Bezabor: Painting floor, balancing walk, dehumidifier woes, washer/dryer relocation…
Thursday, 11/24/05 –
We finished up the washer/dryer installation today in the morning and then drove to my brother’s home for Thanksgiving dinner in the afternoon.
We had our first snow of the season overnight. We just had a very light covering of snow and by 1000 or so it was gone. But it’s windy and cold today—temps in the low 30’s and winds blowing 20-30… a good day to be inside enjoying a Thanksgiving meal!
Wednesday, 11/23/05 –
I had another dental appointment today so didn’t get into the basement until 1400 or so. The main thing we accomplished was to extend the washer drain about eight feet laterally and add a trap.
Tuesday- 11/22/05 –
Today we brought the washer and dryer back into the basement. Once again, we thought it’s time to make some improvements. We decided to move both the washer and dryer about five feet and facing in a different direction. Where before they blocked access to the water heater, washer faucets, and sewer down-pipe areas, moving them would both open up that access as well as provide a less-cramped workspace. These moves would mean that we would have to do some plumbing work to move the washer-drain connection, we’d have to extend the washer-intake hoses, and we’d have to come up with a completely new routing of the dryer vent pipe.
So today was mostly taken up by figuring out what to do, researching the limitations on re-routing the vent and drain pipes, and buying the parts needed. By day’s end we had the washer in place and leveled and most of the dryer-vent piping done.
Monday, 11/21/05 –
I had a dental appointment in the morning. Labashi painted the second coat of paint on the basement floor and that has turned out well. The underlying red paint covered up fine and we’re very happy with the results.
We returned a dehumidifier we had bought last week. It was Whirlpool’s most powerful model and I thought we should be safe to buy a major brand like that but this unit had multiple problems. First, the unit is supposed to work down to 44 degrees F but it iced up almost immediately even though it was in a 60-degree room. I contacted Whirlpool Customer Service by phone and they said it should not do that and I should contact a local dealer to service the unit under warranty. Later I checked it and it had de-iced so I thought maybe it worked in cycles of freezing and defrosting so I sent an email to Whirlpool support but again was just advised to call someone in. I don’t think Whirlpool Customer Service in either instance had a clue….they were just following a checklist.
I found two other problems. The Low Fan setting causes the unit to become even noisier than the High Fan setting and the humidistat apparently didn’t work—the unit would never cycle off, even after setting the humidistat on the moistest setting and our basement hygrometer showing a reading of under 40 per cent humidity. I had no hope of getting any answers from Whirlpool so we returned the unit to Lowe’s and I’m trying to find a good source of recommendations for another brand. So far both Consumer Reports and the various sources of reviews on the web are disappointingly vague or are biased. It was also interesting to learn from the returns-desk clerk at Lowes that about 30 per cent of dehumidifier units—regardless of brand—are returned.
The whole issue of using a dehumidifier comes from our realization that our old dehumidifier really isn’t up to the job during the cooler months. In trying to use it to help dry things out after the cleanup, ours iced over immediately while the commercial unit used by the cleanup crew did not. A little web research revealed that most only work down to about 65 degrees and that was consistent with what we’ve seen. We also realized that our practice of hanging laundry in the basement means we should have a low-temp dehumidifier.
Sunday, 11/20/05 -
We needed some outdoors time so Labashi and I went for a walk at Pinchot State Park’s Beaver Creek Trail. It was a great day for a walk and we took advantage of the many fallen trees along this trail to work on our balancing skills. We started out with the larger trees and slowly graduated to smaller diameters. The point, of course, is to maintain balance and to avoid ‘dabbing’ a foot down or using nearby branches or standing trees to help maintain balance. Labashi does it well—she turns each foot out at about a 30 degree angle and walks very slowly, making tiny corrections as she goes and making it look easy. I tend to wave my arms around way too much trying to correct and am soon off the tree. We started out with trees about a foot in diameter and eventually could walk for 15 to 25 feet on trees as small as five inches in diameter without stepping off. This little game is not only fun but also a bit of a workout—we were a bit too cool as we started our walk but once we tried walking a few trees we took our jackets off.
The other thing we did to help restore our sense of balance was to step and jump from rock to rock on the trail, again trying to avoid dabbing a foot down. Some sections of Beaver Creek Trail are rocky enough that you can do stretches of up to 80-100 feet without touching the ground. This little trail game is another confidence-developer and helps when it comes time to cross a creek.
We were surprised to see slush ice on Beaver Creek. It seemed odd to see ice this early. Water normally takes quite a while to cool down in the Fall to the point where ice will form. Since our weather has been warm lately—days in the high Fifties and into the Sixties, nights mostly above freezing, it didn’t seem possible that we would have ice. It also seemed odd that it was such a nice day that there was a canoe and a kayak on the lake yet here was ice on the creek. It would have been fun to paddle our kayaks up the icy creek—I think the ice was thin and slushy enough that we could have paddled through it.
After our Beaver Creek adventure we drove over to our local Barnes and Noble store to browse through the books and do some Christmas shopping. Then we went home and watched a movie we had rented, “Born into Brothels”. This award-winner is the story of a group of children of sex-workers in the red-light district of Calcutta. An American photographer, Zana Briski, gave the children cameras and taught them how to ‘see’ with a camera. Their photographs were so striking and her commitment to the children so strong that she was able to get them into boarding schools and is financing their education via sales of the photos. See www.kidswithcameras.org for more about the movie and to see some of the photos.
Saturday, 11/19/05 –
I was ‘off’ today and took a couple of motorcycle rides—about 120 miles total. I did some errands in the morning--- picking up some plumbing supplies and shopping for another dehumidifier. After lunch I decided it was such a nice day that I just HAD to get in some more riding so I spent the afternoon sport-touring in the mountains north of Harrisburg.
Friday, 11/18/05-
I painted the concrete basement floor today using Drylok Concrete Paint. We had considered using an epoxy but the expoxies all say the concrete must be ultra-clean or the epoxy won’t stick properly. Since our floor had been painted before in one section and had carpet adhesive applied both to the painted area and to much of the remainder of the floor area, we decided we’d better not try epoxy. The painting started out well enough but I soon ran into a problem—the previous coat of paint started bleeding through. It was a deep red color and I started to see streaks of red in the sandstone color I was applying. I found the best thing was to just avoid brushing too much—which of course conflicts with the instructions for the concrete paint—it should be brushed in well. The instructions also had me thin the initial coat of paint with a pint of water per gallon of color. That made the paint very thin so it was not surprising to see that the first coat did not cover well. The initial coat took most of the gallon-and-a-pint. I had 625 square feet to do and coverage was estimated at about 500 square feet per gallon so that worked out about right. I decided I wanted to be sure the paint had plenty of time to fully dry and since application temperature was fairly low—just under 60 degrees— I thought it best to let it dry for the weekend.
The other thing that happened today was we learned the township sewer board had met and had agreed to pay the bill we had submitted for the cleaning, for a month’s storage, and for our additional cleaning/sanitization supplies. That’s good news!
Thursday, 11/24/05 –
We finished up the washer/dryer installation today in the morning and then drove to my brother’s home for Thanksgiving dinner in the afternoon.
We had our first snow of the season overnight. We just had a very light covering of snow and by 1000 or so it was gone. But it’s windy and cold today—temps in the low 30’s and winds blowing 20-30… a good day to be inside enjoying a Thanksgiving meal!
Wednesday, 11/23/05 –
I had another dental appointment today so didn’t get into the basement until 1400 or so. The main thing we accomplished was to extend the washer drain about eight feet laterally and add a trap.
Tuesday- 11/22/05 –
Today we brought the washer and dryer back into the basement. Once again, we thought it’s time to make some improvements. We decided to move both the washer and dryer about five feet and facing in a different direction. Where before they blocked access to the water heater, washer faucets, and sewer down-pipe areas, moving them would both open up that access as well as provide a less-cramped workspace. These moves would mean that we would have to do some plumbing work to move the washer-drain connection, we’d have to extend the washer-intake hoses, and we’d have to come up with a completely new routing of the dryer vent pipe.
So today was mostly taken up by figuring out what to do, researching the limitations on re-routing the vent and drain pipes, and buying the parts needed. By day’s end we had the washer in place and leveled and most of the dryer-vent piping done.
Monday, 11/21/05 –
I had a dental appointment in the morning. Labashi painted the second coat of paint on the basement floor and that has turned out well. The underlying red paint covered up fine and we’re very happy with the results.
We returned a dehumidifier we had bought last week. It was Whirlpool’s most powerful model and I thought we should be safe to buy a major brand like that but this unit had multiple problems. First, the unit is supposed to work down to 44 degrees F but it iced up almost immediately even though it was in a 60-degree room. I contacted Whirlpool Customer Service by phone and they said it should not do that and I should contact a local dealer to service the unit under warranty. Later I checked it and it had de-iced so I thought maybe it worked in cycles of freezing and defrosting so I sent an email to Whirlpool support but again was just advised to call someone in. I don’t think Whirlpool Customer Service in either instance had a clue….they were just following a checklist.
I found two other problems. The Low Fan setting causes the unit to become even noisier than the High Fan setting and the humidistat apparently didn’t work—the unit would never cycle off, even after setting the humidistat on the moistest setting and our basement hygrometer showing a reading of under 40 per cent humidity. I had no hope of getting any answers from Whirlpool so we returned the unit to Lowe’s and I’m trying to find a good source of recommendations for another brand. So far both Consumer Reports and the various sources of reviews on the web are disappointingly vague or are biased. It was also interesting to learn from the returns-desk clerk at Lowes that about 30 per cent of dehumidifier units—regardless of brand—are returned.
The whole issue of using a dehumidifier comes from our realization that our old dehumidifier really isn’t up to the job during the cooler months. In trying to use it to help dry things out after the cleanup, ours iced over immediately while the commercial unit used by the cleanup crew did not. A little web research revealed that most only work down to about 65 degrees and that was consistent with what we’ve seen. We also realized that our practice of hanging laundry in the basement means we should have a low-temp dehumidifier.
Sunday, 11/20/05 -
We needed some outdoors time so Labashi and I went for a walk at Pinchot State Park’s Beaver Creek Trail. It was a great day for a walk and we took advantage of the many fallen trees along this trail to work on our balancing skills. We started out with the larger trees and slowly graduated to smaller diameters. The point, of course, is to maintain balance and to avoid ‘dabbing’ a foot down or using nearby branches or standing trees to help maintain balance. Labashi does it well—she turns each foot out at about a 30 degree angle and walks very slowly, making tiny corrections as she goes and making it look easy. I tend to wave my arms around way too much trying to correct and am soon off the tree. We started out with trees about a foot in diameter and eventually could walk for 15 to 25 feet on trees as small as five inches in diameter without stepping off. This little game is not only fun but also a bit of a workout—we were a bit too cool as we started our walk but once we tried walking a few trees we took our jackets off.
The other thing we did to help restore our sense of balance was to step and jump from rock to rock on the trail, again trying to avoid dabbing a foot down. Some sections of Beaver Creek Trail are rocky enough that you can do stretches of up to 80-100 feet without touching the ground. This little trail game is another confidence-developer and helps when it comes time to cross a creek.
We were surprised to see slush ice on Beaver Creek. It seemed odd to see ice this early. Water normally takes quite a while to cool down in the Fall to the point where ice will form. Since our weather has been warm lately—days in the high Fifties and into the Sixties, nights mostly above freezing, it didn’t seem possible that we would have ice. It also seemed odd that it was such a nice day that there was a canoe and a kayak on the lake yet here was ice on the creek. It would have been fun to paddle our kayaks up the icy creek—I think the ice was thin and slushy enough that we could have paddled through it.
After our Beaver Creek adventure we drove over to our local Barnes and Noble store to browse through the books and do some Christmas shopping. Then we went home and watched a movie we had rented, “Born into Brothels”. This award-winner is the story of a group of children of sex-workers in the red-light district of Calcutta. An American photographer, Zana Briski, gave the children cameras and taught them how to ‘see’ with a camera. Their photographs were so striking and her commitment to the children so strong that she was able to get them into boarding schools and is financing their education via sales of the photos. See www.kidswithcameras.org for more about the movie and to see some of the photos.
Saturday, 11/19/05 –
I was ‘off’ today and took a couple of motorcycle rides—about 120 miles total. I did some errands in the morning--- picking up some plumbing supplies and shopping for another dehumidifier. After lunch I decided it was such a nice day that I just HAD to get in some more riding so I spent the afternoon sport-touring in the mountains north of Harrisburg.
Friday, 11/18/05-
I painted the concrete basement floor today using Drylok Concrete Paint. We had considered using an epoxy but the expoxies all say the concrete must be ultra-clean or the epoxy won’t stick properly. Since our floor had been painted before in one section and had carpet adhesive applied both to the painted area and to much of the remainder of the floor area, we decided we’d better not try epoxy. The painting started out well enough but I soon ran into a problem—the previous coat of paint started bleeding through. It was a deep red color and I started to see streaks of red in the sandstone color I was applying. I found the best thing was to just avoid brushing too much—which of course conflicts with the instructions for the concrete paint—it should be brushed in well. The instructions also had me thin the initial coat of paint with a pint of water per gallon of color. That made the paint very thin so it was not surprising to see that the first coat did not cover well. The initial coat took most of the gallon-and-a-pint. I had 625 square feet to do and coverage was estimated at about 500 square feet per gallon so that worked out about right. I decided I wanted to be sure the paint had plenty of time to fully dry and since application temperature was fairly low—just under 60 degrees— I thought it best to let it dry for the weekend.
The other thing that happened today was we learned the township sewer board had met and had agreed to pay the bill we had submitted for the cleaning, for a month’s storage, and for our additional cleaning/sanitization supplies. That’s good news!
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 11:47
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home