Cable Repair

 One of the neighbors had problems with their cable service.  The cable company (Time Warner Cable) came out and ran a cable down the fence as a temporary fix.

Yesterday (July 2), a crew came out to bury the cable.  The cable company has taken a longer-term approach and the current policy is to bury a 2 inch plastic conduit (at least 18 inches underground), and then run the cable thru that conduit.  Same sort of thing that we did to run the cable from their cable box/pedestal to our house.

So the plan was to bury a conduit from our current cable box/pedestal the entire length of the backyard to the neighbor's yard.  This of course tears up the grass (Zoysia Palisades) that we planted (last year?), has to go under the stone wall, thru the South bed, under the monkey grass by the greenhouse, and then thru the concrete wall under the stone edging.

 The lawn part went pretty well.  They avoided the sprinkler system along the fence.  As the photo shows, this really tore up the lawn along the fence; we will have to see if it fills back in.

 We disassembled the stone wall to allow them to lay the conduit underneath.  They helped put it back together, but the rocks are in a different order.

The South bed was more difficult.  It has an underground drip irrigation system.

and although they may have avoided destroying the lines themselves, they broke the connections to the lines.  I will need to repair those lines.

Plus the monkey grass was dug up.  It seems this should be taken as an opportunity to move it to the West Lawn, at least the parts that were dug up.

And we will need to repair the cement wall, now that the conduit is in place.

Trying to put things back after they were gone, I discovered that they broke one of panes of the greenhouse.

After we poured new concrete to repair the cement wall, and topped it off with new mortar work to hold the white limestone blocks in place, we turned our attention to the underground drip irrigation lines that were broke.

 There were two lines that were broke, one East of the greenhouse and the other West of the greenhouse.  Both were broken at the T-junctions where the underground drip lines intersect the water supply line.

So we replaced the T-junction piece and the line in-between the two T-junctions.

I'm not sure how we would detect if there are other places where the underground drip lines are broken, but at this point we think we have repaired them all.

At this point we can put all the dirt back.  Now we just need to water the plants to try to get them to re-grow and repair the bare spots and lines.


Note: the cable company finally came out and put the line thru the conduit in February 2016.

Sprinklers for the beds by the River of Rocks

We have dug out a bed by the A/C compressor.  Doing so exposed a sprinkler head that is currently on zone 8.  The other bed, on the other side of the A/C unit, is on zone 9.  We will convert zone 9 to cover all the beds.

So we need to remove this head from it's current water supply and tie it into the water supply for zone 9.  Zone 9 covers the heads in the other bed, so let's dig down and tie into that line.  Although the paperwork of this other bed shows the line going from one end to the other, next to the house, once we dig it out, it is clear that it must run down the middle of the yard and then send a pipe over to the head.

So to tie the new bed onto this, we cut the line to the head in the other bed, and put in a t-union.  Then run a pipe in front of the A/C unit.  We cut the head in the new bed off of it's supply and attach it to the new pipe from zone 9.  

We need to dig back as far as we can on the zone 8 supply line and cap it off.

Then we can extend this new water supply to another head at the other end of the new bed.

This gives us sprinkler heads at both ends of the new bed.

And we can extend this around the corner of the house to the other new bed between the River of Rocks and the house.

Grab Bars for Middle Bathroom Shower

With Linda's Mother moved into the guest bedroom and using the central bathroom, we figured it would be prudent to install grab bars to help with getting in and out of the bathtub.

I bought a 24 inch and two 12 inch bars, from Amazon, and installed one of the smaller ones.

I want to install the other at the other end of the tub and the longer one against the wall in the bathtub/shower.  But I am unsure where the studs are behind the tile.  My stud finder does not seem to work reliably in finding a stud behind the tile, grout, and tile-board.  So I am waiting to install the other two until I can get a better stud sensor, or we replace the tile (and I can see where the studs are behind the tile before they put the new tile on).

4 February 2016

Was reminded that falls are the most common problem for older people, and most falls are at home.  So I went ahead and installed the second, longer grab bar.

I marked where the studs were, as best as I could tell, and then positioned the bar where I wanted it.  That should give me three holes for each end in the stud; the installation document says we need at least two.

Using a masonry bit to drill thru the tile.  First use a hammer and a point to make a dent where I want the hole, then drill.  It seems that the glaze on top of the tile is hard, but once I am thru that, it drills easily -- red clay dust.  Of the 6 holes, 5 of them hit the stud.  The inside one on the left misses the stud just a bit.  So we have two solid screws on the left and three on the right.

From there it is fairly easy.  Use clear silicone caulk on the holes to seal them from the water.  Put in the 5 screws. Put the covers over the screws.

Clean up the dust from the drilling.

This may seem to be high, but normal use now is with a bath seat, and it is not too high for standing from a bath seat.

Mulching the trees and beds

It has been a year since we finished most of the beds in the East Lawn, and we normally put down mulch around the trees in the Spring.  So it seems like the time to mulch the yard.  In addition, the City is actually offering a rebate to encourage mulching (to cut down on water usage).  The City wants us to use at least 2 cubic yards.

We looked at doing that in bags (27 bags at 2 cubic feet per bag at $3 a bag) but it is more cost effective to get it in bulk ($23.50 a cubic yard).  So we borrowed a pick-up and loaded it up with 2 cubic yards, put a plastic sheet over it and held the sheet in place with 4 bags (one in each corner).

We dumped that all out on the driveway so we could return the pick-up.

Then we started distributing it around.  First the trees in the front yard, starting with Fuzzy.

And then the large Spanish Oak in front of the house.

 The Chinese Pistache in Zone 2.

 And the plantings in Zone 2.

The bed at the base of the Monterrey Oak.

And finally the new pecan tree in the back yard.
 

Amazingly that was the full 2 cubic yards (plus the extra 8 cubic feet from the 4 bags).  We still didn't get to mulch the peninsula between the driveways, nor the North bed nor South bed on the East side of the house, nor the beds in the front of the house, nor the Elms on the West side of the house, nor the Oak tree.  This would take at least as much more.

Addendum, 28 June 2015

Home Depot is having a sale on its mulch -- $2.00 a bag for the Native Austin Hardwood Mulch that Linda likes.  So I bought 51 bags of it -- took 3 trips in my car -- 15 bags, 18 bags, 18 bags ($110.43 including sales tax).  That gives me 102 cubic feet, or more than 3.5 cubit yards.

I was able to cover the South beds, on both the right of the greenhouse (which took 12 bags)

and on the left side of the greenhouse (which took 10 bags)

and the peninsula between our driveway and the neighbors (which took 26 bags)

That leaves us 3 bags for the North Bed.  We had some Mexican Feather grass in one corner of it, but after two years, it has failed to thrive.  I want to put more dirt in this area, to raise the level some (I think it has settled some), and then I will put mulch over it for now.

Fence Repair for Downed Tree

The neighbor behind us has a couple of dead trees.  One of them lost out to high winds and broke about 10 feet off the ground, following towards us and across the fence.

 Luckily the damage was minor -- two fence pickets had some damage at the top, and a lot of dead limbs.  Cleaning up the dead wood and replacing the two pickets fixes the problem.  About $5 for the two pickets (rough cedar, dog-eared, 1x6 six-foot long) at Home Depot.

Starting the River of Rock work

The River of Rock has been in preparation for some time.  We presented the plan for it in October, 2014, and laid out the rough flow of the rocks.  Now we need to actually implement it.

There will be a small bed between the River of Rocks and the house on both sides of the air conditioner compressor.  The one bed was excavated a long time ago, back in July 2008.  Now we need to excavate the second one, south of the air conditioner.

We marked off the boundary of the bed and started to dig.  The soil is quite different from what we normally find.  It is sandy loam, presumably brought in by the builder for fill.  After about a foot to 18 inches, we have the loam removed.

 Under the loam is the dark heavy soil that is native to this area.  Mixed with a lot of rocks, of course.  We separate out the rocks, and dig down to what seems to be bedrock.

We will need to get the sprinkler head on the same zone as the heads for the other bed, and put in another head at the other end of the bed.  This line will also need to be extended on around the house to the other bed between the house and the River of Rocks.

Then we will be able to fill the bed back in, and plant Liriope.

Refinish the Computer Room Floor

The rolling chairs are really taking a toll on the computer room floors; they have needed to be re-finished for some time.  But it helps to have good weather, so we can open the windows to air out the fumes.  This week looks good.

First we have to clear out all the stuff that is in the room.

Then we can sand down the floors (150 grit), vacuum, mop, and wipe it down with paint thinner and put a coat of polyurethane on.  The actual painting only took about an hour.  Then we wait over night.

We put two coats on the worst spots.

An LED "Fluorescent" light for the kitchen

Years ago, we took out the normal Fluorescent light fixtures over the middle of the kitchen and put in a skylight.  For kitchen lighting, we put shop lights on top of the upper kitchen cupboards, pointing up, so that the light reflects off the ceiling and down into the kitchen.  The shop lights each have two 4-foot fluorescent light bulbs.   Every now and then, I have to replace the bulbs.  Power is supplied by outlets that were added in the walls above the cabinets and controlled by the standard 3-way light switches from before the change.

Lately, one of the fixtures has not been working well.  When we turned on the lights in the kitchen it would not come on.  Or not for a while.  Or not until I went and hit the fixture lightly a couple times.  I replaced the bulbs, but it didn't get any better.  So it's probably not the bulbs, but the fixture.  Now the fixture itself is little more than a switch, some wires, and a ballast.  The ballast is apparently a transformer, and sometimes they go bad.  So I need to replace the ballast.

I've replaced ballasts in the past.  It's not easy work, and the replacement ballast typically costs about as much as a new fixture -- $20 to $40.  So there is really little economic reason to replace a ballast; better to get a new fixture.  So, off I go to Home Depot.

Of course, the current fixtures, even for something as mundane as a shop light, are not the same as they were decades ago.  And we are in the transition from incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs to LEDs.  I have a small flashlight with 27 LEDs that is really bright.  If only they could do that in an even bigger fixture.  And they can!  I can get a new fixture that is roughly the same as the old one in size, but with two LED strips instead of two fluorescent bulbs.  In theory it will last forever (or at least decades), so no more bulbs to replace.  $130.

While I was pondering this, an employee of the Electrical/Lighting department comes up and asks if I needed any help.  I said I was looking to move over to LEDs from my current fluorescents, but that what "they" should really do is develop a drop-in replacement for a fluorescent bulb that used LEDs internally.  And the employee said, "They did!", and took me over to a separate stand with a bunch of triangular cardboard boxes.  Each box had a replacement bulb from Toggled.

But it is not really just a drop-in replacement.  Rather the LEDs run off regular 120V 60-cycle wall plug power, so you have to remove the ballast.  Which is perfect for what I need -- the ballast is my problem!  And I figure I know enough wiring to be able to make the necessary changes.  So I buy two bulbs.  $35 each.  Not cheap, but less than the cost of the new LED fixture.

We start then with the light fixture and the two new bulbs.

 The first thing we do is open open of the boxes, to get the instructions and anything else.  The box is not easy to open -- I guess it was designed for sturdy transportation, but inside is the bulb, the instructions, a sticker, a couple of wire nuts and ends for the bulb -- duplicates of what is already in the fixture (apparently there are cases where the existing ones may need to be replaced).

The instructions say to open the fixture and cut the wires to the ballast, which is what I was expecting.  The instructions say to just leave the ballast in place, but I don't see the point in that -- it no longer serves any purpose but to add weight, so I removed it completely.

Now things get a bit more complicated.  For regular fluorescent bulbs, the reason there are two ends, and it does not matter if you put the bulb in one way or the other, is that both ends are powered.  For the LEDs on the other hand, it just gets power from one end -- the other end becomes just a way to hold the bulb in place.  The instructions have a little diagram.

The important thing to notice here is how the wiring for the LED bulb is just a simple power and ground situation.

Understanding that makes it a bit easier to modify things.  I can go to the far end of the fixture and just clip all the wires off.  And the near end can be substantially simplified from what was there.  Power comes in on the black wire, goes to the pull-switch (which we don't use) and then is distributed to one side of each of the two fixture lampholders.  The other wire from each lampholder is brought back and tied to the white (ground) wire.

In our case, the black power wire goes to a yellow wire nut to a yellow wire that goes to one lampholder.  A white wire right next to it carries the power over to the other lampholder, and then another white wire (from the other side of the lampholder) brings the ground back.  The lampholder with the yellow power wire has another yellow wire that takes the power back to another yellow nut with the white ground wire, to complete the circuit.  If I had to do this for show (instead of just for function), I would would change the color of the wires to make it clear which are power (black) and which are ground (white).  But even with the confusing wire colors, this is pretty simple, and no one should see it again for decades (if we are lucky).

Since I can, and just for over-kill, I both used the wire nuts and soldered the wires together -- solder them first and then put the wire nut on -- so the connections should be very solid.

Once the wiring is done, I can put the cover back on and install the two LED bulbs.  This is more difficult than necessary.  The LED bulb only has one side with lights (why have lights on the back side?), so it has to be rotated correctly to get the lights on the outside.  And it only gets power at one end.  The bulb has two aluminum strips along the side and engraved in the aluminum at one end is a suggestion that that is the end which needs power.  A more obvious marking would make it easier to be sure the right end is being put where the power should be.  (But, presumably, putting it in backwards just means it would not work; it wouldn't hurt.)  And with any luck, I will probably never replace this bulb.  (Of course, by the time I have to, I'll have forgotten all about the fact that power comes from only one end).

and then turn it on to see that it works.

Once it is back in place, I can test it out with the normal kitchen light switch and see how it works with all the other kitchen lights.

It seems to take just a moment to come on, but no more than the old fluorescent bulbs did.  The light is very bright.  I had a choice of 3 different "temperatures" for the bulbs -- 3500K (Neutral), 4000K (Cool White), or 5000K (Natural Light).  I choose the 5000K (Natural Light) and it's a bit brighter and less "orange" than the other fluorescents we have in the kitchen, but I would probably change the others to be this color, instead of going the other way; I might step down to the Cool White 4000K color.

This all took about 30 minutes.  Check back in 20 years to see how long they last.

Did a second kitchen fixture in May 2015.

Changed out one of the garage light fixtures in July 2015.

I had been having trouble with this light fixture for months; it was not coming on when I flipped the switch, but flipping the switch repeatedly would eventually get it to work.  Now it turns on every time.  Seems like there is a slight delay before it comes on, but it does come on consistently.  The 5000K (natural light) works really well in the garage.

The First Backyard Pecan Tree

My overall plan is to shade the center of the backyard with a couple of trees.  From working out in the yard, it seemed clear that the East and West parts of the backyard, with plenty of shade from various trees, does fairly well, even in the heat of the summer.  As the sun moves from East in the morning to West in the evening, both ends of the yard get at least some direct sun, but not for the whole day.  The West part of the yard gets the morning sun, up until just after noon, when the large oak tree at the West end of the yard shades it.  The East part of the yard gets afternoon sun.

But the center of the yard seems to be direct sun all day.  So if we plant a couple of trees to the left and right of the center, it should, eventually, shade all of the yard, at least part of the day.  Since we want the sun in the winter, we want a deciduous tree, and for variety (we have mostly oaks), we decided on pecan trees.  If the pecan trees give off nuts, that's good too -- both for us and for the neighborhood squirrels.

Since the East half of the yard is done, it could take a tree.  To reserve space, we have put a volunteer oak tree where the pecan will go (and a stick where the other goes).  Since we don't have the West part of the yard done yet, nor the center, we can't put the second tree in yet.  But we can put in the first tree.

Today, we went to Berdoll Pecan Farm and Nursery and bought a tree.   We have been buying our pecans from them -- in bulk, cracked but not shelled -- and figure that they have good pecans, so they must have good trees.  We bought a medium size Pawnee tree. $49.99 (plus tax).  It is 53 inches tall.

We planted it in the spot reserved for it in the East part of the yard.  The instructions from Berdoll say to water it every day for the next 30 days, so every day in April.

The volunteer tree that was filling in for it was moved over to where the next tree should go.  It will probably be a couple of years before this gets dug up and we can put another pecan tree in it's place.

The information sheet from Berdoll suggests that it will be 4 to 6 years before we get any nuts from this tree.  So around 2020.

Update:  It appears, in May 2018, that we will have nuts on the tree this year.

Update: There were a dozen or more very nice looking plump pecans developing on the tree, but suddenly one early September morning, they were all gone.  Just disappeared.  Nothing on the ground; nothing left on the tree. (5 Sept 2018).

New door knobs

The guest bedroom has been having continuing problems of the doorknob falling off.  The current door knobs were put in when the house was built, and just screw on a flange on the door.  Over time, they can back themselves off and then fall to the floor.  I've tried putting them back on and tightening them as much as possible, but weeks or months later they fall off again.  Not all door knobs, just a few.  Like the guest bedroom.

These doorknobs might be hard to use, if you had arthritic hands, so the idea is to replace them with levers, to make it easier for older people (like us) to open and close them.  We started that already with the coat closet, and now we want to continue that replacement on this bedroom door.

First, we purposefully remove the door knob.

And then all it's associated hardware, to get down to just a door, with a hole in the door.  Then we put the new hardware on.  It takes about 30 minutes.

We are again using Kwikset Tustin Satin Nickel  (720 TNL 15) Signature Series.  This time it's a "Bath and Bed" model, instead of a "Hall and Closet", so that it can be locked, in need be.

And then a couple days later, we replaced the utility room pantry door knob, again using a "Hall and Closet" model, since we don't need to lock the pantry.

And, finally, after the success of these two doors, we decided to go ahead and change out all the others.  We needed 7 more "Bath and Bed" types and 2 more "Closet" types.  Instead of buying these at Home Depot, for $29.92 and $25.87 (plus sales tax) for each, I found a place on the web that would sell them for $19.54 and $18.30 each (with no shipping or sales tax).  This cuts the cost from over $200 to about $135.   We finished switching them all out on 20 March 2015.