Category: House

  • Pool coping project drones on

    Pool coping project drones on

    Work on the pool coping project continues slowly but surely. I didn’t intend for this to be an all-summer project, but that’s how it’s turning out. The hot weather has really slowed it down, which is not all bad, as it’s keeping me from overextending myself. I’ve done most of my recent work in the early mornings on weekends.

    Today I finally finished prepping the individual coping stones for re-mortaring. This involved using a hammer and chisel to laboriously chip old, loose mortar off the bottom of the stones. From the appearence of the mortar, it looks like someone attempted a similar repair at some point in the past. Hopefully, this one will last a bit longer — that was the idea behind saw-cutting the expansion joint, anyhow.

    Next up is to chip any loose stuff off the top of the bond beam, and finish cleaning out the expansion joint at the deep end. Also, one of the coping stones needs to be glued together. This week I’ll figure out what product I need for that. Weather permitting, next weekend I’ll try to get all this prep work finished up so that I’ll be ready to reattach the stones.

    I will update this entry as I gather info.

  • Pipe Insulation Adventures

    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), and lastly the secondary loops for our 3 heating zones (mix of 1″ and 3/4″ copper). I’m using the pre-formed fiberglass pipe insulation that has a white scrim jacket, as that’s what was recommended to me. Home Depot carries this stuff. I found it in the aisle with the furnace/air handler filters, thermostats, and ductwork. Here’s the catch — the stuff is tagged as being for various sizes of copper pipe, but the tags have no bearing on reality. I initially bought the stuff labeled for 1-1/4″ copper, but it was way too big for my 1-1/4″ pipe. I had to return it and get the stuff labeled for 1″ copper, which was a snug fit on the 1-1/4″ pipe. And, the stuff for 1″ pipe is actually more expensive than the stuff for 1-1/4″ pipe (by about 50¢ per 3′ length), which makes absolutely no sense.

    Fast forward to the actual installation. The insulation slips easily over the pipe, and seals shut with an adhesive strip on the scrim jacket. However, on the stuff I bought, the adhesive doesn’t hold up very well against the expansion and contraction of the pipes as they heat/cool… a lot of the seams were popping loose just a few hours after I wrapped the pipes. I’ve compensated by adding some strategically placed wire ties, but I may need to track down a better adhesive to apply to the problem areas.

    For butt joint (and possibly seam) sealing, I found some white scrim tape at Grainger, but it’s mind-numbingly expensive: Around $35 for 50 yards. That’s almost 25¢ a foot. I can’t imagine what’s in the stuff to make it that expensive.

    On a totally unrelated note, I see that Home Depot is now carrying trench drainage systems. This could come in handy for my driveway down the road….

  • Hump Day Ramblings

    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 making these cards work well with Linux. The installer script produced a working config file that started right up, with acceleration enabled to boot.

    The nVidia driver has a built-in option called “TwinView” which provides multihead support via the VGA and DVI ports on the card. It replaces Xinerama, although supposedly Xinerama can still be used to provide the same functionality. However, TwinView seems to be the better alternative because it provides acceleration on both displays. It also adds Xinerama-compatible “hints” to the X server so that window managers will work the same as with Xinerama. It’s really very well done. So now I have a full 24-bit display across both monitors, with acceleration. Right now I’m still using the widescreen as my “main” display and the standard display as my “secondary” screen. I’m going to try it like this for a while, and if I don’t like it, I’ll switch them.

    The only configuration challenge was getting both displays working at their respective resolutions. I accomplished this with the following Device section:

    Section "Device"
    Identifier "nVidia"
    Driver     "nvidia"
    BusID      "PCI:1:0:0"
    Option     "TwinView"
    Option     "MetaModes" "CRT-0: 1680x1050, DFP-0: 1280x1024"
    Option     "TwinViewOrientation" "RightOf"
    EndSection

    The MetaModes line is the important one.

    [More:]

    While testing things out, I also learned something about VNC: It compresses the pixel depth over slow connections. To force full-color rendering, I need to do

    vncviewer -FullColor host.name:display

    I was initially scratching my head as to why it was still rendering limited colors despite the 24-bit display. That explains it, and I may want to keep full color rendering disabled to maximize performance over my slow DSL uplink.

    Also, this morning I hooked a scavenged SCSI disk up to my PC at home, mainly as a proof-of-concept: The disk uses 68-pin wide SCSI, and my controller uses 50-pin narrow SCSI. However, all I needed to make it work was a 50-to-68-pin adapter cable. I just jumpered the drive to SCSI ID 1 and plugged it in. Initially I had an external terminator on the drive case, and that hosed things. When I removed the terminator, it worked. Apparently my controller wants to terminate the bus itself. At any rate, now I have a spare 72-gig drive with its own case and power supply.

    And finally, what’s a summer blog entry without a mention of the pool? Last week, the backup valve on my Polaris 380 broke. The valve mechanism itself is a big mess of gears and turbines, which fits into a plastic enclosure. The enclosure is made up of two halves held together by a screw-on collar ring, with a couple of o-rings to prevent leaks. The screw-on collar piece is what actually broke, probably after the valve was dropped onto the concrete pool deck one too many times. The mechanism itself was undamaged. Fortunately, Polaris sells a replacement case kit separately, and it’s much less expensive than an entire valve. The annoying thing is, the case kit only includes one of the two necessary o-rings. The included o-ring seals the two case halves together. The other one seals the backup jet to the case. It’s “technically” not part of the case, but if I’ve got the valve disassembled anyhow, I might as well replace both o-rings as they’re both probably worn out. It’s a small o-ring (1/2″ O.D. x 3/8″ I.D.) and it would have been nice if Polaris had seen fit to throw one in with the case kit. Oh well. For future reference, I found a replacement o-ring at Home Depot, in the plumbing section where they have the faucet repair kits.

    Well, I guess I should get to work now.

  • Load center upgrades

    Load center upgrades

    Continuing in my grand tradition, I’m writing about yet another house project that I’d like to do… the problem, as always, is finding the time for it..

    We have two circuit breaker panels which really should be replaced. They are FPE panels with known safety issues. One panel is our main house panel, and the other is a subpanel. The FPE subpanel is fed by a third subpanel, a Square-D QO type.

    The Square-D subpanel has 20 slots, of which only 9 are currently in use. Because we’ve abandoned a few circuits in the FPE subpanel that it feeds, I could actually squeeze all the circuits into the Square-D if I wanted. However, if I did that, the panel would be full with no room for future expansion. So.. it would probably make sense to replace both subpanels with a single 24-slot Square-D QO type.

    I would need a panel, a cover, and a ground bar kit, as well as a bunch of breakers. It looks like the project would cost around $500. Probably worth it for the safety and peace of mind — maybe I should slate it for this winter.

    The main house panel is a bigger project. I would need to involve BG&E to get them to shut off my power at the meter, and to tell me what kind of service I have — the panel is 150 amps, but it appears that the service may be 200 amps. In this case, I’d get a 200amp, 40-slot panel. This project would probably run closer to $1000. If I can get the subpanel project under my belt this winter, maybe I could tackle the main panel next winter. Again, the main issue is finding time and prioritizing it amongst all the other stuff that has to get done around here.

  • Troubleshooting cloudy pool water

    Troubleshooting cloudy pool water

    For the past several years of pool ownership, I’ve always had off-and-on problems with cloudy water. I’m generally pretty good at keeping up with the water chemistry, so I’ve always been a bit curious as to why the water clouds up so regularly. The pattern is the same every year: it starts out crystal clear, then after a month or so, the water slowly starts getting hazy.

    The only way to get to the bottom of this is to apply the scientific method: assume that the problem is caused by x, try a known solution for x, and see if it works. I’ve worked at this over the past few seasons, and I’ve come up with three potential causes.

    [More:]

    Problem: Yellow algae
    Cause: Lack of superchlorination

    Yellow (or brown) algae presents as a fine “dirt-like” substance that accumulates on surfaces. When brushed, it dissipates easily and clouds up the water. It re-settles when the pump is off. I had big problems with yellow algae last year and the year before. At the time, I was superchlorinating very infrequently (only one or two times a season). This year, I have been superchlorinating weekly and also using a polyquat type algaecide semi-regularly, and I have not had an algae problem (yet). If this is the ticket to keeping it at bay, then I need to figure out the ideal frequency of superchlorination that will prevent algae blooms without wasting too much chlorine.

    Problem: High pH
    Cause: Prolonged use of hypochlorite sanitizers without adding acid to compensate

    High pH and/or Alkalinity can cause cloudy water. Once this year I let the pH drift to almost 8, and the water was noticeably turbid. Adding acid cleared it up after 12 hours or so. I’ve found that supplementing the hypochlorite with a trichlor floater (in moderation, to avoid high levels of cyanuric acid) can help to keep the pH down, particularly during the hot months when the chlorine demand is high.

    Problem: Inadequate filtration
    Cause: Undersized pump and/or not running pump long enough

    I’ll freely admit to running the pump as infrequently as I can get away with it, to try to save electricity. Unfortunately it appears that I’m paying the price for this in the form of cloudy water. Currently, the pump runs around 9 hours a day (6 hours in daylight and 3 hours after dark). With turbid water, a pH of 7.4 and no visible algae, I ran the pump for 24 hours straight and there was a marked improvement in clarity. So it appears that I need more circulation. This seems odd to me, because 9 hours really should be enough to fully turn the water over and keep it from clouding up. So I’m curious if my pump and/or filtration system is undersized. When I get around to it, I’ll measure my flow rate and see what kind of numbers I’m getting. If they’re low, I may want to consider a larger pump and/or filter. Until then, I guess I’m stuck running the pump longer if I want clear water.

  • Mortar for pool coping stones

    Mortar for pool coping stones

    I swung by Lowes today to see what kind of mortar (and mortar ingredients) they carry. Neither they nor Home Depot seem to carry white Portland cement, so unless I go through a supplier or lumber yard, it looks like my only choice is gray mortar. However, I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing. Most of the stuff is going underneath the stones, where it won’t be seen. Gray Portland is cheaper than white Portland. What about using gray mortar to bond the stones, then filling in the gaps and other visible areas with white grout? That might be a plan. I just need to look into what kind of “grout” (I put that in quotes, because grout, mortar, etc. all seem to be basically the same thing, namely portland cement, sand, and additives in varying ratios) I would need to get.

    Lowes carrys Quikrete products (Home Depot carries Sakrete). They have a bewildering variety of different Quikrete products on the shelf…

    [More:]

    Number Description Bag Weight Bag Price
    1102 Mortar Mix 60lbs $4.00
    1125 Type N Masonry Cement 70lbs $8.00
    1125 Type S Masonry Cement 70lbs $8.50
    1136 Mason Mix – Type S Mortar 60lbs $4.50
    1136-58 Blended Mortar Mix 80lbs $5.32
    1124 Portland Cement Type I/II 94lbs $9.64
    1103 Sand/Topping Mix 60lbs $4.00
    1230 “Quikwall” Surface Bond Cement – White 50lbs $17.00
    1962 Medium Sand 50lbs $5.00
    1152 All-Purpose Sand 50lbs $2.90
    1133 Vinyl Concrete Patch 40lbs $13.43
    1585 Precision Grout 50lbs $14.00

    The task now, is to go through all of these, check the Quikrete web site to see what’s actually in each of them, and determine which product(s) are appropriate for my job. Stay tuned.

  • Honeywell VisionPro 8000 t-stat

    I just installed one of these to replace our existing Honeywell t-stat, which was a T8600 series (badged as a “Chronotherm IV Plus”). As part of our big boiler job, we’re splitting our main floor into two heating zones, and I’ll use the old stat for the new zone. The new VisionPro 8000 has a humidity control that will run the A/C when the humidity goes above a preset value. This is the first thermostat I’ve seen with this feature. I’ve always thought it would be a great idea, especially on cool, humid days when the A/C doesn’t run much and the house feels damp and clammy. It doesn’t take much A/C to lower the humidity in the house; just a few minutes to circulate air through the condenser. When you’re trying to change the temperature, you have thermal mass to deal with; that’s not the case with humidity. So, thanks to the new stat, we can have a comfortable house on cool, humid days, without using much extra electricity.

    Aside from the humidity control, the VisionPro has a number of improvements over the old Chronotherm IV line. Among others:

    • A much more installer-friendly mounting plate. It has holes to fit a standard electrical wall box. Also, the wire entry opening is in the middle, with mounting holes centered on either side of it. The Chronotherm IV’s mounting holes were off-center, making it a pain to put one where there was previously an electrical box (I know this from experience).
    • One single model handles multiple powering schemes. The Chronotherm IV had three separate models: A power stealing type, a battery powered model, and a direct-wired version that used a common wire. For the VisionPro, they’ve dropped the power stealing option and included both battery and transformer options on the same model. If both are used, the batteries are used for backup power. To me, this makes sense and I’m sure it reduces manufacturing overhead costs.

    Add to that a nice, slick touch-screen interface, and it seems like a great thermostat. We’ll see how it does over time.

  • Pool coping project underway

    Pool coping project underway

    Today I officially got the pool project underway, after 6 weeks or so of procrastination. After a week of foul weather, I finally got a decent day, so I took off work and rented the concrete saw. It did the job quite nicely, and quickly enough that I only needed a 4-hour rental.

    It took a bit of time to get the hang of the saw, but it was very easy to use. The blade had no problem cutting through the entire slab. The water feed did a great job of keeping the dust to a minimum, and it probably sped the job up by keeping the blade cool. I was not able to cut any of the curved areas, which I sorta expected. Not sure how I would handle these. A 7″ angle grinder might work for the area around the steps, but the corners are a little too tight for any kind of rotary blade.

    Next I need to clear the joint and clean up the mess, which figures to be more time consuming than the cutting. The wet concrete dust forms a kind of pasty mud, which sticks to the deck and won’t fully vacuum up. I’ll probably end up using my pressure washer to clean it off the deck.

    With the joint partially cleared, I can see that a lot of the fill around the pool has eroded over the years, from water seeping into the joint. I’m not planning on doing anything about it, as I’d need to demolish the deck (that’s a job for the next owner of the house). But, once I caulk the joint it’ll stop any further erosion.

    Once I’ve cleaned the joint I may go ahead and fill it (at least partially) with backer rod, to keep junk from falling into it before it’s caulked. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish prepping the joint over the long weekend; then I can focus on re-mortaring the loose coping stones.

    Oh, and the stupid Tulip Poplars have already started dropping leaves, and it’s not even July yet. It’s going to be a long summer..

  • The paradox of pool solar covers

    The paradox of pool solar covers

    We have a solar cover for our pool. It’s essentially a big, plastic sheet of bubble-wrap that sits on the pool surface. To remove it, we crank it onto a big reel — it’s pretty much a necessity to have a reel for these things, particularly with a large pool like ours.

    After 5 seasons of dealing with solar covers, I’ve learned quite a bit about them. Contrary to what one might initially think, they don’t increase heating during the day when the pool is exposed to sun. In fact, they actually reduce daytime heating by blocking sunlight. There’s a bit of a greenhouse effect that heats the top foot or so of water, but the rest of the water sees less sun so doesn’t heat up as much. One desirable side effect of this is that it reduces chlorine usage during the day. So.. if you’re going on vacation and want to cut down on chlorine demand, put the cover on.

    The biggest benefit of a solar cover is that it reduces heat loss and evaporation at night. So for the warmest water, you want to cover the pool in the evening and uncover it during the day.

    [More:]

    The drawbacks of solar covers are subtle and a bit paradoxical (hence the title of this post). The biggie: You’d think that using a solar blanket to cover a pool would keep the pool cleaner, but it doesn’t. In fact, you could argue that it actually makes the pool dirtier. It’s true that when the pool is covered, stuff will fall on the cover instead of into the water. And sure, you can even use a leaf rake to clear the larger debris off the cover before you remove the cover. But when it rains, the dirty and untreated rainwater will collect around the folds and creases of the cover, and then when you remove the cover, the dirty water (along with whatever debris is still there) all falls into the pool and fouls the clean water. Then, because most of the debris is already waterlogged, it immediately sinks down to the bottom of the pool. Contrast this to when the pool is uncovered: the skimmers collect all the debris before it sinks, and the rainwater immediately mixes with the treated water rather than puddling up on the cover.

    Solar covers (like any cover) also encourage neglect of the pool. When the pool is covered, I find myself more likely to skip chores like adding chemicals, brushing, emptying skimmer baskets, running the automatic cleaner, etc. When you combine this with rain and extra organic debris, it can lead to an algae bloom pretty quickly.

    Conclusions: Unlike conventional covers, these things really are not meant to keep stuff out of the pool. Use them only for their thermal properties (chilly nights etc), and keep them off during the day and in particular, when it rains. If you must use the cover when it’s raining to conserve heat, uncover the pool as soon as possible after the rain stops.

    I’ve often thought about getting a leaf net cover to keep out debris. I think it would complement the solar cover nicely, and in certain instances the two could be used at the same time. I hesitate because I’m not sure how much trouble it would be to put on and take off, and how I would anchor it down to keep it from blowing away, falling in the pool, etc. When you think about it, another tradeoff with covers in general is that they are an impediment to getting in the pool. It’s much easier to go swimming when the pool is uncovered and ready to go. No one wants to spend time fumbling with a big, unwieldy cover beforehand. Still, in the late summer and early fall, when we’re swimming less frequently anyhow, the leaf net may be worth the hassle.

  • Pool coping project — getting started

    Time to get started on the pool repair project.. better late than never I suppose. I’ve blocked off this coming Thursday to rent a concrete saw and cut back the expansion joint. Also, I’ve been thinking a lot more about what to use to mortar the coping stones in place. Terry Tamminen’s excellent book, The Ultimate Pool Maintenance Manual, includes instructions for making what he calls “patch mix”, using white portland cement and sand. He uses this same stuff (possibly with different ingredient ratios; I don’t have the book here to confirm) for patching plaster, anchoring coping stones, and grouting stones and tile. I think this might be the way to go, rather than buying premixed bags of mortar as I was originally planning. Just need to find a supplier. I’m not too confident that the big boxes will stock white portland. If not, I’ll try my favorite lumber yard. Will work on researching this over the next few days. (Update 6/22.. no sign of white portland at Home Depot).

    Oh, and the loose strip of waterline tile in the deep end fell off all by itself two days ago. I had to dive in to fish it out. Remarkably, it stayed completely intact, leaving me with a roughly 2-foot strip of mortar and pool tile, and the beam behind it is fairly clean too. I need to decide if I want to try to re-attach it, or just start over and retile (I have plenty of extra tile, so either is an option). This is the last step of the project, and won’t be happening until fall when I can lower the water level, so I’ve got plenty of time to think about it.

    [More:]

    6/21: Informative posting on poolforum.com about setting pool tile.

    6/22: Well, I decided to scrap my plans for the day due to unfavorable weather. However, I did go to Home Depot to take a better look at the concrete saw. I found out:

    • They supply all the fuel mixture I need (it’s a 2-cycle engine as I suspected)
    • There is roughly 5-6 inches from the blade to the outer edge of the dolly wheel on one side. This should be sufficient clearance to run the dolly along the pool coping edge. It will be helpful if the wheel height can be adjusted independently on either side to accommodate uneven surfaces.. but, I didn’t think to ask.
    • The saw includes a water feed, which is great because it should really help cut down on dust.
    • I don’t think it’ll fit in my car, so I’ll need to borrow my parents’ pickup.

    Now, I just need to wait for the weather to cooperate, so I can get this done. Based on the 5-day forecast, I might be waiting awhile..

    6/28: The crappy weather is finally moving out of the area, so the job is back on the calendar for Friday. Fingers crossed.