Sunday, April 26th, 2009
It appears they are both.
If you haven’t noticed, lawn weeds are starting to hit hard. It’s been hot for the past few days and this is prime season for all those ugly critters to take hold in your lawn. I actually just went out yesterday to get a few bottles of Ortho Weed-B-Gone, along with the hand sprayer that hooks up to a garden hose. I sprayed the front yard today and am going to wait to see what that looks like. I’ll let you know.
Since I had the guys at Scotts Lawn Service put down some pre-emergent herbicide, I am sitting here wondering why the lawn is starting to have weeds grow in it. There are some spots with crabgrass, but other weeds are growing as well. The whole thing got me thinking about which lawn weeds are annuals and which ones are perennials.
I found a nice description of the most common lawn weeds over at this website. I’ll put the weeds in a list for you:
Perennial Lawn Weeds
- Dandelion
- Ground ivy
- Clover
- Plantain
- Nutsedge
Annual Lawn Weeds
- Crabgrass
- Annual bluegrass
- Knotweed
I think we pretty much have all of these weeds, so my work is cut out for me.
I know that a lot hinges on how nice and full lawn grass grows. We have a few bare spots that need reseeding, but I can’t do that until Autumn. I am getting a little impatient, but seeding now (with the pre-emergent still active) is a waste of time. Also, seeding in the Summer doesn’t really work out too well. Come September, I am going to de-thatch and aerate the heck out of this place and reseed the whole thing.
Little by little. That’s what they say about lawns and lawn care…little by little and you’ll win the battle.
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Sunday, February 15th, 2009
Valentine’s day was here. I wanted to wash the car and have it nice and clean, so my lady and I could drive down to Foxwoods in style. It was pretty dirty and needed a good wash.
On my way back from tennis yesterday morning, I dreaded the idea of going downstairs, turning the water valve to “on” and then going back outside to hook up the hose on the water spigot at the front of the house. I think the part I hate the most is hooking up the hose outside and then having to unhook it to put it back in the garage. The reason I would have to go downstairs to turn the valve on is because of freezing in the winter. No valve downstairs, frozen and broken water spigot upstairs come spring.
I had a great idea. Why not install a water spigot inside the garage? This way, I can keep a hose hooked up all the time and not have to worry about the spigot freezing over the winter. I could use the spigots that are outside for watering and things like that over the summer, but for washing the car and things like that, I could use the inside one. I thought it would be very handy.
Since the area I wanted the spigot located in the garage was right on the other side of the washing machine hookups down in the basement, I figured it would be a pretty easy job. Somehow, I would just tap into the cold water feed for the washing machine. I really look forward to these types of projects because I have to get imaginative. I enjoy standing in the pluming aisle at Home Depot trying to figure things out. I really do.
Before I left for the Depot to get all the parts, I decided to drill a hole through the 2×10 that the floor was resting on. This 2×10 is up in the ceiling of the laundry room and down towards knee level in the garage. I would drill a 7/8 inch hole to see what I would find.
I drilled the hole from the basement and saw daylight. Lucky me. I went upstairs to the garage and saw a hole right where I wanted the spigot to be. Really lucky me. I started getting my thoughts together and made a little list. Then, I hopped in the car and drove over to Home Depot.
I am not going to give you the list of parts I bought here because I forget what they are. Hopefully you can see them in the pictures I will show you. As I post the pics, I will probably remember what they were. Take a look at the finished product.
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Water hose splitter and on-off switch on cold water laundry feed
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125 psi hose going through 2×10 from laundry room to the garage upstairs
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Water spigot mounted to 2×4s in garage
Let me do a little explaining. I know the proper way to do this is with copper piping. I may change that some day. For this application, I used hose. Since I am aware that this is not a permanent thing, I put an on/off valve down near the splitter in the laundry room. I saw the hose in the store and couldn’t pass it up. When I am not using the spigot, I can just go downstairs to turn the valve off.
Also, the reason the spigot is mounted to 2×4s is because I wanted it really solid on the wall. I am probably going to tug on the hose as I pull it outside and I didn’t feel like having the spigot tear off the wall. It’s not the prettiest thing, but you should try to give it a wiggle. Nope. I know there is a 2×10 on the other side of the sheetrock, but the hole I drilled was a bit too big and the mounting screws weren’t sitting right.
After everything was all set up, I hooked up a nice brand new no-kink garden hose I bought last autumn to the spigot in the garage. I went downstairs to turn on the easily accessible on/off valve and then came back upstairs to drag the hose out into the driveway. I turned the spigot on and…well, that’s for the next post.
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Thursday, January 29th, 2009
If there is one thing that I have noticed during this winter, it’s that the bathroom is really cold in the morning. I keep the door closed because I want to concentrate the heat, so that might be the reason. Either way, the whole thing got me thinking.
Can bathroom exhaust vents cause your house to lose heat? I am thinking yes. I did a Google search on this and came across a good article on “Ask The Builder” entitled, “Bathroom Exhaust Fan Leaks Cold Air.” It pretty much covered what I was thinking.
Basically, a bathroom exhaust fan is simply a fan attached to a hose that leads outside. The fan pushes the moist air you create from taking a shower outside, so you don’t rot everything in your bathroom. Some of the fancy fans have lights in them and I am told that the fans vary in quality. I guess they are supposed to have flaps in them too. The flaps stop the cold outside air from leaking directly into your bathroom and house.
I just walked into the bathroom to see if any cold air was leaking through the fan. I put my hand up to the vent and didn’t feel any cold air. Since that felt okay, I pulled down the attic door and went upstairs to see what that looked like. I saw both bathroom vent hoses leading outside. Nothing seemed too out of place.
Now that I am downstairs, I am thinking that I didn’t really do much to see if there was a problem. I mean, I still have to take the vent cover off to see if the vent flap is closing nice and snug. If not, I have to fix that. Then, I would like to cover the exposed vent hoses with insulation. An exposed vent hose in a cold attic can cause the air in the hose to get cold. That air can enter the house if the vent flap isn’t working correctly. Do you see where I am heading with this? I guess it doesn’t help that the boiler is kicking on and off all night, creating a vacuum in the house. Cold air is probably being pulled in through those vents.
I might need to do some more exploration to see if there is some sort of a “makeup air intake port” anywhere around. If not, I probably need to put one in.
Now, I admit, I am no expert at this. Any advice would be appreciated.
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Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
Okay, so listen to this. I received my Home Depot gift cards yesterday. I got a pretty decent amount’s worth. So basically, they have been burning a hole in my pocket ever since. So what did I do about it? Well, I ran over to Home Depot and picked up that RIGID 4 gallon wet/dry vac I was talking about. It’s going to be a big help during those “cleaning out the pellet stove” times.
RIGID 4 gallon wet/dry vac
Actually, I just cleaned out the pellet stove a few minutes ago. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was worried about ruining our regular house vacuum by sucking up ashes from the pellet stove. I mean, it’s not like there is a huge amount of them. I do empty the ash pan first, but there are still some remaining ashes hanging around. Those need to be vacuumed. I tried using the dust pan and brush, but that doesn’t have the best results on the floor tile grout. The ash kind of gets smeared in there.
The reason I got the 4 gallon wet/dry vac is because is was the smallest size RIGID makes. The reason I got RIGID, is because I like the brand. I have had decent luck with their other products. Also, this vac has wheels on it, so I can roll it around when I am vacuuming out the car and stuff like that.
The only thing I am worried about is the ash clumping up in the filter. After I used the vacuum a few minutes ago, I did notice the filter got a bit dirty. I banged it against the side of the vacuum and the dirt pretty much fell off the filter. I figure this is bound to happen with any type of vacuum I use, so I might as well use a wet/dry vac. Also, once the filter has been banged around for its last time, I can always pick up a replacement.
Now that I used up a little less than half of my gift cards, I think I am going to hold on to them until Home Depot starts selling trees and shrubs again. Then, I can head over there and go on a shopping spree.
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Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
After I returned the humidifier yesterday, I had planned on picking up a little shop vac. I clean the pellet stove pretty regularly and am currently using the regular house vacuum cleaner to suck up all the stray ashes. I don’t think that’s a great idea, since ash is probably the world’s dirtiest thing. Well, ink is pretty dirty too. Okay, they are both dirty and both are fairly easy to make a serious mess with.
I walked around the Depot and couldn’t seem to locate the vacuum cleaners. I stopped to ask a guy who worked over near the floor tiles and he led me to a wall of various vacuums. I thanked him, walked over to the wall and took a look at what was available. Hmmm…I didn’t see any shop vacs.
I knew they were in the store, but figured that they were hidden over with the regular tools somewhere. After all, shop vacs aren’t really all that pretty and kind of deserve to be with the tools. They are more of a tool than a household appliance.
As I was making my way back to find what I was looking for, I came across a neatly situated aisle of air compressors. Now, I’ll tell you that I actually had two things on my list; a shop vac and an air compressor. I was going to get the shop vac because that would cost around $50, which is what the humidifier cost. My purchase would just cancel out the return. Simple algebra really.
I was going to walk right by the air compressors in an attempt to locate a Home Depot worker. I needed to find the shop vacs. I did almost get past the compressors, really I did. Then, I saw a little sign that said, “NEW LOWER PRICE – Was $149 – Now $89.99.” Wow, $89.99 didn’t really seem too bad for a nifty little Husky 6 gallon, 1.5 Hp, 135psi portable air compressor. I was forced to stop. I himmed and hawwed for a while and decided that it was in my best interest to get one of these cute little air compressors. I mean, there were about six of them in inventory and I knew that people were going to be running down the aisles soon to get one for themselves. I had to get one before they were all out.
I picked the box that I wanted. I usually go for the one way in the back because it’s not picked over by all the looky lous. I like a fresh box. I did notice that the package came with the compressor, an air hose and an attachment connector. I would need one of those joining connectors and a tire filler upper piece if I was going to be able to use the machine. I walked over and got the extra items. They were only a few bucks. I decided not to get the kit because that was around $20 and I didn’t feel that I needed all those extra pieces. I am a simple man with simple needs.
So, here are a few pics. Tell me what you think of her.
Did anyone notice my new license plate? Thank you Photoshop.
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Sunday, January 18th, 2009
I hope you forgive me for typing this post with dirty hands. I just got finished cleaning out the St. Croix Prescott EXL pellet stove.
Actually, I gave it more than a regular cleaning, I gave it more like one of those seasonal cleanings that everyone says you should do, but no one does. I even took some pictures.
The reason for this post is really to follow up from a comment left by “Linda” over at my original pellet stove post.
Apparently, many fine pellet stove owners out there are having issues with their #2 light blinking. I received tons of great comments on my other post regarding this. We have all been looking for the answer. Linda offered a lot of insight, so I decided to give her ideas a try. I think the main point of her comment was to say that cleaning out behind the “ash clean out covers” is very important. I thought I had been doing that, but she mentioned that what I was doing, wasn’t enough.
Okay, so let’s get going. I am going to show you some pretty interesting photos in this post…photos that are hard to find. Sure, there are tons of good pellet stove shots out there, but usually when people start cleaning out their stoves, they forget all about the camera. Not me, my friends. Not me.
I first went downstairs and shut the stove down. When it cooled itself and shut all the way down, I unplugged it. That’s very important, so make sure you do it. After that, I gave it a quick once over to make sure there were no large piles of ash anywhere. I didn’t give it a good cleaning, because I just did that yesterday. It didn’t need to be done again. I did push some ash into the ash pan and empty it though.
What I want to show you here are those ash clean outs that the owner’s manual talks about so much. I just realized this morning that there are about 4 warnings to keep these things clean. I guess it’s pretty critical. I have been doing this every time I clean the stove, so I really didn’t think I needed to do it again. Linda mentioned that we should be cleaning these out with a bottle brush or something like that to really clean them well. Good thing I had bought one of the bottle brushes from Lowe’s a while back. It’s really made for a fireplace or stove, but I was using it to clean bottles for my home brew.
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Left pellet stove clean out cover – closed
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Left pellet stove clean out – open
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Cleaning the pellet stove clean out with a bottle brush – straight up
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Pushing bottle brush into pellet stove clean out – towards center
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Right pellet stove clean out with ash showing
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St. Croix Prescott EXL exhaust fan
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Fan blades of a pellet stove exhaust fan
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St. Croix Prescott pellet stove exhaust vent
Notice how there really isn’t too much ash in there? I’m talking about inside the hole. I just vacuumed this out yesterday, but I can imagine what it would look like if someone never cleaned these out. Probably like a packed wall of ash.
I didn’t take pictures of the right side, because it is identical to the left side.
By pushing the brush straight up, I didn’t get all that much ash to come out. There really wasn’t all that much up there. By pushing it sideways, I got a little bit more. I’ll show you in the next photo.
To get the pile of ash in the photo above, I basically pushed the bottle brush straight through, from the left side to the right side. I actually saw the brush coming through the right side.
I figured that was done, since I saw all that ash coming out. I decided to move on to clean out the exhaust fan. This is one of those things the book tells you to call the dealer for. It took me about 15 minutes to do the whole job, so it’s up to you.
To remove the fan, I took off the 6 nuts that surround the motor. I believe I used a 9mm 6-point tall socket. I also removed the vacuum hose and took off the vacuum switch wires as well as the fan wires. After everything was removed, the motor and fan popped right out.
With the fan in hand, it was easy to clean the blades (if you call them that). You can use an old paint brush or a rag or something like that. Just get the ash off the blades. The owner’s manual says this fan does not require oiling.
I also decided to take a photo of the rear part of the exhaust vent. This is one of those things we always wonder about, but unless you have taken a pellet stove apart, you will most likely will never see.
As you can see, there wasn’t really too much ash buildup on either the fan or the exhaust vent. I brushed them off and put everything back together. I lit the stove up and watched it burn for a while. I haven’t yet put the wires back on the vacuum switch. I still have them jumped. I’m not sure I have the heart to go through that again, since the stove has been running so wonderfully the way I have it now.
Questions, comments, concerns?
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Saturday, January 17th, 2009
Rarely, have I seen such a dirty car. I mean, I have seen those trucks where someone drew “WASH ME” on the back lift gate, but still, my car was pretty dirty.
Today, we had to run out to get a few items at the store. I have been meaning to wash the car for some time, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. I figured that since we were out and going to be passing a car wash, what better time to get it done.
Do you agree that driving through a car wash is like one of the most fun things you can do? I think so. It really is. There is nothing like the feeling of driving a filthy car through the car wash and feeling those but sponges whack the car from all angles. This time, I wanted the rims cleaned the most. The new brake pads made a mess of things, not to mention all the dirt and salt all over the rest of the car.
About half way through the wash, I gasped and totally remembered that I had the camera in the back seat. I reached behind me, grabbed the camera, turned it on and started clicking away. I really wish that I had the video camera, or at least more battery life in the regular camera. I think getting a video of going through a car wash would be the coolest thing to post. I’ll do it next time.
For now, all you get is a few photos of the second half of the car wash.
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Driving through the car wash
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The wax starting inside the car wash
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The last spritz of the car wash
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Water running off the waxed windshield
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A clean car feels so good
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Monday, January 28th, 2008
Ever since I went out this past Saturday and purchased a new dishwasher, I have been preparing for its delivery and installation. The appliance store will be doing the delivery and I will be doing the installation.
Setting everything up is actually pretty fun. This post is about the plumbing part of it. Here are a few photos to get things kicked off. It’s simpler than one might think…
The first thing I did was to drill two holes in under the sink in the wall facing the dishwasher. In this photo, you see four holes. That’s because I drilled the two upper holes first. Then, I thought for a little while. I figured that I had no idea what the back of this new dishwasher was going to look like and how tight the fit was going to be. Those two first holes may be too high and go right into the side of the dishwasher “tub.” I then thought that it would be a better idea to drill two holes in the floor of the sink cabinet and then out the side down below. I know the tub part sits up a few inches, so this should clear everything. For now, these two hoses don’t go to anything, since the dishwasher isn’t here yet, but just in case you were curious, the fat hose is the drain hose and the braided one is the hot water feed.
This next picture is of the drain hose hooked up to the sink drain. This was pretty simple to install. Lowe’s and Home Depot sell these pieces of pipe with the drain spout sticking out. All I did was to remove the existing pipe and trim the new one to length. Then, I popped it in and hooked up the hose with a hose clamp. On the inside of the pipe is sort of a “shield” so the water will only go in one direction. Pretty nifty.
This is a photo of the hot water feed that is currently connected and the new braided hose with the “T” connector. Lowe’s and Home Depot sell these connectors especially made for this. I am going to connect the white hot water hose in the back to the top part of this T. That will also give that white hose some slack.
That’s about it for the plumbing part of the dishwasher preparation. All that’s left is the electrical and the actual dishwasher installation. I will share when they are finished.
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