New House Blog: Episode XXXXVII - Ant-Induced Piping

Welcome back to our second action-packed Episode of the year, though it's going to be hard to match the sheer excitement, drama, terror, and action of Episode XXXXVI.  You may recall that in the previous Episode I mentioned that, "The tub ant war led to a new repair project that will be described in a future Episode..."  That future is now.  We will be discussing the ant-induced replacement of the  shower valve, shower handle, shower head, tub spout, and all related piping and plumbing in the downstairs bathroom.  I say it was ant-induced because the only way we could be sure we had truly defeated the bathroom ants was to open up the wall and have a look-see, and we figured that while we had the wall open we might as well install the replacement shower valve we had purchased some months ago before we knew how big a project it could be to replace a shower valve.  The shower valve kit also included the replacement shower head, shower handle, and tub spout.  But before we get into the main project, let's have a look-see at a brief 'hood update.

'Hood Update

One new feature of our 'hood is what seems to be a stray dog running around at random.  He has no collar, and he looks like an overgrown chihuahua.  So far he seems to be scared of me, and I am not aware of his doing any harm.

Do you remember our friendly BigCrow who sells auto insurance?  He's still out on the street corner every day, but lately he's been sporting a new sign and hat.  It seems that his insurance company also does tax returns.  Here are some recent photos of the Big Crow.

 Here's the front view.

And the back view.
















Ant-Induced Piping

We began this project by cutting open the wall in my office, which is on the other side of the wall from the downstairs bathroom.  We could not cut into the wall from the bathroom side because the tub/shower is a one-piece fiberglass insert, and we don't know how to repair/replace fiberglass inserts, but we've become quite comfortable with repairing drywall.  Sadly, cutting into the wall also meant cutting into the unique painting in my office.

 This is how the wall looked before the project began.

This is how the wall looked after cutting into it.  Note the handy plastic sheeting that has been set up.

On first inspection it appeared that all of the ants were dead.  Indeed, we did not see any live ants at all, and during the entire project we only saw one lonely live ant crawling down a water pipe.  It was quickly dispatched.

We noticed right away a lack of shutoff valves, but that did not surprise us.  We also noticed that the hot and cold water pipes that service the downstairs shower are the same pipes that service the upstairs shower.

Here is a picture of the old crusty shower valve and associated piping.

The first order of business, of course, was to install some shutoff valves, as we had done upstairs.  To do this we had to shut off the water, cut the old hot and cold water pipes, install new lengths of pipe and install the shutoff valves.  This went fairly smoothly, except for the cutting of the old pipes; the hot water pipe was right up against the stud, and this made it quite tricky (and time-consuming) to get my pipe cutter (even the compact pipe cutter) enough clearance to cut through the pipe.

Here is what our new shutoff valves look like with their PEX connectors installed.  Please note that the valves are in the off position.

The next step was to reconnect the hot and cold water pipes so that we could use the upstairs shower.  After installing some pipe couplers and PEX connectors to the upper pipes we installed the PEX.  As I mentioned in this Episode, PEX is wonderful stuff.  For this project we chose to use the red and blue PEX because Home Depot had it in stock in convenient 5' lengths.  As usual, one of our other house residents wanted to help us out with this project.

Looks good so far.

That's some good-looking PEX.

What's down there?

With water flow restored to the upstairs shower, despite Satchmo's "help," we moved on to the next part of the project - removing the old shower valve and shower and tub spout pipes.  These all came out fairly easily.  Here is a closer look at our PEX with the old shower valve and pipes removed.  Please note the pesky bit of romex that was often in the way.  Please also note that the foamy-looking stuff in the big hole is dried spray foam.  We used this as a temporary measure to seal up the hole and keep the ants out during the tub ant war.  The foam was removed prior to installing the new shower valve.  Please also also note that the shutoff valves are in the on position.

Next came the installation of the new shower and tub spout pipes, and the new shower valve.  As with the removal of the old, the installation of the new went fairly smoothly.  Here is a look at the shiny new shower pipe (and shiny new pipe clamp thingys).

Here we can see the new shower valve completely connected and leak-free.  On to the drywall repair.
















There's not much to say about the drywall repair.  We've done it before, we've talked about it in past Episodes, so we're going to let the pictures do most of the talking.  The access panel you see in the pictures below was originally purchased for use upstairs, but it did not fit upstairs so we held onto it with the hope that we could use it for a future project.

Drywall

This is the drywall nailed and bracketed in place.  Please note that we were able to reuse one piece of the original drywall.  Can you guess which piece that is?

Drywall + Tape

Drywall + Tape + Joint Compound

After the second coat of joint compound, and the second sanding, we installed the access panel.  It is a large metal door in a metal frame, and it is securely screwed into the wall studs.

A closeup of the access pane.

This is my office wall after repainting.  Yes, I painted over the access panel.  If you compare this picture to the first picture of my office in this episode you may notice some subtle differences in the paint pattern.

And this concludes the ant-induced piping project, but it leads to the start of another project.







Somewhat-Related Electrical Project

After completing the ant-induced plumbing project it seemed like a good idea to replace the electrical outlet that is in the same part of the wall, and which sits just below the brand new access panel.  We've replaced numerous outlets already, so I won't bore you with details.  It went smoothly, and I've included some pictures.

This is the new outlet going in.  The red wire indicates that this outlet is connected to the light switch in my office.  The use of the flashlight to illuminate the scene indicates that my work light's bulb burned out and we have no spare bulbs for it.

This is the new outlet, installed and faceplated.


















Bonus Pictures

Here are some bonus pictures of the new shower head, shower handle, and tub spout in the downstairs bathroom.  They are properly caulked, unlike the old setup.

Please note that the discoloration in the tub is due to us using this tub to wash out our paint brushes and rollers when we were painting the house.














2013 is off to a great start, and we look forward to whatever new adventures await us in our New House in the new year.

Keep those cards and letters
       bIsh

New House Blog: Episode XXXXVI - THEM!

Happy New Year and welcome back to the New House Blog.  Thank you for joining is in our first Episode of the new year.  You may have noticed that there have not been any Back Yard Archaeology updates in quite a while.  This is because, just like a lot of professional dig sites, we have both a digging season and a non-digging season at our dig sites.  We are now in the middle of our non-digging season, due in large part to the cooler weather and the shorter daylight hours.  However, even though digging is suspended until the season reopens, we are still working as hard as ever at researching the mosaic tiles we've extracted (seen in this Episode) and trying to correctly reconstruct their original pattern.

THEM!

Our new house was invaded recently.  Not by humans or small furry animals.  No, our New House was invaded by a force more insidious than either man or mammal (I know, man is technically a mammal, but just go with it).  We were invaded by THEM!

That's right, folks - giant mutant ants, and lots of them.  And when we say giant we mean small black ants.  As far as being mutants, we can't prove that they aren't, so that designation stays.

We first noticed them apparently sneaking under the frame of our sliding glass door, in the kitchen area.  They were headed mostly straight for the garbage and recycling can area.  Then we noticed them on the other side of the kitchen, crawling up the cabinet and feeding on a mote of food that did not get cleaned off of the stove-top.  Did I mention that they chose January 1, 2013, for their invasion?  Happy New Year!  Anyway, we didn't want to use regular RAID or Black Flag, or some other such insecticide inside, because of the cats, so it was a run to the store to get some pet-safe ant spray and ant traps.  While I was out getting the anti-ant chemicals Becky waged a might squishing war against the invaders, but they just kept coming.

I got home and we battled the ants together.

Naturally we prevailed, for even mutant ants are no match for two human brains working together.  We defeated the ants and mopped the kitchen floor to get rid of the ants' chemical trails and to get rid of the dead ants and anti-ant spray that was on the floor.  Then we thoroughly caulked around the sliding glass door frame to seal up any small gaps.  Next we carried the fight outdoors by spraying known ant trails, spraying any actual ants we found, putting traps by our orange trees, and spraying the entire perimeter of the house as a preventive measure.

No more ants.  

Or so we thought.

THEM! Part II

Shortly thereafter, on the same day, we casually looked behind the shower curtain in our downstairs bathroom and we discovered more ant invaders.  They had invaded our home on two different fronts!  Is any more evidence necessary to prove that these were indeed mutant ants?  Would normal ants think to invade at two different points?  Anyway, they were crawling about in the bathtub, mostly concentrated near the water spout and drain areas.  It took us a while, but eventually we discovered that this branch of ants was coming from within the bathroom wall, and they were entering the tub through a small gap at the base of the tub's water spout.  With this discovery we were properly prepared to step up our ant assault and be rid of the foul fiends.  Off came the tub spout, the shower handle, and the metal plate behind the shower handle.  Into the wall went the ant poison.  In this case we used a non-pet-safe product and we kept the door closed so the cats would not get into that bathroom.  

After a thorough chemical attack on the ants we watched and waited.  We watched and waited a long time.  No more living ants came through the holes in the wall.  We thought we had probably won the war again, but there was only one way to be sure - we would have to open up the wall to be sure we had exterminated this ant invasion.  Opening up the tub side was out of the question - it's a one-piece fiberglass insert with holes for the shower head, shower handle, water spout, drain, and drain lever.  The other side of the wall in in my office, and it's just plain drywall, so we went in from that side and no living ants were seen anywhere nearby.  We had won.  

The tub ant war led to a new repair project that will be described in a future Episode - the replacement/upgrading of the shower valve, shower handle, shower head, tub spout, and all related piping and plumbing.  We figured that since we had the wall opened up already and we had the new parts already, it would be a good time to tackle this project.

THEM! Part III

While we were battling the ants in the bathtub (it was more than a one-day battle) we noticed more ants in the kitchen, concentrated mainly around the stove/oven area and the sink area.  We also noticed that they were avoiding the areas of the cabinet that had been sprayed with the (pet-safe eco-friendly) anti-ant spray.  These ants were not crossing the floor from the sliding glass door area - they were coming from somewhere in the cabinet/stove/sink area.  It turns out that they had invaded on THREE fronts, not just the two fronts we suspected in Part II above.  

For a few days we squished and sprayed and wondered exactly where these ants were entering from.  We would  wipe them out and think we had figured it out only to see them again later in the same area.  We finally found them emerging from inside the lower cabinet on the left side of the oven, and we decided to try out some new ant baits.  In went the ant baits.  Against the cabinet door went a heavy tool box (to keep the cats out).  We followed the directions for the ant baits and waited and watched, and, like the instructions said  would happen, we first saw a massive increase in ants in the cabinet, then the numbers dwindled over a few days, until at last there were no living ants to be seen.  We had won the war.  

They tried to get in on three fronts.  They tried to discourage us by continually coming back.  But in the end they succumbed to their own greed and desire for tasty (to the ants) ant poison.  The end.

It's either us or

    bIsh

San Diego Living

This is another of my non-New-House-Blog blog postings.  We will be taking a tour of our Christmas trip to San Diego, California.  We drove down to San Diego on Monday, Christmas Eve, and we returned home on Saturday, December 29 (New Year's Eve Eve Eve).  We saw some sights, heard some sounds, smelled some smells, felt some feelings, tasted some tastes, and overall had a really great time.  Planned stops included Legoland California, the USS Midway, The San Diego Zoo, and Seaworld.  We also visited Torrey Pines State Reserve, and we spent a lovely evening with Becky's friends who live in San Diego.

Why San Diego

Why did we go to San Diego for at Christmas time?  It's warmer in San Diego at this time of year.  We wanted to get away from home, but we couldn't afford to go to far (what with buying a new house and all).  San Diego has some attractive attractions.  And I had never been to San Diego before.

The Drive South

After a late breakfast stop at a Sonic Drive-in that is on the way, we headed south - actually a bit east, then south.  We stopped briefly at the San Luis Reservoir to stretch our legs and look at the big hamburger.  Becky was really hungry that day, as can be seen in the photo below.

Our drive south was smooth and lightly trafficked.  It was probably the best traffic I have ever seen in Interstate 5 (also known as I-5).  We were able to zip along smoothly, and we only noticed a few semi trucks.

One of the highlights of the southward trip was our first sighting of a 6Z license plate.  If you're familiar with California's automobile license plate scheme this might make sense to you.  If not, it won't make sense.  Either way, feel free to ask us about it.



Accommodations

We stayed at the Best Western Seven Seas, on Hotel Circle, in San Diego.  The room was small, but it was clean, cozy, and comfortable.  We (I) enjoyed the heated swimming pool and super-heated hot tub.  The pool was quite over-chlorinated, however.

Legoland

We visited Legoland California on Christmas Day.  It was a good day to visit Legoland.  The weather was sunny and not-cold.  The crowds were not crowded.  Lines were pretty short and moved fairly quickly.

We went on several rides.  The roller coasters are pretty good, if a bit short.  We played miniature golf and got exactly the same score, despite my taking 10 strokes on one of the course's par 3s.  Miniland, the heart of Legoland, was pretty amazing.  The amount of detail they get into those models is incredible.  Here's an example from the New York City skyline area (it's the Citibank tower).

One of the highlights (lowlights?) of Legloland was watching a young, apparently unsupervised, child decide to play Godzilla and get onto some of the streets of New York City.  Just before the child crushed an innocent Lego vehicle, Becky admonished her to come off of the display and back to Legoland.  A woman, presumably the errant child's mother, stood nearby laughing at how cute her daughter had been to climb on the display and almost break things.  As for the Lego vehicle that was nearly crushed - it was apparently in shock and it wheeled itself away to recover from the ordeal (Seriously, it wheeled itself away.  Several of the vehicles on the displays are motorized and possibly somewhat autonomous.).

After our Legoland visit we decided to eat dinner.  Most evenings this would have been no problem.  Being Christmas Day, however, it was a bit of a challenge to find an open restaurant.  We eventually found the one open restaurant in the area - a TGIF - and had a very nice dinner, after a long wait to be seated.  It seems that everyone else in town was forced to eat at the same restaurant that night.

USS Midway

On Boxing day we visited the USS Midway museum in the morning.  The USS Midway (CV-41) visit was an awesome experience, and I could have happily spent more time aboard than we did.

There are a lot of planes and a few helicopters on the flight deck and on the hangar deck.  Several areas below deck are open for exploring, and there is a free audio tour available to all who visit the ship.  Sadly, there are also many areas that were not open to the public.  However, it would have been fairly easy to slip past the barriers (usually just a single chain across a doorway) and do some free-style exploring of the ship.  It would also have been easy to get completely lost in doing so.

I was able to really test out my phone's panoramic picture option on the Midway.

Across the bay from the Midway we could see the USNS Yukon (T-AO-202) and the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) moored at their respective moorings.

San Diego Zoo

In the afternoon, still on Boxing Day, we visited the San Diego Zoo.  In short, the zoo was awesome and huge.  An afternoon is not enough time to see the entire place, so we eventually focused on trying to see as many of the monkeys as possible (monkeys are funny).  We also noticed that the small birds got less and less interesting as the day progressed, and we started ignoring them after a while.

This is a view from the overhead skyway tram.

In addition to taking the skyway, we took the bus tour of the zoo.  The driver/guide mentioned that the zoo is also a large botanical garden.  It was after sunset and it was starting to get quite chilly out-of-doors when the bus tour ended, so we decided that our last stop at the zoo would be the reptile house.

It wasn't really a house at all, though - there was nowhere to go inside.  All of the displays were on the outside of the building.

Here's a polar bear.  Sand just isn't a good substitute for ice and snow.

Seaworld San Diego

We visited Seaworld on Thursday, December 27.  We were quite looking forward to Seaworld before we got there, but our entheusiasm waned quickly after we saw the Shamu show.  The short version is that we were rather disappointed overall with Seaworld, and slightly disappointed with the Shamu show.  Before the show we rode the Manta roller coaster, which was excellent.  For reasons that escape us now we decided to sit, for the Shamu show, in the soak zone.  Maybe we didn't believe the word, "soak," or maybe we just didn't care.  In the end it doesn't matter why we sat there - we got soaked.  Our upper halves were dry, thanks to having waterproof jackets with us, but our lower halves were inundated with salty water that seemed to get colder and wetter as the day progressed.  Not until we were thinking about leaving did our pants start to feel any less wet.

I've seen whale and dolphin shows before, way back in my childhood, so I thought I knew what to expect.  Nope.  I was wrong.  The show started with an inane video talking about one ocean, one earth, one planet, and such nonsense.  Then the live show began.  There was no talking, no announcing, no audience participation (who wants to feed a killer whale?), no humans riding on killer whales.  Nope.  The whales swam and jumped and did their thing to a pre-recorded soundtrack full of inane music.  They never did tell us which killer whale was Shamu.  And the show was quite short - maybe 15 minutes if you include the unneeded introductory video.  The soak zone, however, lived up to its name.  Did I mention that we got soaked?

The aquariums at Seaworld also disappointed.  They were small, the displays were all small, they were not any warmer or drier than the outside (an important consideration of your pants are soaking wet).  One bright spot was the Shark Experience.  I like sharks, and Seaworld has a good selection of sharks on display.

I did get a good chuckle from something the shark announcer said as we entered the Shark Experience.  She said, quite blatantly, that, "sharks don't eat people."  Ha ha.  Right.  Tell that to all of the people in history who have been eaten by sharks.  Tell that to the survivors of the USS Indianapolis.  Sharks don't eat people.  Hah!  She also claimed that people don't taste good to sharks.  Double Hah!  This is who they have announcing at the Shark Experience?  The sharks were quite impressive, despite the less-than-excellent announcer.

I had a Shamu cookie with my late lunch at Seaworld.  It was a really good cookie.

Torrey Pines State Reserve

On Friday, December 28, we visited Torrey Pines Sate Reserve.  It was a beautiful sunny day, and after we eventually found a parking space we enjoyed a nice hike up and down the hills of the park (and the parking lot).  The Torrey Pine, we were told, is a rare tree that only grows in a very small part of California.  We saw a lot of pine trees, but we can't be sure how many of them were Torrey Pines.

The park is situated right on the coast, and the hiking trails tend to head downhill toward the beach.  Not all of them actually reach the beach, however, but there are plenty of connecting trails.  Here's a panoramic view from the main trailhead.

We visited the beach, and we once again witnessed the potential destructive power of unsupervised children.  While we were viewing a tidepool area a young girl, possibly around 12, reached into a pool and looked like she was going to try to pull a small anemone off of a rock and out of the pool into the open air.  We didn't think that the poor anemone would enjoy this, so we advised her to leave the thing alone and stop pestering it.  She, of course, insisted that she was not, in fact, going to remove the anemone from its home pool, but we're pretty sure she was wrong.  Her parents were somewhere on the beach, but not in the immediate vicinity.

While we were enjoying our day at the state reserve a military helicopter (something in the CH-53 family, I believe) flew overhead roughly in a northerly direction.  However, when I tried to photograph it it refused to show up on my camera's viewfinding screen.  The helicopter was low enough that it should have shown up, but it didn't.  When this same helicopter, or one just like it, flew overhead in a roughly southerly direction it showed up on my camera's viewfinding screen.  Does the military possess some sort of top-secret camera-blocking technology?

The Drive North

We drove home, on Saturday, December 29 .  Our drive north was not as smooth or as free-flowing as was our drive south (How come I often initially type "Norty" when I want to type "North?").  Part of this was due, no doubt, to the snow.  Yes, we had to drive through the snow.  The snow started when we were on the Grapevine.  As we climbed the temperature dropped, the precipitation started, and the traffic slowed.  At a few thousand feet of elevation the rain turned into snow and traffic slowed again.  It didn't seem to be a heavy snow, but it was a nice, decent snow, and as we got higher up it was sticking to the ground more, at least on the non-road parts of the ground - it didn't seem to stick to the road itself.  It's probably a good thing that traffic slowed down.  The road was wet, and it was only a degree or two above freezing.  The car's external thermometer got as low as 33 degrees (Farenheit), and we were a little concerned with the possibility of encountering ice on the road, but we experienced no ice and we enjoyed the spectacular visuals that the snowfall provided.  After the Grapevine there was no more snow and traffic sped up.  Then for the next few hours it was the typical I-5 experience - slow drivers in the left lane who don't want to (or are too stupid to) pull over to let faster drivers go by, truck drivers who feel compelled to pass one another over a very long distance, trying to leapfrog around slow groups of traffic, etc.  All things considered, we made pretty decent time coming home.

Recap

To recap briefly: Legoland - yes, go visit it; USS Midway Museum - yes, absolutely go visit it; San Diego Zoo - yes, absolutely go visit it; Seaworld - overrated, don't waste your money, unless you just have to have a Shamu cookie; Torrey Pines State Reserve - yes, to visit it, but be aware of the crowded parking lots.  There are a lot of other places in the San Diego area that looked quite interesting, but we simply did not have the time to see them all.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good
      bIsh