07:59 – It was 48.4F (9C) when I took Colin out at 0645 this morning, gray and drizzling.
Herschel spent all day here yesterday, ripping out the ceiling and fixing joints. The entire ceiling in the downstairs den is going to have to have the ceiling removed and replaced. The house was built only ten years ago, and I asked Herschel if they’d used cheap materials or something. He said they’d used top-notch materials, but the water around here corrodes stuff. He did say they’d made what he considered one dumb move when they installed a plasterboard ceiling instead of a drop ceiling. So we’re going to replace the ceiling with a drop ceiling, whether insurance pays for that or not.
The leak soaked and warped the hardwood floor in the master bath on the main floor, and actually got through the wall into the adjoining master bedroom closet. Between that and downstairs, there’s a ton of work to be done. This morning, Barbara and I are emptying bookshelves in the finished area downstairs and hauling books out to the unfinished area.
It’s fortunate that this is a very slow time business-wise because we’re going to have to spend a lot of time on this project ourselves even though we’re hiring people to come in and do most of the work.
08:51 – We’ve now pulled all the books from the downstairs den bookshelves and carried them out to the unfinished area, where they’re sitting in plastic bins on the floor and a folding table. The only thing left on the bookshelves is our router/WAP.
It’s there because that was the only data jack in the house, so it was easier just to install it there. But yesterday Barbara suggested that as long as we have the downstairs ripped up I might as well run a data cable up to the den and install the router there. She pulled out my 6-foot drill bit, which is a holdover from 25 years ago when I used to install structured cabling systems. So sometime over the next few days I’ll drill a hole from the corner of the den down into the unfinished area of the basement, which is where the fiber terminal adapter is installed.
Rather than try to get fancy and install a jack in the wall upstairs and make a run of Cat 6 to it, I’ll just drill a hole in the floor, run a 5o-foot Ethernet cable through it, and plug it directly into the TA downstairs and the router/WAP in the den. Oh, and the one lesson I learned early on is always to leave an extra pull in the hole.
According to studies, living in the house during a remodel is as stressful as the death of a partner or a divorce. You aren’t dealing with a full remodel, but remember to take a breath and a step back every now and then.
It’s also a truism in construction that everything takes longer and costs more than you expect (even if you’ve added 10% like you should for contingency.)
Good luck with the repairs.
n
fwiw, there are many choices for drop in ceilings beyond the traditional acoustic tile. Some look really nice.
Thanks. Barbara is really stressed out. I’m taking it with my usual Type B attitude. Shit happens. We’ll deal with it.
Heh. Hotair posted a link this morning:
http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/study-finds-link-between-brain-damage-and-religious-fundamentalism
As much as I suspect they may be right, their sample size is inadequate to draw any conclusions. This is the kind of thing that happens when liberal-arts people try to do a study and massage data.
“According to studies, living in the house during a remodel is as stressful as the death of a partner or a divorce.”
I’ve suffered neither but had a fair amount of work done on the house in Canberra in 2013, before I sold it. As someone who *loves* peace and quiet, having tradesmen in the house day after day for weeks drove me nuts. I wish I’d had it done over several years, a bit at a time.
Given their editorial slant, I am inclined to discount anything they suggest as almost pure agenda driven propaganda. Even if it might be true.
n
Insurance will generally not cover the pipe repair instead just covering the damage repair. Insurance should also give you enough money to replace/repair the ceiling. It may just be enough to repair the damaged area. What you do with the money is your decision. Putting in a drop ceiling is a good idea. I have a dropped ceiling and acces to pipes and wires is much easier.
I think you should rethink the cable drop and put in a face plate in the wall. Not much more work. Drill a locating hole next to the wall, move over 2.5 inches at a right angle to the wall and drill up. Should put you in the wall cavity. Doing that it is also easier to put in two drops. Running through a hole in the carpet causes problems when carpet (or flooring) is replaced. Plus if you just have a cable through the floor and it gets damaged you have to replace the run. With a wall plate you just get a new patch cable.
If you do a wall plate you might also consider dropping in some RG6 coax into the same plate.
It’s hardwood in the den floor and it goes straight down into the unfinished area. I have lots of lots of Ethernet cables, so replacing one wouldn’t be a problem, not that it’s likely to be necessary.
Always leave a pull string! OR better yet, pull one extra line. This policy has saved my butt on innumerable installations. Cat cable is cheap, and the marginal cost to pull 2 instead of one is minimal compared to the labor of pulling in a second when it’s needed. You can get adapters or baluns or active extenders to run anything over Catx, it’s the most versatile thing you can install.
If you haven’t pulled cable in a while, the ‘fish sticks’ will let you pull or push, and can get you cable in the damnedest places. They let me do a lot of work solo, pushing one set up thru a hole, then using the second set to reach and snag the first…
http://www.pushpullrods.com/ has some examples…. lowes and HD carry versions too. They are awesome for above ceiling and attic work.
n
Hotair also has an article on 100 Vets dying in LA waiting for care at the VA over 9 months in 2015. So, yeah, let’s go with more gooberment “health care.” We won’t have to worry about overpopulation.
Six years after moving into my new home my water heater started to leak. My plumber said that was really strange so he had my water tested and it turned out to be rather high in acid. (I have a well). That’s what shortened the water heater life. I was lucky to have all pvc pipe in the house, so I didn’t have to worry about leaks there, but I did have to replace all the metal connectors/valves at sinks, toilets etc just to be safe. I had acid neutralizer treatment tanks added to my water treatment system so I wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. Bob, I think it might be a good idea to have your water checked. You might have the same problem I had.
We have had our water checked. It’s not acid. The problem is the minerals, particularly nickel. Every time Barbara cleans the shower, she has to scrub off the blue-green stains. It’s not at a level that’s dangerous for human consumption, but it eats pipes and joints of any type, including copper, brass, PVC, PEX, etc. etc.
Barbara just said she wanted to have the soaked carpet in the downstairs den pulled out entirely. She doesn’t want to mess with having it cleaned. Neither of us much likes carpet anyway. She wants to install ceramic tile. Between that and a drop ceiling, we shouldn’t have too many problems.
Actually, I think I may buy us a countertop water filter that’ll strip out all the minerals from the water we use for drinking and cooking.
This could be far worse than we will ever be told:
The gray-beards who know what is really in that tunnel are mostly dead and the “records” have been “lost” for years. Looks like a concrete cocoon coming up, good time to be in the concrete business here. BTW that facility was to have been fully decommissioned by 2000, it is not even half-way done.
Add/Edit: There are air sampling helicopters flying patterns now.
#2 Add/Edit: Potassium Iodide tablets at the ready.
Overcast and 85F with 67%RH and occasional spatter of raindrops. Miserable to be outside with a ‘feels like’ of 92F.
n
As long as you are in the walls and ceilings, run coax (TV, whatever it’s called), extra CAT6, and maybe even alarm system wires? Although the wireless alarm system stuff is pretty good nowadays, I’d guess.
And maybe interior insulation in the basement ceilings to cut down on noise from above (along with insulating qualities)? Our prior house had a finished basement under tile floors above, and you could hear the footsteps from above quite easily.
And refreshing insulation in any exterior walls you have to open up.
But I suspect you have already figured out most of the above.
If you decide to run the coax, make sure it’s “quad shield” rg-6. That’s what’s required for satellite tv distribution now.
n
We have no need of coax. We don’t have cable TV. Everything is via fiber-optic Internet.
Yes, there’s a whole bunch of insulation from the ceiling lying in piles on the plastic sheets covering the floor downstairs. We’ll definitely install new insulation above the drop ceiling.
I may buy us a countertop water filter that’ll strip out all the minerals from the water we use for drinking and cooking
We have one of those. Got it through Costco. About $1,000.00 installed. Reverse osmosis along with two stage charcoal filtration. Got it to get rid of the chlorine and other crap in the water as all our drinking water is pulled from the Clinch River (feeds the TN river). Water is quite good quality but still needs treated. The system we have produces really good water and hooked up to the ice maker for the fridge. Recommended.
Update, tunnel breach confirmed. Old pictures at bottom of article. Picture of hole at top, declared size IMHO is larger than stated, based on trailer in foreground left and knowing the cameras.
Add: Official link:
http://www.hanford.gov/c.cfm/eoc/?page=290
BTW that facility was to have been fully decommissioned by 2000, it is not even half-way done.
I graduated engineering school in 1991. A girl in my graduating class has made the Hanford cleanup her whole career since then, including the subject of her PhD dissertation at WSU Tri Cities. Amazing, but her original goal was to be a NASA-type bureaucrat. I’d say Mission Accomplished.
Hanford is a full employment act for EE remote instrumentation geeks the way NASA is for space nerds.
We have no need of coax. We don’t have cable TV. Everything is via fiber-optic Internet.
I run MOCA adapters on an otherwise unused piece of coax to extend Internet to my home office. Last time I checked the bandwidth, it was 30 Mbps, about as fast as our cable modem’s connection. I have the link encrypted since the connection runs out through our cable junction box and back into the house.
This could be far worse than we will ever be told
After Fukushima, I swore that the rain in Vantucky smelled “off”. A few years later, my wife mentioned this to a patient of hers who worked on the cleanup as a consultant in Japan, and he responded, “All I will say is that your husband is not imagining things.”
Second the MOCA extenders. If you need to get IP somewhere, and your homebuilder pulled coax everywhere, it’s a good choice. Available cheap on ebay too.
n
Regarding the MOCA extenders: is there any advantage to those as opposed to WiFi (801.1a/c)?
We both use laptops here. One desktop computer (main purpose is to run the weather collection software for upload to WeatherUnderground; plus as the 1st-level data backup). It connects to our main wireless via an old Wireless extender I have. The Raspberry Pi media center is also connected up there. But doesn’t get much use otherwise.
So I suspect that my config is just fine; just curious.
Just the difference between wireless and wired. If you are fine on wifi, no reason to change. DirecTV uses it to get net to each outlet in legacy installs where there is already a coax. It can be a problem solver if you’re trying to get a hard line somewhere without pulling new cable.
n
I’m the same. I don’t get stressed about the vicissitudes of daily life; I deal with them, usually very well, as they come up.
That’s one of the reasons I reject “Type A” and “Type B” personality distinctions. They’re too simplistic. I’m “Type A” in that I’m driven and get things done, but “Type B” in that I don’t worry about much of anything. Prepare and plan, yes. Stress, no.
What they write is bullshit, by the semi-technical meaning of the term. Truth or falseness is irrelevant; all that matters is the attempt at persuasion.
At GOTGv2 waiting to get the bucket-o-corn.
Regarding the MOCA extenders: is there any advantage to those as opposed to WiFi (801.1a/c)?
Better security and throughput than when I ran the home office across the WiFi connection.
The best solution would be Cat6, but I haven’t had time to run the wire. The coax was available, and the only real work involved was removing the splitters and installing the adapters.
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2017/05/09/see-ya-4/
Buh-bye! Don’t let the screen door hit ya on yer way out, you fuckin’ pogie-bait-capon muthafucka!
Let’s hope tRump replaces him with a non-Mormon hardass dick who really hoses out the Feebies good and hard.
Otherwise it’s just another political musical chairs game for their club, and you and me ain’t in it.
“The ACLU to travelers: Maybe don’t go to Texas right now”
news.fastcompany.com/the-aclu-to-travelers-maybe-dont-go-to-texas-right-now-4037096
Yeah baby !
Lynn posting from Montana.
“The ACLU to travelers: Maybe don’t go to Texas right now”
My wifes extended Chinese family members in WA are already scared of Texas.
The problem is that every Memorial Day, the open house events are always crawling with Number One Sons moving from the West Coast to work at Dell, Apple, etc., and, sooner or later, the WA relations are going to get the word that Asians get along fine in the state. No cattle stampedes, Hillbilly shootouts in the streets, etc.
Road trip Lynn? I can provide some suggestions if you’re going all the way to the OR/WA coast. Oregon is fun for about a week. Don’t stay any longer, and, for Godssake, don’t move there
Buh-bye! Don’t let the screen door hit ya on yer way out, you fuckin’ pogie-bait-capon muthafucka!
The best part are the screeching neocons like Krauthammer. He can’t get anything right lately. Libturdians are flipping out for a special prosecutor for tRump/Rooskie hanky panky. Just the opposite when Redumblicans called for one on Coffin Cankles.
lol! President tRump FOR LIFE! He’s really scrambling the bipartisan system good.
We flew into Helena via Salt Lake City. My dad, my son, and I are going to float portions of the Missouri River for the next 5 days and catch some rainbows. My uncle came along for three days also.
My poor son. We just went to Applebee’s for supper and talked about infirmities. Dad is 78, my uncle is 75 and I am 56. He is 33 and is resigned to hearing about old people ailments for the trip.
Sounds like a blast, Mr. Lynn, and you and your dad and son and uncle deserve it, too!
Hey, Bob; good nooz from North Carolina:
https://twitter.com/ConstanceQueen8/status/861343464268726272
Next time you see a mob of SJWs and progs blocking the road?
FLOOR IT!
Whoa, I beat atoz to GOTGv2 ! It excellent and the first 20 minutes are awesome. I took the daughter and wife Saturday afternoon to the amc fountains theatre with recliner seats.
Ah, but did you have the bucket-o-corn drowning in butter?
Great movie. Did you see The Grandmaster in the bubble during the credits?
No, there was so much stuff going on in the credits that I was laughing about. I need to see it again. And again. Groot …
Btw, GOTGv2 = Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2
And I don’t have a clue who the Grandmaster is.
Thor: Ragnarok
http://conservative-headlines.org/another-republican-disappoint/
Yes, utterly predictable, and another reason why Ann Coulter asks why we should ever bother voting for Republicans again. They do the same shit the Dems do, and continually provide prima facie evidence that it’s really all just one Party and voting makes them laugh at us in contempt and loathing.
We should return that contempt and loathing a hundredfold.
To the wall with them.
Oh my goodness; it’s nearly 02:00 here in northwest Vermont and I got lost in various time sinks and rabbit holes, not only online, but on my external storage; I’d forgotten how many vids and pdf files I’ve downloaded over the last few years on firearms, radios, gardening, etc., etc. Yikes. Moving the firearms stuff to the CentOS 7.3 machine and gave up on Nethserver; won’t load applications list, various yum issues, etc. I’ll manage without it.
Pax vobiscum, et morari, intentiores … Like Mr. DadCooks says…
Oregon is fun for about a week. Don’t stay any longer, and, for Godssake, don’t move there
I grew up in southern Oregon, graduated from Rogue River High School. I lived 14.5 miles from the school up East Evans Creek Road on a 147 acre ranch. I have absolutely no desire to return to Oregon, to visit or to live.
Even in the late ’60s people there were complaining about the Californians moving into the area. I would then ask the people where they were from, answer California. I would then ask why it was OK for them but not for others. If I got a response other than a dirty look it was something along the lines “we left to avoid the crowding and we got here first”. The mindset boggles the mind.
Whoa, I beat atoz to GOTGv2 ! It excellent and the first 20 minutes are awesome
I saw it Saturday in IMAX 3D. Well done 3D and in IMAX is just wonderful. Rarely do I go see a movie anymore that is not in 3D and I choose IMAX if I have a choice. Really enjoyed but you have to sit through the credits.
My dad, my son, and I are going to float portions of the Missouri River for the next 5 days
Keep your powder dry.
This is what FEMA has to say about Hanford
“Hanford Nuclear Site – WA
Current Situation
• On May 9, a tunnel collapsed near the Hanford Nuclear Site
facility’s Plutonium Uranium Extraction Complex (PUREX)
• Cave-in is 20 x 20 feet long in a 360 foot tunnel used to store
contaminated equipment since the 1950s
Impacts
• No indications of release or radiological contamination at this point
• No fatalities or injuries
• No local evacuations; on-site employees were evacuated after
temporarily sheltering-in-place
Next Steps
• Establish site employee work schedules and restrictions for the
area
• Monitoring equipment is in place
• Determine condition of tunnel
• Close the breach
• Develop and execute recovery plan
Response
• WA EOC at Full Activation
• FEMA Region X at Enhanced Watch (dayshift only)
• FEMA Region X LNO deployed to WA EOC
• FEMA NWC remains at Watch/Steady State”
Met a couple from California on an European coach tour. They’d moved to Oregon deliberately to escape Calif. (They seemed fairly right wing Christians to me.) The guy had just lost his job in Oregon and was dreading the idea of having to move back to Calif if he couldn’t get a new one.
I wouldn’t want to live on the left coast, or anywhere there are tornadoes, hurricanes, nasty reptiles or liberal Democrats (but I repeat myself). But I would like to live on the coast, where snow is measured in millimeters rather than metres.
“I wouldn’t want to live on the left coast, or anywhere there are tornadoes, hurricanes, nasty reptiles or liberal Democrats (but I repeat myself).”
That’s one of the reasons we moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains. The risk factors up here are very low for everything: tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, liberals, etc.
http://www.usa.com/28675-nc-natural-disasters-extremes.htm