New House Blog: Episode LX - At Your Disposal

One thing I have learned this week is that Russell Crowe cannot be thwarted, at least in the movies.  This I learned from the recent movie, Man of Steel.  Something else I learned is that thornless honey locust trees can apparently propagate from left-over roots in the ground.  More on this later.  And it's not just in Man of Steel that Russell Crowe is thwartless.  Think of Gladiator and Master and Commander.  In each of these movies he...he um...you see...um...and then...getting back to the subject at hand, since this is the New House Blog, and not the Russell Crowe Movie Blog, and before we get too carried away...

We would like to warmly welcome back the Parents' House for its second appearance on the New House Blog.  The Parents' House had a seized-up garbage disposal, and I took charge in the replacement thereof.  And like Russell Crowe, I was not thwarted.

Garbage Disposal Replacement

Regular readers of the New House Blog will recall that this is not the first disposal that has been replaced in the New House Blog.  In this Episode we replaced our old, gnarly, gritty, grimy, grody, grungy, disposal with a new Insinkerator Badger.  At the Parents' House I was dealing with an old Badger 1, and replacing it with a new Badger 100.  Both units look identical on the outside, and all of the holes lined up in exactly the same places, so no new piping or routing was needed.  What was needed, however, was a new power cord (not included), wire holder (not included), and wire nuts (not included) - in other words, a new wiring kit from Insinkerator.  This repair went quite smoothly, and when I left the Parents' house all was leak-free.  I haven't gotten any calls, emails, or texts to say otherwise, yet, so I assume that it's all still working as it should.

 This is the offending old Badger 1, before replacement.

 This is an overview of the setup.  Look how clean it is below the kitchen sink.

Badger down!

 Now we see what the setup looks like with all of the old parts removed.

The new flange assembly is in place.  If you look closely you might be able to see a bit of plumbers putty.

 The new unit is wired up.

 The new Badger 100 is in place.  As I said earlier, it looks a lot like the old Badger 1.

It's still clean and dry under the sink.  And look at how nicely the connecting holes line up with the existing plumbing.







Thornless Honey Locust Update

When the Tree Elite crew removed our old thornless honey locust, hereafter referred to as THL to save typing, they only removed the roots in the immediate vicinity of the stump - they left a large crop of roots buried in the parking strip.  This we discovered quite by accident.  We noticed what looked like THL seedlings sprouting out of the ground in our parking strip.  When we dug up one of these seelings we found it to be growing directly out of a buried root.  The following picture illustrates this.

These are seedlings that were growing directly from a buried root.  We decided that we should dig up the root pieces that had live seedlings sprouting from them.

 You can (barely) see one such root fragment.  This one put up quite a fight, but like Russell Crowe we prevailed in the end.

This shows some root fragments we dug up.  There is more rootage in the parking strip, but we will probably leave things lie for now, unless more THL seedlings sprout up.



Cactus Update

One of our prickly pear cactus is in bloom.

 So far it has two blossoms.

 This is a closeup of a blossom.

You are looking at a bee inside of the blossom.  Maybe our prickly pear will produce some fruit.

Our sunburst cactus is also flowering.  Here we see a bud, and we hope to see the blossom in the next few days.







Are you not entertained?  Is that not why you are
   bIsh

New House Blog: Episode LCVIIII - Meet The Parents' House

We at the New House Blog are pleased to bring you this extra special Episode of the New House Blog, in which we feature our first ever guest star.  Give a warm New House Blog welcome to the Parents' House!  This is the first appearance of the Parents' House on this, or any, blog, and we are happy to share with you our recent visit to the Parents' House.  I should clarify here that by "we" I mean "I."  Becky was not with me at the Parents' House for the repair work I recently completed.  More on that repair work in a bit - but first some background information about our guest star.

The Parents' House is a manufactured home, customized and bought new by my parents in 1997.  I lived there with my parents for a while, and it has been a focus point and family gathering place for many birthdays, Thanksgivings and Christmases.  As with any house, the Parents' House needs occasional maintenance and/or repair work.  In this case, the hose spigot in the backyard had developed a leak, and the local handyman said that it was a really weird spigot that he could not fix.  Upon hearing this I was intrigued and asked if I might take a look at this spigot and see if I could do anything to stop the leaking.

Spigot Replacement

The spigot did indeed turn out to be unusual.  The first step was to pull it out from the wall to see how it connected to the house plumbing.

This is the spigot after I pulled it out from the wall a bit.  In my experience, admittedly limited in this regard, you can't normally pull a spigot out of the wall in this manner.

Here is a look at the backside of the spigot.  In this view it appears to be welded, or brazed, on to a regular 3/4" copper pipe.  I Didn't see an obvious way to detach the spigot, so I thought it would be a good idea to look for the other end of the connection 'neath the house.









'Neath The House

Fortunately for me, there are convenient easy-access doors leading to the sub-basement of the Parents' House.  I chose the most convenient easy-access door and plunged in head-first (after donning my protective hat, dust filter, and long-sleeve shirt).  Here goes.

 Peering through the easy-access door.

 Doesn't look too bad, so far.

No spiders sighted, yet.

 Looking out of a vent.  Can you spot the square, purplish flower pot?

 Still no spiders.

Heading back to the easy-access door.  Unfortunately for me, all of the relevant plumbing is hidden in-wall, so I did not find the other end of the spigot's connection.

The sub-basement looked very clean and dry, and I saw no signs of life, save an ancient dried-up spider exoskeleton that had obviously been dead and dried-up for years.  Also, no plant life of any kind was observed under the house.

Plan B

Since I couldn't access the in-wall end of the spigot's plumbing connection it was time to move on to plan B - cutting through the copper pipe, fitting it with a nonthreaded-to-threaded coupler, then fitting a standard threaded hose spigot (also called a hose bibb).  A quick run was made to Home Depot and plan B was enacted.

The end of the copper pipe, post hacksaw.  After cutting through the pipe I discovered a surprise inside the pipe.  Those of you who are familiar with this type of hose bibb already know what I found - a metal rod with threading on one end.  That's all I'll say about that for now, but it will make sense when I explain in more detail later.

After extracting the metal rod I attached a Sharkbite 3/4" female connector to the copper pipe and then installed a standard 3/4" hose bibb into the Sharkbite connector.  Sharkbite is also the brand of PEX we used in our shower valve replacement projects, seen in this Episode and this Episode.

This is the completed repair.  The wall was caulked with genuine silicone caulk, and a Nelson Flex Connect Shut-off Hose Adapter was added to simplify operation.














The More Detailed Explanation

The hose bibb on the Parents' House was a Nibco Fig. #90 frost-proof silcock.  Apparently it is designed to be impervious to frost or freezing, neither of which is a huge concern out here in the Silicon Valley.  Ironically, it may have been frost that killed this particular Nibco 90.  As my dad tells it, the leak started the day after a particularly cold night - before that it had never leaked.

But what exactly is a Nibco Fig. #90 frost-proof silcock?  Basically it consists of a copper pipe with threading on one end and a spigot on the other end.  The spigot end also contains an integrated anti-backflow device.  Inside the copper pipe is a copper rod that attaches to the knob on one end and has threads and rubber washers on the other end.  This other end, with the washers, controls the actual water flow.  Below is a picture of the Parents' House's Nibco 90 post-hacksaw.

The following picture, from http://www.familyhandyman.com/, will help you to understand how this type of spigot works.

See this link for more detailed information.








We would like to thank the Parents' House for appearing in this Episode of the New House Blog.  If your house would like to be a guest star on the New House Blog please send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the owner of this blog,  Said envelope should contain a crisp new $20 bill and a brief explanation of the repair or project to be detailed in the New House Blog.

Bonus Produce Update

We have harvested our first purple bell peppers of the season, and our first potatoes of the season.

These peppers went into a stir-fry.

Interestingly, purple bells turn green when cooked, but not the same green as green bells.

The potatoes did not go into the stir-fry.













If you don't feel comfortable sending cash through the mail, we will also accept gift cards and cashier's
   bIsh

New House Blog: Episode LCVIII - Water And Fire(works)

Happy Belated 4th of July to all of you blog readers out there.  And what a 4th of July it was for us in our New House.  Since this year's 4th was the first 4th we've experienced in our New House we didn't quite know what to expect; we only knew that one of our neighbors was planning to light off a few fireworks at some point in the night.  This information was obtained by Bish whilst he was talking with....  Well, more on that later.  For now let's just say that from the time we got home from supper on the 4th, at around 9pm (due in large part to very slow service at our local Chile's restaurant), to past midnight we heard a seemingly constant barrage of noise.  Explody, boomy noises permeated the air for more than three hours.  Mostly they were far off booms and explosions, but their constant presence in the background was unexpected.  More details on that later.  First, let's get the watery part of this Episode out of the way so that we can get back to talking about the explody sights and sounds from our 4th of July night.

Water

The time had come to remove the extraneous plumbing from the front yard hose hook-up.  It was a mess of L-bends, anti-backflow devices, superfluous spigots, and PVC.  We believe that most, or all, of the extraneous plumbing was left over from a now-defunct sprinkler system (said sprinklers were removed in this Episode) and a now-non-existent water softener system.

 Look at all of that extra, superfluous, and unnecessary plumbing.

What an over-complicated, overly-complex mess!












All of that extra superfluousness has been removed and replaced by a brand new 1/4-turn spigot.

Look at that beautiful simplicity.  Some of the old parts can be seen in the background.  If you recall, the same exact type of spigot was first seen in this Episode in our laundry room.


Garden Update Interlude

Before we get to the exciting explosions we must interject a garden update interlude.  Our back yard garden is still doing well.  We are now actively harvesting some of its bounty, but some of its bounty is not quite harvest-ready yet.  So far we have partaken of onions, lettuce, radicchio, beet greens, and lemon cucumbers, which you can see below.

These are the first lemon cucumbers harvested from our eating garden.  The apple cucumbers, melons, beets, and potatoes are all still maturing.

 This is the back area of the garden.  As you can see, the melon plants have spread out quite a bit.  Also seen in this photo are the radicchio, beets, onions, potatoes, and catnip.

 This is another view of the radicchio, beets, and onions.  Also seen are the strawberries and a cucumber plant.

This is the front area of the garden.  Seen here are strawberries, two cucumber plants (which seem intent on taking over the entire garden), lettuce, and catnip.















Fireworks

It all started on the night of July 3.  A few medium-sized bangs had been heard from neighboring streets, and then KABOOM!  The big one.  It rattled windows and set of a car alarm.  And it came from just a few houses away on our street.  Well, I had to see what was going on and who had detonated this small artillery shell.  I walked outside and looked up the street to where a group of people was standing around.  I walked up to this group of 4 (or maybe 5) 20-something men and asked if they were the ones who initiated the unexpected eardrum assault.  They were the ones, and while I was talking to them one of them set off another firework - this one being the kind that shoots into the sky and explodes in a brilliant burst of color and light (and noise).  They were testing out two of their toys in preparation for the next night's festivities.  One of them, the only one slurring his speech, said that they were going to provide quite the show on the 4th of July.  I told them it was nice to meet them, and then I returned home and warned Becky of the noise to come.

On July 4th said neighbors were true to their word.  Sometime late at night, well after 9pm, they provided quite the neighborhood show.  And I'm not talking about the small stuff we used to play with as kids.  They weren't quite professional-grade, either - somewhere in-between, I think.  Despite it being technically illegal in San Jose to light off fireworks, we didn't see any real point in calling the Police, so we decided to enjoy the show and comfort the cats as best we could.  As it turned out, Satchmo was the most affected by the noise, and by the other various explody noises that night, and Miles hid under his chair much of the time; Daisy was rather blase about the whole thing.  I managed to capture some pictures of the event - some from the front yard and some from our upstairs balcony.

 This first set of photos was taken from the front yard.

 As you can see, the camera had trouble focusing on some of the bursts.

 Despite how it may appear, the fireworks were not actually shooting out of anyone's chimney.

 This next set shows what we saw (and heard) from the neighbors from our upstairs balcony.

In addition to seeing our neighbor's fireworks show, we were able to view (thanks to the flatness of Silicon Valley) several other fireworks displays in neighboring neighborhoods and surrounding areas.

 Look at that flat, low horizon.

For the record, and just in case any law-enforcement personnel are reading this, we do not know precisely which neighbor's house was the originator of the neighborhood fireworks display, nor do we remember any of the names of any of the people who may have been involved.

Bonus BYA Update

We conclude this Episode with a bonus Back Yard Arachaeology update.  While uprooting some unwanted foxtails along the front sidewalk, (As mentioned in this Episode I am including all of the yards under the blanket umbrella category of Back Yard Archaeology) I uncovered a rusty artifact - a pop rivet, of the type that would be used with the old rusted-out rivet gun first discussed in this Episode.  Here is a picture.  The glove is included to show scale.

Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it.
   bIsh