Monthly Archives: November 2022

Special Blog Post for 202211(01-14) – Accessory Building Project Update

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[ Note:  This post consists of 13 photographs with captions.  All photos were taken on a Google Pixel 6 Pro smartphone and post-processed with Faststone Image Viewer. ]

 

TUESDAY 01 – MONDAY 14 November

 

A view of the shop looking toward the NE corner from the door in the SW corner.  The ceiling/joists and walls have been primed with Killz-2 using an airless sprayer and then painted with Valspar Pro Storm Coat Exterior semi-gloss acrylic white paint.  The spray nozzle clogged frequently and the whole process was messy and inefficient.  Still, it was probably better than doing the joists and the OSB on the ceiling with a brush and roller.

The stairs to the storeroom.  The risers have been primed and painted white.  The treads have been primed and painted light gray using Valspar Pro Deck, Floor, & Porch anti-skid paint.  The stair walls and the spaces at either end of each step have been trimmed in 1x pine but have not yet been primed/painted.  The doors for the shop and storeroom have been installed.

The extension of the west pull-through driveway to the front of the barn.  Phil (Precision-Grading) was here most of the day on the 5th, initially redistributing the 1×3 crushed concrete based, and then finish grading the dirt on the other three sides of the barn.

The view of the accessory building from the NW after the finish grading.  The grades on the E, N, and S sides were sloped away from the building a bit more and tapered gradually into the existing terrain.  That created some extra dirt in addition to the large and small piles that were already there.  Phil had me designate low areas to fill in, and I selected ones that were both obviously in need of some fill and not too far from the building to make it efficient for him.

The main/permanent entry door for the barn.  The carpenters removed the temporary one and replaced it with this one.  Besides the class window, this door has extra deep jams which will allow it to be properly finished off if I ever decide to install paneling/drywall and trim.

Looking straight up the stairs to the storeroom, the risers and trim have been primed/painted white and the treads have been primed/painted light gray with anti-slip floor paint.  Although not visible, the landing at the top of the stairs and the floor of the storeroom have also been primed and painted with the light gray anti-slip paint.  Everything will have two coats of paint when the job is done, although some of that might not happen until spring 2023.

The carpenters trimmed between the OSB and the stairs, under the trim on the top and front of the walls, and along the floor.  I was able to get all of this primed and painted (one coat) before the weather turned too cold.  The Valspar Pro Storm Coat paint can be applied down to 35 degrees (F), but the weekend after these photos were taken, the lows started dropping into the mid-to-low 20s (F) at night and only rising into the 30s during the day.  That signaled the end of the painting until spring.  As is obvious in these photos, the larger walls that enclose the shop and storeroom have not been primed and painted yet, a big job that will have to wait until next year.

The electrician (Bill) was finally able to fit our barn into his extensive commitments and install the service entrance.  Seen here is the meter can and riser conduit on the SE corner of the building.

The meter can with the cover removed.  The black and red wires are the two ‘hot’ leads (L1 and L2) and the bare aluminum wire is the neutral, all going to the load center on the other side of the wall.  The conduit lower/left is where the wires from DTE will come into the meter can and attach to the lugs at the top of the box.  The meter blades will plug into the four vertical spring-slots and then the cover will go back on and be secured by DTE.

The electricians had to chisel out part of the foundation to allow the riser conduit descend vertically (more or less) below ground level.  I will install the 2” Schedule 40 PVC Conduit that connects to this pipe and runs through the yard to junction box by the utility pole (once it is installed).  I will rent a trencher from The Home Depot in Howell for this work.  The horizontal white device is just a clamp for the ground wire.  The wire coming up from this device goes through the wall and into the bottom of the load center; it does not go through the meter can.  It leaves the clamp through the bottom and then runs to the right where it attaches to two, 8’ long copper ground rods driven into the ground next to the foundation.

The top few inches of both ground rods are visible, as is the bare copper ground wire that connects them to the ground bus (and case) of the load center.

Shown here is the Siemen’s 240/120V – 200A Load Center.  The service entrance cable and ground wire come through the wall and up into the bottom of the load center.  Just visible at the top/right is a yellow 12-2+G Romex cable that feeds a duplex outlet out of sight to the left of the photo.

I put in a request for the Miss Dig 811 service late last week with a work start date of November 10.  I had to create an account and do the whole thing online, but it was otherwise a fairly smooth process.  The only caveat was that I could not draw the work area polygon using the pencil on my iPad Pro and ended up having to do the whole thing on my laptop computer.  The confirmation said the site would be marked not later than 12:57 PM on November 10.  The utility location service showed up around noon on that date, and was done before one o’clock.  The flags and paint for the DTE electric (magenta) and the AT&T phone (orange) cables to the house are marked.  (The AT&T cable is no longer in use.)  We have natural gas and broadband cable on the property as well, but they are on the other end of the house, well away from the work area, and did not need to be marked.

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Blog Post for 202210(18-31) – Accessory Building Project Update

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[ Note:  This post covers updates on the accessory building (barn) project for the 14 days from Tuesday, October 18 through Monday, October 31, 2022.  There are three photos with captions. ]

 

TUESDAY 18 October

The accessory building (barn) is so close to being done that I am getting a bit impatient for it to actually be finished.  Which is to say, to have all of the stuff the builder is taking care taken care of.  Once he is done, there will still be a lot for us to do, but most of it cannot be started until all the permitted details are complete and he has gotten the final inspections.  Top of the list, for me, is all of the electrical work that I still have to do, and the first step is arranging for our electric utility, DTE Energy, to run power to the building.  I put in my service request with them on Wednesday, October 12, and expected to hear back from a planning consultant not later than tomorrow.  I now have to design the electrical plan, which I will do in QCAD (the same software I used to design the building).

In the meantime, the one thing I can do is prime and paint the walls in the shop and storeroom, as well as the risers on the stairs, and then prime and paint the floor in the storeroom and the treads on the stairs.

 

WEDNESDAY 19 October

The HVAC technician (Mike) from Lakeside Services (Lakeside Heating and Cooling) arrived around 1 PM today to service the Bosch hot-water baseboard heating system for the house, and the heating portion of the Bryant HVAC unit for the library.  He was here until about 3:30 PM.

I spent most of the day at my desk working on the final post for our trip and a parallel post for the activities this past week related to the accessory building (barn) project.  I knew that the electrician might be here sometime this week, and by mid-afternoon I had it in the back of my mind that I should   check to see if he was on site.  I went outside around 2:45 PM and saw several vehicles down by the barn, so I walked down to check it out.  I could hear the unmistakable sound of a circular saw, so figured it was probably not the electrician.  I was right.

What I found instead were three vehicles and three carpenters.  The crew chief was Rob, who is Patriot Builders lead finish carpenter.  (Chuck, the owner, is a framing carpenter, and Garrett, who I met last week, does both framing and finish work.)  A bit to my surprise, they were installing OSB on the inside of the studs for the sides of the staircase, and also installing OSB on the interior of the shop and storeroom walls.  I had not realized they were going to finish off the stairs, and had (apparently) forgotten that they were going to finish off the walls.  All of which was great.  I had a brief, but very nice, chat with Rob and then left them to work in peace without any more interference from me.  I texted Chuck to let him know the guys were here and that I met them briefly.

 

THURSDAY 20 October

Sometime around this date the DTE planning consultant assigned to our work order showed up on site (unannounced).  I was in the middle of painting, but obviously stopped to give him whatever time he needed.  We had a very nice chat about what I was trying to accomplish.  By the time he left, it was clear that he wanted to have DTE run power to the barn from the same transformer that powers the house.  It also appeared that he had determined that we needed a larger transformer, but also needed a new utility pole, possibly taller than the current one, located within ~5 feet of the current one.  As best he could tell from the ground, he thought our current transformer was 10KVA and said something about switching it to a 25KVA.  He indicated that wire from the junction box to the barn would be $10/foot (I would need close to 100 feet) and there would be a charge for the new/larger transformer, but probably not more than $1,500.

I pointed out that the house already has a 240V/200A main load center and 240V/100A, secondary load center (not a subpanel), and that the barn would have a 240V/200A load center as well.  I noted that 24KVA is only 100A at 240V (or 200A at 120V), so a 25KVA transformer would still be far below the capacity of my three load centers, and that my total existing loads exceed the load center capacities.  This is actually typical, as load centers never draw their full rating, and probably rarely draw half of their full rating for more than a short period of time.  Still, as long as we are going to the trouble and expense of doing this work, I wanted to make sure the new transformer was adequately sized.  (My research later revealed that the next size up from DTE is 50KVA.)

As I understood the order of events, it would go something like this:  0) Get confirmation that the meter can, load center, and an outlet have been installed in the barn by a licensed electrician and the installation has been inspected and approved by the permitting authority (Livingston County Building Department, in this case).  1)  Deliver new pole to the site.  2) Install the new pole, transformer, and terminal strip.  3) Install a junction box in the ground about 5 feet from the new pole.  4)  Disable the power to the existing transformer.  5)  Move the existing wires to the new pole.  6) Run wires from the new transformer to the terminal strip.  6) Run new/large wires down the pole from the terminal strip to the junction box.  7) Connect the existing wires from the house to the junction box.  8)  Pull the new wires for the barn from the meter box to the junction box.  (I will have the 2” PVC conduit already installed in a trench.)  9)  Install the new meter for the barn.  10)  Energize the new transformer.

He indicated that it would likely be a month before this got done, but to get the process moving along, and provide me with the cost estimate, he needed the LOAD SHEET, asap.  He also ‘suggested’ that I include any/every thing I thought I ‘might’ possible ever want to power.  I got the sense that this LOAD SHEET was part of a justification/approval process for the cost of whatever work has to be done, determining what our share of that initial cost will be, and what payback the utility company can expect.

I already had the LOAD SHEET pdf, and it indicated that most of it has to be filled out and signed by a licensed electrician.  I explained that the meter can and load center were being handled by the builder’s electrician, but that I did not have my own electrician for the job.  I explained that I have an EE background, but am not an electrician, and asked it would suffice for me to fill it out myself?  He didn’t say ‘no,’ which I took to mean ‘yes,’ or at least ‘okay, not great, but I’ll work with that.’  He also made it clear he needed it sooner rather than later.

From this meeting forward, I continued painting during the day when it was warm enough and I had some daylight to work with.  In the evenings, I worked on determining the loads I would need to power and filling in the LOAD SHEET.

 

FRIDAY 21 October

The floor joists for the storeroom floor are exposed on the underside in the shop, and I do not plan to install a flat ceiling onto them.  With that in mind, I thought it might be easier to prime/paint the joists and the underside of the OSB storeroom floor with a paint sprayer.  I don’t own one and have never used one.  Thinking this might be a one-time use, not wanting to spend a fortune, and not having an air-compressor with adequate CFM or an oil/water separator/filter, I got a Wagner Control Pro 130 airless sprayer at the local Lowe’s.  I chose Killz-2 for the latex primer and Valspar Pro Storm Coat semi-gloss acrylic latex for the paint.  Even though I will be using the paint inside, this exterior paint is formulated to deal with outdoor temperatures with cracking.  It can also be applied down to 35 degrees (F), so well suited to what I needed to accomplish given the time of year.

 

FRIDAY 28 October

Towards the end of the afternoon, I finally uploaded the LOAD SHEET to my DTE planning consultant, along with an Excel Spreadsheet I had created to catalog my current and future loads, both for the house and for the barn.

 

MONDAY 31 October

For the balance of this post, I am going to just include a few photos.

The south/interior wall of the shop with a view through the door to the area under the storeroom stairs.  Closed-cell spray-foam insulation is visible between the floor joists for the storeroom above.  The walls have been spray-foamed and then covered with OSB.

The stairs leading up to the storeroom as seen from the large/west bay door opening.  The side paneling and studs have been removed under the high end of the stairs.  The area under the landing has never enclosed as the door the to shop is there.

The storeroom looking SW from the NE corner.  The floor has been masked off at the base of the walls for painting.  Likewise, the Velox sun-tunnel diffuser in the center of the ceiling has been masked off.  The transparent painter’s plastic had the unexpected benefit of spreading the light out more towards the walls.  The step ladder is a 6-foot model.  The ceiling height is ~7 feet.

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Blog Post for 202210(18-31) – Back to Normal (for now)

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[ Note:  There are no photos for this post. ]

 

TUESDAY 18 October

Life is gradually returning to normal, which is to say, we are moving back into the rhythm of our normal, daily routines, local activities, and commitments.  Not completely, of course.  Adapting back to home life after an extended trip takes time, and we are not necessarily in a hurry to complete the transition.

Linda placed an order last night with one of our local Panera’s for a baker’s dozen bagels, to be picked up this morning, so she fetched those first thing.

A technician from Schutz Heating & Cooling was supposed to be here this morning between 8  and 10 AM.  Sometime between 8 and 8:30 I got a phone call from the company.  The technician had called in sick and they needed to reschedule.  No problem, the appointment was routine maintenance, and was easily rescheduled for Tuesday, October 25 at 10 AM.

Around lunch time we drove over to the Oceola Township Hall and picked up our absentee ballots for the November 8 general election.  It turned out that our new voter ID cards had been returned to the Township as they were mailed while we were away but could not be forwarded to our daughter’s house.  The reason they could not be forwarded, and that we could not pick them up in person, was that they constitute a confirmation of address.  We confirmed that our mail was, once again, being delivered to our house, and the clerk said she would re-post them.

As part of the transition, bridging our travel adventures with our home routines, we met our friend, and my former co-worker, Kate, for an evening out at the Corner Brewery (Arbor Brewing Company) in Ypsilanti, Michigan.  Kate and Brian live in Ypsi, and she still works at Wayne RESA, so we typically drive in her direction about once a month and get together for food and beverages (usually beer) someplace relatively convenient for her.

We left around 4:45 PM in a light drizzle and drove through mist and rain of varying intensity all the way.  We got to the pub around 5:30 PM and Kate joined us a little before 6 PM.  We always try to arrive early enough to get a booth (we didn’t) and get our first glasses of beer at happy hour prices (we did).  Linda selected a table near the booths.  A booth opened up before Kate arrived, so we snagged it.

It’s always a wonderful evening when we get together with Kate, and this was no exception.  She is an intrepid traveler, and has been following our trip blog with genuine interest (which I very much appreciate).  And we are always interested in where she has been recently, or plans to go next, as well as the goings on of her (very talented) nieces and nephews.  She had birthday presents for Linda, a couple of books, wrapped in paper that she had designed and printed herself (she’s a graphic artist) with a repeated pattern of an F-150 pulling an Airstream trailer.  Linda removed the paper carefully, treating it like a treasured object.  We had a couple of gifts for her as well from our travels.

We finally returned to our vehicles around 10:15 and headed home.

 

WEDNESDAY 19 October

The HVAC technician (Mike) from Lakeside Services (Lakeside Heating and Cooling) arrived around 1 PM today to service the Bosch hot-water baseboard heating system for the house, and the heating portion of the Bryant HVAC unit for the library.  When he tried to flush out any debris from the hot-water tank, he discovered that the floor drain in the furnace room appeared to be almost fully clogged.  That’s not a good thing, as the furnace is a high efficiency natural gas fired condensing unit, and the condensate drain line discharges into this floor drain.  The water from the floor drains (this one and the one in the laundry room) flow to the sump in the NE corner of the basement.  I could hear water dripping into the sump, but removed the lid to get visual confirmation as well.  We waited a while and the water level in the floor drain slowly dropped.  Obviously the rate at which the furnace puts condensate into this floor drain is slower that the rate at which it flows out to the sump, but not by much, and certainly not by enough.

Lakeside Service doesn’t not deal with drains, but Mike gave me the name and phone number of a company that does (Clog Busters).  He was here until about 3:30 PM.  The library furnace filter was fairly clean (last changed on May 24, 2022), but Mike suggested I get a MERV 11 filter element instead of a MERV 13, which he felt was too restrictive, and reminded me to replace the batteries in all of the thermostats.  We also talked about CO detectors, making sure we had ones that were sensitive enough to actually matter, and that we had them installed in the right places.  I will call the company Mike recommended to deal with the slow drain.  I could run a long hose out the downstairs doorwall to drain/flush the hot-water tank, but I will probably wait for the drain to be opened up.

I got a text message from Lakeside Service not long after Mike left asking me to provide feedback.  It was a positive experience, and I responded accordingly.

 

THURSDAY 20 October

We got our seasonal Flu shots and bi-variant CoVID-19 boosters at a local CVS this morning.

Sometime during the day, a Boondockers Welcome guest arrived.  It was someone we have hosted before, and we were glad to have her return.

I called Clog Busters, the company I was referred to by Lakeside Service, and set up an appointment for Monday morning.

In the afternoon, Linda met with Dave, the Controller from Metropolitan Baking Co., to pick up work and discuss a major upcoming software project.

Yup, we were returning to our normal routines.  Except for the barn, of course; having a building that size constructed on our property is not a routine occurrence, and there is nothing about the experience that is routine.

 

FRIDAY 21 October

According to our calendar, Linda met up with Diane to go for a walk today.  I am writing this post weeks later, and have no idea what else we did today.

 

SATURDAY 22 October

The two youngest grand-daughters arrived today for a sleepover.  Paul and Nancy also came over for dinner as they were in the area staying with their son and daughter-in-law in Ann Arbor.

The weather was also warm enough to paint, and looked like it would stay that way for the next few weeks, so I started acquiring the materials I would need to prime and paint the inside of the shop and storeroom, as well as the stairs, in the barn.  More on all of that in a separate barn update post.

 

SUNDAY 23 October

The morning after the sleepover night, Paul and Nancy returned to have breakfast and visit.  They enjoy interacting with our grand-daughters.  They eventually returned to Ann Arbor in the early afternoon.  We then gathered up the munchkins, drove them back to their house in Ann Arbor, and stayed with them for a bit before returning home.  On the drive back, the system information screen in the center of the dashboard (navigation, entertainment, information) went completely dark.

 

MONDAY 24 October

Today was a slightly less routine day.  First up was dropping off the F-150 at Brighton Ford for a service appointment.  The appointment was originally to do a LOF, check the brakes, make sure the SYNC 3 and navigation MAPS were up-to-date, and investigate the slight hesitation when going from 3rd to 4th gear while driving slowly with the powertrain not yet warmed up.  Since the info screen had apparently died last night on the way home, I added that to the list.  The drop off was a bit less smooth than usual, however.  When I made the appointment I was told to check in with a specific service advisor, the same person I have worked with exclusively for two years.  I arrived on time, and asked for that person.  He was busy, but that was fine, I wasn’t in any hurry.  When he finally got to me, he didn’t think he was my service advisor, and that I was supposed to work with someone else that I had never worked with before.  He agreed to do the write-up, however, but seemed pressed for time.  Whatever, I described the issues, signed the paperwork, and rejoined Linda, who was waiting for me in her car.  I should have read carefully what he actually wrote down, but I didn’t.

Clog Busters was scheduled to arrive as early as 10 AM, which they did.  The technician started by adding water to the floor drain in the furnace room, and confirmed that it was mostly clogged and draining very slowly.  He could see a lot of loose material at the bottom of the drain/trap, so he started by removing it, picking out the larger pieces and vacuuming out the rest.  He then ran a drain snake through the drain, and was able to feel a T-intersection, which I presumed was the drain running from the laundry room to the sump in the NE corner of the basement.  The snake opened things up a bit, but not that much.  He then ran the snake through the floor drain in laundry room, thinking it would emerge in the sump.  (It was my job to watch for it coming into the sump.)  At one point he had 100’ of snake in the drain tiles, but was never able to get it to emerge into the sump, even though I thought I could hear it.  In any event, by the time he was done the drains were emptying and flowing into the sump much better than they had been; probably for a long time.

We had in-home health assessments scheduled for 1:15 PM, and Clog Busters was done and gone before that.  The health assessments were a no-added-cost benefit of our health insurance plan/provider.  Having them done in-home was one of the options, so we gave that a try.  They were conducted by a P.A. and took about an hour for the two of us combined.  It was a very easy process.

Tuesday is garbage pick-up day, and the company (Granger) that bought out our service provider (Alchin’s) does our street in the first half of the morning.  That means the container gets wheeled to the edge of the street on Monday at 5 PM, so as not to forget it in the morning.

 

TUESDAY 25 October

Schutz Heating and Cooling arrived around 10 AM, as scheduled, to service the Mitsubishi-Trane heat pump they installed in October 2021.  Everything was OK with the unit in heating mode.  They will return in the spring to check/service it in cooling mode.

Nothing else of special note occurred today.

 

WEDNESDAY 26 October

We were notified by Xfinity (via e-mail, IIRC) that they were increasing our broadband speed, apparently at no extra cost to us.  Of course, our 1st year special pricing ended in July 2022, so we are now paying more for the service.  The notification said I had to restart the gateway to activate the higher speeds, so I did.  That’s always a bit of work, as I like to shut down all of the devices in the house, including the network switches, and then restart them in order:  gateway first, then the switches, then all of the devices.  The notification wasn’t completely clear if the speed boost would be immediate, or perhaps take place by “sometime in November.”  I ran a speed test anyway, and did not see any change from what we normally have.  I will try again in mid-late November.

I had not heard anything about the service work on the F-150, so I called the dealership later in the afternoon and spoke to my service advisor.  He didn’t have a current status, but said he would check on it and call me in the morning.  He did indicate that the reason he thought another service advisor was going to handle it was because of the transmission issue.  OK.  I wasn’t necessarily in a hurry to get the truck back, but it was unusual for them to have it for this long for relatively routine service.

 

THURSDAY 27 October

Linda has been doing a lot of work for the bakery and I have been working on whatever I can do in the barn.  I called the Ford dealership back to see what the status was on the F-150, only to find that my service advisor had not made it into work today due to a “family emergency.”  OK.  That happens.  I was directed to service manager, so I called him and left a message.  What unfolded from there was a text message conversation rather than return phone calls, which I thought was rather odd.  What I was told was that they had not been able to duplicate the “hard, delayed shifting from 3rd to 4th gear.”  I communicated back that this was not the problem I had reported.  Apparently, however, it’s what the service advisor had written down.  So, they had apparently spent time trying to replicate and chase down the wrong thing.

 

FRIDAY 28 October

Linda spent the day in Ann Arbor babysitting.  She took Halloween treats for the girls as we would not see them again until after that.  I worked on the painting projects in the barn.

At some point I was notified that the F-150 was done and ready for pickup.  Linda was home in time to drive me to the dealership.  All I had to pay for was the LOF service.  We bought the truck from this dealership, and have had all of the service done here except for the LOF and tire rotation in St. John’s Newfoundland back in August.  My interactions with the staff have always been pleasant, and the work has always been performed correctly and in a timely manner, the events of this week notwithstanding.

 

SATURDAY 29 October

We got together with neighbors this evening.  Marta was back temporarily from her contract assignment in San Francisco, so Gail arranged for a 6:30 PM get-together at their house with the usual suspects (Gail/Mike, Marta/Gary, Rose/Jerry, and us).  Mike already had a really nice campfire going when we arrived, and kept it well-tended all evening.  Everyone brought snacks to share and came bundled up against the impending cold.  It was great to re-connect, and catch up, with our neighborhood friends.

 

SUNDAY 30 October

Just another day in paradise, apparently.

 

MONDAY 31 October

Boo!  We have never had trick-or-treaters since moving to our current house, but to avoid any misunderstanding, we made sure the outside lights, and all of the lights on the main floor, were off and that the shades were closed.  We then retired to basement and watched TV.

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