Fruddled Gruntbugglies

Category: Projects

  • LAN Wiring 101

    Written on

    in

    ,

    I am getting a remedial course in network wiring this week. I’ve been lucky in the past, as all of my CAT 5/6 wiring has “just worked”. Sadly, my luck ran out the other day, when I tried to rewire the uplink for a 5-port switch in my basement office. I have two uplink wires running to my basement patch panel, and oddly, the switch’s jack worked when patched through to one of them, but not the other. Both uplinks worked when I plugged my laptop into them directly, so I was rather baffled. At that point, I decided it was finally time to invest in a network cable tester. I picked up a Klein LAN Scout Jr 2 from Lowe’s, and it immediately identified the problem: The switch’s jack’s wiring was bad (pins 1&2 open), uplink 1 was wired straight, and uplink 2 was wired crossover. The good news was that of the 7 jacks I tested, only 2 turned up bad, and they’re both short runs that wouldn’t be too hard to replace if I choose. Interestingly, both of the older jacks that I rerouted to the patch panel were wired crossover. It was 10 or 15 years ago that I installed the jacks, and I thought I remembered wiring everything with T568B, but apparently, I was wrong. I probably won’t bother re-punching them, as I don’t use either jack much (one of them I had actually never wired up) and they both still work thanks to Auto-MDIX. I do know now to check the wiring at the other end before punching a wire in to the patch panel (you’d think that would be obvious, but this is me we are talking about). As for the bad jacks, I’m not sure if the issue is with the cables or the punches (or both), but either way, it’s good to have a way to test the wiring. As a case in point, I crimped an RJ45 plug this evening, and accidentally swapped pins 1 and 2. Without the cable tester, I likely wouldn’t have known about it until something didn’t work right, and then I would have been pulling my hair out. I’d say the tester paid for itself right there.

    Update 2/28: Mystery solved- both bad jacks turned out to be wires that weren’t punched all the way down in the patch panel. After fixing that, they both test good. The basement patch panel is now fully wired, with 4 free jacks available for future use. Next up is the library closet. As an aside, so far, every jack I wired “back in the day” has turned out to be T568A.

  • Winter Projects

    Winter Projects

    Written on

    in

    ,

    I’m no longer quite the home improvement addict I used to be “back in the day”, but in the wintertime, I like to have at least one project to keep me busy around the house. Otherwise, I end up wasting too much time on the computer when I’m home. As I wrote earlier, I’m currently working on some home LAN upgrades. I’ve had something of an epiphany in the 3 days since that post. After waffling over where I should mount my switches and run my new wires, I did some reading and learned more about structured wiring, and now, rather than terminating my wiring at switch ports, I’m installing CAT-6 patch panels. That will give me permanent termination points for all of my existing wiring, which I can then patch into switches as needed. Right now, I’m in the process of wiring the first panel up in the basement boiler room, which will handle all of the cabling that runs through the west half of the basement. There are two existing CAT-5e cables that run from this area up to the switch in the library closet. My original plan was to run a single CAT-6 uplink and pull the two CAT-5e cables out, but now I’m going to leave the latter in place as well, and terminate them at the patch panel I intend to install in the library closet. That will let me move things around between the basement and upstairs switches as needed, just by moving patch cables around. The more I think about it, the more I understand why large enterprise LANs are wired this way. It might be overkill for most houses, but for this house with all of its wiring challenges, I think it makes a lot of sense. After I finish the basement, I’ll move on to the library closet. After that, I want to put something on the east side of the house, but I haven’t made up my mind exactly where yet.

    My next project arose out of necessity. Our pool is losing water at a rather alarming rate in the winter. This year, it is down over 2 feet since we closed it. Before the big 2026 SnowCrete Apocapalypse, we took the cover off, as the water level was too low to support a snow load on the cover. That gave me an opportunity to observe the water level every day. It continued to drop for a while, and now it seems to finally have stabilized at around where the light fixture conduit enters the pool in the shallow end (the deep end conduit is a couple inches lower). This is a common place for in-ground concrete pools to start leaking, as the sealant starts to fail over time. I suspect that what sealant is still there is hardening and shrinking in the winter, causing the pool to lose water in cold weather (it doesn’t seem to lose water nearly as fast in the summer).

    Today, with the pool water mostly un-frozen, I put my hip waders on, got in the pool, and pulled the shallow-end light fixture out. Then, I looked over and saw that the deep-end fixture had fallen out of its niche on its own. Not sure how or when that happened, but I’m guessing it might have been from freeze-thaw, with the water level being so low. I took a couple of photos of the shallow end niche, but after some recent rain, the conduit opening was still underwater, and it was a little hard to see how much (if any) sealant was there. Before the water leaks back down, I think I’m going to try to do a dye test to confirm that it’s leaking there. Regardless, I think it’s about time for new light fixtures. The existing fixtures still work, but they’re very old 500-watt monsters made by Paragon, a company that is no longer around.1 A company called Spa Electrics makes a nice-looking retrofit 12-volt LED fixture that I think I could use. Two lights plus a required transformer will set me back $1700 or so (nothing is cheap in the world of pools) but with the pool already partially drained, and needing to fix the leak either way, it seems like a good time to take the plunge (no pun intended).

    1. Looks like Paragon is now owned by Pentair, and they previously sold a very similar-looking LED retrofit called the SlimLite. However, it appears that it has been discontinued. ↩︎

  • Random stuff

    Written on

    in

    , ,

    I’m battling off-and-on dizziness again, similar to what I had back around the end of last year. Still unsure what causes it. As with last time, it’s not room-spinning vertigo, just more of a spacey, lightheaded feeling. Various things I’ve considered as possible causes:

    • Allergies/Environmental
    • TMJ issue (chewing/clenching/jaw tension)
    • Low blood pressure/low heart rate
    • Low electrolytes
    • Dehydration
    • Migraine
    • Eyestrain/squinting or possibly vision issue (do I possibly need glasses?)
    • Positional vertigo/motion sensitivity
    • Something I’m eating

    I’ve noticed that I rarely wake up dizzy. I often first notice it while eating breakfast, meaning that chewing/clenching (TMJ) or possibly diet could be factors. I suspect that the only way I’ll ever get to the bottom of it is to try to be scientific, keep notes on diet/environment/etc., and try to find some kind of correlation.

    I ran on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday (today) this week. Monday was 6.5 miles. I felt stiff for most of it, hit the wall at around mile 5, and cut the run short by a half mile. For mile 6, I could only manage a pace of 13.5(!) minutes/mile. Tuesday’s run was 7 miles, and the best of the three. I paced myself well and finished strong. Today was also 7 miles, and better than Monday, but the finish was not as good as Tuesday’s. It was, however, my fastest average pace of the week, at 10:50/mile, which is still about 20 seconds/minute slower than what I consider my average pace under ideal conditions. The dizziness does affect my running to an extent, but I don’t think it’s directly responsible for “hitting the wall”. My working theory is that the latter is related to electrolyte/hydration imbalance, and something else is causing the dizziness.

    This winter’s house project is upgrading our home LAN. I am running low on ports (particularly PoE ports) so I’m adding an additional 8-port switch in a different part of the house, which will give me more capacity, and allow me to shorten a few wire runs. I’m also going to start upgrading some of the wiring from Cat-5e to Cat-6, starting with the “backbone” that runs from the FiOS ONT to the router and from the router to the switches. I’ve also replaced our old AP-AC-Pro wireless access points with new U7 Lites, which support WiFi 7. Once the new switch is in place, I’m going to move one of the old APs into the garage, to provide better coverage for outdoor cameras, and eventually support a smart garage door opener. Lastly, I may put an AP in the basement family room, and I want to clean up the wiring in the closet around our existing switch. We will see how much of this actually gets done. 😄

  • Instant Hot Water Tank Repair

    Written on

    in

    One of the must-have appliances in our kitchen is an instant hot-water tap. Once you’ve gotten used to instant cups of hot tea, you’ll never want to be without one. Unfortunately, while these gadgets are a great luxury, they have a reputation for being unreliable. The most popular brand, In-sink-erator, is well known for lasting 2 or 3 years before the tank starts leaking. Indeed, that’s what happened to ours, while it was still under warranty. We contacted In-sink-erator, and they helpfully shipped us a brand new tank at no cost. The only problem was that the new tank also leaked. The ultimate solution was to replace the In-sink-erator with a different brand, a Waste King. The Waste King seems like a better made unit, and it’s been working fine for a month or so now, but the jury is still out as to its longevity.

    With our family happily tapping instant hot chocolate again, I decided to take a closer look at the leaky In-sink-erator tanks. I wanted to pinpoint where they were leaking and see if I could repair them. It’s next to impossible to find leaks while the tank is in service, because it’s under the sink where it’s hard to get to, and the tank’s internal plumbing is hidden behind the case and the styrofoam tank insulation. The best way to find the leak is to take the tank and faucet out of service, remove the case and insulation, hook the faucet up to a temporary water supply, turn the water on, and look for the leak. The In-sink-erator faucet attaches to the water supply with ¼” copper tubing with compression fitting.  I went to my local Lowe’s and picked up a ¼” compression to ½” male NPT adapter, and a ½” female NPT to female garden hose adapter, and used these to hook the faucet and tank up to my laundry tub faucet. With the case and insulation off the tank, I was able to pinpoint the leaks in both my original and replacement tanks.

    The In-sink-erator tanks have a well-known issue where the plastic tubing fails between the tank and the backflow reservoir.  It turned out that this wasn’t the problem with either of my tanks.  On both my tanks, the culprit was a plastic bulkhead fitting: the original tank leaked at the water supply fitting at the top, and the replacement leaked at the drain fitting on the bottom.  These fittings don’t appear to be serviceable, so the only option appears to be to replace them with higher quality bulkhead fittings.  In the meantime, I salvaged a useable tank by using the top half of the replacement with the bottom half of the original.  We’re happy with the Waste King dispenser for now, but if and when it fails, we now have a working In-sink-erator that we can fall back on.

  • Grout Removal Finally Finished

    Written on

    in

    ,

    So yesterday, about a year after starting, I finally finished grinding the grout out around the master bathroom tub.  This is not a job I’d recommend doing with older tile, unless it is really valuable and/or has historical significance.  It’s boring, dusty, tedious, and time consuming.  Did I mention that it’s dusty?  That cannot be understated.  Our tile is very close together, with very narrow grout joints.  They’re too narrow for a 1/16″ Dremel grout bit.  I removed our grout with a Dremel diamond wheel, coupled to a right angle driver attachment.  It worked, but it kicked up a LOT of dust.  We have a layer of fine grout dust covering everything in the bathroom.  It can also be fatiguing, particularly on overhead sections.  When your arms get tired, it’s easy to slip and scratch the tile glazing with the tool.  I burned through 2 diamond wheels on this job.  You can tell that a wheel is shot when it’s lost around 1/8″ of its diameter, and it starts kicking up a lot of sparks and not cutting as well.

    Now that the tub is finally grout-free, the next steps are to

    • Clean up.  Wipe everything down with a wet rag, top to bottom.  Sweep up piles of loose grout dust with a dust pan.  Let surfaces dry, then vacuum up remaining dust with shop vac.  Then wipe with wet rag again.
    • Clean tiles thoroughly and prep for new grout.  Knock out and clean up any grout I couldn’t get to with the Dremel.  Remove old caulk in a couple of spots.
    • Regrout the tile.
    • Misc improvements (new in-shower light fixture, faucet handles, shower head, exhaust fan, etc.)
    • Put in new shower door.

    I won’t be doing this again in this house.  Our tile is not nice or historic enough to be worth the effort.  It’s easier to rip everything out and start with new wall board and new tile.  That’s what we’ll be doing when we get around to remodeling our other bathroom(s).

  • Grout Removal

    Grout Removal

    Written on

    in

    , ,

    Nothing much exciting to write about on the biking front lately.  I was off work last week, and didn’t do much biking, but this week I’m back at it again.  August has brought some slightly more pleasant weather so far, but still not much in the way of rain, other than the occasional torrential downpour.  In other words, business as usual for mid-summer in Maryland, more or less.

    Been doing a little bit of work in our master bathroom lately.  We decided to re-grout the bath tub and shower area, because a lot of the old grout was either in bad shape or gone altogether.  Also, the shower door, likely a 1950s original, was shot (the rollers at the top were corroded to the point where they wouldn’t turn any more).  The first step to re-grouting is to remove the original grout.  According to everything I read, there’s no getting around this step, if you want the new grout to last.  Problem is, grout removal is a slow, boring, dusty job.  Over the course of the last few months, I’ve spent countless hours with my Dremel and my cartridge respirator, grinding away at the stuff, and I’m still only around 75% done (granted, this is a larger than average job, with 3 full walls and ceiling fully tiled – probably around 100 sq. ft. of tile).  The good news is, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

    This tile was initially challenging to work with.  Dremel sells a specialized grout removal bit and guide, but I couldn’t use their system because my tile was too close together.  I would end up grinding away the edges of the tile along with the grout.  I ended up using the Dremel with a right-angle adapter and a diamond wheel.  It was skinny enough to get into the gaps between the tile, and relatively easy to control, although there have been a few spots where I’ve nicked the tile glazing.  I’ve completely worn through one diamond wheel and am on my second now.  Looks like the entire job is going to cost me two diamond wheels.  Fortunately they’re not all that expensive — around $17.

    Once we’ve re-grouted, we’ll replace the faucet handles and trim, the shower head, and the recessed light at the top of the shower, then install the new shower door, which we’ve had since last September.  I think the end result will look pretty nice, but this isn’t a job I would want to do again.  If we ever redo the other bathroom, I’m going to argue in favor of ripping out the (beautiful 1950s retro-pink) tile and re-tiling.

  • Chlorine Generator Manifold Repair

    Written on

    in

    ,

    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

    Written on

    in

    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)

  • Taxes, painting and stuff

    Written on

    in

    , ,

    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.

  • Bedroom wiring finished

    Written on

    in

    Finished up the master bedroom fan switch wiring this weekend. It turns out that after I removed the downstream wiring from the box, I was able to fit the switch in the box just fine. No need to muck around in the attic pulling new wire. Five years ago, when I had more time on my hands, I probably would have pulled that wire. But now, if there’s a shortcut to be taken, I’m taking it.

    I also replaced the rest of the outlets in the room. On the last outlet I replaced (the outlet to the left of the closets, behind Cathy’s dresser) the outlet box was a little screwed up… kind of hard to describe, but it’s one of those boxes that can be expanded by removing the side and ganging it together with another box. And anyhow, the removable side, which was attached to the adjacent stud, was loose, and the rest of the box was a little loose and crooked. I fixed it up the best I could, but in a perfect world, the box should really be replaced. Again though, that’s one to put on the list for some mythical time in the future when I have lots of spare time.

    I also winterized the pressure washer and finished hooking up the unloader line on the air compressor. As of today, I haven’t yet managed to psyche myself up enough to turn it on and see if it works.

    So all in all, not a bad weekend around the house.