Category: around the house

Water Hookup Complete

October 21, 2005

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Well, despite my plans to the contrary, I finished up the water line install last night. Now there is a nice tap located behind the fridge, waiting for the new one to arrive. (Note to self: call to confirm delivery date)

After some discussion with , I think that a GFCI may need to be installed behind the fridge. I’m really not sure about this, though… I know that GFCIs are needed within X feet of water outlets, but I’m not sure about a connection which doesn’t dispense water freely. I need to look into this. I *think* that a fridge doesn’t require a GFCI because it’s on a separate circuit and the outlet isn’t considered ‘couter top’, but I need to look into this more.

Bah. I’m sleepy. I also need to head over to Moosejaw over in Birmingham (uggh) at lunch in order to pick up a backpack. See, I had ordered the fleece for my new jacket from a place called Paragon Sports on Monday, only to have them cancel the order last night due to not having it in stock. I ran over to the Moosejaw store right by work and picked up the fleece (I think it looks really good on me — the collar is grand.) but they were out of the backpack. Uggh. I don’t like shopping for such things. Hopefully these things will last for years and years so that I won’t have to go through this all any time soon. That’s what I’m planning on, at least.

Mmm… Heat…

October 20, 2005

This morning when I woke up, my house felt a little cool. I wasn’t sure why, so I took a bit of a look into it while brushing my teeth. It turns out that I believe my furnace is having its same old problem that it’s had for the last few years. This, combined with my failing air conditioner, makes me think that it’s about time to replace the heating / cooling stuff in the house.

See, here’s the furnace problem: For some reason when I have the grated cover installed on my furnace (as seen here), the furnace will occasionally fail to work. As in, it’ll light the pilot, light the burner, then shut the burner off after ~2 minutes. Then the cycle will start over again, and the furnace will short-cycle like that until the house is up to temperature. I’ve found info online saying that the flame sensor could be dirty, but the problem doesn’t happen when the door is removed, so I’m quite confused… The blower also runs and never cuts out, even when the flame is cut off.

So really, I’m just confused.

Coupled with the slow leak in my AC, I think it may just be time to replace things… That’s $2500 I don’t want to be spending, though. :\

UPDATE: Maybe some of the folks around here will be able to help.

around the house moved from livejournal

;)

October 19, 2005

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Nothing like an evening of laying pipe to make one feel like they’ve accomplished something. ;)

Unfortunately it’s not done. Well, not quite…

See, for some reason around 9pm I decided to start poking at running the water line in the wall. Well, a little over two hours later and it’s almost done. I’ve got the full length of water line hooked up, into the wall, into the little box, and everything is pressurized. All leaks are corrected, and I’m letting it go until tomorrow before I mount things for good. This means cutting the pipe to length, fastening the box together (read: gluing / epoxying, since I modified it all to be like a sort-of old work box), doing a final routing on the pipe, and cleaning up. I also need to pick up some of the little metal straps used for nailing such pipe to the joists.

I must say, I think it’ll be pretty nice… Instead of a wee stub of pipe poking up through the tile or out of the wall and hooking on to things, there will be a plastic box mounted in the wall about twelve inches above the floor recessed into the wall behind where the fridge goes with a valve inside of it. Then a flexible jumper hose (I got a six foot stainless steel braided one which won’t get pinched) connects from there to the fridge. Yes, it’s more joints and one more valve, but it really seems like the most elegant solution.

The only thing that I’ve got left to figure out is how to stick the trim ring for the box on to the box itself. I’m thinking I’ll use hot melt glue, because it should hold solidly, shouldn’t soften, works well on plastic, and can (generally) be removed should the need arise. All that is needed to hold the box is the trim ring, because it’ll fall into the wall if pushed, so the ring will hold it nicely. I’m just afraid of leaks so I’m not putting it together yet… Oh, the reason I had to mount it this way as opposed to something easier, is all the ice maker supply boxes seem designed for new construction. I ended up with this one here, the I2K from Oatey and I had to modify it a good bit so that it fit my needs. It should work out well, though.

But anyway, click the picture above and you can see some of the images I grabbed while installing the water line.

Goodnight. :)

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Soldering…

October 18, 2005

Sweating a brass shut-off valve to copper pipe is no fun at all. I can’t get the solder to wick down into the joint (I’ve had a leak on both tries) so I just tried reflowing it. Hopefully that’ll work.

around the house making things moved from livejournal

Plumbing Update…

October 18, 2005

I don’t like waiting. I’ve cut the cold water line in the basement, and now I’m waiting for all the water in the house (!!!) to drain out through the now-severed pipe before I can solder the new fitting in. Guh!

around the house moved from livejournal

Ice Maker Hookup

October 17, 2005

Okay, before I make a possible mistake, can anyone give me a good reason why I shouldn’t hook up my new icemaker with a polyethylene supply line? Most directions say to use copper, but there are many, many PEX kits available, and I can find no solid evidence as to why one shouldn’t use them. Just the occasional “they leak” statements.

Help?

around the house moved from livejournal

Daylight Bulbs

June 30, 2005

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Okay, remember the bit about daylight bulbs before? Here’s a perfect example of why. This is the florescent fixture on the ceiling of my laundry room, with the cover removed. On the outside are the two new daylight bulbs, and on the inside are the two standard “cool white” bulbs.

I set the camera’s white balance to ‘daylight’ in order to be consistent and shot this in program mode so the exposure would be a nice, even middle ground.

See how yellow those center tubes are? Gah. No wonder things never looked right in that room. Walking in there with the light on now just looks and feels better. Things just seem right.

Unfortunately, when I installed the bulbs in the kitchen I found they are about 2cm too short, so they are up in the housings a bit. I don’t think this will cause a problem, but I’m going to wait until after dark to experiment with them and the remaining working old bulb. I might even have to return these (at $9.something a piece I’ll definitely return them if I don’t like them) and find something else.

Guh, this is a pain. All I want is bright daylight colored bulbs! Heh…

around the house moved from livejournal

Fixed Car and Lights, Woo!

June 30, 2005

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Well, it seems that the new battery has taken care of the problem. Provided nothing crops up with the alternator, things will remain good. Thinking back, my car hasn’t started this promptly in a year or two, so I think the battery may have been going for a while. Whatever the length of time the problem was happening for, I’m just glad it’s fixed.

I also snagged some daylight-color halogen spotlights for the kitchen. One of my old bulbs had burned out, and the GE Reveal bulbs I picked up simply weren’t bright enough. So I swung by Lowe’s and picked up a pair of daylight-color halogen PAR30 spots to take their place. I then returned the Reveal bulbs to Home Depot and picked up two more daylight fluorescent bulbs for the laundry room. I had picked up two the other day, but it turns out that it’s a four bulb fixture. I’d been wanting to replace the standard tubes with daylight ones, but I’d kept forgetting.

Can you tell that I like daylight colored bulbs? Good. I like them a lot. In fact, I try to only use them. Things look proper colors under them, and I’m fairly convinced that bright, daylight-colored light does a good job staving off SAD during winter or just periods of time where I stay inside.

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June 7, 2005

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As one tends to find out this time of year, the A/C at my house is fuX0r3d. Judging by the frosted over line shown above, it looks like low refrigerant again. In an hour of running as a test tonight, the line gained 5mm of frost on the outside of it. I guess it must be pretty humid out there. Anyway, in case you care, this is how the line is supposed to look when the compressor is on or off.

So, someone is coming by tomorrow afternoon to take a look at things, and then I’ll see how they are going. I just hope it doesn’t cost too much… I believe the leak is coming from the valves (large nut-like things you see in the picture) so perhaps the repair person can swap the seals.

It really bothers me that I can’t do this work myself. I don’t have any of the tools, nor do I have the refrigerant. I’m really, really tempted to learn how to refill the system and purchase some R-22 and a gauge set off of eBay, just to save some money…

Ah well.

Oh, I made some lemon ginger sun tea today because it’s easy and tasty. Now I just need to wait for the ice to finish hardening in the freezer.

UPDATE: I seem to have found this site on troubleshooting A/C issues, and the appropriate tool on eBay. Now to source some R22…

around the house food moved from livejournal

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June 1, 2005

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I know it’s all suburban and crap, but I wanted to make the slice of it in which I live at least a little prettier. So, between my frustration with the look of and the need to mound dirt in order to have enough space for planting stuff in the concrete ring around the base of the tree off my front porch, I replaced it.

Total cost for this project was less than $40, including the purchase of two new garden hand tools, a bag of potting mix, and a cold chisel for trimming a piece of the brick. All in all, I think it looks better, and it seems like it’ll probably be easier to water. It’s not perfectly level, but it’s pretty close. The root system of the tree made it nearly impossible to dig down and level everything perfectly, but I think it’ll be all right. If not, I’ll just dig it out next year and adjust the stone.

Tomorrow I’m going to attempt to install new mirrored disks in a file server, and hopefully the day after that I’ll install some florescent lights in my garage. I think a pair of dual-tube 8′ fixtures (total of four 110W tubes) should sufficiently illuminate my garage. Right now I’ve got a pair of 100W incandescent bulbs and it’s just not enough to do real work by. Hopefully with the brighter light I’ll be able to do detail work on my car, like cleaning out the inside, waxing it, etc. It needs it, too. The last time I made a good effort to clean it was before my big trip in November.

All the pictures for today:
· The picture from above of the ring around the base of the tree.
· Wider shot of the tree and the base.
· Looking off the front porch past the flowers showing the trees and a neighboring condo.

around the house moved from livejournal