Fruddled Gruntbugglies

Category: House

  • Chlorine Generator Manifold Repair

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    I’m in the process of installing a salt-water chlorine generator (model DIG-60 from AutoPilot) for my swimming pool.  As part of this, I need to plumb the salt cell in downstream of my filter.  The cell is part of a big inline manifold which includes a 3lb spring check valve.  The valve’s purpose is to limit the water pressure going through the salt cell, theoretically extending the cell’s life.  Anyhow, as I was preparing to install the manifold, I dropped it (don’t ask) and the check valve broke away from one of its adjoining tees:

    Broken AutoPilot Manifold
    Broken AutoPilot Manifold

    What to do here?  The whole manifold is solvent-welded together, and the tees are attached to proprietary unions.  At first glance there appeared to be no way to fix it other than ordering a replacement manifold, at a cost of over $100.  By contrast, a replacement check valve can be had online for $15-20.  So I decided to think outside the box a bit.  The check valve is made by Flo-Control and is commonly sold as an air check valve for spa blowers.  It has a 1½” socket and a 2″ spigot, meaning one can either attach a 1½” pipe “inside” it, or a 2″ pipe “around” it.  AutoPilot ships it with 2″ tees cemented to either side, which attach to the pool’s plumbing.  My pool has 1½” plumbing, so I would ordinarily need a reducer bushing to attach to the tees on the manifold.  When the manifold broke, the 1½” socket end of the valve was left stuck inside the tee.  Eventually, it occurred to me that if I cut the other tee away from the valve, I could flip the tees around and cement a new valve to the intact ends. The other ends, with the remains of the original valve, would then accommodate my 1½” plumbing without the need for reducer bushings.  It seemed like a great plan, so I pulled out my trusty miter saw and cut the intact tee away from the old valve, leaving me with 3 pieces:

    AutoPilot Manifold Parts
    AutoPilot Manifold Parts

    I then went online to look for a replacement valve, and promptly ran into another problem.  It turns out that this particular valve is sold in a bunch of different spring weights:  .75, 5, 10, and 15 pounds, to name a few.  The version that ships with the AutoPilot has a 3lb spring.  And here’s the problem:  I wasn’t able to find the valve with a 3lb spring anywhere.  It’s not even listed on Flo-Control’s web site.  They’re apparently made special-order for AutoPilot.

    Makeshift check valve spring removal tools
    Makeshift check valve spring removal tools

    Undeterred, I wondered if I could remove the spring from the broken valve and reuse it in a new valve. With the help of a couple of makeshift “spring removal” tools I fashioned out of copper wire, I was able to extract the spring. As a proof-of-concept, I then replaced the spring with the help of some needle-nose pliers.  Encouraged, I went ahead and ordered an identical valve with a .75lb spring.  I chose the model with the lightest spring I could find, figuring it’d be the easiest to get out without damaging the valve.  The valve arrived a few days later, and happily, it was identical to the original valve, other than having a different weight spring and not being broken.  The lighter-weight spring easily came out of the new valve, and with a little effort I was able to insert the 3lb spring.  Turns out direction matters when re-inserting the spring:  it initially wouldn’t seat properly, but when I flipped it around it went right in.  With that, I had a working, non-broken 3lb check valve.  I then cemented the two tees onto either end of the valve, completing the repair:

    Repaired AutoPilot Manifold
    Repaired AutoPilot Manifold

    All that’s left to do is plumb it in and make sure it works.  Assuming it does, my little accident (dropping the manifold) cost me a lot less than I had feared.

  • More fun with digital TV

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    The great digital TV antenna project continues.  I found out that the cheapie UHF antennas I built are known as “4 bay bowtie dipoles,” and they are very similar to the Model 4221 by Channel Master.   Based on my reading, I’ve decided not to try using a combiner to join the antenna signals.  Instead I picked up a remote control A/B switch at Radio Shack, model 15-1968, and it seems to work great.  I’m going to buy a second one for our other TV.  Providing most of your stations are in 1 of 2 different directions (as mine are), this switch is a great alternative to a rotator.  In particular, multiple TVs can watch signals from different antennas simultaneously, which is not possible with a rotor.  The down side, of course, is that you need to run two separate antenna cables to each TV.  But that only needs to be done once.  I’ve also ordered a couple of Sony model RM-VL600 universal remotes, based on all the positive reviews.  My hope is that I can use these to work the A/B switches.  We’ll see how they work out once they get here.

    I may need to move my Baltimore antenna.  It’s aimed NNE directly at TV hill, but there are a lot of tall trees blocking its path.  It seems to pick up most of the Baltimore stations just fine..  WMAR-2, WBAL-11 and WBFF-45 all come in perfectly with 95%+ signal strength consistently and no dropouts.  WJZ-13 is my problem child, though.  I was watching it this afternoon and it started dropping out as soon as the wind kicked up.  Wondering if the frequency WJZ-DT is currently using has something to do with it — WMAR, WBAL and WBFF are all currently at the higher end of the UHF spectrum, while WJZ is lower at 38.  Dunno, but I’m going to try moving the antenna to the other end of the house, where it can hopefully get a clear shot through the foliage.  Just need a longer length of RG-6.

    All bets are going to be off come February 2009, when a lot of these stations will be shifting back to the VHF band.  At that point, I may need to add a VHF antenna to my setup.  Looks like all of my local stations will end up on the high VHF band (channels 7-13), so I should be able to get by with a smaller VHF antenna.  I’m going to hold off before I do anything, though.  My current antennas seem to pick up the analog channels in the VHF-hi band pretty well, so they may do the job with the digital channels.

    Stay tuned..  (no pun intended)

  • Gorilla Glue Test

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    We have an automatic cleaner for our swimming pool.  It’s the kind that runs on water pressure and uses a booster pump.  I have kind of a love-hate relationship with it.  When it works, it works great, but when it doesn’t, I’m constantly swearing at it.  It’s got a lot of moving parts (belts, gears, you name it) and it seems like something breaks on it every year.  Anyhow, this year it was the automatic backup valve’s turn to break.

    The backup valve is a big conglomeration of gears driven by a paddle wheel.  It’s actually quite ingenious.  The gears drive a rotating port that changes the flow of water through the valve every several minutes, which causes the pool cleaner to “back up,” which is an essential feature as it’s continually getting stuck in the pool’s corners.  One of the gears is held in place by a small retaining clip, and at some point this year the clip came off and disappeared into the great unknown.  The result was that the gear no longer stayed on the shaft.  It would stay there for a while, but eventually it would fall off and the backup valve would stop cycling.

    Lacking a matching retaining clip, I wasn’t sure how to fix this without shelling out megabucks for a new valve.  So I decided to try Gorilla Glue. We picked up a bottle of this a while back, and it’s pretty impressive stuff.  One of its interesting properties is that it expands as it cures, sort of like that expanding aerosol spray foam stuff.  This can be a pain when you’re using it to repair furniture, as the glue tends to ooze out of the repair as it cures.  But, it’s exactly what I needed in this case.  I just stuck the gear on the shaft and added a dab of Gorilla Glue, and it expanded into a small blob, holding the gear in place perfectly.

    So anyways, Gorilla Glue claims to be waterproof.  During pool season (which runs from Memorial Day through around the end of September in these parts), The pool cleaner spends 90% of its time at the bottom of the pool, submerged in chemically treated water.  I made the repair somewhere around the end of June, and it’s been mostly submerged ever since.  At the end of pool season, I’ll take the valve apart and see how well the repair has held up.  I’ve had no problems with the backup valve since making the repair, which I take as a good sign.  But I can’t think of a better way to see how waterproof this stuff really is.  Stay tuned!

  • Blogging again…

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    Hopefully I’ll pick up the blogging pace a bit now that I’ve moved everything over to wordpress.com.  In preparation for un-password-protecting the blog, I’m going through all of my old posts, and the only thing I’ve noticed is that all of my links to other blog entries are broken.  Nothing unexpected, but I wonder if there’s anything that can be done to prevent this from happening every time I move the blog (it’s moved 3 times now, and it’ll probably move again).  Probably not, but right now all my links reference posts by number, and it might help to change them to use named permalinks.

    My latest pet project at home is preparing us for the impending cutover to digital TV.  We’re far too cheap to pay for cable or satellite TV (although FiOS may be hard to resist), so I’m concentrating on getting a nice setup for receiving over-the-air digital broadcasts.  Following some instructions I found on the Internet (where else), I built two homemade UHF antennas.  The author of this web page uses a single antenna with a rotator.  At our location, though, we’re smack-dab in the middle of the Baltimore and DC TV markets.  So I can set 2 antennas up in the attic, one aimed at Baltimore, and another aimed at Washington, and pick up pretty much every station within 50 miles, without the hassle of a rotator.  The only issue is combining the signals.  The antennas work great separately, but I haven’t tried using a combiner yet (I try to avoid going up in the attic this time of year..).  Using a combiner in this kind of setup is always going to result in some signal loss, so the question is, will the resulting combined signal be acceptable?  I don’t know, but it’s easy enough to try, which I plan on doing soon.  If the combiner setup doesn’t work well, the other option is to run separate antenna feeds to each TV and then use a switch similar to Radio Shack Cat. No. 15-1968 (each TV would need its own switch).  I know this will work, but it obviously involves extra work and expense.  But it’s still preferable to a rotator, IMO.

    Sort of on the same topic, I picked up one of those much ballyhooed digital “converter boxes” awhile back, to use with our old TV.  Total outlay was just over $20, thanks to the $40 coupon from Uncle Sam.  This is an Apex model that is being sold at Best Buy.  It works as expected, and includes all the standard features you would expect from a digital tuner (TV guide, signal strength meter, etc).  However, I kind of wish it had come with a universal remote.  The included remote control works fine, but it’d be a nice touch if I could also turn the TV on/off and adjust the volume with it.  As it is now, I’m stuck with 2 remotes until I can find a cheap universal remote that can also work the converter box.

    More later..

  • Weekend update

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    Kind of a lazy weekend so far. It’s too cold to really want to go out and do anything, so everyone is just puttering around the house. Yesterday I drained the pool water back down below the tile line. First time doing that so far this winter. Since closing, the water had crept back up several inches. Before that, we hit Macaroni Grill for an early lunch to celebrate my b-day, and I picked up some telecom equipment at Home Depot so I can work on rewiring the phone jack in the master bedroom. I have never wired a 66 punchdown block before, so this is going to be a learning experience. I think I am going to use the 66 block to replace the existing screw-terminal phone junction in the boiler room, which is a bit of a bird’s nest. It’s going to take a little planning. I will probably end up taking a day off work to do it, on a day when I can have the house to myself.

    Today I have mainly been working on spackling and sanding the trim in the master bedroom, in preparation for painting. Most of the prep work has been concentrated on the trim. Years ago, someone decided to mount a phone jack near the entrance to the bathroom, so they tapped into an existing jack behind the bed and ran phone wire along the trim to the new jack. The wire was meticulously tacked along the baseboard, up one door opening, over three doors, back down, across more baseboard, up and over the bathroom door, and finally back down to the jack. It was really quite impressive, especially considering they could have run it through the basement, which would have taken about half the time, used about half the wire, and resulted in a nice, concealed wiring job instead of a massive eyesore. But, I digress. Anyhow, I pulled out all the wire, which was (of course) covered with several layers of paint, leaving me with a big patch and spackle job. But it’s almost done now, and soon we’ll be painting. Can’t wait.

  • Taxes, painting and stuff

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    It’s been a while since I wrote anything here, mainly because I have been swamped at work, getting ready for a presentation next week at Educause, my first foray into public speaking since, oh, 1995 or so. That was back in the days of transparencies, so it’s been a while. And I do have to say, there are much better tools around for preparing slides nowadays. But anyhow, it’s been pretty all-consuming writing up this presentation, and by the time I get home I haven’t been much in the mood to write anything else.

    Interesting tax-related development here in the People’s Republic of Maryland. It seems that the legislature has raised the personal exemption amount for 2008 a whopping 33%, from $2400 to $3200. This is the first time Maryland’s personal exemption amount has changed since 2002, when it rose from $2100 to $2400. Apparently this is the legislature’s way of providing relief to the “working families” they are always harping about. This is in contrast to the governor’s original plan that would have widened the lower-income tax brackets, and being a flat tax advocate, I think it’s a better idea, although it benefits fewer people. For a typical family of four (like us.. imagine that) this results in $3200 less taxable income in 2008 than in 2007. Maryland has also completely overhauled how they figure payroll withholding. For me, that resulted in about $27 less state tax being withheld from my paycheck. This seems like a lot. According to my handy spreadsheet, an exemption amount of $3200 would have resulted in $254 less in taxes owed in 2007. Extrapolating the $27 withholding difference out to 26 paychecks results in $702 less tax withheld in 2008, leaving me $448 in the hole. There must be something I’m missing here, or I’m going to have to tweak my withholding exemptions again.

    In other, less exciting news, we are finally getting ready to paint the master bedroom, several years after buying the paint. In preparation, I’m putting in a new phone jack. The original jack was one of those “woodwork warts” that was surface-mounted to the trim. I hate these, so I’m getting rid of them as we paint the rooms, in favor of flush-mounted wall jacks. This will be the first phone jack I’ve rewired, so I’m going to do it right and use twisted-pair cable with a Leviton “QuickPort” punch-down type jack. In the basement, I’ll install either a patch panel or a 66-type punch-down block (haven’t decided which yet) and splice it into the old quad-conductor cable that makes up the rest of the house’s phone wiring. Then as I replace jacks down the road, I’ll replace the quad with Cat-5. Doing this might improve our DSL speeds, too.

  • Today in review

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    Today marked the start of the 2-week Christmas break. I actually managed to get a few things done. First off, I came up with a temporary fix for the house’s grounding system, which faithful readers may recall was interrupted when we had our copper water main replaced with plastic. I realized that we had a copper line running underground from the well room to the old abandoned hand pump by the garage, so I bonded it to the copper water pipe just downstream of the pressure reducing valve. Not sure how good of a ground it is, but it’s definitely better than it was, and it buys me a little time to plan how to do it right.

    Next up was the master bathroom sink, which had been out of commission for a couple months. My original attempt at snaking the drain was a rush job and did not work out too well. This time I took my time and pulled out a big plug of hair. Then I put the drain back together and poured several big buckets of hot water down to try to clean things out a bit. Not sure why this drain in particular has so much clogging trouble. I think for starters, I’ll get a strainer for it to keep hair out of it. Then I may see about rerouting the A/C condensate drain, which currently runs into the drain via the attic vent.

    Also managed to bag up some leaves for yard waste pickup today. Leaf removal is running behind schedule due to inclement weather. At the rate I’m going, I may be putting leaves out all the way up to January 21, when the pickups end for the winter.

    To do for the rest of the week: finish winterizing the tractor, clean the humidifier, caulk the sill plate in the back part of the basement, replace the toilet fill valve in the kids’ bathroom, and work on getting the master bedroom ready for painting.

  • Big Dig, brewing update, etc

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    Today was the Big Dig at our house, where we had our old, leaky water line replaced with a brand, shiny new one. The new line is polyethylene. It has the advantage of being lots cheaper than copper, and it’s a single, continuous run of approximately 250′ from the house to the meter. We got a new shutoff valve as part of the deal, replacing our old gate valve that I never completely trusted. And of course, as with everything in this house, there’s a catch that I didn’t realize until a few minutes ago. Our electrical service was grounded to the old copper water service, so we’ve effectively just cut off our house ground. Lovely, huh? Looks like I’m going to be driving a ground rod or two in the near future. Got to do it soon, before the ground freezes. Sigh..

    Tomorrow I’m off to the homebrew supply place to pick up ingredients for the beer we’re brewing this weekend. I did a little web shopping there last night, and it looks like I’m going to need to make a couple of substitutions, in particular a different kind of yeast. I think the beer will still turn out fine, and of course I’ll document the final recipe we follow here.

    Leaf removal began in earnest today, much later than most years because the leaves stayed on the trees so late into November. As with past years, I’ll be mulching a bunch with the chipper shredder, and frantically trying to get the rest out for yard waste pickup before the county stops the service for the winter.

    I also ordered a new, kinda pricey hard top cover for our pool table today. The hope is that it’ll protect the table as it gets used for laundry sorting, gift wrapping, crafts, etc. And at some point in the future, when we have massive, wild parties in the basement, we can use it as a buffet table. Hope it works as advertised. I did get a pretty good price on it.

  • O.C.

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    Here we are in lovely Ocean City, MD for Thanksgiving.  You know you’re getting older when it becomes more appealing to go to O.C. this time of year than in the summer.  It’s nice and laid-back here, although not surprisingly, a lot of the seasonal places are closed.  Can’t wait to see what Avon, N.C. is like in March.

    Finished winterizing the pool the other day, just before we left for the beach.  As I had hoped, I was able to nurse the air compressor through it and get the lines blown out.  The compressor seems to be fine as long as I manually shut it off at around 100-110psi of tank pressure.  For some reason it doesn’t properly shut off on its own any more.  It just keeps going until the safety valve pops.  I thought replacing the pressure switch would fix it, but no luck there.  So I’m not sure what the problem is.

    When we get back from our beach getaway, I’ll need to get busy clearing leaves and winterizing the tractor.  I’ll be happy when all the fall outdoor chores are done with.

  • Saturday update

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    Got a start on winterizing the pool today, with occasional breaks to shoo Andrew off the pool cover.  I drained the water down below the tile line and added chlorine and algaecide.  The water was nice and clean even after a month of neglect.  Wonder if the algaecide I added last month helped.  Anyways, tomorrow I hope to get out earlier and get the bulk of the work done.  Not sure if I’ll get to blowing out the return lines.  We’ll see.

    On the calendar front…  turns out Sunbird is not buggy after all as I had assumed yesterday.  Apple’s iCal exhibits similar behavior.  It appears that if I have events with RECURRENCE-ID properties, somewhere there needs to be an event that “defines” the recurrence with an RRULE or RDATE property.  Oracle Calendar’s output is missing this “defining” event.  I thought briefly about trying to “fix” the recurrences by adding RDATEs, etc. to the iCalendar output, but I think that’s more trouble than it’s worth.  I’m just going to try rewriting the recurring events as separate events, giving them unique IDs based on the start date of the event.  I’ll try it out Monday and see how it goes.