Category Archives: Projects

2015/04/26-30 (N-R) Routine Returns

2015/04/26 (N) Bentley

Turning the lights out at 11 PM last night meant I would be awake around 6 AM this morning and ready to get up, and that was the case. Linda was awake by 6:30 AM and we were up shortly thereafter. I was able to light the natural gas fireplace without difficulty. The only thing I can figure is that perhaps I did not have the Off/Pilot/On gas valve in the right position last night.

With the gas valve in the Off position gas cannot flow beyond the valve. In the Pilot position gas can only flow to the pilot flame assembly, and only while the knob is pushed in, until the flame has been lit long enough to cause the heat sensitive pilot valve to remain open at which point the knob can be released. I do not think gas can flow to the main burner tubes, however, until the knob is turned to the On position. There is also a Remote/Off/On switch that has to be in the Off position when lighting the pilot flame (with the built in spark igniter) and moved to the On position to allow the main burner tubes to receive gas. All I can figure is that I did not have the Off/Pilot/On valve turned to the On position. The Remote position is intended to be used with a wall mounted thermostat which we do not have. For us the firelogs are primarily decorative but are useful for taking the chill off of the early morning or late evening. We never have them on, however, unless we are in the living room or dining room where we can see them.

Linda fed the cats while I made coffee which we enjoyed in the living room by the firelogs. It was 33 degrees F outside this morning but in another week the morning temperatures should be such that we can sit on the rear deck and enjoy our morning brew out there. We finally both got dressed and Linda heated an Amy’s Breakfast Scramble and split it between us. We lingered a while longer in the living room and finally got to work on our various chores.

Linda’s focus was to continue cleaning the kitchen, off-loading food and kitchen supplies from the bus, and getting her domestic and professional domains back in order. She made a grocery list as the day went along. We would normally go to the Howell Farmers Market on Sunday morning, but the outdoor market does not start until next week.

I cleaned the cats’ litter tray, which seems to be my job at home but Linda’s job on the bus, and then got to work on revising the draft survey for the FMCA national education committee. While I was doing that I also started up a couple of our workstation computers, installed updates, and kept an eye on my e-mail and RVillage messages. I worked on the survey until dinner time, with a break for lunch, and had Linda proofread it before I uploaded it to my Dropbox and e-mailed the link to the committee. We have a telephone meeting at 3:30 PM EDT tomorrow and I wanted everyone to have a chance to look it over in advance of the meeting.

Linda made Farro with garlic, dried cranberries, almonds, and kale and cooked some fresh asparagus. A green salad and a glass of wine completed a very nice meal. Linda had a text message from her sister letting us know that her housemate, Linda, decided to have Bentley put down. He was the oldest of her three dogs, deaf and arthritic, and on medications that he would not take, and he had lost interest in food. We had both received a text message from Linda regarding our recent visit so I responded to that. We were sad that Bentley was gone, but glad that we got to see him one last time.

I turned my attention to editing photos for my April 10 blog post about out visit to Bandolier National Monument and Santa Fe, New Mexico but the batteries in my wireless mouse needed to be recharged so I plugged it in and called it quits for the night. Linda was watching the first episode of Wolf Hall (PBS) on her iPad so I finished reading the May-June 2015 issue of the Gypsy Journal and played a few rounds of my favorite games. Linda prepared some fresh berries for dessert and we enjoyed them to the glow of the firelogs before going to bed.

2015/04/27 (M) Caller #9

After coffee and cereal this morning I continued selecting and processing photos from our April 10 visit to Bandolier National Monument and Old Town Santa Fe. I ended up with 16 photos so I uploaded the post and put them in an image gallery at the end. After lunch I got all of my documents in order for my 3:30 PM (EDT) telephone meeting of the FMCA Education Committee. I chatted briefly with the committee chair to see if there were any surprises in store. I then worked on consolidating my draft blog posts for April 11 through 15 which included the time we spent in Norman, Oklahoma visiting with my uncle Bob and Aunt Helen, and four additional generations of relatives.

I exchanged e-mails with BCM Publisher Gary Hatt and Editor Dave Rush regarding my article on the redoing of the exterior of our coach. The article is 5,800 words with 71 photos and they would like to split it up and run it in installments over three or four issues. That will require me to go back through the article and identify the places where it can be split, making sure the photos track with the text, and write some additional bridge paragraphs to wrap up each installment and introduce the next one.

I dialed in to my FMCA meeting just before 3:30 PM. I was caller number nine (9) but I did not win anything. The meeting lasted almost 90 minutes. We discussed the survey we have been developing and approved a motion to pass it along to the Executive Board with the recommendation that it be sent to a random sample of the members both electronically and via USPS. I expect to receive minor corrections in the next 36 hours and get a final draft to the FMCA Executive Director on Wednesday so he can have it reviewed by an outside expert (Barry) at Membership Corporation of America (MCA). The FMCA executive board meets in a week so we will see what happens.

After the meeting I finished working on the April 11-16 consolidated post and uploaded it to our personal blog just in time for dinner which featured taco bowl salads. She started with refrigerated tortillas, draped them over ramekins, and baked them to create the shell. She reconstituted an ancho, red Hatch, and pequin chile and used them to season the pinto beans, mixed greens, tomatoes, onions, and olives that made up the filling. Franzia Fruity Red Sangria went nicely with the tacos. Later we had a fresh mixed fruit salad of blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, and bananas. We relaxed for a while, reading and playing games, but were surprisingly tired and went to bed before 10 PM. Change happens, transition takes time.

2015/04/28 (T) And now … the rest of the summer

As sometimes happens when we go to bed early, we slept in this morning and did not get out of bed until after 8 AM. It is nice to be able to do that if we want to. Coffee and toast got the day started followed by reading, writing, and cat admiring. It was a beautiful, sunny morning albeit still on the chilly side. In other words, another day in the idyllic paradise we call retirement in the country.

We have both been busy since we got home last Friday, unloading the bus and putting things in their place in the house, visiting family, cleaning and stocking the kitchen, going through mail, and working on bills and accounting, both personal and organizational. And that was mostly Linda! I helped with some of that but was mostly focused on finishing a draft survey for the FMCA education committee, sending it out, and participating in a committee meeting by teleconference yesterday afternoon. I will have some minor additional work to do on the survey by the end of the day tomorrow, but with the meeting behind me I can now concentrate on all of the other things that need to be done. To paraphrase Paul Harvey “And now … the rest of the summer.”

One of the chores that is always there is laundry. Linda seems to take over this task when we are living in the bus, but it is definitely my job when we are at home. Ditto for cleaning the cat litter tray. To be fair, both the laundry room and liter tray are in the basement where my office and the ham radio shack are located, so I am down there a lot more than her. When we first return home after being away for an extended time there is a lot of laundry to do. Not that we don’t do it while we are away, we do, but I like to clean everything that we had with us. This is not a one day task, in part because we like to limit the number of loads of laundry we do on any given day so as not to overload the septic tanks, and in part because I just do not want to spend an entire day doing laundry.

My main focus this morning, however, was to revisit my article for Bus Conversion Magazine on the renovation of the exterior of our bus back in 2011/2012. It needs to be split into 3 or 4 installments and I would rather do that myself, making sure the photos track with the text. I started a load of laundry and then got to work, keeping an eye on e-mail and RVillage. I finished restructuring the article just before lunch, uploaded it to my BCM Dropbox folder, and e-mailed the editor and publisher. Linda reheated the Farro-cranberries-almonds dish for lunch and served it with black grapes.

I moved the first load of laundry to the dryer, put a second load of laundry in the washing machine, and started compiling my posts for April 16 through 20. I got an e-mail from Lou Petkus regarding the SKP Photographers BOF website. Lou started, and leads, the BOF and administers the website while I take care of the RVillage group and someone else takes care of the member database/roster. He found and installed a free system for displaying photo albums. He was setting it up so each BOF member had their own login and could upload their own photos and wanted me (and Linda) to try it out. I did, and found a number of issues which I documented for him. I like the idea, so I hope he can resolve the issues.

I folded and hung up the dried laundry and returned to my blog post which I uploaded, tagged, and published before going upstairs. It was a beautiful day and while Linda was outside on the rear deck reading four deer walked up the eastern boundary of our property. We were chatting back there when the doorbell rang, which is unusual for us. It was Aaron, one of the kids (teenager?) from the house to our immediate east. UPS had delivered our Amazon order to their house instead of ours even though it had my name and our address on the label.

Linda sautéed onions until they were partly caramelized, pan-fried tofu slices, and then added bar-b-que sauce. She served these in tortillas rather than on buns. She also sautéed fresh green beans. I opened a bottle of Barefoot Moscato and we each had a small glass with dinner.

After dinner I called Joe Cannarozzi, the mobile mechanic who has done the majority of the service work on our bus since we got it back to Michigan in 2010. As planned, he is now in upstate New York where he will be working well into the fall. He plans to be back this way the first week in November and we made plans to have him do the routine chassis maintenance at that time. I also discussed our interior renovation plans for the bus and got some tips from him about how to approach that work, especially the floor, as he has done several.

I noticed that I had a voice message from Gary at BCM. He had called earlier in the day after I had uploaded the new 4-part version of the Exterior Makeover article so I called him back and left him a message. Tag; you’re it.

2015/04/29 (W) Bus Lunch

We had a typical start to our day; coffee, breakfast, and iPads (news, weather, games, reading, and writing). Actually, that’s how most of our days in the bus also start, so the only real difference is where we are sitting and what we can see from that vantage point. I needed to order a refill on a prescription medication so I tried doing that on my iPad. No problem iPad-wise, but the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System (MPSERS) had switched the mail order prescription drug service from Medco/Express-Scripts to Catamaran Home Delivery effective January 1, 2015. Catamaran was already the third part administrator (TPA) but was now operating their own pharmacy. Even though I already had a Catamaran account I had to register for Home Delivery service. Once I did that I was supposed to be able to see any prescriptions that had transferred over. There weren’t any 🙁 That meant I needed a new prescription. I had a mid-morning appointment and did not want to spend time “holding for the next available representative” so I decided to take care of this task tomorrow.

Linda called last Friday and arranged to have our curbside trash pickup resume this week. Wednesday is trash pickup day, so the trashcan had to go out by the street this morning. (We don’t have curbs here, so I can’t say we took the can to the curb.) The last two years Alchin’s has come past our house around noon. While we figured that would probably be the case again this year we did not want to risk missing the truck, so Linda took it out early.

Linda is the treasurer of SLAARC, our local ham radio club based in South Lyon, Michigan. The club’s bank (First Merit) is there and she needed to make a deposit. I was headed that general direction so I took it with me. The deposit made, I headed on to Chuck Spera’s bus garage in Novi, MI. Chuck and Barbara have the same model Prevost bus that we do only one year newer and converted by Liberty, so fancier than ours. Like us, they spend a lot of time in it, and, like us, there are always projects to be done. Some of those, in turn, require some discussion.

I met Chuck at his shop at 10:15 AM and had a look at his turbo boost sensor intake manifold pressure hose. It appeared to be intact but old a frayed like mine was. The one on our bus failed on the drive out to Quartzsite, AZ in December 2014. Changing his hose would be more difficult than our as is chassis batteries are in the passenger-side engine bay and make access to that side of the engine much more difficult than in our bus. We have been using the same mobile mechanic for the last few years but he has found longer term employment and cut back on the mobile servicing of Prevost chassis. I indicated to Chuck that we really needed to find someone locally who is in business at an accessible location and plans to continue as such into the foreseeable future. He suggested that we take a drive to Johnie’s in Walled Lake, so that is what we did.

Denny was not there (Johnie was his dad) but I got to see the place and now know where it is. We drove back to the Panera in Novi for lunch and then back to Chuck’s shop which is nearby. By 2 PM we had not only solved all of the world’s problems we had made good progress on unraveling the mysteries of the universe. Wanting to leave something for the next conversation I headed for home leaving Chuck to ponder the mysteries of the bus, which are far more baffling than the mysteries of the universe.

I drove home on Grand River Avenue (GRA) to avoid WB I-96 and the I-96/US-23 interchange construction. I bought gas at the Wixom Meijer’s and found out 20 minutes later that I had paid way too much for it ($2.59/gal). The BP station in Brighton had regular for $2.29 and the Shell station closest to our house had it for $2.44. Bummer. I passed a First Merit Bank on the south side of GRA just west of Old US-23 in Brighton. Not right around the corner from our house, but a lot closer than South Lyon. There is also a Jeep dealership there. We are interested in getting a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, we just don’t like the prices we are seeing.

Our Amazon shipment arrived with the two filter cartridges for the under sink housing in the bus and other things. Hopefully the delivery to the wrong address on Monday was a one-time thing. I had been trading phone messages with Gary at BCM and finally got through to him this time. I then curled up with the new B&H catalog which made it feel like Christmas in April.

Linda made a potato lentil ginger curry for dinner and it was very good. I had planned on revising the FMCA Education Survey and sending it out this evening but I was simply not in the humor to go back downstairs. I think my retirement motto is going to be “there is always tomorrow, and if not, it didn’t matter anyway.” Linda had to get up early tomorrow morning to beat the traffic headed into Detroit so we went to bed earlier than usual.

2015/04/30 (R) Steel

Linda set her alarm for 5:45 AM. The purpose of her alarm is to wake me up so I can wake her up. It worked as planned and she got up and got ready to go to the bakery while I went back to sleep.

I finally got up at 8:30 AM. I’ve been busy since we got home but also a bit tired and feeling the need to just unwind from our exciting winter out west. After breakfast I called the Internal Medicine clinic at the Henry Ford Health System Columbus Center in Novi to see if I could get my doctor’s nurse to get my doctor to write me a new prescription for my nasal spray. Naturally I never got to talk to the doctor or a nurse, but the youngish sounding lady who handled the phone call was very helpful, up to a point. She really wanted to schedule me for an appointment and was not quite piecing together that my prescription, which is for a maintenance drug, is only good for one year but my doctor only needs/wants to see me every other year. I don’t expect the new script to be a problem, but that fact that my MPSERS health care plan changed mail-order prescription providers as of January 1st may add a wrinkle. I’m not due for a physical until the fall but I will go sooner if needed to get my script. Which reminds me, I need to schedule my annual appointment with the dermatology PA.

I focused on making some last minute corrections to the FMCA education survey and shipped it off. I got an e-mail back from Diane Wolfe with some questions. She is not a member of the FMCA education committee but she and husband Brett did review and comment on it. The questions were interesting and answering them gave me a chance to explain some technicalities and cc: the FMCA Executive Director as they were as much for his benefit as hers.

I had several e-mails back and forth with Kate regarding productions at Meadowbrook Theater and an exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), all of which sounded interesting. Our social life is less active at home than on the road so we welcome such opportunities.

I had a phone call from Mike at Rocket Steel Buildings following up on an inquiry I made. He sent me a brochure and a price. It was something but not exactly the quote I was looking for. I still need to follow up with SteelMaster Building Systems and get to work on drawings for the wood-framed basilica design.

I compiled my blog posts for April 21-25, 2015 after finding the one for the 24th. I had e-mailed it from my iPad but it never arrived. I e-mailed it again and it bounced back. The spam blocker even said it was from a white listed sender (me!) but rejected it anyway. Huh ??? I sent it a third time to two addresses, one of which was not attached to our domain, and it came through to both accounts, naturally. I guess this was one of the mysteries of the universe that Chuck and I left unsolved yesterday. Anyway, I finally got it, finished compiling my posts, and uploaded, tagged, and published it.

I also had several e-mails back and forth with Lou Petkus regarding the SKP Photographers BOF and website. Gary sent me a link to a document in his Dropbox with photos and audio files from an interview he did for a featured bus article that never got written. I agreed to take a look at it and see what I can do.

I managed to get more things off of the bus, including bedding, and did two more loads of laundry. I do not like to do more than two loads a day as it over taxes the septic system. Someone rang the front doorbell, the second time this week. This time it was Kaylie, Aaron’s sister, from next door. For the second time this week UPS delivered a package, correctly addressed to me, to the wrong address. I was concerned this would happen and Linda said I was a pessimist. Apparently we were both right.

I called the local UPS store but the only thing they could do was give me the national 800 customer service number. I am a pessimist (just ask Linda), so I was not looking forward to that experience, but I called and fought my through their voice menu system. It did not include an option for my situation (of course) and I finally just kept saying “agent” until the system gave up and connected me to a real person.

“Chelsea” was apologetic, even though she had not personally done anything wrong, because that’s what customer service people are trained to do. I think someone, somewhere, once upon a time figured out that apologizing diffuses customers who are upset. Well, it doesn’t. And assuring me that it “won’t happen again” is equally meaningless when it comes from a person who is not in a position within the organization to make such a statement. But Chelsea verified my name and address and the incorrect delivery address and said she took careful notes and would make sure they got to the right person. I hope so.

What is perhaps most frustrating is that UPS has a local distribution center in Howell, and I have the address, but it is not open to the public except for limited package pickup hours. In other words, the mistake is being made by a driver who is most likely operating out of that location, or by someone scheduling the routing, but there is no customer support person or facility manager that I can talk to, face-to-face, and resolve this at the point of origin of the problem. We buy a lot stuff now through Amazon Prime, and it all gets shipped via UPS, so having it delivered anywhere other than to our house is a problem.

Linda called at 4:30 PM to let me know she was leaving the bakery at 5 PM and heading to Kathi’s. They were going to have dinner at La Marsa in Farmington Hills and give the I-96 traffic a chance to subside before she finished the drive home. I had some of the leftover potato barley ginger curry for dinner and then called Phil Jarrel to remind him that we are still trying to figure out how to put up a bus barn and still want him to do the site prep and driveway. I then called Butch to see if he was able to locate the front brake drums for their MCI MC-9 NJT bus. He was, and already had the driver side front reassembled. I responded to a couple of e-mails and filled out an online RFQ for SteelMaster Building Systems and went to bed.

2014/11/03-09 A Week at Home

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Note: There are no photographs for this consolidated post. Sorry. 🙁

2014/11/03 (M) Getting Ready

Linda was up early and off to the bakery. I got up an hour later and had some raisin toast for breakfast. Whenever I have had time since I got home on Friday I have been working on the project list for our bus. I worked on it some more this morning but eventually had to set it aside while I made some phone calls, tried to deal with an issue with Linda’s Samsung laptop computer, and got documents ready to upload to my Dropbox for a meeting on Wednesday afternoon.

I called Bill Jensen, the national service advisor for conversion shells at Prevost Car Inc., but his voice message said he was unavailable indefinitely and gave alternate contact info. The main contact was Kevin Laughlin so I called him. I described the shorter ride height linkage and the downward pointing position of the ride height valve lever arm in its neutral position. He agreed that neither of these seemed right.

I called Prevost and ordered a new ride height valve and two CX-96 (Gates) drive belts for the OTR air-conditioning compressor. I then called Martin Diesel in Defiance, Ohio and made an appointment to have the diesel generator in our coach serviced on the 20th and 21st if needed. I also needed to call Webasto technical support but did not get that call made today; maybe on Wednesday (or Thursday).

Linda’s Samsung laptop suddenly decided to turn the screen brightness down and she has not been able to turn it back up. It’s bright enough to see in somewhat dim conditions, but still uncomfortably dim for general office use. I did a Google search and found that lots of other folks had encountered the same problem and had advice on how to fix it. I shared several links with Linda but she could not get it to work.

I put the finishing touches on the FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter’s financial statements, roster, and minutes of last year’s’ meeting. I uploaded them to Dropbox and e-mailed the chapter members that the materials where there.

Linda got home later than usual from the bakery so we decided to go to La Marsa in Brighton for dinner. It’s our favorite local restaurant but was more crowded than on a regular Monday due to the buffet they have the first Monday of each month and we had to wait about 20 minutes for a table. We ordered the almond garlic Ghallaba from the menu, one of our two favorite vegan dishes, but it was not as good as usual. Not bad just somewhat flat, as if they had left out the garlic. It was 8:30 PM by the time we got home and we turned in for the night fairly quickly.

2014/11/04 (T) Election Day

Linda did not go into the bakery today. We spent much of the day together and this is what we did:

Had raisin toast for breakfast with Orange juice and banana…
..
Got passport photos at Rite-Aid in Brighton…
Went to Panera for coffee…
Drove to Dearborn for dental hygienist appointments…
Drove back to Farmington Hills where we went to McDonald’s and had French fries for lunch…
Drove a mile to the Henry Ford Health System Columbus Center in Novi for flu shots…
Drove back home where we had a few chips and hummus for an afternoon snack…

I drove to Brighton Honda for a 3:30 PM appointment to have the Element’s recalled air bag serviced. The appointment took 45 minutes by which time the traffic was really bad. Because of the combination of rush hour traffic and the ongoing re-paving of Grand River Avenue just west of the dealership a left turn was going to be near impossible. I needed to get to Latson Road and Grand River Avenue so I made the easy right (and correct) turn out of the dealership and quickly got on I-96 westbound. I took the relatively new Latson Road exit and stopped at Walmart to stock up on ICE brand water. I went to Meijer’s for a Mega-Millions lottery ticket and then to O’Reilly’s Auto Parts for two more 12VDC duplex power outlets. It was still raining lightly, as it had been for most of the day, so I returned home by way of Grand River Avenue and Hacker Road which kept me on pavement for most of the trip.

Linda heated up the leftover chili for dinner. She continued to try different things to get her Samsung laptop to allow her to adjust the screen brightness and return it to normal but nothing worked. I took a little time to update WordPress websites and tweak the Wordfence login security. We then filled out and printed our passport renewal applications and got them ready to mail. We also figured out how to create, share, and synchronize multiple calendars on multiple devices so that we can now see the same information on our laptops, tablets, and smartphones. It’s all about Google.

Linda was tired and needed to get up early but something had broken on our bed foundation and needed to be fixed, if only temporarily. We are still using the plastic foundation that came with our select comfort air mattress years ago and one of the cross members that carry the load to the side rails had come loose from the interlocking top platform and dropped down. We had to get the mattress off the bed to work on the platform. We got it put back together for now, but we need to get a box spring or other foundation to replace it. That probably won’t happen until spring.

2014/11/05 (W) The Day After

Yesterday’s election results were generally as predicted, so nothing to cheer about from our point of view, but the world did not come to an end either. Elections change very little in the short-term and the daily tasks of living continue regardless of who does or does not get elected. We were happy, of course, that Gary Peters won the U. S. Senate seat and that Debbie Dingle was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives. We were especially pleased that our friend, Brian Robb, won re-election to the Ypsilanti City Council and that Richard Bernstein was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court, but saddened to learn that Casandra Ulbrich failed in her attempt to get re-elected to the State Board of Education. And so it goes with American politics.

Linda was back at the bakery today reviewing the period accounting and continuing to answer questions and monitor the use of the new software. I took care of some e-mails and then headed to the Brighton post office to mail our passport renewals. I refueled my car at Meijer’s for $2.899/gal and then stopped at Bed, Bath, and Beyond to exchange two Sodastream CO2 cartridges. BB&B is in the same strip mall as the Panera, so I stopped in for some coffee.

When I got home UPS had already delivered my package from Prevost. I took the trash can to the street first and then I opened the box and verified the contents. I installed one of the Sodastream cartridges but the display would not reset. The unit has an LCD display so I figured it had a battery hidden somewhere. I released a clip at the top of the display and the whole display module came out with the nickel-sized battery was installed on the back side. I started to remove it and the display changed, so I figured it needed a new battery. I did not think we had any of this type of battery in the house but Linda told me later that we did.

I had not backed up all of my photo files from last week so I spent some time in the early afternoon copying files from my camera to my laptop and then from my laptop to both of our NAS units. I printed off all of the documents I needed for the FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter annual meeting and was responding to an e-mail when Tony and Mark from GSI showed up to install the new natural gas fireplace logs and hookup the new natural gas outdoor grill.

Tony and his wife own GSI but he had Mark install the fireplace while he worked on the grill. He installed the new disconnect but when leak testing discovered that there was a small leak on the output side of the shutoff valve. I had to shut off the gas supply to that branch circuit, which also supplies gas to the kitchen range and the fireplace, so he could work on it. Tony removed the new disconnect, installed a new valve, and reinstalled the disconnect. I turned the gas supply on and he retested for leaks but did not find any. He suggested that we run it for a while to burn off manufacturing oils and other things that initially produce odors and can affect the taste of foods cooked in the unit. I got the stainless steel heat diffuser and two cast iron grills and set them in place. The left burner lit easily using the battery powered piezoelectric igniter and the right grill lit easily from the left one.

Linda got home at 3:30 PM while Tony and Mark were still working and took over interacting with them while I got ready for our 4 PM telephone meeting. She got instructions on how to light/operate both appliances, paid them, and then joined me for the meeting. By 4:05 PM we had 14 “F” numbers represented, safely exceeding our quorum requirement of 10, and Bob Pelc called the meeting to order. The meeting was friendly but efficient. We conducted all of the necessary annual chapter business and adjourned at 4:42 PM. I was re-elected to another 2-year term as chapter secretary but did not run for chapter vice-president, the position I have held since the chapter was formed in June 2010.

After the meeting Linda shut off the outdoor grill and we sat in the living room monitoring our fireplace logs and discussing dinner options. As a result Linda decided to make waffles. She tried a different recipe and substituted pastry flour instead for regular flour. Neither of us understand the difference, at a food chemistry level, but she apparently invented/discovered something that will stick to Teflon-coated cookware; really, really tightly. The waffles were crispy and tasted fine, once we got them out of the waffle iron, but they would not have won any prizes for presentation.

We spent a couple more hours after dinner sitting in the living room letting the firelogs operate with the flue opened a bit. Tony and Mark said it can take up to 20 hours of use for the unit to stop producing odors and suggested that we operate it with the flue slightly open while breaking it in. The logs are a non-vented design, just like a kitchen range, which means they are designed to operate without being vented to the outside yet not produce harmful combustion by-products such as carbon monoxide. At 8:50 PM I turned the logs down to their lowest setting. Linda shut the unit off at 9:15 PM (it has an On/Off/Remote switch but we do not have a remote). The pilot light does not consume enough air or produce enough heat and combustion by-products to be a safety or economic concern, so I left it on, closed the flue, and went to bed.

2014/11/06 (R) Inductive Thinking

Linda left the house before I awoke and spent a long day at the bakery. I spent most of the day at the dining room table working at my computer. I typed up the draft minutes from yesterday’s FMCA Freethinkers annual meeting, generated PDFs of the chapter’s financial reports, uploaded files to the Dropbox folder, and reorganized it.

I took a break at noon and drove into Novi to have a look at Chuck’s latest bus projects and then go to lunch at the local Leo’s Coney Island. The new wedge cabinet and Corian top look and fit great between the end of the new couch and the kitchen base cabinet. He did a nice job replacing the outside Jenn Air electric cooktop/grill, which was mounted in a pull-out tray in one of the bays, with two Indufix 2-hob induction cooktops. The tray has an open bottom and is supported by four heavy duty extension slides, two on each side. The induction units are from Germany and came with European “208VAC” plugs. They are strictly 208/240 VAC devices and do not have a neutral connection. The wire colors are also different with brown and blue for the L1 and L2 (hot, load) and yellow/green for the ground. Chuck had an addendum sheet explaining the color codes and how to match them up to the U. S. standard.

For lunch I had a small Greek salad without feta cheese and an order of French fries. Chuck had a more substantial meal with a salad, chicken on skewers, and rice. I was back home by 3:00 PM and settled back into my computer-based work.

Linda got home around 6:15 PM and made barbecued tofu sandwiches with grilled onions and corn on the cob. We washed it down with Leelanau Cellars sweet Red Table Wine. It was labeled semi-sweet but it reminded me of the King of the North wine from Red Trail Vineyards in North Dakota which had a distinctly grape juice taste. I liked it and Linda said she did too, which surprised me a little, as she tends to like dryer red wines.

After dinner Linda read and played online word games on her iPad to the warm glow of our new natural gas fireplace logs. These logs are a high-efficiency, unvented design and actually through heat into the living room rather than up the chimney. I continued reformatting the Freethinkers chapter roster, uploaded it to my Dropbox, and e-mailed the members to let them know it was available and ask them to review their listing and get back to me with corrections. RVillage had notified me that someone wanted to join both the CCO and GLCC groups so I logged in and approved those.

I discovered the other day that Wordfence will allow me to block individual IP addresses so I would like to find the time to go back through the “User Locked Out” notification e-mails and enter some of the most egregious repeat offenders. But not tonight. It’s late, Linda is already asleep, and I’m tired.

2014/11/07 (F) 50% plus

My objectives for today were the following:

Finish up yesterday’s blog post and start working on today’s…
Read a few of the blogs I follow in Feedly (I am way behind)…
Move the spare Aqua-Hot from the garage to the library…
Move any other freeze sensitive items from the garage to the library…
Finish the drywall compound work in the library…
Call Webasto technical support…
Measure the inside of the Honda Element…
Buy plywood to build the storage divider for the Element…
Start building the storage divider for the Honda Element…
Use the blower to clear the leaves from the deck and planting beds….
Prepare the FMCA Freethinker annual chapter certification paperwork…
Select a few photos to go with blog posts going back to early October…
Start uploading blog posts to our website…

That was obviously more than I could possibly accomplish in one day, but it helps to write it down. Here is how I did…

Finish up yesterday’s blog post and start working on today’s…check.
Read a few of the blogs I follow in Feedly (I am way behind)…check.
Move the spare Aqua-Hot from the garage to the library…check.
Move any other freeze sensitive items from the garage to the library…some.
Finish the drywall compound work in the library…check.
Make an unplanned trip to Lowe’s and Sherwin Williams for paint supplies…Yes.
Prime the areas in the library where the drywall work was done…Yes!
Call Webasto technical support…check.
Measure the inside of the Honda Element…check.
Buy plywood to build the storage divider for the Element…no.
Start building the storage divider for the Honda Element…no.
Use the blower to clear the leaves from the deck and planting beds….no.
Prepare the FMCA Freethinker annual chapter certification paperwork…no.
Select a few photos to go with blog posts going back to early October…no.
Start uploading blog posts to our website…no.

That’s 6-1/2 + 2 out of 13 + 2 or 8-1/2 out of 15 which is over 50%; not bad. I might have gotten one or two other things done, or at least started, but we ended up meeting Chuck at BD’s Mongolian Bar-B-Que in Novi for dinner at 7:00 PM. Barbara was still attending to out-of-town family business and Chuck appreciated not dining alone. We were at the restaurant for over two hours and had a nice meal and great conversation in spite the very loud, upbeat youthful vibe of the place. Next time we will try Sizzling Sticks in Northville; same kind of food but a much more subdued atmosphere according to Chuck. Overall it was another good day.

2014/11/08 (S) Steve and Karen

We had a good sized crowd at the ham radio breakfast this morning. We did not have to be anywhere at any particular time, and we were enjoying the conversation, so we stayed a little longer than usual. Once we got back to the house I changed into work clothes for drywall and painting while Linda gathered up the recyclables and finished her grocery list. She left to run the errands and I got the painting tools/supplies out.

Linda dropped off the recyclables, stopped at the bank, stopped at Lowe’s to return something that it turned out we had not purchased there, and then did the grocery shopping at Meijer’s. While she was gone I put a first coat of paint on the areas of the west wall of the library where I had repaired the drywall. The item she planned to return was a can of Great Stuff Fire Block that broke yesterday when I tried to use it. It turned out that I had not purchased it at Lowe’s as they do not sell it. They sell a 3M product for the same application, which I had sitting in the garage but had overlooked. I used it to try to fill gaps around the gas supply pipe and the condensate drain, which were open clear through to the outside, and the double-walled flue pipe and gas pipe that pass through the furnace closet wall. I applied the foam from inside the furnace closet and will need another can to finish the job from the outside of the closet.

Linda started putting together supper while I gathered up laundry and started a load. I spent some quiet time with Jasper, our very sweet 10-year old cat, and then settled in to write and read for a while.

Steve and Karen arrived at 5 PM and we visited while Linda put the finishing touches on dinner. She made the warm Farro dish with kale, dried cranberries, almonds, garlic, and onions and roasted asparagus as a side. She has the Farro dish tagged “good for company.” We still have a few bottles of the 2009 Egri Merlot and the slightly sweet full body of this wine went very nicely with the earthy Farro. She made a chocolate cake for dessert with raspberry sauce made from fresh raspberries. I think the cake was her best yet; very moist with just the right texture. Vegan baking is tricky and Linda is still figuring it out. Sometimes the cakes are a bit dry and other times they lean towards being brownies but tonight she got it just right.

Steve brought his Raspberry Pi single board computer (SBC) and an SD card with photos of their recent (September) trip out west. He connected the Pi to our TV/monitor in the basement so we could all comfortably see the photos. They had excellent weather and some fall colors the days they were in Yellowstone National Park and got some nice images. But we spent most the evening sitting in the living room enjoying the new natural gas firelogs and catching up on what we had been doing since we last saw each other. They left around 10:30 PM and we had everything picked up by 11 PM and headed off to bed.

2014/11/09 (N) Wrapping Up

Today was mostly about wrapping up the library drywall/painting project and other minor chores, doing laundry, and getting me packed for a two week return visit to Twelve Mile, Indiana to work on our bus and help Butch and Fonda work on theirs.

Linda made blueberry pancakes for breakfast, which is always a treat. I made a trip to Lowe’s for a nine inch disposable paint roller cover and another can of 3M Fireblock spray foam. I used the can of spray foam to finish sealing the gaps in the utility closet wall openings where the black iron gas pipe and the double-wall flu pass into the garage. I only needed a little more foam to finish the utility closet openings so I used the rest of the can to fill gaps around the rear entrance door in the garage.

I used some scrap packing paper from recent Prevost shipments and some frog tape to mask the opening for the library furnace return air grille. I then used flat black spray paint to make everything that is visible through the slots in the cover disappear. Finally, it was time to paint walls.

I used a small brush to cut in the adjacent wall and ceiling with the Sherwin-Williams Extra White satin finish paint. I removed the cover plates from two outlets and a switch and then rolled on a new/final coat of paint. I cleaned up my paint supplies and then we brought the outdoor grill (and cover) into the garage to store for the winter. We also brought the patio table umbrella and base into the library and set the umbrella in the base for the winter rather than let in lie on the floor.

Linda made another batch of granola while I checked stuff on my computer and took care of laundry and packing. We had leftovers for dinner at 5:15 PM and then headed to South Lyon for the monthly SLAARC (ham radio) meeting where I was re-elected as VP for a second year and Linda was elected Treasurer for the coming year. The program was a presentation on Software Defined Radios (SDR) by Mike Alexander (N8MSA). When we got home we finished the chocolate cake and raspberry sauce with a glass of Leelanau Cellars Autumn Red wine and then turned in for the night.

20141030-1102 Fixing Buses in Indiana

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2014/10/30 (R) To Kokomo We Go

Well…sort of. Our actual destination was Maple Grove Distributors in Galveston, Indiana, which was in the general direction of Kokomo, but not as far. (It’s pronounced “gal VES ten” with the emphasis on the second syllable.) The tie rod ball ends that Butch ordered had finally come in and he wanted to get them early this morning so that: 1) We could get back and take advantage of a relatively nice late October day, and 2) He would have them for tomorrow when the weather is forecast to be lousy and thus a good day for inside work such as fabricating ride height linkages.

PS rear corner bedroom cabinet with slot in door for TV/monitor wires.

In spite of the nice weather I spent most of the day working inside my bus, stopping occasionally to help Butch with something. I don’t have a lot of outside projects at the moment, or at least none that I felt like working on, and I really wanted to get the bedroom TV cabinet taken care of. As with the front TV cabinet that I worked on for the last couple of days, the bedroom cabinet once housed a 19″ CRT TV set and a VHS tape deck. I removed those in late 2011 while the bus was at Phoenix Paint and had Jaral Beaty make doors to cover the openings. Once those doors were installed, I mounted 22″ diagonal, 16:9 aspect ratio, LCD/LED flat panel TV/monitors on each door. The power and signal connections, however, were inside the cabinets, so for the last couple of years the cables have come out of the bottom/rear of the TVs and under the bottom edge of the doors and into the cabinets. This arrangement prevented the doors from being closed, even though they had spring loaded ball catches, so we have held them closed with a couple of pieces of bright green Frog Tape. The tape is sticky enough to hold the door closed but does not seem to leave any reside even after being in place for a while.

The wires from the TV/monitor pass through the slot in the door so the dorr can be closed and latched.

As with the front TV cabinet door, I created a horizontal slot behind the TV, positioned to allow the cables to come down out of the back of the TV and bend gently through to the inside of the cabinet. I removed some unneeded cable and coiled up other cables and secured them with zip ties that have a mounting tab with a hole for a screw.

My two outside projects were brief. I got back under the front of the bus between the front tires and unbolted the ride height linkage. It unbolted from the ride height valve lever arm easily but not from the axle bracket. Fonda got a can of Cyclo Breakaway and some paper towels for me, but even after spraying the nut and letting it sit it would not come loose. I am not the strongest guy in the bus yard so I put some more muscle into it and broke the bolt off with the nut still stuck tight to it. The other half of the bolt then slide out easily.

As long as I had my wrenches out I slide under the rear end of the bus to see if I could free a couple of wires for the auxiliary braking system that were pinched under a mounting pad for the rear bumper fascia. The stud had a Nylok nut on it that was barely threaded onto the stud. The reason, I guessed, was the stud was at an angle that made it difficult to get a socket and ratchet on it. I was able to loosen/tighten it using a universal (swivel) adapter between the socket and the ratchet. While I was under there I noticed a second stud with a barely threaded Nylok so I tightened it as well. One of the things you have to watch out for on a used RV is all the work that other people have done ‘just well enough’ to get it ‘out the door’ without something falling off in the parking lot. These are always things that are hidden and relatively inaccessible, which is why they were not done correctly or completely in the first place, but the assumption is you will never see them.

My other inside project was to separate the load wires for the lighted entrance handle and the patio light and put them on separate switches. It turned out that the front most switch just inside the entrance door (next to the passenger seat) was supplying 12VDC power to three circuits, the two just mentioned and a third one that, as of this writing, is still a mystery in that I was unable to determine anything that was being controlled by those wires. The first (front) switch now controls only the lighted entrance handle, the second (middle) switch controls only the patio light, and the third (rear) switch controls…well, I don’t know what it controls but it definitely puts 12VDC power onto a wire that goes somewhere.

I assisted Butch briefly in locating their front fan-coil heat exchanger relative to the bay where the coolant lines will go. Later in the day I helped him position the front suspension of their coach to the MCI specified spacing for the air springs so he can fabricate the ride height linkage to the correct length.

I needed a few parts for projects I might want to work on tomorrow so I left at 7 PM and drove to the Home Depot in Logansport. That also gave me a chance to call Linda and chat about cell phone data plans. I got back to Twelve Mile at 8:30 PM. Butch and Fonda were already having their dinner so I went to my bus and made a salad. After I cleaned up the day’s food utensils I installed the 6-outlet surge protected adapter in the AC duplex outlet in the bedroom TV cabinet. That completed my work for the day and I returned to the house, visited briefly, and retired to my room to check e-mail, offload photo files from my camera, and write this post.

2014/10/31 (F) Boo! Snow (Boo)

After a relatively mild October the weather decided to turn more seasonable just in time for Halloween. I was originally going to title this post “Foot Pounds and Gigabytes” but decided to acknowledge All Hallows’ Eve instead, along with the dramatic change in the weather.

A couple of days ago I bought a torque wrench from Butch that is adjustable up to 600 foot pounds, which is the kind of torque needed to tighten and loosen the lug nuts on our bus wheels. It’s a very big torque wrench; over three feet long. I need to buy a compatible socket to go with it. Today was also the last day for the Verizon and AT&T double your data plan promotions, so I planned my day to put me in Elkhart, Indiana while one of the corporate stores was still open.

I got up around 8 AM and spent 45 minutes doing some preliminary packing after which I went out to my coach and had breakfast. We had snow flurries around 9 AM this morning and did not work outside today save the few minutes I spent adjusting the air pressure in the tires of my Honda Element. Today was mostly about shopping.

I got a cup of coffee from Small Town Brew and then we headed to Logansport where we did most of our usual circuit: NAPA Auto Parts, O’Reilly’s Auto Parts, Rural King, Aldi’s, and Walmart. (The only regular place we did not go was Home Depot.) My only purchase was a 12VDC dual outlet with a mounting flange that I found at O’Reilly’s. I plan to use it to create power connections for the GPS and TPMS receiver. (I realized later that I should have bought three of them as I also need to supply power to the DVD camera/recorder up front and the TPMS repeater which I plan to mount in the rear TV cabinet.)

We got back around noon and I spent the next couple of hours straightening up the inside of the bus and packing everything that was going home with me. Around 2:45 PM I finished packing the stuff I had in the guest bedroom and began loading the car. I wrote up a list of things we owed each other money for and, as I expected, I owed Butch more than he owed me. (He tends to order things we need on his accounts and I pay him back.) I bought a Variac from him, added it to the list, and put it in the car. Fonda has been working on a wedding dress for their daughter Gene for quite some time and was done except for some trim, so I got to see it before I left, which I did at 3:15 PM. It was very nice.

I had located a Verizon corporate store on US-33 just south of US-20 which was on my normal route home. I arrived at that intersection around 4:45 PM and first stopped at the Burger King next door for some French Fries. The Verizon sales associate, Hector, claimed to know nothing about the double data promotion and insisted there was no such thing available. I called Linda from their parking lot and we discussed what to do as today was the last day for the promotion. She had checked our account online last night, and although we could change our monthly data allowance online (for a price, of course) there was no information about the promotion available there either. Very strange considering how much this has been in the media all month.

Linda was stuck in traffic coming home from the bakery so we chatted while I made my way over US-20 to CR-17 (IN) to I-80/90 (Indiana Tollroad) to the I-69 exit where I had to pay my toll. Traffic on her end had also loosened up by then so we ended our call.

My entire trip home was in some form of precipitation; mostly rain but occasionally sleet or snow, with very strong and gusty winds from the north that made for somewhat more difficult driving. It also made it difficult to judge the effect of the adjusted tire pressures on handling although the shimmy seemed to be gone. I stopped at the Michigan Welcome Center on I-69 and unpacked some of the food I had with me. I stopped again at M-60 for coffee at McDonald’s and fuel at the TA/Shell station where Regular gasoline was $2.929. It’s been a long time since we have seen gasoline prices below $3/gallon. That was my last stop before arriving home at 8:45 PM. The last few miles were through moderate snow and the strong winds had coated the north facing side of trees and road signs.

Linda helped me unload the car and get everything into the house. I gave Butch a call to let him know I had arrived home safely and we chatted briefly about bus projects. I took a shower and went to bed where I finished this post before 11 PM and went to sleep.

2024/11/01 (S) Words

Although we were both very tired we did not sleep well last night. We awoke early to find a thin covering of snow on our rear deck and over parts of our yard with the temperature in the upper 20s. We went to our SLAARC ham radio club breakfast this morning anyway, the first time in several weeks for Linda, and there was a good turnout. Those members who came from east or south of us did not have snow on the ground.

When we got back to our house Linda worked at her desk on our personal finances while I worked at the dining room table on e-mail, websites, and bus project documentation. Our son and daughter-in-law showed up around 3:30 PM with their daughter. They had a baby shower to attend in Detroit and Madeline was spending the night with us.

Linda had given me the heads up that Madeline’s vocabulary had increased significantly since I last saw her and that certainly proved to be the case. She finally had understandable words for many things including the counting words from one to ten. She is now 22-1/2 months old and is a very active and busy little girl. We played with lots of different toys, including a new little Thomas The Train locomotive that Grandma Linda bought for her.

We had dinner between 6 and 6:30 PM. Madeline had mock chicken tenders with broccoli, cauliflower, mandarin orange segments and sliced strawberries. Linda and I had yummy homemade chili that she had been cooking in the crockpot most of the day. I played with Madeline after dinner while Linda cleaned up the dishes and then joined the fun. Nighty-night is her current pre-bedtime game, but by 7:15 PM she was tired enough let Linda get her into her pajamas and then sit quietly while I read a couple of story books to her. As always, she went to bed without a fuss.

Once Madeline was asleep Linda read and played online word games with friends and relatives and I continued working on my bus projects list, light bulb inventory, and reconciliation of purchases that Butch and I have made for each other. By 10:45 PM I was tired and ready to do something else so I climbed in bed and worked on this post.

2014/11/02 (N) An Extra Hour

At 2 AM EDT this morning it was suddenly 1 AM EST so when Linda got Madeline out of her porta-crib at 8 AM, according to the clocks in our house, it was officially 7 AM. We all slept well last night and Madeline woke up well rested and in a pleasant mood. She enjoys her meals so before any playtime we had breakfast of toast and juice and fresh fruit. Brendan called around 9 AM to see if we could keep her until after her afternoon nap as he and Shawna had professional work they needed to concentrate on. I suggested they come for an early dinner and they agreed. Linda checked her ingredients on hand and then agreed to make her seitan stroganoff served over rice. This is one of my favorite vegan dishes and a standard ‘go to’ when we are having non-vegan company for dinner.

You cannot have too many bows in your hair, apparently.

We played with Madeline all morning and she was a very busy girl. She has understandable words for a few things and a much richer, if somewhat secret, vocabulary that she takes great delight in using. She knows the names of her basic colors and has started to get the idea of counting. She enjoys building tall structures with her Lego blocks and is still fascinated with the organ. Running around the island in our kitchen is another favorite activity; sometimes chasing, sometimes being chased, and sometimes holding someone’s finger.

I got a TXT message from Chuck asking if I was back in town and had time to talk. Linda let me take a break from playing with Madeline so I could call him back. He has been working on their bus and wanted to bring me up to date on his projects and get caught up on my projects and timeline.

Our other grand-daughter, Katie, is up in the U. P. with Chris (her dad) and Meghan (our daughter) visiting Northern Michigan University in Marquette. They visited the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore yesterday and made it out to Castle Rock. This evening they had a banquet to attend and tomorrow she has an interview for a scholarship. Katie is interested in animals and wants to study zoology. NMU is one of the few universities that offer a true zoology major rather than a biology major with an emphasis in zoology. It may sound like a distinction without a difference, but it is an important distinction to Katie. Katie is a serious young lady who has done well in school and will certainly represent herself as such during the interview. We are excited for her and hope she is successful in obtaining this merit-based financial support.

By 11:30 AM we were anticipating lunch and Madeline requested pizza. We happened to have an Amy’s Roasted Vegetable pizza in the freezer (our favorite) so Linda preheated the oven and baked it on our pizza stone. We sat down at noon and enjoyed our pizza accompanied by seedless red grapes. We were all full by 12:30 and Madeline was showing signs of being ready for her nap so Linda helped her wash her hands and face and then got her settled in her porta-crib. Madeline enjoys sleeping almost as much as eating and went to bed without any fuss.

The cats, who had retreated to the basement this morning as soon as they heard/saw Madeline, are keenly aware of when she is eating and sleeping. Once we have her in her high chair at the table we usually open the safety gate at the top of the basement stairs so they can come up. Both of them did and walked around under the dining room table, apparently aware that she was not mobile. They eventually went back downstairs but came back up once she was asleep. We decided to leave the door to the middle/blue bedroom open about six inches to see what the cats might do. Jasper immediately turned around and went back downstairs but Juniper stuck her head in the room, probably got sensory overload, and also left.

Linda needed a few grocery items and went to Meijer’s in Brighton where she topped up her gas tank for $2.919 a gallon. If only the price of diesel fuel would pull back to corresponding levels. It has dropped but not by the same amount. I stayed home and worked on my bus projects spreadsheet. When Linda got back with batteries I changed all of the clock batteries and reset the time.

Brendan and Shawna arrived at 3 PM just as Madeline was waking up from her nap. She was thrilled to see her parents, of course, as they were thrilled to see her. It was a beautiful, if somewhat chilly, day and they got her coat, hat, and mittens on and played in the yard while Linda started preparing dinner while I cleared the table of my computer and papers and set it for the meal. We sat down to eat at 4:15 PM and started with a nice salad of chopped greens and cabbage, an Asian dressing, and crispy Asian noodles. The main course was the seitan stroganoff served over white rice and accompanied by roasted Brussels sprouts and a sliced multi-grain baguette. The adults had a small glass of the Leelanau Cellars Witch’s Brew, a seasonal mulled (spiced) red wine.

After dinner Brendan and Shawna began the process of getting ready to leave which includes delay tactics on Madeline’s part and their response to them which is always gentle but persistent. They were out the door at 5:30 PM and by 6 PM we had cleared the table, rinsed the dishes, loaded the dishwasher, and picked up the few toys that were left out in the living room. Although the clock said 6 it felt like 7. As hard and as long as I have been working on bus projects, I am surprisingly tired after spending a whole day with Madeline. I opened the safety gate and Jasper came upstairs right away, eager for our company and attention. He curled up in my lap while I worked on this post.

We watched Inspector Lewis (streamed), the first TV program I have watched in quite some time. Part of the PBS Masterpiece Mystery series, it is a really excellent production. I did some online research on 2m/70cm ham radio antennas and dual (co-phased) CB antennas but did not come to any conclusions about what to get. The problem remains the same; I cannot put anything tall on the roof of the bus and even if I wanted to I have little-to-no access to the underside of most of the roof. The fact that the lower roof sections in the front and rear are part of the front and rear fiberglass caps just complicates matters even more as they do not provide a conductive path or ground plane.

2014/09/25 (R) Two M’s

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Linda made zucchini bread and muffins a week or so ago. We ate all of the muffins within a couple of days but she froze some of the bread. She took the bread out of the freezer last night to let it thaw so we could have it for breakfast this morning. She warmed it up and made a fruit salad to go with it, along with our usual fruit juice and coffee. Marilyn took advantage of her visitor status and slept in so we had breakfast without her and she ate when she finally got up.

Madeline in her sofa-bed with her Winnie-the-Poor sleep sack.

I was working on the electrical outlets in the garage when Brendan arrived at 9:45 AM with Madeline in tow. Meghan arrived around 10 AM, so Madeline had all the “buddies” here to admire her. I finished my electrical work, touched up some drywall compound, and then got cleaned up. I was once again the designated reader and got to read three books to Madeline. She had lunch at noon and her dad got her down for a nap around 12:30 PM. Meghan is still experimenting with foods, so she left to do her grocery shopping on the way home.

The “buddies” (L-2-R): Brendan, Marilyn, Meghan, and Linda. (Not shown: Bruce, taking the photo.)

Brendan stayed for lunch and a long chat. He was thinking about leaving when he decided to check out my old Toyo view camera. He figured the students in his history of photography class at the University of Michigan had probably never seen one and wanted to take it in for them to see. He also wanted to have it at his house to play with. We found it and checked that all the parts were there and he loaded it into his car along with the tripod and dolly (studio roller base). Madeline started to wake up so he made his exit. She doesn’t seem the least bit concerned if he’s not here when she wakes up, but is momentarily distressed if she sees him leave.

Flowers along the Mill Pond boardwalk (Brighton, MI).

Madeline is spending the night tonight so we will two M’s here the rest of the day and tomorrow morning. Linda and Marilyn will take Madeline back to Ann Arbor tomorrow in time for lunch and her 1 PM nap. Madeline has swimming on Fridays at 4 PM so Linda and Marilyn will leave before that and stop at Whole Foods Market before taking Marilyn to Detroit Metropolitan Airport for her evening flight back to St. Louis.

I took a few minutes to check e-mail while Madeline was napping. This morning I had tightened up the Wordfence parameters on the FMCA-GLCC site and switched the caching from the faster Falcon Engine to the Basic setting in order to fully activate country blocking. I only had a few failed login attempt e-mails so I think it made a difference, but only time will tell. I also white listed our own IP address to make sure we did not get locked out if we mis-typed our login credentials.

Madeline with Grandma Linda on the Brighton Mill Pond boardwalk.

I had an e-mail from my niece, Amanda, with a couple of pictures of her daughter, Lilly, a very pretty and sweet-tempered child about six weeks younger than Madeline. We saw them in late June and will like try to visit again en route to the southwest this winter, weather permitting. If not, we will certainly try to stop in the area on the way back in the spring.

When Madeline awoke from her nap we let he play long enough to fully wake up and then we all went to downtown Brighton. We walked the boardwalk along the east edge of the Mill Pond and saw a Painted Turtle, an egret, some fish, and lots of ducks and geese. We then took the pedestrian bridge to the west side of the pond where the playscape is located. The playscape is a wonderful place with structures built to suggest animals and Madeline explored it thoroughly with Grandma Linda’s help while I took pictures. It also has an area with chalk boards and a mailbox full of sidewalk chalk that the kids can use to draw. Madeline spent quite a while trying all the different colors.

Madeline with Grandma Linda at the playscape by the Brighton Mill Pond.

We stopped by Lowe’s on the way home to return the spark plug I bought last night and get the correct one. By the time we got back to the house Madeline was hungry so Linda got her dinner ready right away. For our meal Linda prepared a green salad with sunflower seeds and dried cranberries topped with Ken’s Sweet Vidalia Onion dressing (one of our favorites) and a one pot meal of quinoa with black beans, corn, and onions. Linda and I finished the Red Guitar Sangria with dinner (Marilyn does not drink alcoholic beverages).

Madline working with chalk at the Brighton Mill Pond playscape.

Madeline played quietly with Linda for a while as I chatted with Marilyn. Before we knew it, it was time for Madeline to go to bed. The time between dinner and bed always seem short compared to other intervals during the day. She is always very good about bedtime and went without a fuss. Linda spent about 30 minutes getting something ready to e-mail to the bakery software vendor while Marilyn played Words With Friends and I researched where we could buy more Red Guitar Sangria. It is available at the Meijer’s stores in our area and is very reasonably priced so we will probably get some more. We had apple crisp for dessert after which Linda and Marilyn played three-way online Scrabble with each other and their brother Ron in Pennsylvania.

“I think this color goes right here.”

Madeline is a very good-natured and relatively calm child but when she is awake she is full engaged with the world around her. We were all tired after a long but very satisfying day of visiting and turned in without watching any TV.

2014/09/24 (W) Marilyn Redux

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We were up a little before 8 AM and had a light breakfast of fruit and toast with our usual orange/grapefruit juice and coffee. Linda left at 8:30 AM to fetch Marilyn and I stayed home to work on some minor house projects.

Before I got started I got a call back from Darryll at DCM Heating and Cooling. He agreed that the thermostats should not allow the temperature to rise 5 degrees above the set point and offered to bring out new ones. I suggested that I keep an eye on them for a few days and let him know if they continue to work as described in yesterday’s blog post. He said he would check with his supplier to see if they have had any other reports of faulty units. I mentioned that the gas pipe coming through the floor for the kitchen range was too long and he offered to take care of that if/when he was out here to deal with the thermostats. I turned both the garage and library thermostats on and set the temperature up to take the chill off of those rooms since that was where I would be working this morning after checking in with the blogs I follow. I checked a little later and the units had shut off with the thermometers reading only 1 – 2 degrees above the set point; still not right but a lot better than 5 degrees or more.

Karen called from Bratcher Electric at 9:30 and said that they could come on Friday between 9 and 11 AM to convert the whole house generator and do the annual maintenance. That was good news as it will take care of our last propane to natural gas conversion. The new outdoor gas grill and the new gas fireplace logs are just that, new appliances that do not need to be converted. The fireplace logs have to be installed, of course, but we will have someone do that. I will have to attach the extension hose to the outdoor grill and perhaps replace the existing quick-disconnect with the one that comes with the extension hose if they turn out not to be compatible. With any luck both of those will arrive on Friday. If not, it will be another two weeks. We are also waiting on a cover for the outdoor grill.

When I finally got to work on my projects I started by installing the door latch/knob set for the utility closet. I then replaced a duplex outlet in the NNW wall of the garage with a GFCI outlet that would also protect all of the downstream outlets on that circuit. After completing the GFCI installation I discovered that I had installed it at the wrong point in the circuit. I turned off power to the circuit, removed the cover plates from all the outlets on the circuit, and disconnected all the wires to isolate each outlet. I turned the power back on and used my non-contact voltage sensor to find the supply wire. It was in a shallow single-gang box with three 12-2+g NM cables, so there was no way the GFCI was going to fit in there along with all the wires. I wired it up anyway and will get a box extender to create the needed space. The better solution would be to just install a GFCI circuit breaker for that circuit, and I may do that at some point, but I am trying to use up parts I have accumulated over many years of house projects rather than buy new ones.

Sister Marilyn and her sister Linda relaxing on the back deck and pretending to ignore the camera (and the photographer)..

Linda and Marilyn stopped at Meijer’s on the way back to the house and got home around 12:30 PM. We had lunch and then they worked in the kitchen using the new range to make a batch of granola and some apple crisp while I used that time to finish reassembling and testing the outlets in the garage. When I tested them the duplex outlet between the garage doors it did not have power. I thought it did when I checked earlier so perhaps the feed came loose from the upstream outlet. I think I know which outlet that is and recall having to attach one of the hot wires to the side terminal because the push-in connection wasn’t holding. Perhaps the other push-in slipped out. I will check that tomorrow.

When I was done with the outlets I took the cover off the sub-panel, removed the 240V/30A breaker I had previously installed for the radial arm saw, and replaced it with a 240V/15A breaker which is the correct size for that tool. I have the parts I need to install the outlet but I still need to pull the wire which was not on my project list for today. I put the birch plywood cover panel around the box and put the cover back on the box to hold it in place. My last electrical task for the day was to change the two fuses in the disconnect box for the new a-c compressor.

My next project was sanding drywall compound in several places and applying another coat, after which I cleaned up my tools and took a break. I started up my computer and had 1173 e-mails. 1100 of them were from 550 e-mail notifications to two different e-mail accounts resulting from failed login attempts against two of our websites. The brute force login attack has not succeeded, but this is starting to get annoying. I also had an e-mail from Bill confirming that he and Karen and two others would be coming to our house on Sunday for a visit and dinner. I suspected that the other two would be Mike and Kathy (Bill’s sister), which he confirmed later in the day.

Since I was in my work clothes I thought I would cut the grass but couldn’t get the lawnmower started. It’s been a year-and-a-half since we last used it so I was not surprised. I always use Sta-bil in my gasoline, but 18+ months is a long time. I added fuel to the tank but that didn’t help. It’s possible that the fuel I added had oil mixed in with it for small 2-cycle gas engine powered yard tools. If so, that only made matters worse. I put the mower away and will deal with it tomorrow, if I feel like it.

I turned my attention to the bus and removed the cover from the end of the Aqua-Hot to see if I could determine why the burner won’t ignite. I ran it through three start cycles but it would not fire. There appeared to be fuel flowing through the final filter but I had no way to know if it was an adequate flow and I could not see any other obvious reason why it would not start. I jiggled the spark ignition wires and made sure they were fully attached to the ignition coil, but that didn’t help. I also confirmed that there was no white smoke or diesel smell at the exhaust pipe, which really suggests that fuel is not getting sprayed through the nozzle. Stupid machine.

After the apple crisp was done baking Linda started working on dinner. She made a warm Farro pilaf with dried cranberries and roasted some Brussels sprouts. While the main meal cooked we had a kale-chard-spinach salad with sesame seeds, cranberries, and tomatoes and a raspberry vinaigrette dressing. I really like the way we eat, and Marilyn also enjoyed the meal. She has been trying to make healthier food choices after seeing the results we have gotten.

After dinner I made a run to Lowe’s for a spark plug (for the lawnmower), electrical extender box, and a single gang Decora-style outlet cover plate. I stopped at the Shell station for some fresh gasoline and then at Meijer’s for a small towel rack. I had a quick chat with Steve (N8AR) on the South Lyon 2m ham radio repeater while driving home. Linda and Marilyn were just finishing a game of Quadominoes when I arrived, after which we had the apple crisp they made earlier. Linda had warmed it up using the “warm” feature of the new oven. New tools are fun.

The sisters were both tired enough to turn in by 8:30 PM but decided to stay up a while longer. To stay awake they played Scrabble online with their brother in Pennsylvania. They called Ron to make sure he was online and then ganged up on him. Never underestimate the power of a nun and her sister.

2014/09/23 (T) Cooking With Gas

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The autumnal equinox was last night at 10:29 PM EDT. It’s a magical moment marking one of the two times during the year that there are equal hours of day and night at every place on the planet. Today is the first full day of celestial fall. From now until the winter solstice the hours of daylight will steadily decrease and be less than the hours of darkness as winter eventually settles over the northern hemisphere. Meteorologist and climatologists consider September 1 as the first day of fall, but either way colder weather is coming north of the equator. Of course, winter in the northern hemisphere varies widely from mind-numbingly cold in the far north to very pleasant the closer one gets to the equator. The southern U.S., in particular Florida, the Gulf Coast, southern Texas, and the desert southwest, have a winter climate that is particularly attractive to RVers from more northern states and the Canadian provinces. Along with all of the migratory birds the “snowbirds” will be very much on the move by mid-October and generally have relocated to the Sunbelt by mid-December. We will be among the last to go, but go we will.

Linda was up early again and off to the bakery ahead of the morning rush hour traffic. I had finished breakfast and was finishing up yesterday’s blog post when Curt called from D. R. Electric Appliance to let me know that our new range was being delivered to them this morning. He said they could bring it out and install it right after lunch so I gave him our address.

I called Bratcher Electric and talked to Karen. I asked if it might be easier on them in terms of scheduling to have someone come out and convert the generator and do the annual maintenance and take care of the electrical project on a separate visit. She agreed and said she we would call me back tomorrow morning to schedule it as she was not in the shop and did not have the schedule for this week in front of her.

I had gotten dressed this morning with the intent of doing some drywall work in the library, some electrical work in the garage, and possibly pulling the cover off the Aqua-Hot in the bus. I turned up the thermostats in the garage and the library and set the temperature up so they would come on. It was 64 in the library and 59 in the garage. I set both of them to 65 and let them run. The library got up to 69 and the garage got up to 70, so it looks like I may have to adjust the anticipators in those thermostats. That wide of a temperature swing means the furnace(s) will not run as often but will run longer when they do. More to the point, however, is that they should regulate the temperature (at the thermostat) to less than +/- 1 degree F. If the thermostat is set to 70 the thermometer should read 69 or 71, it should show 70. The Honeywell thermostats in the house work that way.

I decided to defer most of my tasks until after the new natural gas range was delivered and installed. I did go online and find a manual for the White-Rodgers 1F78 (70 Series) non-programmable thermostat (we have 1F78-144s installed for the library and garage). The manual I found online contained more information than the installation sheet that came with them, including diagnostic tables. It turned out that this thermostat does not have an adjustable anticipator function other than a wire that can be clipped to produce a longer heating cycle when controlling a hydronic heating system. If the cycle is too long (not shutting off when the set point temperature is reached) the really isn’t anything you can do. The displayed temperature is adjustable, however, within a +or- 3 degree range, but the thermometers were supposedly set (calibrated) at the factory, so I’m not sure I want to fix the problem by changing them. I put one of our refrigerator thermometers on top of the library thermostat to check whether it agreed with the built-in thermometer. I then placed a call to Darryll ask about this and let him know that we had received his invoice yesterday.

I pulled the old range out of its space between the kitchen cabinets/counters and moved it to one side to so I had access to the alcove where it normally sits. I unplugged the unit and closed the gas shutoff valve but I did not disconnect the flexible gas line. I swept up the small amount of debris that had accumulated there, trimmed some wood shims that had been used to level the cabinets and were left sticking out into the range space, and then cleaned the floor.

Although we would have liked to have the range installed last Friday or Saturday, today was good enough if just-in-time. Linda’s sister is arriving sometime tomorrow and we will probably have grand-daughter Madeline here starting tomorrow night or Thursday morning. Marilyn leaves Friday evening and Madeline returns home either Friday evening or Saturday. The arrangements are not yet finalized. Her Jewish-run day care center is closed Thursday and Friday for Rosh Hashanah and we agreed to babysit her at our house, including overnight stays. How fun is that? Lots! We are also trying to arrange to have RV friends from Canada come visit and dine with us at the house on Sunday. The point is, we are getting our new range just-in-time for Linda to be able to cook properly for all of these people (and us; I consumed the last of her amazing home-made granola for breakfast this morning).

D. R. Electric Appliance arrived at 3:15 PM. They determined the easiest way into and out of the kitchen was through the front doorwall of the library and then through the kitchen door. I had measured the old kitchen range and the inside of our Honda Element and knew that the old range would not fit in the car (the width and depth are fine but the height is a problem) so I had the installers move it to the garage. We will call the Salvation Army number and arrange for one of their trucks to pick it up.

Our new GE natural gas kitchen range.

It took the 2-man installation crew about 45 minutes, start-to-finish, to remove the old range, move it to the garage, unpack the new range, move it to the kitchen, remove all the packing tape, plug it in, hook up the gas, assemble the burners and slide it into its space between the base cabinets/counters. They said we did not need a new flexible gas line and reused the old one. I had opened the branch shutoff valve in the basement while they were working and they opened the shutoff valve at the unit as soon as they had the gas connected. None of us smelled any gas so they started it up and made sure the five burners on top were working. They handed me the invoice and I asked if they accepted credit cards. They said I would have to call or go into the office for that, gathered up their tools and packing materials, and took off.

I tested the two ovens after they left as they indicated that if they didn’t work there wasn’t anything they could do about it anyway as they were not service technicians. The oven controls are more complicated than the range burners, but I figured out how to set a temperature and turn them on. I did not test the convection feature of the lower oven, the broiler in the upper oven, the timers (start and cook), or other features but I did set the clock. Linda and I will have to spend a little time with the manual to fully understand how to use the ovens.

Another view of the new range.

The only installation issue we have is the iron gas pipe that comes up from the basement behind the unit with the gas shutoff valve is installed on top of it. The pipe is too long and prevents the unit from being pushed back as close to the wall as we would like. It can’t go flush to the wall in any event as there are vents on the back for the convection oven (I think), but it has open space at the bottom that would allow it to go back farther than it is now if the shutoff valve were closer to the floor. The iron pipe is undoubtedly screwed into a 90 degree elbow just below the floor in the ceiling of the basement. Fixing this will simply involve disconnecting the flex gas line, unscrewing the shutoff valve, removing the vertical pipe by unscrewing it, replacing it with a shorter one, reattaching the shutoff valve (or a new one), and reattaching the flex line (or a new one). That’s all stuff I can do, but yeah, it will take me half a day (at least) once I have all the parts.

I drove to downtown Howell and found a parking spot right in front of D. R. Electric Appliance. There wasn’t anyone in the store but I found Curt out back unpacking a refrigerator. I paid him with a credit card and it was a good thing I drove to the store. He said that if they take a credit card over the phone there is an additional 3% charge. He wasn’t clear about who ends up paying the extra charge, but an educated guess says it’s the customer.

Linda sent me a text message at 4:37 PM that she was leaving the bakery. She got home at 6 PM (traffic was very heavy) and was very excited to see her new kitchen range in place and ready to use. As I expected, she would like to have it pushed in farther, so I guess I have another project. She used the range to pan grill a couple of tofu hotdogs and microwaved some leftovers for dinner. She read through the manual for the range and then worked on a grocery list for the next four days while I checked in on websites and e-mail. I am still getting too many failed login attempts on the FMCA GLCC website, so I lengthened to lockout time from 1 hour to six hours.

Marilyn called to let us know that she had arrived at her destination in Lake Orion and her meeting was set for 8:30 AM tomorrow. Linda will pick her up at 9:45 AM and bring her to our house. Linda had developed a headache during the day and it was still bothering her during the evening so she took some medication and we turned in without watching any TV programs.

2014/09/21 (N) No Drag, No Drop

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We started our morning with a trip to Panera in Brighton for coffee and bagels. We got a table for two right next to the gas fire logs, which have seating on all four sides. I discovered the other day that we had earned a free daily coffee for the month of September. The month was 2/3rds over so we wanted to use what remained of the benefit. We took our iPads and read for a while. We have always appreciated the free Wi-Fi at Panera cafes. We then spent the morning running errands that included visits to Lowe’s, Walmart, the Howell Library, the Howell Farmers Market, Home Depot, and finally Meijer’s. It was after 1 PM by the time we got back to the house. Pre-retirement we would not have spent that much time running errands together but would have split them up. It’s nice to just be able to “hang out” together now taking care of the simple things.

We had hummus sandwiches and black grapes for lunch and then settled in to work at our desks for the afternoon. Linda put in a couple hours of work on the bakery software conversion project, went for a walk, and then worked on our personal accounting. I created a couple of new pages for our website and then created a photo gallery (several, actually) with images of the natural gas project that Roese Construction has been working on for Consumer’s Energy in this part of Livingston County since early July.

The drag-and-drop feature of the native WordPress gallery function is definitely NOT WORKING on my computer and I have tried it on two different WordPress sites hosted on different web-servers. I can drag-and-drop other things on my computer, such as file names, so I strongly suspect this is a WordPress 4.0 problem. Since WP 4.0 was released over a week ago I am getting a bit worried that there has not been a maintenance update fixing this problem or even a mention that the problem exists. I mentioned this to both Mike (W8XH) and Larry (K8UT) at breakfast yesterday and both agreed that it was almost certainly a WordPress problem, not a Windows 8.1 problem. Neither Mike nor Larry had not tried creating photo galleries since WP 4.0 was released, so that had not personally experienced the problem.

We are still experiencing what appears to be a brute force login attack on the two websites hosted by QTH.com; this one and the one for the Great Lakes Converted Coaches FMCA chapter. The more serious attempt is against the GLCC website, which is still under development and almost totally locked down. I decided to tighten up the security options for both sites in the Wordfence Security plug-in. I also changed the passwords for all of the administrative user accounts. It’s a pain, and although I like to think of myself as a peaceful and non-violent individual, I will not put into print what I think should be done with the people (or governments) that are involved in trying to hack other peoples’ websites and blogs either for fun or for more serious (criminal) purposes. The Internet (World Wide Web) may well be one of the greatest technological achievements in the history of human civilization, and it’s a shame that there are those who would like to spoil it for the rest of us.

I got an e-mail from Bill Gerrie letting me know that he and Karen had arrived at the RV park in Frankenmuth, Michigan where they like to spend three or four weeks each fall. That puts them less than an hour north of where we live so we are now trying to arrange for them to come down to visit and have dinner. I know they would love to visit but I suspect they are not looking forward to a whole-food, plant-based meal. I know Linda will do a great job preparing something really tasty that they will like, but for some folks the mere thought of not having meat plays with their head to the point where they can’t enjoy the meal. For others, like a good friend who will remain anonymous, they just genuinely do not like vegetables. Sad, but true.

I worked at my desk after dinner uploading a few more blog posts while Linda read a novel intermixed with playing Scrabble and Words With Friends online. These are what she likes to do to relax. No TV for us tonight as Linda had to be up early tomorrow to get ahead of the morning traffic inbound to Detroit.

2014/09/19 (F) Renewed Acquaintance

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After I installed iOS8 on my iPad2 yesterday morning my Logitech Bluetooth keyboard seemed to change its behavior, giving me double letters in some cases and feeling a little sluggish in its response. The keyboard itself has not changed, so I presume this has something to do with iOS8. I also presume the keyboard batteries have not run down already, but I suppose that is a possibility. If so, I will be replacing them once a week. While creating an image gallery for the SLAARC WordPress website last night I noticed that the drag and drop feature of the gallery editor did not work. I upgraded to WP Version 4.0 about a week ago but this was the first time I had tried to use the gallery feature. If there is a problem with this feature there is no way that I am the first person to discover it and I presume WordPress is aware of it. I find it strange, however, that they have not released a maintenance update fixing it since an improved and more visual editor was a major feature of the 4.0 release.

A few weeks back I re-established contact through Linked-In with a colleague from 10 years ago. Jim was Director of General Education Services at Livingston Educational Service Agency at the time and we went through NCA Ambassador training together. It turns out that he lives and works in the Brighton area, so we are now neighbors of sorts. He suggested we meet up for coffee and I finally called him this morning to arrange that. We both had time at 1:30 PM today and agreed to meet at the Panera on Grand River Avenue by I-96 at that time.

Linda got the new Global Bake bakery software installed on her laptop yesterday so this morning she was able to start working on the software conversion process in earnest. Her work requires a lot of concentration, and she gets very focused when doing it, so I went to my office to continue working on editing blog posts and photos.

In checking my e-mail I noticed that I was still getting failed login attempts from foreign countries on this site and on the FMCA GLCC website, which is sub-domain of this site, in spite having installed the premium (paid) version of the Wordfence Security plug-in. I looked at the installed plug-ins for the GLCC website and discovered that I had one named “Limit Login Attempts” that I did not have installed on our personal website or the other two sites I manage. I surmised that this plug-in might be doing just what the name implied and in the process preempting Wordfence from ever doing its job. I deactivated it and saw a reduction in failed attempts, with none from outside North America, suggesting that the country blocking feature of Wordfence was now working properly. I saw a similar drop in failed login attempts on our personal website when I activated the country blocking feature for all countries except the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Only time will tell, however, if Wordfence is indeed blocking login attempts from outside North America.

We had hummus and apples for lunch after which I hung up one load of laundry and put another load in the washer. I left at 1 PM to have time to stop at Best Buy to get something to clean our various touch screens and monitors. Traffic was very heavy in the I-96 and Grand River Avenue shopping area, but Best Buy is in the same shopping complex as the Panera, so I made it there on time. Jim and I talked for almost two hours and which covered the highlights of the last eight years.

Back home I kept my focus on getting the blog caught up. Linda wrapped up her work for the day and we finished the bottle of Alpha Rose from Red Trail Vineyards while she fixed a simple but tasty dinner of vegan burgers and corn. I got a call from Butch letting me know that the company in Nevada had arranged for a semi and taken all of the parts they plan to take. Everything that is left is Butch and Fonda’s to do with as they please. The important thing for us is that I can now take our bus down there at my convenience. I would like to get all of the natural gas related work taken care of and put the finishing touches on the garage project before I move the bus, but I may go ahead and move it next week if the scheduling of contractors works out.

During the evening I had an exchange of TXT messages with Chuck. He had ordered some miniature 24VDC light bulbs (1829s) that are used in our bus dashboards and the order had arrived. Rather than go to his shop after breakfast tomorrow we arranged to meet him for dinner tomorrow night. I also got a call from Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint. She had a new customer who just bought a mid-1990’s Prevost XL converted coach and she gave him my name and phone numbers in case he had any questions about the rig. We agreed that we would try to find time during the GLCC Surplus and Salvage a Rally to work on the article I started last year about the process she used to repair the body and roof of our coach, seal and coat the roof, and paint the body. We capped off the evening with the second to last episode of Season 5 of Doc Martin. We need to return the DVDs to the Howell Library on Sunday, so we want to make sure we get through all of the episodes for Season 5.

2014/09/17 (W) Hooked Up

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I figured Darryll would be here on Friday but he called a little after 8 AM this morning to see if he could come today and finish up. I was going to check around to see what sort of price and delivery I could get on the boiler conversion, but with Darryll coming this morning I decided it was not worth trying to save a hundred bucks and risk an even longer delay in getting the furnace converted. I called TOMTEK back and left a message with the secretary, Virginia, to let Tom know that we were getting the gas hooked up to the house today and that we needed him to come convert the boiler at his earliest convenience. I also assured her that we would be fine without the boiler for a few days as we are not yet into freezing temperatures at night. The biggest inconvenience will be the lack of hot water for bathing and washing dishes. Linda can use our microwave oven, induction cooker from the bus, and our electric toaster oven to fix a wide range of meals. We also have a microwave oven on the bus as well as a Gaggenau 2-burner electric cooktop and we have a Jenn-Air electric range/oven/grill/fryer/etc. in the recreation room in the basement. We checked out the Jenn-Air when we moved in but have never cooked on it. Once I get the extension hose with quick disconnect for the new gas grill we will also be able to cook on that if we want or need to. We do most of our laundry with cold water, so that is not an issue.

Darryll must have called us from the road. We had just finished breakfast (re-heated homemade cinnamon rolls and fresh grapefruit) and I was headed outside to move the cars so he could back his truck up to the garage when he pulled into the other end of the pull-through driveway. Most of his work today involved completing the connections from the natural gas meter to the new 2″ black iron pipe and the old 1″ pipe that currently feeds propane to the house. All of that work was on the east end of the house so he parked his van there to be as close that location as possible. His dad came with him this time to help out.

We let our dishwasher finish its cycle and then turned off the boiler, closed the gas shut off valve, closed the shut off valve for the line feeding gas to the range, grill, and old breezeway heater (since removed). Darryll they shut off the propane to the house at the tank and disconnected the supply line and pressure regulator from the house. He disconnected the supply line on the other end from the pressure regulator at the tank and installed a plug in the outlet. I used short lengths of 10AWG electrical wire to secure the covers on both propane tanks. The wires are just twisted, and while easily undone, the covers cannot just be pulled up without untwisting them first.

The old pipe that carried propane into the house is below the gas meter to the left and the new 2″ pipe is at the level of the meter and to the right. The consumer connection outlet from the meter is a 1.25″ threaded nipple coming out of a shutoff valve below the right lower corner of the meter. Darryll came out of that nipple and installed an elbow going back towards the house, a short piece of pipe and then a T with the opposing ends horizontal. From there he was able to adapt down to 1″ i.d. pipe going to the left behind the meter and gas line and use various fittings to bring it around and connect it to the old pipe sticking out of the wall. He put a union in there to make it possible to assemble all of this. He went to the right out of the T and used an adapter to go up in size to 2″ i.d. and then elbowed up and over to line up with the 2″ pipe running along the side of the house. He extended the 2″ pipe and somewhere in there installed a 2″ union, again, to make it possible to assemble all of these pieces. The number of fittings and the geometry of their assembly was fairly impressive but it was a very neat installation when he was done.

This was a big project, and although Darryll is done with his part of the work the project is not finished. Rather than post photos as the work has gone along I will be creating a page on our website just for this project and posting several photo galleries illustrating the major steps.

We had a small bird of prey in the back yard this morning being badgered by four very large Blue jays. When sitting on the ground with its wings folded in it was about the same size as the Blue jays, definitely too small to be a Red Tailed Hawk, but I could not get a good enough look at its wings, tail, or underside markings to identify it. The Blue jays kept swooping down at it and then it would suddenly take flight and go after one of them. It appeared to be fast and very maneuverable, so I think the Blue jays were playing a dangerous game.

I called Country Squire Fireplace and Lighting and talked to Bob. We agreed on the 12 foot extension hose kit and Bob said he would get in on order today. Country Squire only gets deliveries from their American Hearth distributor every other Friday and the 26^th is their next scheduled delivery date. If our order does not arrive then it will be another two weeks before it gets here. Obviously we won’t be heating the living room before the furnace gets converted or cooking on the grill before we get the new range unless something goes very, very wrong with those items.

I got a call back from Valerie at TOMTEK to let us know they would hold a service appointment for us on Monday, assuming the part comes in by then. By definition, that has to be acceptable as there isn’t anything I can do to change it. I have been a bit annoyed with myself, however, for not checking on all of this sooner and contacting TOMTEK sooner so they had the part in hand when it was time.

While Darryll was working on the meter tie-in I unscrewed the brass flare fitting that connected the old propane fire logs to the 1/2″ i.d. black iron supply pipe. I then removed the fire log unit from the fireplace and moved it to the garage. There was already a plug sitting in the fireplace box for the end of the iron pipe, but I left that for Darryll to connect after he had spliced a shutoff valve into the pipe outside the house just before it enters the side of the brick chimney and goes into the firebox.

I noted that the dials on the gas meter had not moved since it was installed and pressurized on Monday. Darryll finished the iron pipe connections, opened the outlet valve, and put natural gas to the house and the new 2″ iron pipe. After the pipe filled with gas we noted the readings on the meter dials. He checked for leaks with his soapy water solution and did not find any. Darryll made a light pencil mark on the 1/2 cu. ft. per revolution (rotation) dial. He then opened the gas valve to the library furnace and checked for leaks downstream of the valve. He did not find any so he turned it on and set the thermostat up. It took a couple of tries to purge the remaining air out of the line and get the burner to light, but once it started it ran really nice. He then opened the gas valve to the garage furnace and checked for leaks downstream of the valve. Again, he did not find any so he turned the power on at the ceiling switch, turned the thermostat on, and turned the temperature up to start the unit. There was only a small amount of air left in the 1/2″ i.d. line and the unit lit right up and purred like a kitten. (OK, roared like a small lion.)

These are not dramatic moments but they are significant ones. After numerous visits spanning more than six weeks, and a myriad of steps integrating various technologies, you flip a switch and voila, you have a functioning furnace; or two, in our case. Darryll let both furnaces run long enough to burn off some manufacturing oils which sometimes produce smoke from the supply registers and cause homeowners to freak out. He shut the units off at the thermostats and waited to make sure they would actually cycle off. They did, so there wasn’t anything left to do except pack up and head for home, stopping to get some lunch for his dad on the way. He will mail us the final invoice once he has it figured out. It’s nice to do business we people that trust us.

I called D. R. Appliance to let them know we had natural gas to the house and to find out what they do with the old units they haul away. Curt said they would be able to bring the new unit and install it very quickly after they receive it. There’s a chance that will be on Friday or Saturday, which would be really nice. As I suspected (feared) they take the old unit to a dump. I asked if they would drop it at Salvation Army but they were reluctant to do that, even though I did not see where it would be inconvenient for them.

According to Curt the Salvation Army is very picky about what they will take. I figured they would go right past the donation center on their way back to the appliance store but Curt pointed out that their next delivery and installation might well be in the opposite direction and he clearly did not want his delivery/installer to go even a little bit out of their way to do this. Fair enough. What did not occur to me until later is that a company that sells new appliances might want to get old ones out of circulation. If so, I think that is shortsighted; folks looking for a used (inexpensive) appliance at a Salvation Army Thrift Store were not going to be customers for a new one.

I called the Salvation Army Thrift Store and Donation Center in Brighton, Michigan, which is actually on Grand River Avenue as you go towards Howell from our house. They said they would accept the old range as long as it was working. I told them it was in reasonably good shape, looked OK, and worked fine except for the spark igniters for the stove top burners. That was fine with them. They just asked that we mention the spark igniters when we drop it off. They also had a truck that could come get it if we were unable to get it into our personal vehicle and gave me the phone number to schedule a pickup. Cool. That means we don’t have to try and convince D. R. Appliance to deal with it and it does not end up in a scrap yard.

Although I did not do anything particularly physical today I was very tired by 4 PM and took a 2-hour nap. Linda woke me up at 6 PM to have a dinner of green salad, leftover lentil stew with sweet potatoes and apples, and homemade biscuits with honey.

After dinner we opened a bottle of Alpha Rose wine that we bought in August 2013 at Red Trail Vineyard in Buffalo, North Dakota. They are part of the Harvest Host network and it was the first place we used our membership to spend the night at a winery for free. I posted about the place at the time. The Alpha Rose was absolutely delightful with a very floral nose that carried over into the mouth. Made from King of the North grapes, it was light but crisp and very pleasant in the finish. I wish we had bought a case. The King of the North vines were the first ones planted at Red Trail Vineyard back in 2003 and have done well in the North Dakota climate. The Alpha Rose is only available at the winery and two other locations in the Fargo, North Dakota area, so I guess we will have to plan our travels to take us back that way.

Tonight was Season 5, Episode 6 of Doc Martin; at least it was for us. I think Season 5 originally aired in 2010. I really liked watching it on the TV monitor from a DVD compared to watching it on an iPad.

2014/09/16 (T) Boiled Over

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Our son (Brendan) texted Linda early this morning to see if we would like to have grand-daughter Madeline spend the night while Marilyn is here next week. It turns out that next week Thursday and Friday are Jewish holidays, and Madeline attends a Jewish run day care facility. Of course we said “yes.”

Linda worked at her desk on our personal finances in the morning, worked on her counted cross-stitch project for a while in the afternoon, went on a couple of long walks, and managed to get breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the table. But as days go, it was fairly low key even for her.

I called Country Squire Fireplace and Lighting in Howell and asked for Bob as I had been instructed to do. It was Bob’s day off but I got to talk to Mark. Mark told me that they can get a 12′ hose with a 3/8″ flare fitting on one end and quick disconnect on the other end. The QD includes the male fitting attached to the hose and the female fitting that gets threaded onto the supply pipe. We already have a female QD fitting (Marshall Brass BC0102-0600) but it may not be compatible. I had measured before I called and knew that we needed at least an 8′ hose, so 12′ will work just fine, especially since two feet of it has to go up through the base from the back and then out the top of the base and attach to the grill. Mark asked me to call back tomorrow and talk to Bob to order it, so that is what I will do.

I double checked online that the range we had ordered was indeed a natural gas model. It was, so there was no need to call the appliance store to confirm that. I had a call back from Darryll at DCM Heating & Cooling. He thought he would be able to come back on Friday or Saturday to hook up the gas from the meter to the house and the new black iron pipe and start up the two new furnaces. All of the other gas conversion work we need done is dependent on Darryll getting his piece done first and I asked him if it would be possible to come on Wednesday. He said he would check his schedule and see what he could do. Darryll has been great to work with, and I try not to be demanding, but I cannot schedule other contractors until there is gas to the house.

I checked the label on our Weil-McLain “boiler” that provides heat for our hot-water baseboard heating system and domestic hot water. It’s a GV-5, Series 1. That allowed me to hone in on the right manuals on the W-M website from which I was able to identify the part number for the LP –> NG conversion kit. It’s a 510-811-630 and consists of an orifice plate and an adhesive label that has to go on the unit. The unit is a discontinued model, but service parts appear to still be available. I found the conversion kit at the first online supplier I checked for under $31 (plus S&H) but delivery looked to be 2 – 3 weeks. Ugh. I placed a call to TOMTEK HVAC in Howell to see if Tom had checked on this yet. He hadn’t so I gave him the model and serial number of our unit and mentioned that I had found the orifice plate online.

I worked at my desk for a while uploading blog posts from the last third of August, but it was such a beautiful day that I decided to work upstairs on my iPad2. I called Bratcher Electric around 4 PM just to give them a “heads up” that we had a meter with natural gas. Karen gave me Mike’s cell phone number and a time window during which I would likely be able to reach him. He has been very busy doing estimates for storm damage repairs and has not been in the shop much the last month. I got hold of him to let him know that we might be ready for them as early as next Monday, but anytime in the next couple of weeks after that would be OK. Again, I try not to be unreasonably demanding, and I try to be truthful with folks. Sometimes, however, that just results in us being put at the back of a long line of people who are unreasonably demanding.

Linda made maple baked lentils with sweet potato and apple for dinner. It really hit the spot on a cool evening. After dinner I continued working on selecting and editing photos for a gallery post on the natural gas pipeline work. My cell phone cannot receive calls in the basement but it can receive txt messages and notifications. Tom had called back from TOMTEK regarding the boiler conversion. He can get the parts locally in about four days and wants $250 to do the conversion plus $59 for the service call. A total bill of $310 to install a $30 part (retail) sounded excessive to me, so I may make a few inquiries first thing in the morning before I call him back.

We watched Season 5 Episode 5 of Doc Martin. It was nice to see it on the TV rather than the iPad with a large screen, better sound, a DVD quality image, and no buffering.

2014/09/15 (M) NG Project Gallery

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Rather than create a blog post with photos of the natural gas project I have created a page on our website for these images. You will find 71 photos in several galleries located here:

https://www.omnibus-mi.us/interests/home-yard/2014-08-natural-gas/

2014/09/15 (M) Congratulations, You Have Gas

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As I reported in the blog post for this past Saturday a natural gas hookup crew was at our house in the early morning but it was the wrong crew (trench/plow) installing the wrong size gas line (1/2″ id). The correct crew (directional boring) showed up today around 9 AM and started boring the line for our neighbor’s yard across the street. I chatted with the crew briefly and they said we were next. They had placed a large role of the proper size gas line (1″ id) in our yard, so I knew they knew what they were doing.

Ed, who had stopped by on Friday and runs the hookup crew, was not sure whether they would hang the meter and connect the line at both ends today, but if not, tomorrow for sure. Their presence on site, however, meant that I would need to be in contact with three contractors fairly soon to follow up on arrangements to get them out here ASAP, and in the following order:

DCM Heating and Cooling, to disconnect the propane from the house and tie the new 2″ black iron pipe together with the pipe into the house and connect them to the consumer side of the gas meter. Also, to start up the new library and garage furnaces.
TOMTEK HVAC to convert the hot water base-board heating system to natural gas. Tom was going to check today with Weil-McLain on the parts needed for the conversion and let me know. Our own research suggested that a natural gas orifice plate was the only part needed, but a number of steps were involved in the installation and I doubt that W-M would sell me the part directly. (I did find it later online for $31 plus S&H, so I could buy it if I wanted to.)
Bratcher Electric; to convert the whole house generator, do the annual maintenance, and run the new service entrance cable for the garage panel.

Mike Bratcher was here a month ago to look at the job but had not gotten a price to us yet for the work. They have been slammed with repair jobs as a result of late summer storms. The generator is the least critical component at the moment as it is on its own propane tank, but we want to get it switched in a timely fashion so we can call AmeriGas and have both tanks removed at the same time.

(Ed told me later in the day that Consumer’s Energy requires us to be switched over to natural gas within 30 days of having gas to our meter. He also said that a recent Michigan law (last year) made it illegal to have multiple fuel sources to a house. Since the generator is on its own propane tank and that tank is not connected to, or provide propane to, the house or anything in the house, technically we would not have two different fuels going to the house even if we left it hooked up. Still, we are not looking to create a “situation” with Consumer’s Energy. Presumably the multi-fuel prohibition does not include electricity and wood.)

Keith showed up around 9 AM to cut the grass. I chatted with him briefly about cutting the new grass, which had gotten long enough in many spots that I thought it was probably time for the first cutting. I picked up some small tree branches that were scattered about the yard from recent storms, and warned him about the trench at the southeast corner of the house. I chatted with him some more as he was finishing up with the string trimmer. He said the grass was “April grass, not September grass.” The grass itself (internally) was very moist, not just the soil.

This is how Keith cuts over 4 acres of grass in a few hours.

Linda had reserved Doc Martin, Season 5, at the Howell Library and had an e-mail that it was available and needed to be picked up by the end of today or we would go to the end of the waiting list. She needed to be at the bakery by 11 AM so she left around 9:45 AM to be at the library when it opened at 10 AM. I would have gone to get it but I was “stuck” at the house as long as contractors were, or might be, working here. I also needed to be here to pay Keith when he finished cutting the grass.

Linda met with the folks at the bakery (where she was the Controller and Treasurer for the 10 years before she retired) on Friday regarding a major software conversion project that she is going to do for them and was finally feeling like we could afford a new range. She is a very good accountant/CPA and has always worked hard for what she earned, but has always been reluctant to spend money. We grew up in very different circumstances and that reluctance on her part has provided a good balance over the years as I tend to be less concerned about what things cost and more focused on making sure we have what we need and are getting good functionality and quality for what we spend. One component of my formal education and work experience was engineering, and that developed a certain way of thinking about things that has stayed with me ever since. Need is, of course, relative.

We had been deferring a decision about the new kitchen range but decided on Friday evening that, with the natural gas hookup imminent, we would get a new one rather than convert our old one. We decided on the model we wanted, a G.E. JGB870DEFWW, and knew the price, delivery time, and installation charge from Lowe’s. I also talked to Curt at D. R. Appliance, a local family owned appliance store, on Saturday and expected to hear back from him today with pricing and availability. That call came late morning and their price, while a little higher than Lowe’s, was close enough to be worth the possible end-of-week delivery and installation so I told them to go ahead and order it.

By 3:30 PM the gas line to our house was in the ground and the meter was mounted on the side of the house but a crew was still digging out by the street trying to clear access to the main line so the fuser could tie our line and our neighbor’s line into the 2” main line. My camera battery went dead while they were installing the meter so I grabbed a few shots on my cell phone while the camera battery recharged. Linda got home around this time and got to see some of the final steps in the process.

I followed the process closely all day and tried to get photos of most of the details, especially as they hung the meter, tied the line in, and pressure tested it. All was good, so they tapped the main line and we finally had gas in our branch line. They purged the line, reconnected it to the meter inlet, tested the meter and connections for leaks, and then verified gas availability to the outlet connection. At 5:30 PM they plugged the outlet, put the hang tags on, and handed me the door knocker tag that said “Congratulations, you have gas.”

We always seem to have interesting things in our yard.

Linda took a call from Bob at Country Squire Fireplace and Lighting regarding our quick disconnect for the Broil King outdoor grill. She indicated that I was busy with the gas crew and would call them back tomorrow.

Late last week we received an invitation to a political fund-raiser for Brian Robb, an incumbent councilman in Ypsilanti, Michigan. We do not live or vote there, but Brian is Kate de Fuccio’s significant other, and Kate is a former co-worker of mine and continues to be a very good friend of ours. I called DCM Heating & Cooling and left a message for Darryll that we had gas to the meter. We left around 6 PM and arrived at the Tower Inn Cafe around 7 PM. We made a donation to Brian’s campaign and Kate ordered a small vegan pizza for us. We visited for about an hour and then took our leave.

When we got home we relaxed in the living room thinking about how nice it will be to have our natural gas fire logs while we had some fresh strawberries and nectarines for dessert. I also had a mug of hot apple cider which put me in the mood to go to bed.

2014/09/13 (S) Overnight Guest

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Linda’s sister, Sister Marilyn, called a couple of days ago to let us know she would be in the Detroit area on business this weekend. She wanted to know if we could fetch her this afternoon and if she could spend the night at our house? The answer was “of course,” of course. Her flight out wasn’t until Sunday evening, so Linda put the gears in motion and arranged a brunch with the local family for 10 AM tomorrow.

Being Saturday, we went to our ham radio club breakfast in South Lyon. Before leaving our neighborhood we drove to the other end of the street (dead end with turn-around) to see where the gas hookup crew left off yesterday. We knew they were working down there today because we saw the trucks leave sometime between 5:30 and 6:00 PM last night. There’s a chance they will be back today and we wanted to see how close they were to connecting our house to the main line. It looked like they had quite a few houses to do ahead of ours, so we went to breakfast.

We got home around 10:30 AM to find a crew working in our yard trenching in the branch line to our house. I was told yesterday they were going to bore it in, so something obviously did not get communicated. Not only that, they were running a 5/8″ line, which was way too small for the 425 meter we are supposed to get. I stopped the crew and the guy in charge pulled out his paperwork. It had “425” written on it big letters, but the drawing showed a 5/8″ line. He agreed that the 5/8″ line was way too small for that meter and that we should have 1.25″ line. They pulled the little bit of line they had already run out of the ground, raked out some of the dirt they had already trenched, and moved their machine across the street to trench our neighbors yard.

We were lucky we got home when we did. They had already cut through some tree roots that did not need to be disturbed and would have torn up a lot more of our yard unnecessarily if I had not interrupted their work. They were nice about it, but I still found it troublesome that I had spoken to two different supervisors face-to-face about this, one as recently as yesterday, but this crew showed up and did something different than what I had been told, and agreed, would be done.

I was finally going to try to remove the fogged window from the bus today, but we had a lot of rain overnight and woke to overcast skies, temperatures in the upper 40’s, and a forecast high of 57 degrees F with a strong chance of rain through mid-afternoon. That was not the sort of weather for removing a window from a vehicle parked outside. Besides, with Marilyn arriving mid-late afternoon I did not want to work on anything messy and then have to get cleaned up.

Linda looked up the kitchen ranges we had been considering. The GE 30″ 5-burner double-oven convention model (JGB870DEFWW) was on sale again at Lowe’s for $180 off MSRP and we would get another 5% off the sale price by using our Lowe’s credit card. If we ordered it today delivery would be September 27, longer than I would like, but it is what it is. We have to order this range because Linda wants a white one to match all of the other appliances in the kitchen and the appliance stores do not tend to stock white ranges with the features we want. I called our local Lowe’s store and confirmed the free delivery and take away of our current range. Installation is $20 plus a new flex gas line for $30.

I called TOMTEK HVAC and got hold of Tom. He seemed put off by the fact that I have someone else doing HVAC work at the house and will have the natural gas already tied in when he comes to convert the main house furnace from propane to natural gas, but he said he would check with Weil-McLain on Monday about what parts he needs to do the conversion. While on the phone with Tom he suggested that we try D. R. Electric Appliance Sales and Service in Howell for our new gas range. We looked them up on the web and got their (incorrect) phone number and hours. I got the correct number from 411 before I realized that it was also on their website. They closed at 2 PM on Saturdays, so we didn’t make it there today, but I called and got an answering machine, left my name, number, and the reason for the call. Curt called me back a short time later. I gave him the model number and he said he would call G.E. on Monday. He said he had been holding off ordering G.E. appliances waiting for Columbus Day sale pricing. He figured he would have the range three days from ordering and could probably install it at the end of the week or early next. They charge $25 for installation and haul away, and $25 for the new flex gas line if we need one, so it’s the same $50 as Lowe’s. (Lowe’s assured me that they were REQUIRED to install a new flexible gas line.) That all sounded good depending on the price of the range. Getting it sooner has some dollar value to us, we’re just not sure how much.

I stayed home while Linda went to Meijer’s for groceries. Finding the crew in our yard this morning doing work they were no supposed to be doing spooked me enough to not want to leave the house unattended the rest of the day. As long as I was stuck at home, I called Bratcher Electric to give them a heads up that the gas connection to the house was imminent. Being Saturday I got their answering machine and left a message. I also called Darryll at DCM Heating & Cooling and left a message regarding the gas connection. Once the meter is hung and connected everything else depends on Darryll getting his piece done first.

We checked the website for Country Squire Fireplace and Lighting in Howell and saw a 10% off coupon, so I printed that. I wanted to go there today and buy a set of high-efficiency vent-free natural gas fire logs but it will probably be tomorrow afternoon instead. These logs are more efficient than a typical kitchen range and are designed to be used with the fireplace flue closed, throwing most of the heat they produce into the room instead of up the chimney. Darryll said he would hook it up for us and add a shutoff valve when he came back to tie in to the gas meter, so we need to have it here before he comes back next week.

Marilyn called and said their flights were running a little behind schedule and that Linda should pick her up around 3 PM rather than 2:30 PM as originally planned. She called back again and said 3:15 PM would be better. Linda got back from the grocery store and we had a quick lunch of leftover Sloppy Joe’s.

With overnight lows in the 40’s, highs only in the mid-50’s, and the connection of our natural gas somewhat imminent, we decided we could afford to use propane to heat the house. We have been conscious of our propane use because we did not want to get in a position where we needed to have either of the tanks filled. I turned the furnace on and set all the thermostats a few degrees above ambient to take the chill off.

While Linda drove over to Lake Orion, Michigan to fetch Marilyn I decided to work at my desk selecting photos for gallery posts on the garage/HVAC project and natural gas work, and worked a little bit on the websites for the FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches and Freethinkers chapters. I really need to have the GLCC site usable in the next three weeks and the FTH site within a month of that. That sounds ambitious even as I write it down and I suspect it won’t happen.

Linda and Marilyn got to the house around 4:30 PM and after we got Marilyn settled in her bedroom we just sat and relaxed and talked for a while. We thought she might appreciate a good home-cooked meal but we ended up taking her to LaMarsa for dinner. She had the Koshary, which we had last night, and we split an order of garlic almond vegetable Ghallaba with green salad and crushed lentil soup. We all ate way too much pita bread with garlic spread and were uncomfortably full by the time we finished our meal, but it was delicious and we did not have to prepare it or clean up afterwards.

These days twilight now comes around 7 PM and it was dark by the time we got home at 8 PM. I made a pot of decaf coffee and we settled in the living room for a long chat. I set the thermostats back before we turned in for the evening as all three of us prefer to sleep in a cool room.

2014/09/12 (F) Posted

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Linda was up very early to try and beat the morning rush inbound to Detroit from the northwest. I took an Ibuprofen and went back to bed, finally getting up at 7 AM. 1-800-PACK-RAT was scheduled to pick up the 16 foot long storage container we have had in our driveway for the last two months and I wanted to be up and dressed when they arrived. I did not have any problems with my teeth overnight. They felt OK this morning but the upper right was still a bit sensitive to biting pressure. I had a nice soft banana for breakfast and decided to keep taking the Ibuprofen and Tylenol.

I put a load of laundry in the washer and then ran out to take care of errands. I stopped at Dunkin Donuts for coffee, Lowe’s for solar salt for the water softener, and then Teeko’s for coffee beans. Jeff still did not have the Sweet Dreams decaf blend even though he orders it every week. I got a pound of the Seattle Blend 50/50 regular/decaffeinated, and a pound of regular Brazilian Serra Negra to blend with the decaffeinated beans we already had at home.

Heather, from Root Canal Specialty Associates, called around 9 AM to check on me. I mentioned the sensitivity and she said that was normal and to keep taking the Ibuprofen/Tylenol through the weekend to counteract any inflammation and/or discomfort. She wanted to know if I thought the temporary filing was high and making contact before the other teeth. I wasn’t sure, but she said if it was to call them Monday morning and they would get me in to adjust my bite.

Since I was on the phone anyway I called Bratcher Electric to see about the quote/estimate for the generator service / fuel changeover and the service entrance feed from the transfer switch to the sub-panel to change it into a main panel. They have been very busy with repairing damage caused by the storms of the last few weeks. We did not suffer any damage beyond some dead branches breaking off from trees, but south of us folks were hit much harder. That kind of work always takes priority.

The day was overcast and dreary with morning temps in the mid-40’s and a high of 54, but that was OK; it was a perfect day for sitting at a desk and working on a computer, undistracted by either bad or gorgeous weather. I did, however, bring my computer upstairs and work at Linda’s desk. My office is very nice but it is in the basement and it is a bit of a cave. Sometimes I like that, and sometimes I don’t. I worked on our blog until early-midafternoon and finally uploaded posts from Aug 2 through Aug 20.

My only interruption was a visit from one of Roese Construction’s field supervisors who was checking on where the runs will go to connect the houses in our neighborhood to the natural gas main. After looking at our situation he agreed with me and Mel who had looked at this a few weeks ago, that staying to the east of the east entrance to our pull-through driveway made the most sense even through it required them to bore at an angle relative to the main line. That conversation confirmed that they will be horizontal boring the branch line rather than trenching it in. He did not give me a firm date, but it sounded like it could be as early as tomorrow (Saturday) and likely by Tuesday next week.

My computer battery was down to under 1 hour of charge remaining, so I took it downstairs and plugged it back in to its power supply. While I was down there I put another load of laundry in the washing machine. Back upstairs I made a PB&J sandwich for lunch, along with some green tea. I got back on the RVillage Mobile development site, played with a few more features, and provided some additional feedback to the development team. I then worked on this post using my new Logitech Bluetooth keyboard. The Wacom Bamboo stylus is nice, but the keyboard is the way to go when creating extended text.

Juniper, our female cat, was getting into something in the library so I went to investigate. She had cornered a yellow jacket and was trying to figure out what to do with it. I solved the problem for her by capturing it and putting it outside. I don’t think she was pleased with my solution, but not 20 minutes later she was at it again, and it was another yellow jacket. We have a nest in the soffit near the library that we need to get rid of, but we have not had a problem with them getting into the house until very recently. Hopefully that has not changed but I will have to investigate the situation. It may be that with the onset of cooler temperatures they are finding their way into the library through the recessed ceiling downlight cans. If so, there’s really no good way to seal those. Fortunately we can close of the house from the library with a kitchen door and a living room doorwall that includes a screen door.

It started raining very lightly around 4 PM, but never developed into anything. Linda got home from the bakery at 5:30 PM. The storage container had not been picked up yet so we called the 1-800 number and left a message with our callback number. I got a call around 6 PM from the local (Plymouth, MI) office verifying the pickup and address. The driver arrived around 7:20 PM and had the unit loaded by 7:30 PM. After he left we headed to dinner at LaMarsa where we had crushed lentil soup and split an order of Koshary and salad. Even splitting the dish we both ate too much, aided by the fresh-baked pocket bread and garlic spread. The food and service were both excellent, as always, and the garlic spread was “…the gift that keeps on giving.”

We got back from dinner a little before 9 PM, too late to start any in-depth computer work, but early enough for me to finish this post and for Linda to do some recipe research for Sunday’s brunch. It seems like only yesterday it was still light at 10 PM at night, but we are approaching the autumnal equinox, and there are noticeably fewer hours of daylight now.

2014/09/09 (T) Squashed

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We got up this morning around 7 AM to temperatures in the upper 50’s and thinly overcast skies. I hooked up the garden hose and watered part of the back yard where we have been spot seeding the grass. Breakfast was our usual yummy homemade granola and a fresh grapefruit but I had to eat the cereal carefully.

I woke up this morning with minor pain in my lower right rear teeth. The upper teeth on that side have been bothering me for a little while and the coffee bothered one of them this morning. Not a good sign, as we learned a few weeks ago when Linda developed severe pain overnight. Sensitivity to heat and lack of sensitivity to cold is one of the tests for a nerve gone bad, and that usually means a root canal procedure. I called our dentist’s office at 9:15 AM and they booked me in at 2 PM. When I was there a couple of weeks ago to have an abfraction redone Dr. Steve did not see anything wrong with the upper tooth and speculated that I might be clenching my teeth while I sleep, which can aggravate the nerves. He may want me to try a mouth guard first. We’ll see.

After catching up on blogs I finished watering the back yard and moved around to the front. Being on a well, we cannot just run the water indefinitely; once the pressure tank runs down we need to let it recharge. The tank is large and we never notice this with normal household water usage, but watering the lawn can take a lot of water.

With the watering done I had planned to work on the drywall in the library, something I have not done for the last week, but I decided instead to re-grade a small area of the yard just east of the east driveway culvert. Roese Construction brought two pieces of plastic gas line above the surface in that area, dug a big hole to connect them straight together, and then back filled the hole and buried them. In the process of filling and grading the disturbed area they blocked the lower half of our culvert. Unfortunately the water flows out of that end of the culvert, so their grading was blocking the natural flow of the water.

While I was digging and raking Bill showed up from AT&T. Linda let me know that about 20 minutes before he arrived we had gotten two calls that just identified as “Incoming.” Bill said that coincided with the time he was dispatched and that an automatic line test is run whenever a technician is dispatched. He was able to pull up a screen on his diagnostic tablet of the recent use of the line pairs by 30 minute intervals and could see that our DSL had dropped out shortly after the diagnostic calls were made. This matched what Linda had seen in the house. He repeated the test sitting in our driveway and the telephone test call caused our DSL to disconnect again. He disconnected the line from the service entrance box and went in search of the problem while I continued working on the drainage issue.

I had the drainage problem fixed by 11:45 AM and got cleaned up and dressed appropriately for my dental appointment. We had hummus sandwiches with onion and olive oil, leftover butternut squash from last night’s dinner, and fresh, perfectly ripe pears; all soft foods so as not aggregate my dental situation. I was just getting ready to leave for my appointment when Bill returned. He said it was not a circuit board but appeared to be a cable problem that they refer to as a “swinging line,” referring to a marginal section of cable that develops problems when it moves, such as with storm winds. We had problems on Friday evening as a storm front approached and the winds kicked up, so this diagnosis did not surprise me.

Bill said he moved us to yet another line pair much farther away from our original ones and then repeated the tests he had done earlier. He had not gotten any failures but was not completely confident that he had solved the problem. The weather forecast for tomorrow is for a 100% chance of storms, some strong to severe, and Bill thought that would be a good test. I let Bill know that while I was digging and raking by the road I found an old underground AT&T line that had been cut in half with ends left above ground. He said it was no longer being used but they ask the other utility crews to leave the ends exposed when they snag them so AT&T can find them.

My teeth hurt on the drive down to the dentist, did not hurt while I was there, and hurt on the drive home. Direct examination, hot/cold sensitivity testing, and X-rays did not provide a definitive diagnosis. Dr. Steve was still of the opinion that it could be nerve irritation from clenching my teeth at night, but thought I should have the situation evaluated by an endodontist. Linda saw an endodontist just down the street from our dental clinic, but she needed same day service and they were able to get her in and do the root canal. They referred me to a clinic in Brighton about five miles from our house and made an appointment for me for Thursday late morning. With any luck my teeth won’t go critical in between now and then.

I did get an interesting recommendation on how to manage any ongoing discomfort. Motrin (Ibuprofen), up to 800 mg every six hours, and Extra Strength Tylenol, every six hours, taken half way between the Motrin. Apparently it works nearly as well as narcotics, at least on dental pain, without any of the unpleasant side effects or habit forming properties.

I did not feel like changing back into work clothes when I got home so I enjoyed some quiet time on the deck with Linda, who was working on her counted cross-stitch project, under partly cloudy skies with pleasant temperatures in the mid-70’s and a light breeze. Ahhhh.

With the phone and DSL currently functioning properly I worked in my office for a while before dinner. The login attack on our two WordPress sites hosted by QTH.com had continued, but not to the same extent as before. I set the country blocking to “all” in Wordfence and then deselected the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. I did not have a reply from Scott at QTH.com which surprised me a bit but was not a big deal.

Linda made a nice salad for dinner and then served the leftover baked squash and squash/pasta dish from the other night; a lot of squash for one meal, but very tasty. We had a glass of the Leelanau Cellars Winter White, a very drinkable semi-sweet white table wine blend that must contain a fair amount of Riesling, although the label does not specify the grapes used to make it.

My bottom tooth was really acting up so I took 800 mg of Motrin (Ibuprofen) around 6 PM. We were out of Extra Strength Tylenol so Linda went to the store and got a bottle. I took some of that around 9 PM and then went to bed. I will be taking a pass on wine and coffee until I get the problems with my teeth resolved.

2014/09/08 (M) No More Leaks

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I was up at 6:30 AM, having fallen asleep before 10:30 PM last night. I rarely sleep more than eight hours. Linda was up shortly thereafter. We had breakfast a little after 7 AM and drank our coffee in the living room while we checked in on the world with our iPads. It was a perfect morning to fire up the gas logs in the fireplace, but we did not. The propane logs require the flue vent to be open and most of the heat they produce goes up the chimney, not into the room. We will definitely replace these with 99.8% efficient vent-free natural gas logs that operate with the flue damper closed once we have natural gas to the house.

Linda went for a long walk, about 5.5 miles. I was catching up on blogs I follow on Feedly when Darryll and Alec arrived around 10 AM. With Alec along Darryll did not need my help fixing the leaks in the black iron pipe fittings. To repair the leak behind the garage he decided to install a union in the 1″ pipe coming out of the T-fitting that will feed gas to the garage. They still had to disassemble all of the fittings from there to end of the run and then reassemble them. Ditto for the leak at the elbow in the 1/2″ line coming out of the utility closet to feed the garage furnace.

I had Darryll look at our old propane fireplace logs to see what would be required to replace them with high efficiency natural gas logs and add a shutoff valve. Based on how the pipes are run the shutoff valve will have to be in the outside pipe just before it enters the side of the chimney. That will place it at a comfortable height and keep it out even deep snow.

While Darryll and Alec worked on the black iron pipe I unloaded more stuff from the storage container. I was dressed to work and with Linda away from the house I did not want to sequester myself in my basement office. Besides, I am not very productive at desk work when contractors are here.

As they were finishing up Darryll turned the new air-conditioner on and let it run to check the air temperature it could produce. It got the temp down to 58 degrees F in the main plenum. He said anything below 60 is considered proper operation so he did not need to adjust the refrigerant charge. They pressurized the pipes and checked every junction twice and did not find any leaks. He said a lot of guys, including the gas company, attach a gauge and if it holds pressure for an hour they call it good. Darryll wants to see it hold pressure a lot longer than that, which I appreciate. They finished up around 1:30 PM. After they left I set the pressure in the pipe as close to 15 PSI as I could. I noted that most of the pipe was in the shade and the air temperature was 76 degrees F.

For lunch we had hummus with pita chips and sourdough pretzel nibblers, fresh apple slices, and leftover kale salad. After lunch we worked in the garage for about 90 minutes and managed to get the storage container emptied out and all of the contents stored somewhere. We still can’t get a car in the garage, but we have time to work on that. What we need now is a dumpster, but I think that will have to wait until next spring.

I was supposed to have a FMCA Education Committee telephone meeting today at 4 PM but it was postponed yet again. I did, however, get two phone calls today from the folks at AT&T who are following up on our MPSC complaint. The phone was actually quiet enough today that I could carry on a normal phone conversation with them.

We had several other calls today that were also OK. One of them was from Norma, a woman from New York City that we met last year on our second Holistic Holiday at Sea cruise. Norma stopped by to visit us at Williston Crossings earlier this year along with her daughter and grandchildren. Norma is the person who told us about the Vegetarian Summerfest that is held each July in Pennsylvania. She is eager for us to go, and we are eager to attend; this summer just did not afford the opportunity. Although we will likely be building a barn next year, we would like to take a week and go to this event.

Chuck called in the afternoon to let me know he had picked up his old tachometer from Matt at Bob’s Speedometer and after replacing a few simple parts (capacitors or diodes) it worked fine on the bench. Chuck brought his “new” tachometer along and Matt tested it as well and it also worked, but not with the adaptor cable provided by Prevost. It turned out that the cable was wired to provide DC power to the tachometer from the wire that supplies power to the dashboard lights. Chuck doesn’t drive much at night, so the dash lights were rarely on. Another factor is that the dash lights are on a dimmer (rheostat) that reduces the voltage in order to dim the lights. The tachometer is not designed to work on that reduced voltage.

Once we were done working in the garage for the day I concentrated on deleting or filing old e-mails. I also discovered that we had become the target of a (so far) unsuccessful brute force login attack. I received about 360 system generated e-mails between 10 PM last night and 11 AM this morning notifying me of failed login attempts. I notified Scott at QTH.com and then decided to upgrade the Wordfence plug-in from free to paid/premium on all four of the websites I support.

After purchasing the upgrades I installed one of the API Keys in each site and then activated several premium features including “country blocking.” Wordfence claims to have access to several databases that allow them to identify the country associated with an IP address with 99.5% accuracy. I chose to block China, Europe, Indonesia, and the Russian Federation. If necessary I can “select all” and then deselect the United States and Canada. If the problem stops I could then unblock other countries, such as Australia and New Zealand. Not that I think anyone from there ever visits any of these websites, but with the web you never really know.

2014/09/05 (F) WordPress 4.0

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We awoke to temperatures in the low 70’s this morning and by noon it was forecast to be 85 degrees F with rapidly rising humidity. We turned our A-C on yesterday and left in on overnight and through the day today.

WordPress 4.0 was released yesterday and just before midnight I updated the four websites I manage, including this one. I was looking forward to working with the new version today, but first things first. Darryll called at 8:15 AM to make sure it was OK to come over. We finished breakfast and then opened the garage and moved a few things that might be in his way. Although we would have liked to continue working in the garage during the morning, before it got really hot and humid, we were glad to have Darryll here working on the HVAC installation.

Instead of working on organizing the garage Linda worked at her desk and baked a loaf of bread while I assisted Darryll. He wired up the library thermostat and showed me how the wires were connected. He installed the return air grill, which required some minor drywall trimming, and installed a 6″ combustion air duct in the ceiling of the utility closet. The duct had a screen on one end with a hood, like a dryer vent, and was open on the other end. He installed it from the attic side with the hood in the attic and the open end sticking down through the ceiling into the closet. I may decide to caulk or apply drywall compound to fill that gap between the duct and the hole Darryll made in the ceiling.

Darryll’s main focus, however, was hooking up the four pieces of duct, two rigid and two flexible, that will carry conditioned air into the library and installing the two ceiling registers. That involved working in the attic which was very hot. The flexible duct for the two ceiling registers was the same kind of product that was used in the main house; a pre-insulated flexible accordion tubing with an 8″ inside diameter that comes in 25′ lengths compressed to about 3′ for shipping. To feed the two registers on the lower part of the west wall of the library he cut lengths of 8″ diameter (circular cross section) metal duct and assembled them. He attached them to the supply air duct (plenum) with flange connectors. He then slide insulation blankets (tubes) around them and connected the bottom ends of the duct into the back of the register ducts using several elbows to bring the duct around and close to the wall. Finally, he slid the insulation down and secured it.

While Darryll was doing all of that I finished connecting the AC power to the condenser/compressor. That involved the following:

removing the terminal cover panel from the inside of the fused disconnect box
knocking out access holes on the right side and bottom
mounting the fused disconnect box to the side if the house
cutting a piece of 3/4″ plastic conduit for the cable from the soffit to the box
running the NM cable through the conduit
installing a watertight 90 degree elbow into the conduit
attaching the elbow to the side of the box
cutting, stripping, and connecting the line wires
cutting the plastic armor on the hookup cable to the right length
installing a straight screw-in watertight connector on the box end of the armor
installing a screw-in 90 degree elbow watertight connector on the condenser end
cutting, stripping, and connecting the load wires in the box
cutting, stripping, and connecting the load wires in the compressor.

I had Darryll check my work and then installed the fuses in the pull-out disconnect but was not able to get it to plug all the way in. Darryll bent the blades slightly and got it to seat fully. (I need to get two different fuses. All he had were 30A fuses but 20A would be sufficient. Also, the fuses he had in his truck were notched on one end. I think fuses with full barrels on both ends would be better as they would have more contact surface than the notched ones.) I reinstalled the terminal cover panel and closed the box. I then re-installed the cover panel on the A-C compressor that Darryll had removed earlier.

With the power connected and most of the ducts run, we turned on the 120VAC/15A circuit breaker (for the unit in the utility closet) and the 240VAC/20A circuit breaker (for the compressor/condenser). Darryll turned the thermostat mode switch to “cool” and the fan switch to auto and the A-C came to life. Hooray! I love it when that happens.

While Darryll finished installing the ducts and the registers I connected and mounted the thermostat for the garage furnace and then connected the wires on the other end of the cable to the terminals on the back of the unit according to Darryll’s instructions. I removed the end panel from the Reznor ceiling-mounted garage furnace, removed the documentation packet from the inside, checked that the gas valve was in the “on” position, and put the end panel back on. I also removed the protective plastic film from the bottom of the unit.

Darryll gathered up his tools, extra parts, and unused materials and loaded them in his truck. He then pressurized his portable air compressor and used it to pressurize the black iron gas pipe. It has not been holding pressure, so he pumped it up to 15 PSI and we went in search of leaks with a spray bottle of soapy water. We used my inspection mirror to see behind and under connections and found three leaks. One was in a 2″ pipe fitting behind the garage, one was in a 2″ pipe fitting near the end of the run by the generator, and one was at an elbow in the 1/2″ pipe where it exits the utility closet on its way to the garage furnace.

Darryll was checking air temperature readings at the registers and in the main plenum of the library HVAC unit. The library was 89 degrees F when he first turned the A-C on, and the attic was a lot hotter than that. He connected his gauges to the compressor/condenser and said the readings were close enough to correct that he did not want to add or remove any refrigerant until the room had cooled down and stabilized at the requested temperature.

I was hoping he would get the job finished today but he needed some equipment, which he did not have with him, to work on the iron pipe and he was obviously tired from a long day working in the high heat and humidity. He may be back tomorrow; if not, Monday or Tuesday. Whenever he returns, I have complete confidence that he will get it done before the gas meter is hung and that it will all work correctly for many years with very little attention other than changing a filter once or twice a year.

We deferred lunch until Darryll left. We had chickpea salad on a slice of the bread Linda had baked earlier, corn-on-the-cob, and the last of some fresh pineapple. Nothing says “summer” like organic, non-GMO corn-on-the-cob.

After lunch I called Bratcher Electric to check on the status of the estimate/quote that Mike was putting together to service our generator, convert it to natural gas, and run a 100A Service Entrance Cable from the transfer switch to the garage panel, converting it from a sub-panel to a main panel. Karen said they have been really busy but he would work on it over the weekend.

I also called 1-800-Pack-Rat to arrange pickup of the storage container on Friday September 12th. Steven was not able to schedule the pick-up during the call and said he would contact the local office and get back to me. I made it clear that we did not want to roll over into another billing cycle and I was calling one week ahead of time as we had been instructed. He assured me that it would not be a problem. About an hour later we got a return call and follow up e-mail confirming pickup for Friday, September 12.

Late afternoon I checked on the library A-C to make sure it was not freezing up. Everything looked OK. The thermostat was set to 76 degrees F and the temperature was down to 77, so I bumped the setting up to 78 to let it cycle off and on. Although Darryll did all of the heavy lifting on this project (literally) I spent my fair share of time in the attic on warm days installing the pull-down folding ladder and working on electrical wiring and attic lights. It was very gratifying to see that all of this work—his, mine, and Linda’s—finally result in something that operated correctly.

We were relaxing and reading when severe weather watches and warnings for our area started arriving on our iPads. Naturally we went outside to see what was going on. We were both born and raised in the Midwest, the St. Louis, Missouri area, to be exact, and as kids in the 1950’s, threatening weather was a form of summertime entertainment. Not that we were stupid; we learned from the adults around us when the show was over and it was time to head to the basement. When I was about 5 years old we lost a plum tree in our backyard to a close encounter with a tornado.

The gathering storm. The clouds were very dramatic in all directions.

The clouds were very dramatic but eventually gave way to a formless mass of gray with swirling winds and a few raindrops. We checked the Weather Channel app and the Weather Underground Wundermap app on our iPads. The radar returns showed that we were likely in for some rain, and we got some, but as often happens the worst of it passed north and south of us. The rain we did get was very welcomed. We had heavy rain on Monday (Labor Day), Keith mowed the grass on Tuesday, I spread grass seed around on Tuesday and Wednesday, and a flock of six wild turkeys feasted on the grass seed on Wednesday and Thursday. We needed a nice light rain to help the seeds germinate and take root rather than be eaten or washed away in a thunderstorm.

Storm clouds looking east.

Around 7:30 PM our power flickered several times and we received e-mail messages from our generator letting us know that utility power had been lost and then quickly regained. We decided to check the Kohler OnCue software to see what the generator was doing. We thought sure we had installed the software on Linda’s computer, so we could monitor it from her desk in the kitchen/dining area, but it wasn’t there. After much searching and head scratching we checked my old laptop and there it was! When we thought about it we realized that the generator had been installed about a week before Linda started configuring her new Samsung laptop, so there was no way we had put the software on her machine. We’ve been very, very busy the last 20 months, so it was not surprising to us that we had forgotten the exact sequence of events.

Approaching from the southwest the clouds got more ominous.

The severe warnings expired at 8 PM and the severe watches at 9 PM, but that did not mean the rain was done. A big fetch of moisture was located south of Chicago, Illinois and moving through southwest Michigan in our general direction. The rain was forecast to continue into the early hours of tomorrow but be done before sunrise. When the rains finally came it rained hard for a while. Tomorrow is forecast to be a perfect Michigan day and I plan to buy another bag of grass seed to spot seed the areas that got washed away, again.

2014/09/04 (R) More Organized

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Darryll did not call last night so we knew he would not be here today. That gave us another day to work in the garage. We moved things around, cleaned, sorted through stuff, decided what to re-store, and where, and what to add to various disposal collections. We are pretty sure the old window A-C unit is going to our son’s house, so we loaded it in the Honda Element, which got it out of the garage. Linda also loaded some old video and satellite TV electronics in the car to take to Recycle Livingston tomorrow.

We were making good progress and decided to stick with it and then have a slightly later lunch. We removed all of the doors from some old kitchen cabinets, upper and lower, in the northwest corner of the garage. We plan to eventually remove these cabinets, but not this year. Without the doors we will be able to see what is stored in them, or at least that something is stored in them. We moved a set of small parts bins and a bookcase which allowed us to reposition two work benches. That, in turn, allowed us to move the radial arm saw and finally set the saw on the base and secure it. It is now in a place where I could use it if needed, if it had power. It requires a 240VAC/15A outlet. I bought and installed a 30A double pole breaker in anticipation of this, so I will have to get a 15A breaker instead.

The weather forecast for today and tomorrow was for warm temperatures becoming hot with increasing humidity and chances for rain. We closed the house up at lunch time and turned on the A-C. We have hardly used it this summer, but have appreciated having in on those few sultry days.

We watched our current resident flock of wild turkeys—three adults and three young that have been in the area for a few weeks now—forage in our back yard while we ate lunch. After lunch Linda decided to make banana bread as we had several bananas that did not get eaten fast enough. She was researching dinner recipes when I went to my office to work on computer tasks. Except for a dinner break, I worked late into the evening on the following:

Cleaning up (filing or deleting) e-mails
SLAARC Website user maintenance
Updating WordPress websites (ver 4.0 was just released)
Social media sites (RVillage, Facebook, Linked-In)
Editing daily blog posts
Off-loading digital photographs
Organizing photo storage

BTW: Dinner was a new dish, a pineapple quinoa stir-fry with cashews, ginger, scallions, a little bit of hot peppers, and several spices/seasonings including fresh basil that Linda has been growing in the northwest corner of the kitchen where there is good light. It was excellent.

2014/09/03 (W) Pine Cone Midden

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After breakfast Linda downloaded the Hanks Writer to her iPad2 while I downloaded three app updates to mine. After checking in on the blogs that I follow, I spread some grass seed around the bare and thin spots in the back and west side of the yard by the house. I wanted to take care of that while it was cool and the ground was still damp with dew from the overnight lows in the upper 50’s.

Darryll did not call last night, so I did not expect him to be here today. Our son might be interested in the old window air-conditioner so we moved it to the southeast corner of the garage and plugged it in to make sure it worked. It did, so I sent him a text message to that effect.

We cleared off the table we have been using to cut drywall and got the 1/4″ birch plywood panel that will be the front of the box that encloses the electrical sub-panel and cables. We measured carefully, twice, laid out the cut lines, and checked the measurements again. We got the center cutout very close to correct on the first try and only had to trim it a little bit in one corner to get it to fit around the panel box. We did not secure it place as we still need to feed the thermostat cable through the wall and put some insulation in the wall cavity to the left of the panel as this is an outside wall.

With the carpentry work done we started cleaning and reorganizing the garage, making sure that Darryll will still have access to things he needs to work on. We plan to have the storage pod picked up on the 12th or 13th, so even though Darryll is not quite finished, we were anxious to start working on the rest of the garage.

We moved the tools and supplies we’ve been using to the three new shelving units on the east wall of the garage. We then unloaded two shorter units and two tall units on the west wall and spread everything out on the floor. We moved the units to the northeast wall, the shorter ones fitting nicely under the low end of the flue where it exits the utility closet wall. We went through the stuff on the floor and put some of it in the trash, set some of it aside to recycle, designated a few things to go to the Salvation Army, collected RV parts in boxes to take to the GLCC Surplus and Salvage rally next month, and put the rest back on the shelves.

We took a break for lunch and then finished up in the garage for the day. Linda worked at her desk and I changed out of my construction clothes into something more suitable for working at my desk. She made marinated baked tofu cubes for dinner, with sautéed green beans and corn-on-the-cob (organic and non-GMO, of course). We sat on the deck and watched our resident American Red Squirrel gather pine cones and move them under the cluster of three big fir trees where we presume it has a nest and pine cone midden. These trees have never been trimmed and the lower branches are sizable and long and the ends rest on the ground. I peeked in there the other day but did not see pine cones piled around any of the trunks like I expected, so I’m not sure where the midden is located.

I was up later than I should have been but I finished reading Big Lake Scandal. The fifth book in Nick Russell’s Big Lake murder mystery series, it was a good read. Nick has created an interesting place with interesting characters and reveals a little more about them with each volume. He is particularly good at capturing the way people might actually talk to one another on a daily basis in a small western town. He should know; he has spent a lot of time in such places over the years.

2014/09/02 (T) No More Painting

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After breakfast Linda worked on the financial and membership records for our GLCC RV chapter and I took care of a couple of e-mails. Keith showed up to cut the grass, which he managed to do in spite of the wet conditions from yesterday’s heavy rains. After chatting with Keith for a few minutes I started to resume work on “the project” but decided to look for the tub of grass seed and fertilizer we brought from the old house. I found it rather quickly and we still had a partial bag of grass seed, so I spread it around the front yard by hand filling in the bare and thin spots, of which there were plenty. Our flock of wild turkeys was back today. I think they like the grass seed I put out for them.

Wild turkeys gather in and around the fire pit. No...we do plan to cook them.

Wild turkeys gather in and around the fire pit. No…we do not plan to cook them.

I sanded the drywall compound in the library and applied another thin layer. I’ve been applying non-overlapping horizontal strips of mud, letting them dry, sanding them smooth while feathering the edges, then repeating the process for the areas in-between, or outside, the previous strips. I will eventually turn this 90 degrees and apply the strips vertically. The last set of steps will be to fill around the outside of the opening, feathering everything back to the existing wall surface and sanding it smooth with the central part of the patch. We don’t want it to be obvious that there was ever a hole in the wall. Once the drywall patching is done I have to prime the new compound and then paint the entire wall.

The paint on the east wall of the garage and the outside of the utility closet looked good and the paint on the inside of the utility closet looked good enough; it is, after all, the inside of a furnace closet. I was done painting, at least for now, which should have felt like a big deal, but it just meant I could wrap up a couple of things and move on to the next thing.

The first thing was to mount the electrical box on the wall to the left of the library HVAC unit, make all the wiring connections, screw the switch into the box, and put on the cover plate. I routed the thermostat wire alongside, and zip-tied it to, the armored AC power cable. The second thing was preparing the mounting holes for the garage furnace thermostat on the outside of the utility closet wall. I then cut the thermostat cable to the correct length beyond the wall, removed the outer sheath, stripped the ends of the wires, and secured the cable with a zip tie to prevent it from slipping back into the wall. I did not actually mount the thermostat, however, since I was going to wait for Darryll to connect the wires.

Three adults and three young. They are large and impressive birds.

By then it was time for lunch, after which Linda left for her dentist appointment in Dearborn. I wanted something easy to do, so I assembled the three plastic shelving units I bought at Lowe’s yesterday. They went together easily, but one was missing the feet, top caps, and wall brackets and another one had a defective top cap. I put them against the east wall of the garage and the floor was flat enough that they lined up well, so I don’t necessarily need the feet. But the top caps are important, and it bugs me that I did not get everything I paid for.

The next thing I decided to tackle was the wood box in the utility closet that will enclose the electrical sub-panel and make it appear to be recessed and hide all of the electrical cables. I cleared off the table we have been using to work on sheets of drywall and stood the scrap pieces of drywall against the back wall. I got the two 8-foot 1×10’s I bought yesterday, put them on the table, made careful measurements and then marked them. The two side pieces needed to be 52″ long x 7-1/4″ wide, with notches to create clearance for the top plate, horizontal blocking, and electrical cables passing through holes in studs. I cut them to length with the Rockwell circular saw, and then ripped them to width using the Craftsman band saw. The band saw had not been used in years but it had no problem ripping each board. The notches were made with our Porter-Cable saber saw. This kind of work is a pleasure when you have the right tools.

I screwed the two side pieces into place and then measured and cut a bottom cross member, and a trim strip to go below it, and installed those with screws. I then cut a top cross member and a backing strip to go behind it between the two side pieces. When I was done I had a box that would support a 48″ high by 33″ wide 1/4″ thick plywood panel with the outside face flush with the front edge of the sub-panel once I cut a rectangular opening in the plywood to allow it to fit around the box. The plywood panel will be secured around the edges with a few screws and the sub-panel cover plate will overlap and cover any gap between the panel box and the opening in the plywood. I will finish the plywood panel tomorrow or Thursday depending on when Darryll returns and how much I have to work with him to get the power connected to the new A-C compressor.

Jasper the cat in the kitty tent on the deck. He spends a lot time looking around and sniffing the air when he is out here.

That was the end of my project work for the day so I took a shower and put on some clean clothes. Linda poured a couple glasses of wine and we sat on the deck and enjoyed an absolutely beautiful late summer Michigan evening. We brought the kitty tent out so Jasper could sit outside with us. Linda threw a green salad together, followed by the leftovers of the penne pasta dish and Italian bread she made for dinner on Saturday. As twilight set in we moved inside and I decided to go to Lowe’s for some grass seed. I figured if the soil was still moist first thing tomorrow morning I would spread it around the bare and thin areas in the back and on the west side of the garage, of which there are plenty. Otherwise I will wait until just after the next rain.

I started reading Big Lake Scandal last night and continued with it this evening. It’s the 5th and latest book in the Big Lake murder mystery series by full-time RVer Nick Russell. Nick is a good writer, but he and his wife, Terry, are personal acquaintances, which makes reading his books that much more fun.

2014/09/01 (M) A Day To Labor

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One of the odd things about being “retired” is that holidays, like weekends, do not have the same significance they had when we were employed full time. We no longer have “3-day weekends.” We also do not have a tradition in our family of gathering on the summer holidays, so those days tend to blend into the days around them. If not for our Saturday morning ham radio breakfast and the Sunday morning Howell Farmers Market we probably would not know what day of the week it was.

Knowing that today was Labor Day, Linda prepared vegan cinnamon rolls yesterday and baked them first thing this morning. This was the first time she has made these and they were a real treat. Vegan, yes; whole plant-based food, not exactly. These will be a rare treat for us.

As has been my pattern for the last few weeks, I sanded and touched up drywall first thing after breakfast. Most of the drywall compound was finally smooth enough that I felt it was ready to prime. I discovered that I was out of primer, so I went to Lowe’s to get some and picked up a few other things while I was there. It was very humid today, which tends to slow the drying of paint, but primer is thinner than paint and gets absorbed into the paper drywall covering I was hopeful that I might get a first coat of paint applied this evening.

Mike (W8XH) sent an e-mail Saturday evening to the members of the SLAARC announcing the availability of the new WordPress website and indicating that they would each be receiving a unique username and password from me in the next few days. I wanted to wait at least 24 hours before I started creating users. That waiting period had passed, so today I parked myself in front of my computer and registered users.

Part of the registration process required me to create a username. That was easy for a ham radio club as (almost) everyone has an FCC call sign. It also required a valid/unique e-mail address. When I created an account an e-mail, with their username and a randomly generated password, got sent to the e-mail address I entered. The e-mail also contained instructions on how to get to the website, how to login, and how to change their password. I finished creating the last user account around 9 PM, but I did not work on this between 5 PM and 8 PM.

The vegan cinnamon rolls made for a filing and somewhat higher calorie breakfast, so we skipped lunch today and had an early dinner. I had requested a picnic type of meal to celebrate the end of the summer tourist season, and Linda fixed a nice one. We had vegan potato salad, corn-on-the-cob, and pan-grilled tofu slices with BBQ sauce and caramelized onions served open-faced on some of the Italian bread she made for dinner on Saturday. Dessert was watermelon balls. And the wonderful thing is that I am maintaining a good weight. Eating well and eating healthy are not mutually exclusive. However, like low-fat and fat-free foods, and then gluten-free foods, the processed food industry has discovered a “market” for foods that are free of animal products. That, however, does not mean they are free of unpronounceable chemicals or excessive amounts of sugar and salt. There is a growing amount of vegan junk food available in the marketplace.

We spent a little time after dinner on the back deck watching wildlife as a storm front approached from the west. As the wind kicked up we lost our AT&T DSL connection and then our phone went out, exhibiting the same behavior we have had throughout most of August. I shut down my computer and changed back into my work clothes to do some painting. I put a coat of paint on the east wall of the garage and both the inside and outside of the utility closet. It started raining really hard so I had to close the garage door, which cut down on my light, but eventually the rain let up and I was able to open the garage doors again. The inside of the utility closet may need another coat, but I think that most of the outside of the closet, and the east wall of the garage, may be done. That means I can finally mount the thermostat for the garage furnace and put cover plates back on switches and outlets.

I am still working on the outside of the south wall of the utility closet (with the door). I am using drywall compound to create a smooth transition at the hinge edge of the door to correct for a carpentry error I made when installing the door much earlier in the project. The transition will make it possible for me to install trim around the door, but I have to build up the transition in thin, tapered layers, allow it to dry, sand it smooth, and repeat the process over, and over, and over. Ditto for the west wall of the library, which is the other side of the east wall of the garage, where I am building up a slightly recessed area where the opening was for the old window A-C unit so it will blend in with the surrounding wall surface.

2014/08/31(N) By Any Other Name

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My first task after breakfast was to sand drywall compound and apply the next coat where needed. I’m down to touch up work in most spots and so I am trying to apply very thin layers with feathered edges that will dry quickly and require minimal sanding. The old A-C opening in the library, however, is taking many, many overlapping layers. Fortunately I can finish that at my leisure as Darryll is not working in that location. Since he just this week installed the two pieces of duct in the lower part of the wall between the garage and the library I am still building up drywall compound to fill the irregular and, in places, large gaps on the garage side. Unfortunately, the thicker compound takes longer to dry and watching drywall compound dry is worse than watching paint dry as it’s even slower. The trick is to have something else to do while I wait. Fortunately, I have lots to do.

I had some e-mail correspondence on Friday with the publisher of Bus Conversion Magazine, Gary Hall, whose name turns out to actually be Gary Hatt. He had his reasons for not using his real name when he first took over BCM, which he explained and which made good sense. BCM is running my article on Suncoast Designers in the August 2014 issue and he sent me a Dropbox link to the draft. It looks like another really good issue, but is again coming out a month late. Ever since the editor had a minor heart attack in early May they have been a month behind. It appears that they will be doing an article on spin-on oil filters in the October issue and will also use my article on the Spinner II centrifugal oil cleaner that Joe and I installed a year and half ago. I only have one other article ready for them to use, so I guess I need to get busy and write some new ones.

When I am not working on the house, the yard, or the bus, there’s always computer work to be done. I have multiple projects to work on, but I also like to relax on a pleasant day and catch up on reading the blogs and RV magazines that I follow. It was very pleasant today so we turned off the air-conditioning, opened up the house, and sat on the back deck reading and watching wildlife. I addition to our resident American Red Squirrel we were treated to a visit by three Sandhill Cranes. The squirrel has been busy for most of the month harvesting and stockpiling pine cones in what we presume is a midden under a cluster of very large fir trees northwest of the house. The cranes spent a long time wandering around the back yard foraging. We sat quietly and watched them and they came closer to the house than usual so we got a very good look at them. They are large and magnificent.

I finally decided to continue editing the rough drafts of my blog posts for this month and get them ready to upload. I still need to select photographs to go with some of the posts, or to put in separate gallery posts, but I finally uploaded the tree photos I took on the 21st to our Dropbox and e-mailed the link to Paul at Detroit Tree Recycling.

I spent some time online searching for sources of supply for an ignition coil for our Aqua-Hot diesel-fired hydronic heating system. I can get one from Darin, but he quoted me MSRP and it is an expensive part. I wasn’t having much luck so I called Butch mid-evening to discuss the situation. He suggested that I hold off on getting a new ignition coil until I got the coach to his place and we were able to look at it more carefully. He said I should have had white smoke and a definite smell from the atomized but unburned diesel fuel. I didn’t which made him wonder if the problem might be fuel delivery rather than ignition spark. Good advice, as always. I don’t know enough about the control circuitry on the Aqua-Hot (it’s actually a Webasto inside) to know how the operation of the spark and fuel solenoid might be intertwined. I have the manuals, but I have not had time to dig into them. Besides, I have enough other things to work on right now that I am willing to let this one go for a few more weeks.

2014/08/29 (F) Sand Mud Press

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Before breakfast this morning I tried to start the Aqua-Hot (hydronic heating system) in our converted coach, but the burner would not ignite. We had the same problem back on June 9th when Darin Hathaway of Hydronic Heating Specialists serviced the unit while we were at Elkhart Campground waiting to go to the GLAMARAMA rally in Goshen. Darin suspected a bad coil but managed to jiggle a few wires and got it to work. It started several times in a row, so we decided not to spend the money for a new coil at that time. I hoped then the decision wasn’t a mistake, but it looks like perhaps it was. I will try to find some time over the next few days to jiggle some more wires and see if anything comes of it. I recall Darin saying the ignition coils were expensive, so I don’t want to replace ours if it is not actually broken.

For breakfast we had some of the vegan muffins that Linda made yesterday. They were yummy. We took a little time to revisit our options for a white, free-standing, double oven, 5-burner, gas range with a convection feature in at least one of the ovens but did not come to any decision regarding purchasing a new one. Linda made a grocery list and then went to the Howell library to see what Consumer’s Reports had to say about gas ranges before stopping at Meijer’s.

While Linda was gone I placed follow-up calls to Heights Tower Systems and Bratcher Electric to check on the status of their pending quotes and then e-mailed Darin about the Aqua-Hot. I then got to work in the garage and library working on the drywall. I sanded all the drywall compound (mud) I had applied yesterday and added the next layer to the places that needed it. Patching the library side of the opening where the window A-C was installed has proven to be particularly challenging, or at least tedious. The new piece of drywall is recessed slightly compared to the original wall surface surrounding it, so I have been building up layers of drywall compound to “fill the hole.” It has taken many passes so far and it is going to take quite a few more before it’s done.

I finished up for the day, cleaned up the tools, and changed out of my work clothes. Rather than spend a lot of time at the library, Linda photographed the relevant pages of recent issues of Consumer’s Reports with her iPad so we could study them at home. What we got from the reviews was that LG, GE, Electrolux, and Samsung are making good gas ranges while Kitchen Aide, and Jenn-Air are best avoided. Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Best Buy all carry LG, GE, and Samsung appliances, so we have a choice of local dealers. While we were pondering all of this over lunch a group of wild turkeys came through the back yard several times foraging for food. There were three large adults and three much smaller birds, obviously this year’s brood.

I spent most of the rest of the day working at my desk getting the SLAARC WordPress website to the point where I was comfortable creating user accounts. I had hoped to have user accounts set up by August 13^th, but that did not happen. One reason for the delay was that I was trying to find a way to automatically e-mail each user as I created their account. It took me a while, but I figured out how to do this with the WP-Members plug-in. I also found a plug-in that hides the WordPress Toolbar from users based on their WordPress user role. In this case I was only concerned about users with the Subscriber role but the plug-in allows me to control all defined user roles. I did a final edit of the User’s Guide, uploaded it to the private Members Only Area of the website, and e-mailed Mike (W8XH) and Larry (K8UT) that the site was ready to go. Our DSL connection was pretty good most of the day but got flaky for a while during the evening. The phone continued to be unusable with loud noise masking weak audio. So far AT&T’s response to our MPSC complaint has been a phone call and e-mail from someone in the “Office of the President.” Impressed? I’m not.

2014/08/28 (R) This And That

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I put in a full day working on our garage project while Linda put in a full day working on this and that. She baked vegan muffins, made vegan rice pudding, worked at her computer on bills, banking, and RV club financial records, and helped me in the garage with drywall installation.

My first task was sanding down drywall compound from yesterday and then adding more in certain places. I then measured, marked, and cut the drywall for the inside of the new utility closet. Linda helped me install it. We had to cut one piece in half lengthwise in order to get it into position. I also had to drill a hole for the garage furnace thermostat cable and push it out through the utility closet wall. Once all of the pieces were secured with drywall screws I applied self-adhesive fiberglass tape to the seams and then applied drywall compound to the seams and screw dimples.

Jasper doing his cat thing.

Since I could not sand, prime, or paint until the drywall compound was dry I worked on some loose electrical ends. I installed a saddle connector in the side of the library HVAC for the armored AC power cable and a cable strain relief for the thermostat cable and A-C compressor control wires. Darryll had already installed these cables through the gas pipe hole, so I made a diagram of how they were connected, uninstalled them, re-routed them through the strain relief, and reconnected them. I prepped the AC power cable, partially installed the switch in the surface mount electrical box, and connected the armored cable to the saddle connector. The final AC power connections for the library HVAC unit will have to wait until the drywall is finished and the surface mount junction/switch box is installed.

I mounted the library thermostat on the wall above the air return but did not connect the wires. The color coding of the wires in the thermostat cable does not exactly match the labeling of the terminals and the instructions were less than clear, so I thought it best to leave this for Darryll. I removed the side panel from the Reznor garage furnace and made the AC power connections. I did not, however, connect the thermostat wires and I left the documentation packet inside the unit.

After dinner I checked e-mail and edited a half dozen blog pages before turning in for the night.

20140827 (W) HVAC and Dentistry

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The only thing these have in common (for me at least) is that they occurred on the same day. Darryll and Alec were back this morning to continue working on our garage furnace and library HVAC project and I had a 2 PM dentist appointment to have them check if I had lost a piece of one of the abfractions they did back on June 17th.

Our dentist is in Dearborn some 50 miles to our southeast, so I try to leave 90 minutes for travel. I got there ahead of time and they got me in about 15 minutes early. It was a quick appointment but I was glad I went. The hard piece of material I crunched while brushing my teeth a few weeks ago was, indeed, the abfraction material from the upper outside of tooth #11. They replaced it under warranty and I was back on the road by 2:30 PM, which allowed me to make the trip back towards home somewhat ahead of the afternoon traffic rush.

These mushrooms appeared in the yard a few days ago as round balls and then opened up.

I needed a saddle connector and Linda needed some “power greens” for our dinner salad so I exited I-96 at Grand River Avenue and headed towards Brighton. There is a Home Depot right there, but they only had the 3/8ths saddle connectors in bags of five. I only needed one, which I knew I could get at Lowe’s in Howell. Traffic headed back towards Howell on Grand River was badly congested so I used a back route, taking Challis Road to Chilson Road to Latson Road. The Lowe’s and Meijer’s are on opposite sides of Grand River Avenue at Latson Road.

By the time I got home Darryll and Alec had left. Darryll had indicated they would knock off early and that he would be back next week to finish up. While they were here they set the library A-C compressor/condenser in place by the west wall of the garage and got the refrigerant lines run, the power cable routed, and the control cable run. They also cut the openings for the two lower supply registers in the library, installed the through-wall duct work, and the register grills. Darryll will be back during the latter half of next week to finish up. That gives me plenty of time to finish drywall work.

Summer is coming to an end. The parochial schools are already back in session and the public schools start on Tuesday next week. Lots of folks are heading north for the upcoming holiday weekend which marks the end of the summer tourist season. Fall colors have already appeared on a variety of trees in our part of the county and a few seem somewhat advanced. Except for the last few days, it has been a cool, moist summer.

Early this morning I e-mailed Shelly from the AT&T Office of the President thanking her for calling us on Monday in response to our Michigan Public Service Commission complaint filing that morning, and for following up with her contact information by e-mail. Our phone line is still noisy to the point of being useless, but we have not seen the dreaded “Check Tell Line” or “Line In Use” messages on our phone and the DSL has stayed connected as near as we can tell. I am not aware, however, that AT&T has actually done anything yet to fix the problem. They certainly have not communicated any such information to us Unfortunately working on the SLAARC WP website and creating user accounts absolutely requires me to be reliably online, as does the Intro to Linux course I am (supposed to be) taking through edX, so these tasks may have to wait until our AT&T DSL connection has been solid for a while.

2014/08/26 (T) Dinner With Kate

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Darryll planned to be back on Wednesday morning. He figures two more days to finish everything except the hookups to the gas meter. I figured I needed to have at least one coat of paint on the east garage wall today to stay ahead of him, so my first task after breakfast was to paint the wall.

Madeline being read to by Aunt Meghan with Grandma Linda.

Madeline goes for a ride on her new Radio Flyer tricycle.

When I was done with the morning painting I did a light sanding of the drywall compound on the outside of the utility closet walls. After a cursory inspection, I decided it was good enough and went ahead and painted it and then cleaned up the paint tools. I took care of a couple of minor electrical tasks and then sanded the library side of the former window A-C opening and applied some more drywall compound. I cleaned up my drywall tools and by 11:30 AM was done with construction projects for the day.

I got cleaned up just in time for lunch. We had left over Koshary, after which we sat outside and read. Linda is reading an e-book titled “Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat.” The book is about the intertwined evolution of cooking technique, cookware, and utensils. I started reading the September-October 2014 issue of The Gypsy Journal, which I had downloaded on Sunday and e-mailed to our iPads yesterday.

MEF3 steers the Radio Flyer with a little help from her dad.

We left around 2 PM for our son’s house in Ann Arbor, making a stop at the Whole Foods Market for some dry ingredients. The reason for our visit was to deliver Madeline’s new Radio Flyer convertible tricycle and visit until time to meet Kate for dinner. Madeline started day care yesterday, which is a really big deal. We were curious how the first two days went, and just wanted to see everyone; I think it’s only been a couple of weeks, but it feels much longer. Today was my lucky day as Madeline decided I was the designated book reader. She has let me read to her occasionally in the past, but usually goes to her mom, dad, aunt, or Grandma Linda, all of whom she has spent more time with than she has with me. It made for a very special afternoon for Grandpa Bruce.

The Radio Flyer tricycle even has a sunshade!

We left Brenda and Shawna’s house around 5:45 PM and found ourselves in the middle of the evening traffic jam on eastbound Washtenaw Avenue. We slowly worked our way east towards US-23 and then turned into a strip mall to pick up some disposable paint tray liners at an ACE Hardware store. We got back into the traffic flow using a street at the end of the strip mall that had a traffic signal. Once we were back on Washtenaw Avenue we had more reasonable traffic flow the rest of the way in to Ypsilanti.

After weighing several options, Kate chose the Wurst Bar in Ypsilanti for dinner. Linda had been their once before with Kate but it was my first visit. It was well rated on Yelp and the menu had several vegan options. They also had one of my favorite beers, the Lindeman Framboise, a raspberry lambic ale brewed in Vlezenbeek, Belgium. They were out of the Lindeman but had another lambic from a different producer. It came in something that looked like a large sparkling wine bottle and cost $15, so Linda and I split it. Long before hops were used in beers they were seasoned with fruits and vegetables. I’m not a big fan of hops, but I like fruit. The substitute was OK, but not what I recalled from the last time I had this at a restaurant in Frankenmuth, Michigan.

Grandma Linda’s turn to “drive” the Radio Flyer.

Kate had recently been to Paris, France and to both Venice and Padua in Italy with one of her nieces and nephews. She had printed about 40 photos (8×10) for us to see. While these are inherently beautiful places her photography was, as usual, superb. The Wurst Bar serves “tots” instead of French fries. Linda and I had some as an appetizer with vegan sausage crumbles, vegan cheese, and sliced jalapeños. Not health food, to be sure, but at least no animal products. For dinner Linda had the vegan wurst and I had the Asian tofu burger. Kate had a regular wurst and a dark beer on tap that she had not had before. She really liked it, but I did not catch the name.

It’s finally Grandpa Bruce’s turn to drive the tricycle.

By the time we were done eating the lights had been turned down and the music volume had been turned up, so we moved to Sweetwater Coffee and Tea a couple doors down the street. We all had coffee and to our delight they had a piece of vegan apple pie, which Linda took, and a piece of vegan mixed berry pie, which I took. I really like fruit pies but they have always been a rare treat; all the more so now that we eschew animal products. So tonight I had fruit beer and fruit pie.

I had planned to put a second coat of paint on the garage walls when we got home but the lateness of the hour disabused me of that idea and I went to bed instead.

Madeline shows her new tricycle to he mommy. It’s not a Subaru, but it’s pretty cool.

2014/08/25 (M) AT&T and the MPSC

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I was scheduled to participate in a meeting of the FMCA Education Committee at 4 PM today but it got rescheduled to Monday, September 8, same time. That was a welcomed change of plans which allowed me to concentrate on our construction project.

Roese Construction, the contractor for Consumer’s Energy, is still working along our street. The main gas lines are run. They are now digging the connection trenches, fusing the sections of pipe together, and filling the trenches back in. We heard them working at the west end of our property and walked down to see what they were doing and take a few photographs. A large backhoe was just starting to fill a trench at the northwest corner of our yard where two pieces of main line were joined with a branch line going to the cul-du-sac to the west. There was a lot of water in that trench and it looked like a (muddy) lap pool. The surface of the water was only about two feet below the surface of the ground. I asked the backhoe operator if that was ground water and he said it was. The northwest corner of our property is a low spot that forms small ponds around many of the trees when it rains, and stays wet for a very long time even after the surface water disappears.

We spent the morning and afternoon sanding drywall compound and touching up a few spots. While the compound was drying I worked on electrical tasks and Linda worked in the kitchen and did some weeding in the beds around the house. Somewhere in the middle of all that we put all of the sections of the ham radio tower back on the middle deck, had lunch, and made a trip to Lowe’s for a light switch and various cover plates. I also picked up an 18″ x 28″ sheet of 1/4″ thick Plexiglas to use as a temporary replacement for the fogged window in the bus when I finally get around to removing it to have it repaired.

Our AT&T phone and DSL service is worse than useless at the moment. After three un-returned phone calls to both the technician (who gave us his number and said to call him directly if the problem re-occurred within 30 days) and the infrastructure manager for this area (whose name and number we got from the technician) we were fed up, so we filed a complaint with the Michigan Public Service Commission. About four hours later we got a call from a women who claimed to be from the Office of the President of AT&T letting me know that she was in receipt of our commission filing and that she would be coordinating the “investigation and service repair process.” The audio level was low and the noise on the line was high, so I could barely hear her and said so. Apparently she heard the noise too, so at least she knew we were not making this up. She e-mailed us shortly thereafter with her name and contact information. That’s a start, but what we really want is the clean, reliable signal that we pay for.

There are things I can do, and need to do, at my computer that do not require me to be online, such as editing the rough drafts of blog posts and selecting/post-processing photographs. The last post I uploaded to our blog was for August 1st, so I am once again almost four weeks behind. I needed to finish processing the tree photos from last Thursday, put them in a Dropbox folder, and e-mail the link to Paul at Detroit Tree Recycling, but I did not get that done either. When I wasn’t eating or driving back and forth to Lowe’s I was working in the garage.

Speaking of food, Linda made stuffed mushrooms for dinner and served them with a side of grilled asparagus. Both were very tasty. After dinner I gave the east wall of the garage a final sanding and then worked on the utility closet wall while Linda vacuumed up the dust. I wiped down the wall with a barely damp sponge and applied a coat of Zinzer primer. It should be dry enough to paint in the morning.

I drove back to Lowe’s to return a couple of incorrect cover plates I had purchased earlier in the day and get the correct ones. I picked up another gallon of paint while I was there to make sure I had enough on hand for tomorrow. On the way home I had a nice QSO (ham radio contact or chat) with Mike (W8XH). Ham radio is fun and we have yet to get involved in making long distance (DX) contacts with folks all over the world on the HF (high frequency) bands. Getting our tower up with some HF antennas on it will help a lot.

2014/08/24 (N) The Critical Path

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The current “critical path” on the garage/HVAC project is the east wall of the garage which has to be finished before Darryll returns. Although not as pressing as the drywall work, our first task after breakfast was to (finally) connect the separate ground wire from the garage sub-panel to the house main electrical panel and remove the bonding screw that tied the grounds and neutrals together in the sub-panel. That took about an hour, but that was because it was work that had to be done carefully as the main panel was energized while I was working on it.

With the ground wire taken care of we sanded drywall compound on the east garage wall. We wiped the dust off with a slightly damp sponge and I applied the next coat of drywall compound.

We then worked on wiring. I finally decided on the locations for the two furnace switches, each of which had to be within three feet of their respective units. I decided to locate the switch for the library HVAC unit on the new wall opposite (20″) and above (16″) the cable entry hole in the side of the furnace. The switch will be in an outdoor rated surface mount junction box with the supply cable entering from the rear. I had already run the cable into the middle wall cavity and had to drill a hole through one of the studs to get the cable where I needed it to be.

I decided to locate the on/off switch for the ceiling mounted garage furnace on the ceiling about a foot to the right of the right rear corner, again using an outdoor rated surface mount junction box. The dedicated 15A cable was already routed to that general area so we just had to move it to the new location.

We also had to install the wiring for the thermostats. Darryll brought a large reel of 4-conductor, 18 AWG thermostat cable, so we had the material we needed. I was studying the installation instructions for the thermostats and it appeared that they needed 24 VAC to operate. I called Darryll and left a message regarding this. He called back fairly quickly and told me we did not need transformers as they were already in each of the furnaces. He also left me know he would be back on Wednesday morning.

With the transformer question answered we were able to proceed with the cable installation. The thermostat for the garage furnace will mount on the outside of the west wall of the new utility closet, so we had to run thermostat wire from that location through the attic to the ceiling mounted switch box. The thermostat for the library HVAC unit will mount on the wall to the right of the door into the garage and above the return air register/duct, so we also had to run thermostat wire from there through the garage attic and over to the location of the on/off switch in the utility closet. I worked in the attic while Linda worked in the garage.

We took a break for lunch and then started installing insulation in the utility closet walls. We got one staple installed and discovered that we were out of staples. That meant a trip to Lowe’s. Lowes’s is about six miles driving distance and we prefer not to go for just one small thing, so we made a list. The Arrow staple gun takes T50 staples. The surface mount junction boxes have several threaded holes into which you can screw different clamps depending on how the cable is connected. I planned to use flexible armored cable, sometimes referred to as “greenfield”, to bring 120VAC power to the furnaces. Lowe’s had 6′ lengths of armored cable with an extra foot of wire on each end. I needed a little more than 36″ for the library furnace and a little less than 36″ for the garage furnace, so that worked out nicely. The guy in the electrical department got me set up with the right clamps for the ends called saddle connectors.

When I got home, I discovered that I had bought brads rather than staples, so Linda headed back to Lowe’s to return the brads and buy the staples. While she was gone I pulled the wires out of the armored cable and cut the armor into two pieces. I fed the wires back through the shorter piece and connected it between the garage furnace and the switch box. Linda got back before I could complete the cable for the other furnace, so I set it aside to finish later.

With a good supply of staples we insulated the west wall of the utility closet and the space above the door on the south wall. We then installed drywall over those same areas. We had to notch around the flue pipe and the black iron gas pipe, but we measured carefully (and twice) and the panel fit just right. We applied fiberglass tape to the one vertical seam, and prepared a length of corner bead for the outside corner at the junction of the two walls. Linda prepared dinner while I applied joint compound to the seam and screw dimples. I mudded the corner, pressed the corner bead in place, and then mudded over it lightly. I then did some touch up sanding on the east garage wall and applied what I hoped would be a final coat of drywall compound.

I finished just in time to clean up and have dinner; vegan Pad Thai made from scratch. A small glass of the 2009 Egri Merlot and some lemon melon later for dessert put a nice cap on a very productive day.

2014/08/23 (S) Square Waves

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We have so much to do at home and on the bus that we might have skipped the SLAARC (ham radio club) breakfast in South Lyon this morning, but I had agreed to meet Chuck at his shop (bus garage) at 10 AM in Novi and to bring Mike (W8XH) along with his oscilloscope to look at the tachometer signal, or lack thereof. We had a nice chat with our ham radio friends, discussed having dinner in a week or so with Bruce and Linda, and then headed to Chuck’s shop.

We had two different opinions as to what signal we might find, if any, at the end of the wires that connect to Chuck’s tachometer. Matt, from Bob’s Speedometer, told me that the signal to both the VDO tachometer and speedometer were variable frequency square waves at 3 to 5 volts peak and that the electronics in the gauge moved the needle in proportion to the frequency. Mike (W8XH) had talked to Jim (N8KUE), who works in the research lab at Ford Motor Company, and Jim was of the opinion that the input to these gauges was a pulse width modulated signal. With pulse-width modulation the frequency and amplitude of the waveform are constant but the width of the “pulse” (the “on time” of non-zero voltage) varies from zero to some maximum percentage of the half cycle, up to 100%. If it is on for the entire half cycle it becomes a square wave. The longer the pulse (on time percentage) the more energy is transmitted. The gauge electronics can convert that to a needle position or run a motor faster or slower, such as might drive an odometer.

So which was it? Well…neither. What we saw was an alternating current signal that appeared to simply be an impulse (sudden spike in the voltage), one positive and one negative per cycle, with the frequency responding in direct proportion to the engine RPM. The impulse had a rapid but noticeable decay time that appeared to me to exponential, but we did not have the wires connected to a load and that may have affected the signal. The voltage we were seeing appeared to be in 300 mV range, a far cry from the 3 – 5 volts we expected.

We loaded the cardboard in my car before going to breakfast, so when we were done at Chuck’s we headed directly to Recycle Livingston. From there we went to pet Supplies Plus for some cat litter and then to Lowe’s for four more sheets of drywall (Sheetrock) and a large tub of better drywall compound. After fighting with the back wall of the garage recently and having trouble with using the patching and repair compound yesterday, I wanted a drywall compound that would go on easier and smoother. It could just be my technique, of course; I wasn’t that good at dry-walling 32 years ago, and feel like I have lost what little technique I once had.

Back home we unloaded everything, changed into our work clothes, and had lunch; grilled “cheese” sandwiches with tomatoes and dark leafy greens and fresh peaches, ripened to perfection.

While Linda sanded the drywall compound I applied yesterday I removed the panel from the library side of the opening for the old window A-C unit. I insulated the cavity, cut and installed a new piece of drywall, and re-taped the seams. I helped Linda finish the sanding, wiped off the dust with a wrung out sponge, and then applied another coat of drywall compound. I then applied a first cost of “mud,” as drywall compound is commonly called, to the filler panel in the library.

In preparation for dry-walling the new utility closet we had to do some carpentry to box around the flue and gas pipe where they pass through the west wall. We also had to box around the supply air duct where it passes above the utility closet door. Finally, we added some backer boards along the edge of the platform by the west wall. The purpose of all of this carpentry was to provide backing along all drywall edges so it will be supported and can be secured. Our final task for the day was to trim a piece of 2×4 to block off the top of the wall cavity where the return air duct is connected next to the door between the library and the garage.

For dinner we had leftovers from Thursday: Koshary and pita bread with vegan garlic “butter.” Linda read somewhere recently that drier white wines are generally considered (by someone) to go better with Middle Eastern food, but we thought our 2009 Egri Merlot went quite well with dinner. Of course, Koshary is an Egyptian dish, and so perhaps more Mediterranean than Middle Eastern. All of that reminded me that there really are no rules about these things; drink what you like and enjoy life.

2014/08/22 (F) Radio Flyer

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Today was mostly about drywall. Most of the drywall on the lower half of the east garage wall was removed by the previous owners to access and repair baseboard heating pipes that had frozen (they used water in the system instead of coolant). We also have a 19″ h by 29″ w opening higher up in that same wall where the window air-conditioner was installed. (It cooled the breezeway by dumping heat into the garage.) We needed to replace the lower drywall and patch the A-C opening before Darryll returned next week as he will be running supply air ducts down the wall at two locations to feed through the wall into the library just above the hot water baseboard heat radiator. Before installing the drywall, however, we had some prep work to do. When Linda wasn’t helping me she broke down cardboard boxes and got them ready to go to the recycling center tomorrow.

On the lower part of wall I drilled through the corners of the two register locations Darryll had marked on the library side. We then added horizontal wood 2×4 blocking above and below the locations of the two registers. We also added blocking around the inside of the old A-C opening to provide backing and attachment surfaces for the drywall.

With the carpentry done we removed some old insulation that was not in good shape and insulated the lower section of the wall. I marked the locations of all the studs on the floor and on the upper half of the wall. I also marked the locations of the horizontal blocking, the hot water heating pipes, and the capped off gas pipe that supplied the wall-mounted propane heater in the library. Finally, we were able to install the drywall. It took two pieces, 48″ x 87″, to cover the lower half along with lots of screws. By the time we finished it was time for lunch.

We needed another sheet of drywall to cut the two pieces for the A-C opening, so after lunch we drove to Lowe’s and bought a 4′ x 8′ sheet. When we got back we cut the two pieces and installed them. Linda then helped me apply self-adhesive fiberglass tape to all of the seams.

The next step was applying drywall compound. While I “mudded” the drywall seams and screw head dimples Linda started assembling a Radio Flyer configurable tricycle. She ordered it for our grand-daughter a couple of days ago (Amazon Prime) and it arrived late yesterday.

I finished the first coat of drywall compound at 6 PM and cleaned up my tools. While Linda pulled together leftovers for dinner (potato lentil curry, sautéed green beans with garlic, and naan bread) I measured the tow bar on the back of the bus to see how long of a cable we needed for the EZ*Connector system. 24″ + 34″ = 58″, about 5 feet, so their standard 6′ cable should be a good length. Although it was only 3 PM in California, I decided to wait until Monday to place an order as I still needed to determine some circuit details.

After dinner I tried to check my e-mail and discovered that our DSL connection was not working, again, even though the AT&T gateway said it was. The phone (POTS) had gone out earlier in the day and was out again. I called Ken, the AT&T technician, and left a message and then called Steve, the AT&T infrastructure manager for the Howell and Lansing areas, and left a message. I had called both of them twice this week already without getting a return call from either one. My message this time indicated that I expected a return call with some information as to what they are doing to try and resolve the problem.

I called Chuck (on my marginal connection Verizon cell phone) to get a status update on his bus tachometer, then called Mike to firm up arrangements for him to bring his oscilloscope to breakfast tomorrow so we can go to Chuck’s shop and investigate the signal feeding his tachometer. I texted Chuck back to confirm that we would be there by 10 AM.

I helped Linda finish assembling the Radio Flyer tricycle. It is very spiffy and, of course, very red. We spent the rest of the evening reading. As I was typing this post I realized that I forgot to insulate the wall cavity where the window A-C unit was installed. That meant I would have to remove the piece of drywall on the library side, insulate the cavity, and then cut and install a new piece of drywall. I had already applied the seam tape and initial coat of drywall compound, so it will be a messy task. Fortunately, I do not make those kinds of mistakes very often.

20140821 (R) Words With Friends

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With a dry morning on tap I took care of chores after breakfast while Linda worked on preparations for dinner. First I photographed trees around our entire property that were dead or obviously distressed and not doing well. Next I took all of the sections of our Heights aluminum tower off of the back deck, where they have been stored since we bought it in May, and laid them out in the yard in the order in which they go together. I then photographed all of the pieces, including details of how they interconnect, along with the fold-over assembly, fold-over motor, and bearing plate.

Thrust bearing plate for ham radio tower.

I transferred the photos to my computer and then processed a selection of the tower photos, resizing and sharpening them. I put them in a folder in my Dropbox and e-mailed the link to Heights Tower Systems along with a description of what we have, what we intend to do, and what we think we need to do it. I also gave them the name of the amateur radio operator we bought the tower from. He was the original owner.

The gear-motor for the fold-over mount. Mast rotor in the plastic bag to the right.

Fold-over mount standing up on hinge end.

One meaning of having “words with friends” suggests that they might not be your friends anymore, but in this case it’s the name of an online game from Hasbro that Linda plays with Karen Limkemann. Karen and Steve came to visit this today and arrived around 3:30 PM. We all talked for an hour and then Steve and I went to my office to look at our Linux computer while Linda started pulling dinner together.

Ham radio tower sections laid out in the yard end-to-end.

Linda spent much of yesterday and this morning preparing this meal. She made a salad dressing from scratch, crushed red lentil soup from scratch, pita bread from scratch, mixed up a small batch of garlic butter, and made Koshary from scratch. We had a semi-dry white wine from Leelanau Cellars with the meal, and red grapes for dessert. The meal was truly outstanding.

Heights Tower Systems aluminum tower sections laid out in the yard.

After dinner we took a stroll around the property and showed them the landscaping work, the (disassembled) ham tower, the proposed location of the barn, and the natural gas and HVAC projects. Back at the house we discussed past travels and future plans at some length before they needed to head for home.

The Phase Place

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Category Archives: Projects

2015/04/26-30 (N-R) Routine Returns

2014/11/03-09 A Week at Home

20141030-1102 Fixing Buses in Indiana

2014/09/25 (R) Two M’s

2014/09/19 (F) Renewed Acquaintance

2014/09/17 (W) Hooked Up

2014/09/16 (T) Boiled Over

2014/09/15 (M) NG Project Gallery

2014/09/15 (M) Congratulations, You Have Gas

2014/09/13 (S) Overnight Guest

2014/09/12 (F) Posted

2014/09/05 (F) WordPress 4.0

2014/09/03 (W) Pine Cone Midden

2014/09/02 (T) No More Painting

2014/09/01 (M) A Day To Labor

2014/08/31(N) By Any Other Name

2014/08/29 (F) Sand Mud Press

2014/08/28 (R) This And That

20140827 (W) HVAC and Dentistry

2014/08/26 (T) Dinner With Kate

2014/08/25 (M) AT&T and the MPSC

2014/08/24 (N) The Critical Path

2014/08/23 (S) Square Waves

2014/08/22 (F) Radio Flyer

20140821 (R) Words With Friends