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Month: October 2022

Tues. Oct. 11, 2022 – 10112022 – at home later today

Cool and clear to start the day but getting hot later.  Monday was gorgeous.  I know the dry spell is killing us and crops, but it sure is nice weather otherwise.  And nice not to get rain when I’ve got 27 holes, 4ft deep around the perimeter of my house…

My foundation work definitely got pushed back to next week.  Supply chain issues, and a critical adapter part they need is weeks overdue.  I’m headed back to Houston later today and will work on stuff at home for the rest of this week.

Yesterday the main thing I got done was to connect the master bath pex to the pex trunk line in the attic.  The lines to feed the kitchen are in place but not stubbed out.  Working under the sink just wasn’t going to happen, I hurt too bad from the attic crouching and crawling.   I got foam rubber insulation over the parts of the trunk and branches that I’ve connected so far too.  I do need a couple of parts to tie the new service into the pex and old piping.  I’ll bring them back with me later.

I spent the rest of the day on little tasks and cleanup.   Wife and kids went home yesterday evening.   That left me to have a fire and listen to the radio one last night this week.   The moon rise was later, so I did have some nice dark sky before the moon washed everything out.   It was bright enough to cast shadows and if I had a large print book, I could have read by the moon light.  No shooting stars last night though.

Today I’ll wrap up a few small things, and pack up for the week.  One auction pickup on the way home (an antenna) and then I’m back to normal routine.   It will be a change getting up to get the kids out the door.

I’ve decided to move a bunch more food and supplies up here.   The goal is to get out of Houston if there is an issue, and it would be better to have more of my stacks up here.  Can’t move them all, because of the possibility of needing to stay in town.  Also doesn’t make sense to have all my eggs in one basket.   So I’ll move about half, then rebuild the stacks in both places.  I’ve still got stuff at my secondary too, that will probably stay there.  Backups to the backups.

I need to get serious about getting a full set of tools up here too.  I’ve got enough dupes to do it, but haven’t done much to organize it.  Right now, if I had a plumbing issue at home, I’d be out of luck as all my supplies are here and if I had a mechanical issue, all my real tools are in Houston.  That’s not a great state of affairs.

Ditto for medical.  Some of the stacks need to move, not just first aid kits.

Your stacks aren’t big enough.   Neither are mine.   Get to stacking!

nick

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Mon. Oct. 10, 2022 -10102022 – Columbus Day. Or shine the light of civilization on the vicious natives Day…

Cool now but hot later here at the BOL.  It got plenty hot later in the day yesterday, and I was sweating like crazy in the attic.  Today I’m hoping to avoid the attic.

My main task yesterday was running the pex in the attic and down to the kitchen.   If I stub out the kitchen, or just end the run, I can pressure test, as soon as I connect the stub out in the bathroom.  Dang it, I’m going to be in the attic anyway.  I forgot to connect the bathroom.   I knew there was more I needed to do while I was already covered in fiberglas…  now I’ll get sweaty and filthy again.  Maybe I’ll get it done early, before it gets so hot up there.   Pro tip, if you are going to be working with fiberglas, cover any exposed skin with talcum powder.  Wipe smooth with hand.  It will fill pores and stop most of the fiberglas from getting in your skin and itching.   Works for insulation or when working with resin and fiberglas, like on a boat.  Plain white ‘dryer sheets’ wiped across your skin will catch and remove any fibers that do get in your skin.  I like Bounce, but any of them will do.  Those two tricks will remove most of the discomfort from working with fiberglas.

I discovered while in the attic that there don’t appear to be any roof vents.   There are soffit vents, but nowhere for the hot air to exit.   I thought I was just unfamiliar with however they vent a metal roof, but from the inside, I don’t see any venting at all.   I’ll have to ask the roofing company about that.  Every roof I’ve ever seen has venting (except panelized cathedral ceiling.)

I also spent a little time on other things.  I sanded a bench. Pressure washing raised the grain, and eroded some of the softer part of the wood slats.   I did a quick and dirty sanding with the angle grinder.  It’s smooth, but worn.  Matches the rest of the condition, so it’s ok.  Next time, the slats will need to be replaced, and I’ll refurb the cast iron end frames then.  Until then, call it ‘shabby chic’.

My wife did some electrical, disconnecting the hall bathroom receptacle, installing light fixtures, tracing the circuits, and then installing a new fixture in the living room.   That was while I was in the attic doing plumbing.

I think I’ve got a good solution for attaching my cell booster antenna mast.   I picked up a basketball backboard mounting kit, and I’ve McGyvered the bracketry to clamp to a pipe and give me a place to clamp the mast, while extending it out past the roof overhang.  Feels like it will be very sturdy, and should work.   We’ll see, right?   At the moment, the mast, an extendable painting pole, is ratchet strapped to the chimney.  Redneck as all get out and it  has to move soon, so I can start taking down the chimney.

If the guys come today, we’ll work around them.  If they can’t get the part they’re waiting for, I’ll see them later in the week.  Wife and kids head home later today.  I’ll stay until I know the schedule has changed.   I may pause the fishing… and let my back recover.

Progress is being made.   Skills and contacts are stacking up.  Do some stacking of your own…

nick

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Sun. Oct. 9, 2022 – back at it

Cool and clear with hot later.   It was 73F when I went to bed, after being quite warm in the sun.

Started in Houston with my hobby meeting, which was nice.   Meatspace.  Friends and acquaintances that don’t talk politics or prepping… it’s a nice break.

We do talk about current affairs, price increases, long lead times, and the economy.   One of the guys owns a company that provides a value added technical service to real world goods, and he’s seeing orders slow down.  His work is both mundane, and sometimes high tech, with aerospace customers and other plain industrial customers.  Hard times are coming to the business and industrial world.

After the meeting, I headed up here and basically didn’t do any work.  Didn’t catch any fish either.   Did chat with two neighbors.   One of them is catching fish, over 40 crappie in 2 days.   Good eating.   He mentioned bringing over his crappie tackle box and showing me what he’s using…  I’ve got a lot of learning to do.

Today will be mostly focused on plumbing, with some other stuff thrown in for variety and recovery time.  That’s the plan anyway.  We’ll see if it happens.  I’d rather spend time drowning bait…

Stack up some friends and relations.  Stack up some helpful neighbors.

nick

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Sat. Oct. 8, 2022 – non- prepping hobby day, then back to the grind

Cooler and overcast in Houston today?  Maybe.  I got yesterday wrong at the lake, as it was overcast for at least the morning.  Houston was partly sunny, with rain in the distant south.   None at the house or while I was driving around.

And that’s mostly what I did yesterday, drove around.   Got home, planted myself in front of the panopticon and bathed in the flow from the fat pipe… or plopped down in front of multiple screens and surfed all my normal blogs ’til I was caught up.

I did spend some time cleaning up my ‘family’ blog.   We started it for hurricane comms to our families but most of that happens directly or through fakebook now.  We haven’t even done a ‘hi there’ post on it in years.   But  there are some good memories in the comments and posts, so we leave it up.  Unfortunately, askismet ran out, the comment spammers found the site, and I never closed comments on old posts.  So my inbox has been filling up with ‘someone posted a comment on your blog’ notices, and ‘please moderate this comment’ notices from WordPress.  I ended up deleting over 5000 spam comments and locking comments on all the posts.  Tedious, took a while, but not hard.  I should probably take it down, there is way to much personal info there, and I could save the hosting fees, but some of the comments are from people who have since died, and it doesn’t feel right.  For now, it’s up, but frozen.

No shoeboxes full of old photos for this generation.   Just bitrot, and ghost sites.  Maybe someone in the future will collect old thumbdrives, harddrives, and CDs like people now collect old photos, diaries, and other ephemera.  I can almost imagine a gallery show (virtual of course) “Curated photos from before The Fall, a collection of dinner entre’s from the early 2020s”  and the adjunct gallery “Desserts commonly available in “restaurants” during pre-Fall times…”

Today I’ve got my local get together, then a shopping trip, and back to the BOL for more work.   And a long weekend with family, of course.

Stack some of the things you need to pass on your history and culture to your ‘tribe’.  And stack some ‘tribe’ too.

nick

 

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Fri. Oct. 7, 2022 – back and forth

Cool, damp, then sunny and hot.  Excellent weather.  Kinda dry though, lake is lower still.

Spent most of the morning messing around on small things while waiting for the foundation guy.   Then spent a while with him.  Eventually started knocking down a few smaller jobs.   Didn’t want to get into a big project, and it was too late in the day to get up in the attic.

But I did get a few things off the list, just not high priority things.  I like to have some small things to fill in around the bigger stuff.

Had my fire and drink while waiting for my family to get here.   They ended up getting here super late.  They had stuff to do before leaving town, I guess.   80M had a bunch of stations, 40 was crowded but mostly local (region 5) and there were a bunch of shortwave stations in the upper 9Mhz band.  SO much more activity than I hear in Houston.  I really like spinning the dial when I can hear so much.

Today I’m going to do a couple of clean up things, then head to Houston.  I’ve got ebay shipping to do, and a couple of auction items to pick up.  I’ll be very happy to have a high speed connection for a few hours.  Then my non-prepping hobby meeting Saturday morning, and back to the lake later in the day.

I’ll take some trash home with me, and bring a couple more things back up to stack up here.

Even if you don’t have a BOL, find somewhere offsite to stack some stuff.   Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket.   Stack some baskets!

nick

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Thur. Oct. 6, 2022 – plumbing and electrical on the schedule

Cool and damp this am, followed by really nice.  Thermometer says it got over 100F in the sun but I find that hard to believe.  Didn’t feel like it at all.

I got a bunch of stuff done, but the pace was a bit leisurely, and some stuff jumped up the list and had to be dealt with.  Stuff that I thought would be next week, and done by someone else!  It just points out that every single system here, and all the parts, will need to be updated.   I have no idea how I’ll get to the hose bibs, outside of opening interior walls, but I know I better do it before they fail.  I’ve got at least a rough plan for the other stuff.

Today should involve some electrical, some plumbing, and maybe some carpentry.  I’m also meeting with the foundation company’s foam guy to talk about getting the house ready, and to take a look at the bulkhead.  It’s a lot easier to do electrical and plumbing when the family isn’t here.   I can turn stuff off without considering them, and I’m not under the gun to get it back on.  On the other hand, it’s awfully quiet.

That should end tomorrow evening.

Having some spare parts stacked sure made yesterday’s issue a whole lot easier to tackle…   stack some repair and maintenance parts.  And if you don’t already have the knowledge and skills to use them, stack some reference books.   !Stack all the things!

 

nick

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Wed. Oct. 5, 2022 – le sigh. Work pauses…

Chilly in the morning getting hot in the afternoon, with cooler temps in the evening.

It was pretty darn chilly when the contractor got here yesterday.   Might have been 58F?  Felt cooler after they started working too.  It did get pretty hot in the sun.  I took a break and did some fishing, and I might have even got some sunburn on my neck.   Didn’t catch anything, although lots of fish were out eating.  The minnow were schooling and following my lure, and a turtle followed it all the way to the dock.  I could have let him catch it if I slowed a little bit.  Between the minnows and the turtle, I think the bait is convincing, the fish must just not have been biting.

The work crew got all the holes dug, and the house is ready for jacking… which might not happen until next week.  They are awaiting a deliver so they can use their  new machine.  Everybody seems to be waiting for deliveries.  In any case I get to sleep in today.

Then it will be working the list.   I think I may go into town for some plumbing  pipe.  The supply line cut off valve will need to be replaced, and a new service entry for water installed.  It was buried and it’s rotten.   The foundation guys are also licensed plumbers so I asked them to quote me for the work.   They will also need to fix the transition from the house’s iron sewer pipe to plastic that feeds into the septic tank.   The current joint is broken and leaking.   We didn’t see it during the septic work because it was under the sidewalk, and buried.

We also discovered that there aren’t any repair piers along one wall where we expected them to be.  Since the fill dirt level is only a couple of inches to a foot, the plan was to just ‘tune up’ those piers.  But they aren’t there at all, which would explain the foundation sinking there…  there will be additional charges for new (traditional) remediation piers along  that wall.  The other piers are mostly bearing on sand.  Not sharp, compact-able sand.  Soft sand. Or should I say, NOT bearing, as they are sinking through the sand.   Shoddy work.  All going to be replaced.  Just as soon as the part comes in.

So supply chain issues continue to plague industry.   Grab it if you need it,  there might not be any for a while…

Stack it high.

nick

 

 

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Tues. Oct. 4, 2022- holes are being dug, site is being prepared…

Another cool morning followed by hot afternoon, and cool evening.  Definitely Fall north of Houston.

Started yesterday about an hour earlier than planned, but on the other hand, they didn’t need me to move most of the stuff I was planning to move.  The holes confirm that the old foundation repair was doomed to fail from the beginning.   No soil to bear on under the down hill side of the house.  Sand, and silt.  Good thing these helical piles don’t care…  They are due back here today at 7am and hope to finish the digging today.

Lake was down even more.   This would be a good time to work on the rotten support pilings for the dock as most of them are out of the water now.   Too bad I’ve got other fish to fry.

Skeeters are out in force.   They don’t usually bite me, and if they do it doesn’t raise a welt, but the buzzing in my ear drives me mad, and I can feel them on my skin.   This is the first visit where they were really noticeable and for some reason the house is full of them.

Asked one of the neighbors that’s been up here a long time what fruit trees he thought would be hardy and would grow well, he suggested peach and plum.  Said that apples didn’t do well.  I already have a persimmon tree.  Can’t remember if I’d mentioned that.  Fruit is delicious and sweet.   Big seed though.  I can’t recall ever eating a persimmon before.

Didn’t see any animals last night, but there were lots of raccoon and deer tracks in the mud along the shoreline.  DID see a big snake in the water as I was packing up my radio…   since he was under the water and still, I’m guessing ‘Plain-bellied Water Snake’ based on color.   Hard to tell at a distance though.  I do not care for snakes, especially ones that lurk.   It’s country out here.

Stacking up good will and ties to the community this week.  Knowledge too.   Stack something good.

nick

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Mon. Oct. 3, 2022 – foundation work today, yea!

Should be cool and crisp to start, then warming up later.  Very nice up here.  It will make all the concrete breaking and shoveling much more tolerable.

And that’s what’s on the agenda for today.  Getting the foundation guys started, and expediting whatever I can.  I will start by clearing some stuff out of the way, and re-marking buried utilities.  Then we’ll see what they need from me.

Spent yesterday getting ready to come up.   Filled the bed of the truck, again. One of the things I got on my mad dash to the auction pickup Saturday was a roll of Romex.    I thought it was just one roll, but ended up being two.  150ft of 8/2 with ground, and 50ft of 10/2 with ground.   $40 for all.   Crazy good score.

Dropped off my ebay sale at the post office.  The main local office has a big secure drop box in the lobby so I can leave a package, even on Sunday.  I’m pretty sure they won’t scan it in properly,but it will get delivered.

I resisted the urge to hit the Goodwill Outlet, which is next door to the PO…. had to get on the road.

So I made it here in good time.

Stacked  a few more things in the freezer, and a couple of things in the cupboards.    If I can learn to fish, my neighbor told me he’s caught catfish here bigger than 60 pounds.   The other guy said they get even bigger than that.   That’s a lot of free meat to stack…

So I better get to it.  You should too.

nick

 

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Sun. Oct. 2, 2022 – 10022022 – really just more of the same…

Cool and crisp.  Warming later.   Sun.   Beautiful weather.

I didn’t get to the BOL on Saturday.   Too many things to do, some of which went long, and some of which just popped up…   Sold my forklift.   Lost about $400, after having it for 3+ years.   Like boats, unless it is earning you money, rent, don’t buy.  Getting it started after a couple months sitting, after 3 years not moving, took a bit longer than I had budgeted, and the guy was an hour later than I hoped.   Still, not only did he come by, he bought it. A  Craigslist transaction that didn’t suck, yahoo!

But the delays started to pressure my schedule to do a pickup on the way to the lake.   Heading home, I chanced upon a yard sale… and really scored.  Not preps, but stuff for my workshop.  20 large, heavy duty, mostly made in USA C clamps for $50 was like STEALING.  A live animal trap, some extension cords, hitch stuff, stapler and staples, and some long reach welding visegrips, brought the total to $100.   Score.  But, that ate some time too.   When I finally looked at the google map, my drive time was one hour, not 45 minutes!   And all my slack was gone.   The straw the broke the dromedary’s hump was an ebay sale just as I was getting ready to leave.   No way I could pack the sale, get my food and clothes together, and make the hard deadline for the pickup (two roll around AC units and some romex.)    I just jumped in the truck and sped on my way.  I made the pickup with less than a minute to spare.  The guy was pulling through the gate to lock it and leave.   He was not thrilled, but I was there before 6…

So today I’ll pack and head out at a more leisurely pace.  There was stuff I could have done Sunday morning, but it will wait until Sunday afternoon, or during the week while the foundation guys work.

There is always more to be done.  Like stacking, you just have to keep after it.

n

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