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Category: around the house

Flowers: 2011

Published May 22, 2011

This morning I finally got all the plants on the front porch rearranged, planted new flowers and herbs, and lightly fertilized everything. Shown above is a lemon tree that Danielle bought, then some (typical for me) salvia, then the nifty purple plant whose name I’ve forgotten. Some peppermint was acquired and planted in the same place that the rosemary started, the sage now has its own pot and will hopefully flourish, and the garlic was moved in with the green onions. The purple plant whose name I can’t remember is also doing very well after Danielle cut it back over the winter.

If you’d like to see the rest of the photos of this year’s flowers and plants, click here: Flowers 2011.

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CamelBak Bottle Cleanliness Issues

Published April 16, 2011

The biggest design failure of CamelBak Bottles for cycling (the Sport line) is the difficulty of cleaning the burst valve in the cap. The above photo shows the black mold / mildew that I found after removing the mouthpiece and plastic retaining ring which holds the burst valve in place. This portion of the assembly can only be flushed and can’t be mechanically cleaned without this (slightly difficult, and not designed into the bottle’s use) disassembly.

Note that the burst valve (seen on the right) is made of a rich blue color rubber (seen around the edges) and the inside of the valve assembly (seen on the left) should be a solid silver color. I was able to clean this with a toothbrush and some soap, but it surely won’t be long before this has to be done again.

Even after this I’ll continue to use some of these bottles, but I definitely won’t buy any. (I happened to get this one and an insulated one for free. They are nice, but at ~$10/ea and with this cleaning difficulty I don’t think they are worth buying.)

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High Winds and a Clean Garage

Published April 11, 2011

I went home early from work today because I was motion sick due to the swaying of the building in the high winds. I didn’t expect this to happen as I don’t normally get motion sick, but an hour after arriving at work I felt my head swimming, my stomach churning, and I was unable to think clearly. Even eating a bit of lunch didn’t help, but walking around for a bit at ground level seemed to. So, around 1pm I headed home and finished up the afternoon working remotely, which isn’t a particularly challenging thing since most of my work is remote, but instead of being 35 miles away I’m normally about 300′ away.

After getting home it took almost another four hours before I was feeling better, but after that occured I decided that it was a good day for cleaning the garage. This hadn’t been properly done in two or three years and was long overdue, so it was quite satisfying to finally wash the floor. It only took about an hour to empty the garage, sweep it, and hose it out. After letting it dry out (which was helped by the wind) I put everything back in, and now the garage floor is as clean as the basement floor. I can once again walk outside with bare feet without needing to brush then off before coming back in.

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Failing at Furnace Repair

Published March 28, 2011

For the last two or three winters my furnace would occasionally have a problem where it would fail to ignite and be left in a lockout state requiring the thermostat to be switched off then back to heat before it’d reattempt ignition. Since this was only a minor inconvenience and not repeatable I’d opted to fix it later. Suddenly this past weekend my furnace started seriously misfiring and failing to light, resulting in barely any heat on Saturday night and no heat at all on Sunday night.

Since I’ve done a bit of electronics work in the past I set about trying to troubleshoot this myself, and just after midnight this morning I was convinced that the problem was likely the main control board, Carrier part number CESO110018, as seen above in my furnace. Lacking a schematic it was difficult to troubleshoot, but I thought that it was not sending enough power to the ignition unit and thus the ignition was simply failing. So, this morning I rushed out to Behler-Young‘s Pontiac location and bought a drop-in replacement, ICM Controls‘ ICM 271 (PDF) for $68.73 (after tax). Hurring home and installing it before work I found that I was wrong; it wasn’t the control board.

I then called Mike’s Heating and Cooling, the trusted local place which replaced my air conditioner five summers ago, scheduled a time for them to come by, and set off to work leaving Danielle home in the cold where she even had to pile a robe on top of Roxie to keep her warm. The repair person arrived later in the afternoon, checked the furnace, and $285 later ($166 in parts, $79 for the service call, $40 for half an hour of labor) the ignition unit was confirmed defective, replaced, and the furnace put back into operation.

It’s a bit disappointing to have failed to repair the furnace myself, but at least it’s up and running again. Overall it’s not terribly expensive, as in the 9.5 years I’ve owned this condo I’ve likely only spent $500 on furnace maintenance, including replacing the humidifier and periodic furnace filters, but I still wish that I would have solved the problem myself.

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Broken Carboy Neck

Published March 20, 2011

This evening I noticed that my latest batch of beer, a vanilla stout, was just barely starting to blow krausen out in to the airlock. To fit a blowoff hose (picture from a previous batch) I began pulling on the stopper in the carboy, and when I did so the whole neck of the carboy tore off. This left me holding what you see above; an airlock stuck into a stopper, along with the neck of a carboy.

I’ve fit the stopper back in along with some foil so it should remain air tight and thus this batch should be fine, but it’s disappointing that I’ll now have to buy another one at ~$40. I’ll also have to be extra-careful when moving the carboy; so much so that I’ll probably just transfer it to secondary right in the bathtub where it’s sitting fermenting.

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Gas Distribution Manifold and Dessicant

Published March 6, 2011

This afternoon I added a bit of a luxury to the Kegged Beer Cooler, a three-way gas manifold. While not necessary, this will allow me to easily shut off gas to different connectors if I’m needing to play with different pressures for force carbonating beer, soda, fruit, etc.

Since I was drilling from the inside of the cabinet outward without using a guide the external screw heads aren’t quite lined up (picture). This is disappointing because it doesn’t look as nice as it could, but I guess I’ll just have to leave it. To be sure that I didn’t hit any gas lines I first cut small holes in the aluminum liner with a pointed razor blade, tore back the metal with needle nose pliers, then poked carefully through the foam with a plastic tool until I reached the steel outer wall. The foam was then cleared out using a drill bit in my fingers, and then I completed drilling through the outside.

A few days ago I received some desiccant bags purchased from eBay (picture) and those are now in place as well, so the kegged beer cooler project is pretty much finished. I may eventually add external taps, but for now using picnic-style taps inside of the unit should suffice.

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Inconvenienced by Safety

Published March 5, 2011

A few weeks back I ordered this turkey fryer setup from Cabela’s to replace the burner/regulator that I had problems with a few weeks back. Today when setting it up for use I found that there is an electronic interlock on the gas line which will cut off the gas flow after the last time it was manually reset.

I attempted to remove this, but as can be seen here there is a laquer-like thread locker on the fitting between the regulator and the interlock. While this likely won’t be a huge issue, I’d really prefer to simply concentrate on brewing beer and not pressing a button to keep things running.

UPDATE: In practice this wasn’t that much of a hinderance. The large red button which starts the gas flowing and resets the electronic timer serves as a quick turn-on, and the black button is a good emergency-off in case of a boil-over. A green light illuminates when the gas is flowing and it starts blinking before the gas shuts off, giving one ample time to press the red button and keep gas flowing. While it would be nice to not have this safety in place, it’s not as difficult to deal with as I’d expected.

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Kegged Beer Cooler: Complete

Published March 3, 2011

The kegged beer cooler is complete, sitting in the basement, and is actively cooling what remains of two kegs of beer. Tonight I ran the gas lines, fitted everything into place, and set it up against one wall of the basement. It’s currently set to start cooling at 40°F and shut off at 35°F ambient temperature in the unit, which I expect to keep the beer at somewhere in that range. It may be necessary to narrow the band to something a bit narrower, but I’ll be able to determine that after putting a full keg of beer in the freezer and monitoring it.

I’ve been considering fitting the fridge with taps, but for the time being I think I’ll just stay with using picnic-style taps inside the unit. Actual beer faucets are around $100/each after considering all mounting hardware, and I don’t think they’ll provide enough benefit to justify doubling the cost of the unit.

Here’s some more notable photos of the unit throughout its progress:

· Completed chest freezer to beer keg conversion.
· Looking inside at two corney kegs, party tap-style dispensing lines, gas lines, temperature sensor, etc.
· Gas line transition from the compressor compartment into the body of the freezer. It is held in place with twist-type reusable cable ties.
· Temperature probe in place and gas line and Y fitted. Excess foam was left in place to serve as a hose guide.
· Operational Johnson Controls A419 temperature control indicating that it is currently cooling.

All of the photos can be found here. And yes, Roxie approves of it.

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Temperature Control Fitted

Published March 3, 2011

The temperature control for the kegged beer cooler fitted and it seems to work. It started, cooled the unit until the appropriate temperature was reached, then turned itself off. Now I just have to run the gas lines and see how it goes with actually cooling beer. This will require a little bit more hardware, although I’ll probably only fit it out for two kegs for the time being, as that’s how many I have. It’s too bad that my current kegs are also almost empty, as I won’t be able to run it fully loaded. I guess it’ll be time to brew more soon.

I also need to consider monitoring temperature in the unit or attaching the probe to a specific keg. I think that in the unit will be sufficient, but for the first couple weeks I’ll double-check this by occasionally checking the temperature of a keg itself.

New photos from tonight’s work are can be found on this page.

(Yes, I know those screws are too long, but they are what I had laying available. Oh well, they neither interfere with anything nor will they be seen once the unit is closed up.)

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