-
Gone Fishing
We moved the upstairs computer today, into our library/study. So, I figured I’d fish some Cat 5 and install an ethernet jack there. Nothing I haven’t done before… should take, oh, an hour or so, right? Well, not this time, it turns out.. The difference between this time and all the other times I’ve fished…
-
Washing Machine Fun
My SIL’s washing machine died the other day. It fills and drains OK, but won’t spin or agitate. It’s a Whirlpool direct drive (badged as a Sears Kenmore). I did a little poking around on the net, trying to identify the symptoms, and it appeared that the problem may be the motor coupling. I’ve always…
-
Our weird house
Just when I thought I’ve seen it all with our house, I find more weirdness. I’m working on relocating the clothes dryer circuit, in preparation for our new washer and dryer. In the process, I noticed some disconnected copper tubing hanging down the wall behind the dryer. It’s the standard 3/8″ stuff that you might…
-
2006 Pool Season: Short but Sweet
That about sums it up. Tomorrow we’re putting the winter cover on the pool and officially sticking a fork in the 2006 swimming season. For all intents and purposes, it was really over before the Labor Day holiday, although we did sneak one post-Labor Day swim in, during a warm spell where I was able…
-
Sump Pump fun
So, the float switch on the old FloTec sump pump in our basement office died a while back, and I’m just getting around to doing something about it. This particular sump gets very little water in it, even with a dehumidifier draining into it, so my solution for the summer was to just manually pump…
-
Browse NFPA codes online
I just found out that The National Fire Protection Association has a method you can use to browse all of its publications online. This includes the National Electrical Code and its associated offshoots. This is really nice, because printed versions of the NEC (NFPA 70) sell for upwards of $60, and then you still need…
-
Early end to swim season?
Several days of persistent cloudy, cool and rainy weather have conspired to drop the pool temperature to a nice, chilly 76 degrees. And, the forecast for the next week or so doesn’t look too promising. So it looks like we may be in for our earliest end to the swim season since we moved into…
-
More pool fun
The inevitable happened yesterday.. I accidentally ran the vac booster pump for an hour or so with the intake plumbing shut off. Fortunately, it looks like it survived.. thermal cutoff switches are your buddy. Several years ago, a similar mishap happened to the main circulation pump, and it’s still alive and kicking. The damage this…
-
Pipe Insulation Adventures
Now that our boiler job is complete, I’m going through and insulating all of the near-boiler pipes, which put off quite a bit of heat. First priority is the primary loop (1-1/4″ copper), followed by the secondary loop for the indirect water heater (1″ copper), followed by the DHW piping near the indirect (3/4″ copper),…
-
Hump Day Ramblings
I accidentally shut down my X server yesterday before I left work, so I took the opportunity to install the custom nVidia driver on my X desktop. And I must say, the proprietary driver is much nicer than the nv driver that comes with X.org. Someone at nVidia has put a lot of work into…