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Category: around the house

Acoustically Dampened Hard Disk Shelf

Published October 31, 2009

With an iMac soon to replace my Mac Pro, I’ve had to set up some external disks to take care of extra storage and backup needs. Most hard disk enclosures contain fans and are a bit noisy, so I decided to move them to a place where I won’t be able to hear them: in the floor beneath my desk. As was done back when I had a fibre channel disk array in the basement I’m running a cable through the wall and floor, except this time the drives will be located sitting on an acoustically dampened (with neoprene) shelf, and connected via Firewire / IEEE1394b.

To build the shelf I used 1/2″ birch plywood and applied neoprene to most of it using contact cement (picture). A space was left for an APC Back-UPS ES (BE550G) which will be used to provide power to the disk enclosures (picture). The space above where the shelf will fit was then lined with the remaining neoprene, stapled in place using my Dad’s staple gun (picture). The board was then screwed in place using a number of drywall screws, with them concentrated around the UPS end, as it will bear more weight (picture). With a layer of neoprene between the base and the joists I didn’t tighten the screws down fully, as this should provide some additional isolation between the board and the floor.

I expect that once they are located on the shelf I will not be able to hear the fan in the rather noisy Vantec NexStar NST-400MX-UFB or the disk access in either it or the Macally PHR-100ACB. This will make for a nicely quiet computing experience in my office, with plenty of room to fit more Firewire disk enclosures should the iMac need additional expansion.

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Packetless Routing

Published October 4, 2009

Danielle was wanting some robe-type hooks in my closet for hanging hoodies and such, so I acquired some hooks, a scrap board from my sister’s house, and set to work on them. As just the plain boards looked out of place I threw a simple quarter round on the outer edge. Doing this required fixing my long-broken router, but thankfully the problem wasn’t as complicated as I’d thought. I simply had to clean and reassemble the depth adjustment as it bound on some wood chips and came apart. Yes, it’s a cheap router, but it works.

The boards are currently sitting while a second coat of paint on them dries. Hopefully the third (and maybe fourth) will go on tomorrow morning and the hooks will be up by evening. Maybe with a working router I’ll even keep working on the oak bed project that I’ve put off, partially finished, for seven years.

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Twisted Sheets

Published October 2, 2009

Likely due to the action of the agitator in my washing machine, long pieces of fabric such as the sheets seen above become very twisted and almost rope-like while being washed. They are so tightly twisted that I suspect they actually aren’t getting as clean as they should, and thus I end up washing sheets twice, manually unwrapping them between cycles.

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CDs In Storage

Published September 25, 2009

A few months back I emptied my CD rack, boxed up the CDs, and removed the rack from the wall. Tonight I finally got around to moving the CD boxes into storage in the basement, placing them on 2x4s beneath the stairs. This both gave me a chance to straighten up that closet and finally got the living room / dining area cleaned out, as it’s where the boxes had been stacked.

As can be seen above, there’s quite a few boxes of CDs stored there now. Part of me wishes they weren’t in storage, but I know that having them out taking up wall space wasn’t particularly useful. Now this space is used by a bookshelf that is accessed much more frequently, as can be seen in this photograph taken a few minutes ago. Also, if you’re interested, here’s a photo of the closet and stacked CD boxes with stuff put back in around them.

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Cheating Curry

Published September 9, 2009

I am currently making a cheating curry, using Trader Joe’s jarred Red Curry Sauce, pre-sliced mushrooms, and an eggplant and three green peppers from the CSA. The rice is basmati, will be cooked Indian-style by boiling like pasta, and should be done in about eight minutes.

Past experience with Trader Joe’s jarred curries makes me believe that this will result in a decent lunch for tomorrow, and a few subsequent days. After this I’ll bake the cookies (dough already made) for a potluck at work tomorrow, and then grill up a chicken sausage for dinner.

Through all this the kitchen shall remain clean. Good food and a nice, clean kitchen. Mmm!

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Trash Picking Reason #2264584

Published August 31, 2009

This free shelf here is another reason why one shouldn’t be afraid to take their neighbor’s trash right off the pile. While walking Roxie last night we saw this white shoe organizer sitting in the trash. One of the assembly screws had broken through the top, as if someone had stepped on it.

One new hole, moving the screw, and some wood glue and a clamp to repair the ripped out piece, and it’s quite nice again. Sure, these only cost $10 – $15, but free (and one less in the landfill) is even better. I really like shelves like this, as they are great for organizing small tools on a workbench or desk surface. There’s already one on my basement workbench and another on Danielle’s desk. This one on the garage workbench rounds it out nicely.

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Failing Furnace Blower Motor (A.O. Smith 319P892)

Published August 9, 2009

With last night’s storms and the extra-high humidity today, I turned the air conditioning on before going to bed last night. While working in the basement this morning I heard an intermittant squealing sound coming from the the furnace blower while the air conditioning was running. This wasn’t a good sign, but I figured I could just keep an eye on it and see if it gets worse. Then, sometime around 1pm, the AC was no longer working.

Reaching inside of the furnace and turning the fan by hand (with everything powered down, of course) found it to be rather stiff, and almost stuck, meaning that the bearings in the motor had likely failed. After removing the blower unit and playing with things, I found that the motor was now turning a bit better. With a replacement likely needed in the future I pulled the motor itself, then took the picture above to document the model number.

Looking further, I noticed that the motor has a ‘TOP’ marking, and right below this are two oil inlets. (One of these inlets can be seen above on the bottom part of the motor, sticking out in line with the shaft cover.) Hoping to loosen up and lubricate things a bit, I dripped a bit of Tri-Flow down into the holes, spinning the shaft some more. With the shaft moving better I reassembled the blower unit, put everything in the furnace back together, changed the air filter, and tried it out. It works, with no more (for now) squealing. Yay! Hopefully it’ll keep working. I’d rather not have to buy a replacement.

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