how much the 9 to 5 manages to destroy the creative process and inhibit any sort of spontaneity. If I continue down this path long enough, I may find myself in real trouble.

That said, this was a very successful break. I managed to assemble the Lodge downstairs room divider which combines display shelving on one side and storage and clothes hang-up on the other. I had cut the panels late winter of last year when I had a cement floor and garage doors in CS3. Just enough to keep me out of the wind and where I didn’t have to worry about sawdust going everywhere. Then weeks of sanding, pre-staining, sanding, staining coat 1, more sanding, staining coat 2, and a final sand….to each piece. 9 months later with outdoor work all but impossible, the big Q was now how does all this fit together? And what still needs more stain? A couple days and nights of edge banding, base-making, and gluing and fastening (and more staining) and the thing finally came together. With all the hard work out of the way, there’s just a few small things left and I can call it complete.

I also took this opportunity to get the washers and dryers in order. I vac’d out and repaired the avocado 806 dryer such that it stops automatically. I got the ’62 Frig dryer cleaned up and hooked up. Pulled the yellow dryer out of rotation and vac’d it. Then proceeded to pull every washer along the north wall, scrubbed the floor beneath, adjusted and leveled them all, and made any needed small fixes- like a new poly pump on one Maytag, and a leaky aerator on another. Pulled the beast of a combo machine, yanked the panels and cleaned out the decades old mouse nests (and carcasses) inside. What a mess. A long day for sure, but now ‘washer row’ is neat and orderly, and all machines but the combo, and 1 dryer not plugged in, are completely turnkey.

Unlike last year, the temps have been COLD over the break. No outside work here! But with a furnace running in CS3 I was able to push forward. While I didn’t get my bamboo ceiling installed, I did make progress on a lot of other fronts. For one, the floor for the kitchen will be VCT, but at the moment it was carpet, with cabinets and a stove sitting on top. After getting things moved, and the carpet measured and cut, the hole blister in my hand would agree that the installer’s glue was very effective, requiring much chiseling with a flat blade putty knife, and taking bits and pieces of OSB with it. I have the glue, just need to pick up the tile from the parent’s basement and it should be ready to go. On the opposite corner of the building, the carpet is now trimmed, wrapped and fastened up under the edge of the sunken living room, and the couches moved into place. The winter sun comes right on in and makes it a nice place to sit.

The ceiling pans and pendants are now up in the kitchen, though I still have no good location for a switch. Being of Ikea origin, they use a halogen bi-pin bulb which foils my plans for other technology, which I’ll reveal later. Speaking of which, the track lights I had bought for installation above the workbench are now scrubbed up and in. This was interesting because the tracks themselves were hung from suspended ceilings (Kamerick Art Bldg, UNI), which meant converting them for a flush install. And being a hodge-podge of section lengths, how would it all go together? But in the end it looks good. Just need brighter bulbs; the originals are perfect for murky painting illumination. Found the receipt, too. Bought June of ’09 for 10 bucks. Like I said, the ends are starting to connect.

Now, the workbench is finally done. All 18 feet of it! Made from chemistry lab tops from Price Lab, with lower shelves of ¾ furniture grade birch, which were recycled scraps from the cabinet project. 2x4 and 2x6 construction. A little shallow (24”) but given the quality of the tops, and the price (5 bucks, if I recall), I can’t complain. I officially have a place to work now (once I clear off all the krep parked there while other shelves and cabinets move about). That didn’t stop me on Tuesday from getting my Telex machine online. Several months in the making, I built up a current-loop power supply, traced the wiring in the ASR-32, got a connector wired up for the demodulator board I bought awhile back, and yesterday afternoon after getting the frequency locked in on the iPad, I was receiving 24/7 news! I have a motor control board (kit) on order from a club member which will allow the Teletype to automatically power itself on, receive a message, then shut down. This will be a lot more useful once I have a dedicated internet connection.

But overall, the general them of the break has been Organization. With one bookcase previously installed, the second would requiring modifying to fit my low ceilings. And so with some expert chiseling, a few cuts of the circular saw, and a pass through the table saw with the trim, the cabinet now sits jointly attached to the other, both full of books..organized by subject, the way they should be. The downstairs didn’t go untouched, either. My paint cabinet is now full of paint and stain quarts, and just where did all this spray paint come from?? And totes continue to be opened and sorted. But overall…lots of progress.

Amazing what one can accomplish with a little daylight and AM radio.

Oh yeah, and a restful Christmas and an entertaining New Year’s Eve, to boot!