dr_phil_physics | Entries tagged with house

Yesterday I wrote about Thursday's new appliances (DW) (LJ):

Part of the joke was we got a pizza for dinner -- and used the new stove to place it on. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

But I'd joked on Thursday that the first cooking on the stove would probably be hard boiling some eggs. I've added a hard boiled egg to my lunch since my sabbatical began, to keep my protein levels up and help my heel heal.

And I was right! Lovely brown eggs from a guy at GVSU boiling along. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Of course, Friday's cooking also included rice. Mrs. Dr. Phil suggested that she was going to have to relearn how to make perfect rice. (grin) I seem to recall watching Chopped the other day and some chef was trying to pass his rice off as being caramelized and I think it was judge Scott Conant who said, "Oh that's what we're calling burnt these days?" (double-grin)

Dr. Phil

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So we bought a new KitchenAid dishwasher at the end of December (DW) (LJ), as the one that came with the house in the summer of 1993 was dying. We'd been talking about upgrading the heavy kitchen appliances, since they were over twenty-one -- and replacing a fridge when it fails on its schedule is no fun.

Back on the day of the Earthquake (DW) (LJ) we'd been in Grand Haven back at Bekins looking at new refrigerators. No, the old one wasn't dead. But I've had too many people have to deal with old refrigerators which died. Less of a big deal in the dead of winter in Michigan, but Summer is Coming. And since, like the dishwasher we replaced at the end of 2014 (DW) (LJ), the refrigerator was going to be twenty-two years old this year, I'd say we got our money's worth out of it.

Besides, we hadn't yet deposited the Federal tax refund check yet. (grin)

We came to a decision about a refrigerator pretty quickly. We're on well water, so really have no need to waste door space with an ice-and-water maker. We both hated my mom's side-by-side refrigerator-freezer and liked the freezer underneath of our first unit. Ended up there was a nice KitchenAid which had the bonus of matching the stainless steel and curved handles of the new dishwasher. Why not?

While Mrs. Dr. Phil was across the room taking shelves and drawers apart, I was parked in a chair -- right next to this stove. A stainless steel KitchenAid with the same curved handles, two ovens, a smaller one over the usual big stove, a fifth "fish burner" with grill pan, and much easier to clean and heavier duty grates. Oh, and ball bearings on the adjustable racks, with a cutout handle to make getting in and out easier. Really nice.

At first Mrs. Dr. Phil said no, but a couple things became clear. One, and you can call this trivial, but those nice curved handles we like? Naturally, they are going away and all the new models from all the companies are having straight handles. Two, the ovens are convection ovens, too. The more we looked at the range, well, we had been talking about upgrading the stove, too, at some point. Apparently some point was now. And given the cooking Mrs. Dr. Phil does, and we didn't pick the stove 22 years ago either, why not? Call it in between your basic consumer gas range and those semi-commercial grade Viking units popular with the granite counter yuppie remod people. Pretty much same size as the old one, so it's a drop in.

Delivery day was set for Thursday. We have the 2.5 cu.ft. minifridge downstairs we bought for storing IV bags of antibiotics a year ago, so critical supplies like milk didn't have to depend on coolers or ice bags. And there was plenty of stuff to weed and certain things we've kept in the refrigerator that can stand to be out for a time. Plus we spent ten days eating down some of the reserves. Oh, blueberry-rhubarb crisp... from last year's wonderful bumper crop of lovely blueberries.

The Old

Our kitchen since 1993. Mrs. Dr. Phil at first declared the fridge a magnet-free zone, but between my mother and my sister and other friends and relatives, that was quickly a lost cause. These are almost all wide angle shots with the 12-24mm f4G DX AF-S NIKKOR at 12mm (18mm equivalent, 99°). (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

GE XL44 gas range. Converted to LP. (They ran natural gas down the road less than two years after we moved. Mostly we've saved money by not paying for the pipe and converting all our appliances... again.) (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Sears Kenmore 21 cu.ft. refrigerator with 6 cu.ft. freezer. When we bought it, this was the first of new ultra energy efficient units, with an EPA estimated annual cost of $58/year -- and off the charts below the range listed for all 21 cu.ft. refrigerators. So we've been fairly immune to all the news articles saying CHANGE YOUR FRIDGE AND SAVE BIG MONEY! (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

The New

Bekins is not the cheapest store, but they have a lovely showroom, really knowledgeable sales staff and really great repair and installation teams. With the fridge emptied and de-magnetized, and the stove top cleared in the morning, they came in at 1:30 and had both units out really fast. Hardest thing was figuring out if the doors needed to come off the fridge to fit through the door -- they did. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Old units in the garage. Lakeshore Habitat for Humanity will pick them up next week -- nothing wrong with either unit. Oh, and if you are prone to worry, yes we left the fridge doors open so it doesn't turn into some horrible biology lab experiment in the meantime. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Fridge in. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Bringing in the range. Mrs. Dr. Phil really liked the carrying straps the guys were using. Because we had stairs, they weren't going to use a handtruck or dolly. And you can clearly see the curved handles here, which won't snag or catch as you walk past. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Hooking up the LP line and checking for gas leaks. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Paperwork to sign. Well, it's ours now. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Our new kitchen for the next ten-fifteen years plus. Oh, and just like with the new dishwasher, there is an issue with the nice curved handles when their doors are shut and a small utility drawer. But, we can mostly make it work. The new stove can't get as close to the wall as the old one, since the cutout in the back isn't in the right place for the shutoff valve on the LP line. So much for standardization, guys. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

I forget to take a close-up picture of the new fancy range display. Besides a clock, it displays the actual temperature of both ovens, you care barely make out the red numbers on this blowup, plus chase messages in blue -- these are saying Pre-heating. Both ovens were put on 350°F for half an hour to take off the oil all the inside parts are coated in.
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Open wide. The crew took a good long time to get this exactly leveled. Not so easy in a house where it's always had a few issues with horizontal floors. (We're built on sand and I think there's some settling over 20+ years.) (Click on photos for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

To Celebrate!

Three hours after the new appliances were installed... we drove to Coopersville and picked up the Bravada, which needed an A.C. recharge and picked up a pizza. What? You thought Mrs. Dr. Phil was going to cook after unloading and loading a refrigerator and cleaning stuff all day? When the fridge is purged and allowed to be understocked because... reasons?

327 Pizza and Pub, named for both their street address on Main Street in Coopersville, and Chevy's iconic 327 cu.in. V8 -- Wendy's used 1969 Camero had a 327. And they say they do: "Chicago Style Thick crust pizza that is just like a PIE! We build our pizza inside a deep dish pan, put another crust on top of that, and finish it off with another helping of sauce and Romano cheese."

Did somebody say Chicago stuffed pizza in Coopersville, even closer than Crust 54 in Holland? Hello? ... sets Speed Dial 327 on phone...

Chicago style two crust pizza with sausage, mushrooms, black olives and green peppers. About $24. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Though it's really too thin to be a real Chicago stuffed pizza, it's a nice pizza pie. The sauce on top has lots of Romano and the crust was really tasty. They have other pizzas and calzones -- methinks this is probably closer to their calzones than Edwardo's.

Oh, and the appliances are really nice. They look like they belong. We think we'll keep them for a while.

Dr. Phil

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Christmas Eve our dishwasher started making some alarming noises -- gears not meshing right or tearing themselves apart in the transmission? Who knows? But the RCA dishwasher was new in the summer of 1993, so after twenty-plus years of service, there was no incentive to put a dime into its maintenance.

Besides, it was terribly noisy.

It came with the house when we bought it -- who buys an RCA dishwasher? -- and I figured we'd probably replace it in ten years or so with a nicer unit. But other than being REALLY LOUD, it worked fine.

Funny thing, we never bought a dishwasher before. Oh the new duplex we rented when we came down in 1991 had a nice brand new Panasonic dishwasher. And the newly built house had the new RCA, so technically we bought it, but didn't shop for it. But we have a lovely appliance store in Grand Haven -- Bekins -- who've done repairs and sales on our washer and drier.

Christmas in Chicago, Christmas Dinner II on Friday. It was Saturday at noon when we drove out to Grand Haven. We were the only customers. There were at least a dozen models to choose from. We went over our rough estimate for cost, based on Lowes prices and models, but got the machine we wanted. And it was in stock. And, after saying they couldn't deliver until Tuesday or Wednesday, when they found out it was Allendale, they had a crew that could come Monday morning -- 9:30 or so.

They came at 9:05, which was a good thing, because it was noon before they left. You'd think kitchens would be standard, but Oh No...

The 1993 RCA still did two more loads for us on Saturday and Sunday. So it didn't die on us. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Two decades of well water stained it a bit, but it did a good job and the racks weren't stupidly laid out. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Unfortunately, when we bought the house, we had the basement finished. But they'd run the piping under the floor and now above the ceiling, and it seemed they clamped the two lines together. So you couldn't pull it out. They had to cut a hole in the floor just to disconnect the old dishwasher. But it's under the counter so who cares. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

The water line was copper, so they used that. Put in a new drain line and we had them snake it through the utility cupboard on the other side of the island. The old drain line was capped at both ends and left in place. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

And here's our shiny new KitchenAid dishwasher. Note 1: There must be steel behind the stainless, because our magnet that says Clean/Dirty still works. Note 2: After fighting with the recessed grip on the RCA for 20+ years, I wanted a handle -- the KitchenAid was available without or with a really nice curved handle. Note 3: Um, the drawers to the right? And that handle? Mrs. Dr. Phil swapped the two top drawers -- the Baggies/Ziplock drawer doesn't need to be pulled out far to work. Note 4: The rose came from Bekins. Aw-www. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Stainless steel interior. Energy saving -- also means longer cycles and probably won't last twenty years. The controls are along the top edge of the door. Lots of adjustments on the two main drawers -- plus a third silverware drawer on top. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

And yes, that interior really did have that new car smell.

And it is SO quiet, you can hear the blower fan on the Rinnai inline water heater running in the basement.

Why did we wait twenty years to replace the old one? (grin)

Dr. Phil

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It's down into the 60s now. But it was still about 80°F around West Michigan at 11pm. We have a slim line Sears air conditioner in the bedroom window. Once we used it to cool the bedroom and take the edge off the whole first floor. Or the fan to move air and provide pleasant white noise for sleeping -- in winter we use the humidifier for that -- and now that we have the heat pump for central air conditioning, we just use the fan. With just one day of heat, we chose not to fire up the heat pump. So I used canned air to clean the filter and the vents and put the fan on HI.

By bedtime it was still pretty close in the bedroom, so we spun the dial to AC on the window unit. Despite being around 15 years old and the compressor not run in maybe two years, it cooled like a champ.

Today's big activity was having our septic tank sucked clean. Oh joy. Seriously, living in the country you gotta do this from time to time. The septic service would like you to do every 3-4 years. We've done it every decade, just like clockwork. (grin) The last time was a week before Memorial Day and my first WisCon and two weeks before the 2004 Clarion workshop began.

Naturally, it rained.

Digging for the septic tank in a drizzle surrounded by our cheerful yellow flowers. My guess is that the berm was added after the house was built, resulting in the tank cover being deeper than usual. If we ever have to replace the septic tank, they won't do that. They also wouldn't use the kind of tank and cover we apparently have. Things change over twenty years, especially standards. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

The whole process was made easier because I had taken reference photos of the hole ten years ago when we last had it done. Yeah, ten years and ten years is a bit long. But we have a big tank and no children, which really cuts down on the load, so to speak. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

I guess the outside water faucet is turned on. The last time, or second-to-the-last-time that faucet was used was the last time we had our septic tank done. Just add water and stir. Glug, glug, glug. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

HAULED PRODUCTS - MADE IN MICHIGAN. Ah, that septic/sewer/outhouse smell -- nothing like it, even when you just get a whiff from thirty feet. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

This was all made easier because I had taken reference photos back on Monday 24 May 2004 with the tiny Sony DCS-U30 I had bought for Clarion. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Side view of the truck. Ten years ago it was another dreary, rainy day. Some things never change. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Another reference photo. While the grass is long, I'm not seeing a lot of twiggy weed stalks, so maybe I was still mowing. Sometimes. Maybe. Or maybe not. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Whole thing took less than an hour. And now, other than a little disturbed ground -- too small to be a body and anyway who buries the evidence in the FRONT yard -- we're good for another ten years. Or maybe a bit less. (grin) All this fun, for just $267. Don't you city kids wish you could do this?

Dr. Phil

Back In The Mid-80s

When we moved to Laurium MI in the Upper Peninsula and Mrs. Dr. Phil started her job at the Michigan Tech library, we started off without a lot of money. The old mining house we rented was an odd duck, "renovated" by the landlord would be one way of putting it. But it was warm and comfortable enough.

At some point, possibly after our October 1984 formal wedding, we decided to buy a chest freezer for the basement, so we could take advantage of storing some of the leftovers, baked goods, meats and things on sale. We looked at several at the local Hancock hardware store, and settled on a 6 cu.ft. Whirlpool chest freezer -- a sort of beige colored cube. The salesman wanted us to get the larger rectangular 9 cu.ft. unit, but we liked the look of the little 6 cu.ft., plus without kids how much freezer storage did we really need? The kicker was there was a scratch on the front kickplate of the floor model, so we got it for about fifty bucks off the price.

A trip to Ace Hardware in Calumet got me some wiring, a box, outlet and a new circuit breaker and we had the unit resting on two very heavy boards I'd acquired somewhere from a shipping crate.

The freezer was moved twice -- once to Henry Street in Allendale, where it survived about a year-and-a-half in the garage, subject to heat and cold, and then in the basement in the current house for the last twenty-some years.

Which Brings Us To Sunday Morning

Mrs. Dr. Phil went downstairs to get the second dozen bagels we bought before Christmas. And found they were not frozen. Also a little fuzzy in the bag. Also that the freezer smelled BAD when opened. Yup, it died -- death date unknown.

Now some people would be really upset at losing tons of food in a dead freezer, but really, though the freezer was stuffed, we just lost the bagels. Everything else in there was old. We used to buy frozen pizzas on sale to have a cheap quick meal from time to time, but I can't remember the last time we did that -- so the couple of pizzas in there were at least five years old. And the other things were of even more depressing vintages. There was a plastic tub of chicken stock on the bottom that had a paper tape label of June 1993 or something like that on it! Enough frost had accumulated that there was a couple of inches of water in the bottom once the contents was removed.

So really, the lost food was pretty much amortized over the last twenty years, so a dozen bagels from the bagel store in Holland is pretty much small potatoes, to mix our food metaphors here.

Six cubic feet ended up as three garbage bags, too much to fit in our old Rubbermaid trash bin. But the overnight temps have been about 19°F, so leaving one of the bags outside the garage before the midweek trash hasn't been a problem.

The Ironic Wrinkle

Saturday was our 29th anniversary (judicial version). Rather than going out, Mrs. Dr. Phil made a really wonderful batch of spaghetti with eggplant and turkey Italian sausage, flavored with a very nice Spanish red wine. And capers. Since she'd shopped at the D&W in Holland, we also had a loaf of a garlic sage sourdough bread. Oh, seriously YUM.

Which meant that we had nice big slices of garlic sage sourdough bread instead of moldy bagels for our late Sunday breakfast downstairs with the Sunday paper. (grin)

When Mrs. Dr. Phil posted on Facebook that we'd lost the freezer, many of our friends immediately decided that she deserved a new freezer as an anniversary present. "so what IS the proper gift for 29 years -- white-goods, by any chance?" Turns out, according to one website, 29 years is furniture. Didn't say what kind. Well, we did use the lid of the freezer for some tasks...

Seriously, though, we don't really need a chest freezer. My folks had bought a big double door freezer back in Medina one winter when we bought a big chunk of a cow -- half or a quarter, I don't remember. And in Greensboro, we ended up with a 2nd refrigerator in the shop to handle the overflow of produce from the garden, etc. But with just Mother at home, we unplugged that last year. We don't need the reserve.

Still, the big upstairs refrigerator is as old as our house -- about twenty years -- so maybe we'll budget a new fridge this summer. Be proactive and replace it before we have a product emergency. That and the dishwasher sometime.

Ah, entropy.

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: melancholy

It's July 1st!

That means it's the first day of classes for the WMU Summer-II Session and at noon, the first day of my PHYS-2070 University Physics II / Electricity & Magnetism (w/ calculus) class. Summer classes mean double-length 100 minutes, so we did the Introduction to Dr. Phil, the Good News / Bad News of going from student friendly first semester Mechanics to less previous experience E&M. (grin) Also the 14 page syllabus. And the tale of Electricity & Magnetism is the Triumph of 19th century Physics -- plus Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Yup, effectively the first two days of class. (summer-class-grin)

It's July 1st!

And Redstone Science Fiction is back open to submissions for fifteen days -- for those of you who care about such things.

It's July 1st!

And except for a few roof cap shingles -- or whatever they're called -- that they were short, we just about have a new roof on our house. Yay new roof. Details to follow.

It's July 1st!

And on the Tor.com email newsletter, they had this amusing comment:

Fun factoid: the epic Isner-Mahut tennis match at Wimbledon lasted longer than all three Lord of the Rings theatrical releases; by the time Isner won, after eleven hours and five minutes of play, they were just twenty minutes short of lasting as long as the special editions. That's some serious warrior spirit.

It's July 1st!

Oh, and it's Canada Day. Happy Canada Day, Canada!

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: geeky

Null Heat Pump

Back in April we had The 2009 Great Heating and Cooling Project. Above 32°F, heating is done by the Goodman 2-ton heat pump. Basically, it's an air conditioner run backwards, so hot exhaust gets dumped inside and the outside gets the cold air. Amazing that it actually works.

It's also a little bit odd, because the air coming out of the ductwork isn't hot-hot, like the warm arm when the furnace is running.

Last Wednesday I realized that the heat pump wasn't really warming the house. Outside temp was near freezing, about 34°F. Overnight we let the house cool down, but in the morning after running for an hour-and-a-half it had only gone from about 68°F to 69-70°F. Later in the morning I raised the set point again and after 45 minutes, again only 68°F to 69°F. So I shut down the heat pump and switched to the furnace full-time. Went from 69°F to 72°F in 10-15 minutes. Ah... warm.

Strange Noises

The other symptom: late one night, when the outside temp was 36°F and the heat pump had been running, I heard a 10-15 second long grinding noise -- like the compressor was restarting. Heard that sound during the long not-so-much-warming incidents on Wednesday, too. Hmm...

Overfilled At The Plant?

My heating and cooling guy, Greg, checked out the heat pump and found that it was running, both in heating mode and cooling mode. Worked real good as an air conditioner when the outside temp is 47°F. (grin) The pressure and amps were a bit high, as if it were working a little harder than normal, but it wasn't out of refrigerant (my initial guess). He wondered about the TX transfer valve, the valve on the inside of the heat exchanger that has to switch between heating and cooling. He left to go get a TX valve, but the supplier said that the manufacturer had reported that some heat pumps had shipped with too much refrigerant, up to two pounds, which would cause too high a pressure and in cold weather, i.e., the unit might've been freezing up.

The installation papers had pressure charts for AC mode in temps above 60°F, but not in heat mode. Greg was able to get those figures and found the pressure while running to be high. So he hooked up a tank and removed some of the refrigerant to bring the pressures down to the new tables he'd gotten for heat mode. Reweighed his tank and it was nearly two pounds heavier. Considering the total charge is supposed to be five pounds, it was definitely overcharged at the plant.

Huh

Running the heat pump, the air coming from the vents actually felt warm -- still not hot like with the furnace, but I wasn't expecting that. AC mode would've been working okay, given that the outside temps would've been hire, but the amps to the compressor have dropped so it will run more efficiently in the future. In the spring, when the weather is back up to 70°F, Greg will come back and check the pressures for cooling mode.

While it is annoying that someone screwed up at the plant, it helps that the heat pump and the furnace complement each other, so we have a back-up heat source. (grin) Of course, it's now about 60°F outside, so the heat isn't running. But hopefully we're back up to full power.

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: warm

Monday's Power Outage

Continuing to talk about today's power outage, about 3:15pm I drove into Allendale. Was surprised to see the traffic lights dark at 68th and Lake Michigan Drive/M-45. The Family Fare grocery store and the post office had power, but it's a brand new shopping center and I don't know if they have a generator. The Family Fare gas station out front was dark. In the west side of Allendale, only the Mobil gas station had power amongst gas stations. East of there and over by GVSU, the power was on. Haven't heard what caused the problems and I saw no crews working, except for one AT&T telephone truck.

Funny how it makes me feel better, to know the power outage is widespread. I mean, Consumers Energy has always done a good job out in Allendale with restoring power, but you always wonder out in the country if it's "just you" and whether they know about it or when they'll get around to fixing it. Yet another reason why having the automatic generator is a relief.

The power at our house went out at 11:28am and the generator came on in five seconds. The DSL modem, router and Wi-Fi boxes are all on a UPS and never went down. While I was downstairs copying the daily Sudoku puzzle, I heard a thunk and thought maybe the heat pump compressor was starting hard. But when I was back upstairs I heard the generator shut down outside at 6:19pm, so what I heard was the transfer switch slamming over as we switched back to utility power and the start of the generator's cool down. About 6¾ hours.

Some of the neighbors' generators were still running up to an hour later -- but those units aren't automatic.

Mrs. Dr. Phil was able to reach behind the wooden cube with the TV on it and pull the TV plug from one of the bottom 3 outlets on the APC UPS powerstrip and plug it into one of the surge protected only upper 3 outlets. The next time the power goes out the TV should just go out, then come back on -- not ping-pong up and down, what with the bad battery in the UPS. Yeah, yeah, I should replace the UPS. It's hard to get to, okay? (grin)

All in all, this wasn't a great tragedy for us and I'm not trying to complain here -- or gloat. Just talkin'. Meanwhile, I got a lot of editing done today, so I'm happy about that.

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: relieved

On To Version 4.01

I've been stuffing in and expanding scenes to the OAS novel and it has gotten to the point where I need to see the thing. Besides the usual editing, a few scenes need to be rearranged and a number of bits need to be flagged to get the calendar in order. So it was time to fire up the print server downstairs and run a printout of Version 4.00. Microsoft Word's word count was up to 72,118, but finally getting it in Standard Manuscript Format allowed me to get a page count -- 332 pages. Doing some math at 250 words/page gave me a standard word count of 82,750 words, so that's the number in the progress meter. Officially the manuscript is above the minimum length of 80,000 words, but obviously it isn't done yet.

I print drafts on the HP LaserJet 4ML as 2-ups -- two pages per sheet. It cuts down on paper and allows the manuscript to be held landscape and yet still gives me plenty of space between the lines and in the margins for edits, comments, new stuff, etc. The 4ML has been a pretty steady printer, we bought it in 1995 I think, but it's not very fast. About 4-5 ppm. So 332 pages ÷ 2 ÷ 4 page/minute gives us about an hour to print.

Started last night at 5:29pm. The 4ML holds up to 100 sheets so I knew there'd be a pause to reload. Printed it in 3 sections -- I have a heavy duty stapler that easily staples 20-120 sheets of paper, but after a certain point it becomes too unwieldy. Finished about 6:25pm and had just shut down the print server when the house got hit by high wind gusts (up to 70mph nearby) and the first Sunday evening storm arrived. Mrs. Dr. Phil said the arrival came with a burst of hail, but it was small and didn't last long. Power bounced on and off a couple of times, but by that time I was done printing and could shut the printers down, too. Laser printers have a coil to charge the corona wire to high voltage and the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) units I have suggest not to use laser printers with them, so the 4ML is just on a surge protector.

Storms

Another squall line ran through between 10 and 11pm, though most of the storms were tracking north of us along I-96 and south of us along I-94. TV dropped on and off as the power dimmed a couple of times for a second or so. I've got an old UPS for the TV/VCR/DVD/stereo, but its battery has gotten old and so doesn't hold much of a charge. If the power is out for more than a blip and the TV is on, it has trouble coming back on and the TV cycles rapidly trying to start -- has to be shut off. Annoying, but getting behind the TV to the UPS is a pain that I've put off for a long time. I'd order a new battery from APC, but at this point there's no guarantee that the circuit board is still good, so I should just replace the whole unit. Sometime. The whole point was to keep the VCR from losing its mind when the power went out, but the current UPS is failing that when the TV is on. (grin)

Around 3am we had a series of intense storms training right over us. No more power problems but the rain got pretty hard at times. Glad I got the previous shingle damage fixed a couple of weeks ago.

So Naturally...

At 11:28am Monday, while the sun was coming out -- the power went out. Five seconds later and the generator had us back up and at nearly two-and-a-half hours in, is still running. Well, at least I could test to see if the generator could start the new central air/heat pump we installed. Our 12kW generator is supposed to be able to start a 4-ton compressor and the heat pump is 2-ton. So I made the AC come on -- it started fine. Later I was checking some TV and found that the voltage must drop just enough from the impedance of the compressor start that the bad TV UPS couldn't handle it. I should move the TV to an un-UPS socket.

Back to the editing...

OAS Project

Due Date: Thursday 20 August 2009

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: relieved

End of Day Two

The 2009 Great Heating and Cooling Project continues, but is not finished. See, even the other day the weather forecast for Wednesday and Thursday was clear or at least partly sunny. Instead, the heavy rains came back. "Rain starting about noon," said last night's forecast, but later added, "rain after dawn..." Um, which is it, sparky? Let's go with the Rain All Day scenario, apparently.

Plenty of work for a whole day of banging and clanging, though. The kitties are a little frazzled, since all this was going on next door to their room. Probably ruined a whole day of busy sleeping.

Heat pump refrigerant does not like water, so my heating & cooling guy decided to come tomorrow and do the fill in the absence of heavy rain. Good call, I say. But that means the new thermostat controller will have to be rewired tomorrow, as the primary heat source is moved from furnace to heat pump. Since we didn't have the heat pump. Can't the controller just figure that out? Shouldn't this be a menu choice, just in case -- oh let's go out on a limb here -- the heat pump or the furnace should fail?

Can't We Just Have An ON Button?

We're used to just bumping the thermostat up or down at various times of the day. It is going to take some time to adjust to some sort of smart controller. There are times, however, when all we want is a menu choice that shifts to an idiot screen -- HOT ON, COOL ON, EVERYTHING OFF -- and leave it at that.

Seriously.

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: bouncy

End Of Day One

The 2009 Great Heating and Cooling Project began with bangs and clatters and a furnacectomy. It ends with nary a sound, as the new furnace is installed and working. New blower fan appears to have more oomph but the whole unit is whisper quiet. Not sure we'll know when it's running. (grin) Reminds me of a comment I heard once that said that Americans would never buy Japanese vacuum cleaners -- or at least those models destined for the domestic Japanese market -- because Americans want suck they can HEAR and the Japanese want unobtrusive suck. Mrs. Dr. Phil has commented she'd really like to try the latter. I've been known to vacuum wearing a pair of 35 dB shooting muffs.

The warm glow of the home fires...

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: working

The Great Stimulus Project of 2009

And now giant mutant voles are eating into the side of the house, too.

Remember that scene in the medical dramas where they open up some poor guys chest and remove his heart, only to discover that the donor heart is defective or the connective tissue or arteries just fall apart when they try to sew it all back together again? Well thank goodness we're not there yet. But our furnace is sitting in the garage and it isn't even noon yet. (grin)

Alas, poor York, I knew ye well these past sixteen years...

Back in 2007 we had the Great Rinnai Hot Water Heater, Sump Pump and Kohler Backup Generator Project, which all stemmed from the fact that our water heater was getting old and there was no place to drain it in the basement... The 2009 Great Heating and Cooling Project began with the simple desire to raise the humidity in the house during the winter. It's supposed to be good for the sinuses and keep down colds, flu and sinus infections. But putting a whole house humidifier on a nearly sixteen year old furnace seemed silly. Oh, and the one thing I've always hated about the current furnace were the supposedly washable furnace filters. No frame, stiff scratchy fiberglass and impossible to get in and out. Did NOT help our sinuses that we never cleaned the damned thing very often.

So let's talk about a new furnace. And as long as we are, what about central air conditioning? Well, it turns out 2009 is great year to be talking about this sort of stuff. There's some energy efficiency Federal tax rebate money for going high efficiency. In our case it means we could've spent X dollars for a 90% efficient furnace to replace the 85% York we have (uh, had). Or we could spend Y dollars for a 95% efficient furnace plus a heat pump. Y - X = around $1500 and we'd qualify for the $1500 max rebate. So for the same net money, we can get a more efficient heating system and essentially free central A.C. for the summer.

As for air filtration, we looked at an $800 electrostatic unit, but you have to wash the stainless steel blades every couple of weeks. For about $250 we're getting this large cartridge unit that gets changed once a year for about $30. It's gonna take another sixteen years to get around to making up the cost differential with the one-a-year cartridge system -- no-brainer decision there, folks.

Banging and Klanging

So yesterday was Grading Day. And after a nap we went out to the movies and dinner at a Thai restaurant and a pleasant evening. Now Greg and his helper are busily changing our house. They've budgeted two days for the job, but have half of Friday penciled in for trouble-shooting.

And then I'm off to Penguicon!

Dr. Phil

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First Cooks
New Shiny!
That New Car Smell
The Day After Summer
The Day The Freezer Died
July The First
A Cold Wind Blows... Inside
Aftermath
Powerful Issues
How Many Cubits Of Wood Do You Have On Hand?
Home Is Where The Hearth Is
There Are Giant Mice In The Ductwork... With Tools

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Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

Those Who Lie In Wait, Dream Deep

Entries tagged with house

First Cooks

New Shiny!

That New Car Smell

The Day After Summer

The Day The Freezer Died

July The First

A Cold Wind Blows... Inside

Aftermath

Powerful Issues

How Many Cubits Of Wood Do You Have On Hand?

Home Is Where The Hearth Is

There Are Giant Mice In The Ductwork... With Tools