New House Blog: Episode XCVI - Updating The Hood Again

You may recall this Episode, from May of 2016, in which we showed updates from both the 'hood (the neighborhood), and the hood (the hood over the stove).  In this Episode we re going to do the same, again, with one difference - we will have local 'hood updates and a guest house hood update.

'Hood Update #1

The first local 'hood update is this: our pear harvest is in full swing.  So far the Slimy Squirrels have not gotten into our pears enough to be a nuisance, and we have had a couple of harvesting sessions.  We have lost a few pears due to them becoming over-ripe and falling off the tree (and splattering on the ground), but we still have several ripening pears on the tree for future harvesting.  There is no picture of pears in this Episode.

Hood Update Part I

The Parents' House came with a hood over the stove, and it worked for many years, but it eventually wore out and needed replacement.  Since I have experience with hood replacement, I was happy to tackle this project.  As with our Cat-filled House, the hood in the Parent's House was not fancy - just a plain, garden-variety hood that did its job for many years.

This is a front view of the hood, and the surrounding environment. Note that I took this photo after loosening some of the mounting screws.  The hood did not sag like that in real life. Note also that the breaker for the hood is already turned off.

This is the view from below.  Note that the filter has been removed from the fan already.

Here is a close-up of the electrical connections. There was a protective cover over these connections when the hood was in use.  After disconnecting the wires I removed the mounting screws completely and uninstalled the old hood.

And this is what I found behind the old hood - the exhaust vent. Let's take a slightly closer look at that vent.

It doesn't really show very well in the picture, but this is not a properly-constructed hood vent. The rectangular conduit was not the same size as either the hood's exhaust port, or the outside vent. Said conduit was a seemingly random-sized piece of conduit loosely placed in the wall and not sealed at either end in any way. Possibly someone stuck it in there and said, "That's close enough.  No one will ever know."  Well, we know, and it was not good enough, which meant I would have to replace or rebuild the exhaust vent, in addition to replacing the hood.

'Hood Update #2

This past summer there have been a few fires in the hills surrounding our Cat-hair-filled House.

This fire was photographed from my workplace, and I believe it burned a few hundred acres.  It may have been started by a car fire.

This fire was photographed while I was on my way home from picking up supper (or dinner) after work one late afternoon.  I don't recall how many acres it burned.







Hood Update Part II

The next step after removing the old hood was to prep and install the new hood.

This is the new hood, pre-installation.  The old hood was 42" wide, but the local Home Depot only had 30" and 36" hoods.  It was decided that a 36" hood would be fine.  This hood was designed to be used for top venting, rear venting, or non-venting installations.  I would be using the rear venting option, so I sealed up the top vent cutout and installed the included little flapper door on the rear vent.

Mounting this hood was relatively easy, thanks to its mounting rail system.  I bolted the rails into place (after careful measurement), then partially mounted the new hood on the front part of the rails to insert and connect the electrical wires. My mom helped hold the hood in place while I made said electrical connections. After that I fully mounted the new hood on to the rails and bolted it into place.

Here you can see the hood's electrical wires spliced to the house's electrical wires.  I got a bit confused while splicing and used green electrical tape instead of my signature yellow electrical tape.  I don't know why I even have green electrical tape. After connecting the electrical connections I re-installed the cover for the electrical connections.

'Hood Update #3

This mysterious truck was parked across the street from our Cat-Food-Filled House for a couple of days.  Why would a commercial water truck be parked on a residential street for a couple of days?  Does the company let employees use these trucks as personal vehicles? The truck disappeared as mysteriously as it had appeared.  Hmmm....

Hood Update Part III

Now it was time to tackle that vent replacement, which meant a second trip to the local Home Depot.  I searched for parts to rebuild the vent and conduit, and I found a one-piece unit that was exactly what I was looking for (conduit and vent as a single unit).  It fits the exhaust port of the new hood flushly, it has its own little flapper door, and I just needed to trim its conduit for length.

This is the old vent, way up high on the wall.

As you can see, the old vent was made of plastic, and it was held in place by nails.  It was not too much trouble to remove the nails and the old vent (although the vent did not come off in one piece).

Here is the new, one-piece vent (with built-in flapper door).  As you can see, it is secured with bolts and copious amounts of silicone-based caulk.

The caulk came out of the tube white, but it cured clear.  The new vent works great. The flapper door opens when there's air pressure from the exhaust fan, and it closes up nicely to keep critters and varmints out.

This is the new hood in place and running at full power.  You can almost feel the air moving at 300 cfm.  The sheetrock in this photo comes from the old hood.  The old hood had a hollow area on top, and the sheetrock was in the hollow area.

And this is what the stove area looks like now with normal lighting and everything back in place.












Anybody know how to clean a bug zapper?
    bIsh

New House Blog: Episode XCV - Problematic PVC

There's something about old PVC - something thin and fragile and easily-breakable.  Or maybe it's just the old PVC that we have discovered buried in various places around our Lovely House.  As mentioned in this Episode, digging up a random piece of PVC while planting a peach tree lead to a simple PVC repair, and that simple repair led to a much larger project.

The Leak

The logical place to start is with the leak.  While excavating the random PVC in the picture below (while digging the gigantic hole for our new peach tree), we accidentally punctured a different, water-filled PVC pipe.  This punctured PVC pipe runs out to the hose hookup by our food garden, and we use said hose hookup pretty much every day in the dry season.

We initially dealt with said leak by turning off the water to the affected pipe, but we knew this alone would not fix the leak.

A little digging revealed the extent of the damage - not much - and it looked like it would be a simple cut and splice job, with some blue PVC cement thrown in.

We spliced in a new section of PVC, let everything cure overnight, turned on the water, and BAM!  New leak.  D'oh!  But it wasn't leaking from our repair - it was a new break in the old PVC.  Ok.  No big deal.  We'll just do another repair and be done with it.

As you can see, we thought we were done with it a few times, but new leaks kept popping up. Again, our repairs were good, but the old PVC kept springing new leaks.  At this point we realized that we needed to change our course of action, and we looked at the old PVC a little closer to see why it kept springing new leaks.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this Episode, there's something about old PVC.  And the something is that it is paper thin and it breaks at the least provocation.  Thus, our repairs were only going to keep causing more new leaks in the old PVC. Time for plan B.

Plan B

Faced with the situation above, we decided to replace the whole length of PVC from the initial break point out to the hose hookup by the food garden.  The first step in this replacement was, of course, digging up the old pipe.

No, that curving trench is not a result of the camera lens - the trench did really curve quite a bit, as did the old PVC pipe.  The pre-Bishopians, instead of doing the sensible thing (using some PVC elbows), simply curved the pipe and buried it with a lot of built-in tension, which contributed to its fragility.
Note that the punctures in this photo are from our excavation. We saw no need to be careful in this case.

At left is the old hose hookup.

Here you can see some of the new materials.

Here is a close-up of some flexible PVC.  The sign at the store said it was a new product, and it seemed like a perfect fit for our particular project.

BYA* Update

Yes, folks, we're still excavating ancient artifacts at our Great House.  Five years since taking ownership, and ancient items still turn up!  It's amazing!  We could probably dig up all of our yards, run all of the dirt through some sieves, and find all kinds of good stuff!  But that would use up all of the excitement of discovery at once, and we think it's best to spread that excitement out over time, so we will continue our excavations at their current pace.

These first items were excavated from the old PVC trench, I think.  At least one of them was, I'm pretty sure.  Anyway, we see more rusted metal, which seems to be a theme with pre-Bishopian artifacts.

Next up is this rusted fastener of some sort.  It seems to have some threading on various parts, and there is possibly a nut and washer rusted onto the main piece.

This little fellow was dug up from the old PVC trench.  It's proof that the pre-Bishopians at least knew of PVC elbows.  It doesn't tell us why they chose not to use any such elbows in this case. Perhaps they only had the one?

We conclude this BYA update with this mysterious glass jar.  The foxtail is included for scale.  As you can see, it's not a large jar, and it appears to have some threading for a lid.  I don't remember quite where I dug it up, but there were no other jars nearby. My guess is that the pre-Bishopians traded for this jar, as there is no evidence, yet, of any glassworks at our Archaeological House.  

*As a reminder, BYA is short for Back Yard Archaeology.

Plan B Continued

Back to plan B.  We're now at the actual installation phase, and all went according to plan (plan B).

Look at those nice, straight, un-bent lengths of PVC.  It's beautiful!  And that flexible bit of PVC really made the job a lot simpler.

This is the view from the hose hookup end.  Note the old PVC alongside the new.  We decided to leave it there to provide a mystery for any future archaeologists who might dig up this section of non-leaky PVC.

This is the new hose hookup. Look at that fancy brick work.

After testing the new line for leaks we buried it all - old, new, formerly-leaky, non-leaky.  After filling in the trench we used our trusty tamper to tamp down the dirt.  We did such a marvelous job that we can't tell exactly where the trench is anymore.

While working on this project I listened to a lot of episodes of the old radio show X Minus One on my iPod.

Ending Bonus Photo

I saw this earlier today, and I think it speaks for itself.

Happy Independence Day!

   bIsh

New House Blog: Episode XCIIII - A Tale Of Two Workbenches

This is a tale of two workbenches.  One is old, and one is new.  There's a third one in the story somewheres, but it is only a background character of little consequence to our tale.

Act I - The Old Vise

Our story begins with a vise - an old bench vise.  This particular bench vise was originally in my grandpa's house (my mom's dad), and when he passed away the vise was moved to our house and installed on the house's workbench.  We were renting the house, and the workbench was there when we moved in.  It plays no part in our tale, except as perch for the old vise.

This is a photo of the old vise.  I have memories of using old vise a lot in that house.  I used it to hold stuff, to bend metal, to pound out metal, to squish stuff flat, and to do other things I don't quite recall. Everyone should have a vise to play with.

When we were preparing to move out of that house, and into the house that is known in this blog as the Parent's House, my dad and I decided that the old vise would come with us, and we would build a new workbench for it.

Here's another view of the old vise, and the workbench that me and my dad built for it.  That was a long time ago, and how much either of us contributed to the building of this workbench depends on whom you asked.  I recall that I did the majority of the work to build it, but my dad recalled differently.  He passed on recently, and it doesn't really matter now.   The important thing is that it's something we built together.

Here is the workbench without the clutter on top.  We built it to fit inside a shed, so it's not real big; but we built it sturdily, and we got a lot of use from it. Several years ago, long after I had moved out of the house, some termites got into the workbench and my dad had to do some repairs, so it's not quite 100% as originally built, but it's pretty close.  The old vise is still in great condition, and its patina has only gotten more beautiful as the years have progressed.

After my dad's passing I was going to retrieve the workbench and put it in our garage at our Solar House (still working on a new moniker for the house), but when I actually went to retrieve it I changed my mind and decided it should stay at the Parent's House, at least for the time being.

Intermission I - Tree Tragedy

Poor nectarine tree.  You didn't ask to be so productive that your branches would be weighted down with delicious nectarines and bend and break.

But you did bend and break, and we are the poorer for your sad plight.  If only we had known how heavy are your delicious fruits we would have taken steps to alleviate your stress and help you bear your delicious burden.  Alas, it is too late for the sections that snapped without warning, but there are still a lot of delicious nectarines on the tree (and now on the ground) for us to look forward to harvesting.









Act II - The Background Player

Here is the background player.

I had always known (at least since we bought our Sunny House in May, 2012) that our Sturdy House would need a workbench.  So I built one from materials at-hand. This temporary workbench originally appeared in this Episode, and it was never meant to be more that a temporary solution until I could build something sturdier and larger.  This workbench served me well these past few years, but now it has been surpassed by something newer, larger, stronger, sturdier, and which has a vise.

Intermission II - Fruitful Fortune

Ah, nectarine tree - your tragedy has turned into a bountiful harvest for us.

Behold the harvest!  We could not abide the thought of all of those delicious nectarines remaining on the ground for the various varmints to consume, so we took a closer look at the the doomed fruits on your snapped-off branches, and we found a bounty of beauties that we have washed and started consuming.  And we will be monitoring more closely the fruits still clinging tenaciously to your branches.

Act III - The New Workbench

It started with an idea, and a drawing.

I can't show you a photo of the idea, but here is the drawing.  It is crude, and not entirely to scale, but it was a written plan that I could use for reference. The first workbench, built by me and my dad, also started as and idea and a drawing. That old drawing was also crude and not entirely to scale, but it guided us to produce the workbench you saw at the beginning of this Episode.

The drawing first led to this basic shape, which was first leaked in this Episode.  I think of this assembly as the foundation, because everything else kind of builds off of this structure.

The first piece to be attached to the foundation was the main deck of the new workbench.

The new workbench sprouted legs, attached to the foundation.  The red lines on top of the deck mark the outline of the foundation.  I used my snapline, and having that outline was better than simply guessing where to screw in the screws.

The lower bracing and shelf were the next pieces to be attached.

As the old workbench does, so to does this workbench have a vise.  In looking for a good vise I discovered that there are a lot of inexpensive cast iron vises available, but they don't get great reviews on Amazon - there are a lot of reviews that talk about cast iron vises simply breaking during normal use.  I paid a little more and got a Capri forged steel bench vise.

Finally the new workbench was ready to move to its new location, and the temporary workbench was disassembled into its component parts, mostly.  The deck of the temporary workbench was attached to the wall and became a holder for various tools, some of which were inherited from my dad.

My dad's circular saw and c-clamps were of great use in the making of this workbench.

The End
    bIsh

New House Blog: Episode XCIII - Five Years Already

Yes, it's been five short years since we bought our New House, and that got me to wondering if I should still refer to our New House as such.  Perhaps it's time for a change: our Awesome House?  our Wonderful House?  our Rescued-From-Inept-Previous-Owners House?  our House?  our Great House?  our Blue House?  our House O' Many Cats?  our House Of Four Gables?  Whatever I decide upon, it should be short and easy to type - ideally no more than a one-syllable adjective, such as I have been using.  What do y'all think?  Maybe I'll experiment with various house monikers as I type up this exciting Episode.  The title, however, will not change - the Episodes will still be titled as New House Blog: etc...

We had 45 Episode that first year of being New House owners, and that was only from May to December.  In the following years the number of Episodes has declined, as has the frequency of posting, but the New House Blog continues steadily on.  In this Episode we discuss our annual spring plantings, a brief note regarding a new self-imposed water leak, an encounter with a legendary spider, and a cute cat picture.

But first a brief update on a couple of fruit trees.  In the previous Episode we had to prune the pear tree because of fire blight.  Well, we recently had to do a second, more intense, round of pruning due to a new fire blight outbreak.  Our nectarine tree is also suffering from a blight - leaf curl.  We noticed it too late for treatment to be effective this season, but we can treat it in the fall to prevent a recurrence next spring.  Fortunately, the actual nectarines are unaffected.

Spring Planting 1: Edibles

Let's start things off with our annual spring planting.  I know it's June now, but it's still spring, and we planted the new plants a few weeks before today, so it still counts as spring plantings.  Not everything was planted at once, but I'm going to divide our plantings into their garden groups and not the actual chronological order of plantings. First up is our food garden.

Every year we plant a food garden, but this year we have decided to cut back a bit and focus on only a few vegetables and/or fruits.  We currently have one cucumber plant, some strawberry and hula berry plants, and some catnip in the food garden. We have started various varieties of honeydew (from seeds) in pots, and we will be transplanting them into the food garden when they have matured a bit.

This is the food garden as it currently sits.  The large mass of leaves on the left consists of various strawberry and hula berry vines. The persian cucumber is in the lower right of the frame.  Note also the catnip.

These pots contain our various varieties of honedew, grown from seeds.
















Next in line is our pottery garden, which contains the usual assortment of peppers and herbs.  There's no photo of the pottery garden, but it looks pretty much the same as it did last year at this time.

We now move on to what I have begun to call Berry Row.  We added two loganberry seedlings to Berry Row, between the raspberries and the geraniums.

Our two loganberry plants are thriving.  In addition to providing delicious loganberries, they should also provide some shade for the cyclamens, which are not happy with our full California summer sun.

Berry Row.  From top to bottom: catnip, blueberries, pink lemonade blueberries, geraniums, loganberries, and raspberries.








Spring Planting 2: Cactus

We have added our usual two new cactus plants to our expanding cactus garden.

The first is known as Indian Corn Cob (Euphorbia Mammiliaris Variegata).

The second new cactus is called the Apple Cactus (Cereus Peruvianus).

Here you can see the two new cactus in context.











Spring Planting 3: Succulents

I hereby declare that the succulent garden is finally and officially full.  We recently filled the remaining nooks and crannies, and now there is simply no more room in our succulent garden for new plants.

First up, replacing our stomped-on-by-painters blue finger plant, is this Spear Head Senecio (Senecio Kleinilformis).  Like some of our other succulents, the spear head is native to South Africa.

Filling a small vacancy is this Key Lime Pie (Adromischus Cristatus).  This is another South African native.

Next up we have this Kalanchoe Longiflora Coccinea (Kalanchoe Longiflora Coccinea).  This one is native to Natal.

And here is the final addition to the succulent garden (unless something doesn't survive) - the Dragon's Blood (Sedum Spurium), chosen partly because of its cool name.  This is one of my favourites, and it replaces a voodoo plant stalk that grew to about 4' tall then slowly died.  The rest of the voodoo plant is fine, but the dead stalk left a hole that we were obliged to fill. Once again, the succulent garden is officially full.

Spring Planting 4: Non-Garden

When we moved into our Beautiful House there was a large bladed plant by the front door.  We never bothered to learn its name, but it began to bother me this year, so we pulled it out and replaced it with a Scarlet Flame (Callistemon V. Scarlet Flame).

You can see the old plant to the left of the front door. It was just kind of there, we never watered it, and it kept dropping seeds that would sprout and have to be removed.

Here is the new scarlet flame plant, also to the left of the front door.

Up close you can better see the red blooms that give it its name.  We do water this one. With this planting we have pretty much replaced every single plant in front of our Verdant House. We have not, however, replaced the giant redwood in the front yard.

Spring Planting 5: Fruit Tree

In what may be becoming an annual tradition, we planted a new fruit tree - an Arctic Supreme White Peach tee, and this planting led to another Arboreal House project, which we can mostly blame on the pre-Bishopians.

While digging the gigantic hole for our new peach tree we encountered this unexpected greenish/grayish pvc pipe.  We had already picked the spot for planting, and put some effort into digging the hole, so we weren't going to give up this spot easily.  We excavated a little and discovered that the pipe was already broken and empty, so it was safe to remove.

And this is what lead to the other project, which will be covered in detail in another Episode.  While excavating along the length of this extraneous, enigmatic, oddly-coloured pipe we accidentally punctured a live water pipe, which caused minor flooding of the hole before we could activate the appropriate shutoff valve.  The punctured pipe leads to the hose outlet by our food garden, so the direct impact of the damage was minor.

As you can see, the total length of this random pipe is not great, but its position was annoying, and its presence led to extra picking, digging, and a small project that turned into a larger project.  Those pre-Bishopians: you think you're finally free of their ineptness, then you come across something like this.  Grrr....

Anyway, despite the best efforts of the pre-Bishopians we successfully planted our new peach tree.  It has a few small peaches already, so we hope for a harvest this year.

Our new peach tree in context.  As you can see, the apricot tree has really flourished - it was about the same size as the peach tree when we planted it in 2014.








Legendary Spider Encounter

And now for my nighttime encounters, and battles, with a spider of legend.  If you are squeamish you may want to skip this section.  It was nighttime, of course, on a Thursday.  I had rolled the wheelbarrow into the back yard so I could take a load of pruned pear branches out to the street for the city to collect the following morning.  I was approaching the pear tree on one of our paver paths, and I recoiled suddenly, spun around in a circle, and set the wheelbarrow down across the path - all of this was one motion, and it happened purely by instinct, before my conscious mind had processed what was happening.  When my brain caught up to my instincts I realized with some alarm that I had nearly walked into the biggest spiderweb I have ever seen at our Anti-Spider House.  And in the middle of this gigantic tree-to-ground web was the giant, legendary spider Shelob.  Yes folks, if you've ever wondered where she ran off to after being stabbed by Sting, wonder no more - she made her way to our Fruitful House.

This was a truly massive web, and a truly massive spider.  The pictures don't adequately show her colors, but I believe she was some variety of orb weaver.

Here's a photo from the other side of the web that should give a little more scale and perspective.  After taking some photos I decided to knock down the web and eliminate Shelob.

Shelob, however, did not relish so much attention and light, so she retreated into the pear tree, where her grayish coloring allowed her to blend in nicely.  I knew she was only hiding, so for the next couple of days after the initial encounter (and knocking down of her web of course) both Becky and I were vigilant in looking up into the pear tree when walking beneath it, and in looking for more webs.

One night I decided to go out and look for a new web construction, and I found her in mid-construction. Shelob must have recognized me for the great spider vanquisher that I am, because she beat a hasty retreat, as you can see in this photo. I knocked down the new web and searched the tree for her.  This time her coloring did not sufficiently blend in to the tree's coloring, and I spotted her on a low limb of our pear tree.  I hastened inside to retrieve my trusty fly swatter, and then I returned to the tree, and in a single thwack ended the life of Shelob, the evil spider of legend.

Cute Cat Ending

Let's wrap this up on a happy note with a cute cat picture.

Happy 5th House Anniversary!
    bIsh