Replace Front Porch Light Switch

The switch for the front porch light (which is right inside the front door) was a timer, set to come on about 8:30 pm and go off about 11:00 pm.   But it broke; it stopped being able to turn things on or off at particular times.  So we looked to replace it.

A search on Amazon, Lowe's and Home Depot web sites showed a small set of such timers, but one seemed particularly interesting.  One problem of using a fixed time to turn the front lights on is that in the Winter it gets dark earlier, and in the Summer it gets dark later.  The ST01 Timer from Intermatic includes an "Astro" feature that knows when dusk (and dawn) occur in your location and can be set to turn the light on at dusk.  So we bought one of these ($34.55 at Home Depot).

First thing we do is remove the old switch

The other switch is for the light in the entrance way.  We end up with two wires to control the front porch lights.

The ST01 Timer comes with a standard paper installation guide, but the documentation on this guide is terrible. 

 

 There is a "mode" button that controls what is happening.  As you cycle thru the modes, there are modes that show up that the installation guide does not even mention.   They say to open the battery drawer to install the battery, but it is not at all clear how to do that (until after you have opened the battery drawer).

But it's a light switch, so from an installation point of view, installation is pretty easy.  Attach the black wire and blue wire to the two wires that go to the front porch lights.  The red wire is not used.  Attach the green wire to the ground wires.  Done. 

Bend the wires so that they all fold into the electrical box and use the two screws (top and bottom) to hold it in place.

Oops.  Now we see that the new switch is one of the large rectangular switches, not the small toggle switch, like the one for the front entranceway. So the old switch plate won't fit.  And if we get a new switch plate, we also need a new switch for the front entranceway.  So back to Home Depot, to get a new switch ($1.98) and switch plate ($1.59) for the "Decora" style of light switch.  Remove the old toggle switch and put in the new Decora switch for the front entranceway, then put on the new switch plate.

So that took longer than expected, because of the unplanned for trip to Home Depot for the new switch and switch plate, but things should work better now -- the front porch lights should come on at dusk and go off at 11:00 pm, when we go to bed.  Even if I forget to turn them on.  Or off.

Back Bedroom Bed Foundation Wall, Part 2

Having dug out as much as we are going to, we can clean up next to the foundation, removing loose rock, trimming roots, and spraying it down to wash any loose dirt off. 

Then we can form up for the concrete

The concrete calculator again says it should take about 28 bags of concrete, but this time we are getting 50 pound bags from Lowe's (on special) for two trips of $28.64, a total of $57.28.  Mix them up and pour them in the form.

The next day we can take down the forms.

The Back Bedroom Bed, Part 3

We are continuing the excavation to the bed by the Back Bedroom, after pouring the first part of the concrete wall sealing off the foundation.  A couple of days of digging gets us enough dirt to, when mixed with leaves and grass, fill in the deep area next to the concrete wall.

This also gets us to the point we need to use the jackhammer again, to break up the rock that has been uncovered.

We clean those rocks up.

And continue digging to the end of the bed to expose more rocks.

which brings out the jackhammer to break these up.

And these are also hauled around front to be gotten rid of.

And after another day of digging and hauling off rock, we should be ready to frame the cement wall to run along the foundation.

Back Bedroom Bed Foundation Wall, Part 1

Having dug out more than half of the length of the bed, we have exposed the foundation of the house.  While it may be sitting on rock further under the house, around the edges, it seems to be a mix of rock and dirt.  As with much of the rest of the house, it seems reasonable to seal this off with a cement wall, to keep trees and other plants, or animals, from getting under the foundation.

Using an on-line concrete calculator, we figure we will need about 24 bags of 60-pound concrete.  Two trips to Home Depot gets us 24 bags for $72.48.

Next we frame up along the foundation.

And after two days of pouring concrete and letting it dry, we can take the forms down.

Now it's back to digging out dirt and rocks.

The Back Bedroom Bed, Part 2

It's been a couple months since I was able to work in the backyard, but we left off with rocks and dirt that had been excavated, but not cleaned up.

So the first thing to do is to clean this up.  This takes a couple of days.

Then we can extend the excavation, pulling out more rocks and dirt.

At this point, we need to use the jackhammer to break up the larger rocks.

This broke out a large rock from the center of the excavated bed.

To get this out of the pit, we shaped the front edge of the bed by digging out the top part of the dirt, to fill in the bottom part, creating a dirt ramp.  This allows the rock to be rolled up the dirt ramp and out of the pit.

and then we need to dig out that ramp.

After a rain delay, we can remove those rocks,

but the dirt is really too wet to work.  But we can spend the day with the jackhammer and produce a lot of rock that needs to be be cleared out.

Clearing out the rock leaves a well-defined excavation.

We still have dirt and rock to excavate, but this first part looks done.

Cat 6 cable for the TV

Our wireless router is in the computer room, at one end of the house.  The TV is at the other end of the house.  We've tried to get wireless to extend from the router to the TV, but it's iffy, at best.  So to try Netflix, we ran a 100 foot cat5 cable from the router to the TV (actually to the Blu-ray DVD player which then connects to the TV).

But running a cable along the floor from one end of the house to the other seems to me to be a safety hazard, so given that this may be a long term issue (not just for our free trial month), we wanted a better solution.  We tried a wireless range extender, and considered some other approaches (like using our electrical power wiring), but it seems that the best approach is the cable -- lowest cost, no maintenance, highest reliable bandwidth.

So we decided to just run the cable thru the attic, instead of thru the house.

Starting in the TV room, we have a wall plug that provides the cable and a telephone plug.  Taking that off, we see that the wall is insulated (it's the wall between the TV room and the back deck).  We should be able to use the telephone wire to pull a cat6 cable down the wall, if we can find these in the attic.

 Going in the attic, we can pull back the insulation

and then we can find where the cables go thru the top plate of the wall and down into the wall.

We attach a string to the telephone wire, pull it up, connect the telephone wire and the cat6 cable to it, and pull it back down.

We bought a 100 foot yellow cat6 cable for  this purpose.

Patching the wall, repainting it and getting a new wall plate, we have a connection for the cat6, cable, and telephone.

We bought this wall plate from Fry's.  It's a Shaxon Keystone Wall Plate 3 Port, and then we got a 110-type RJ12 Keystone Jack (Cat 3) for the telephone (we had red, green, black, yellow 4-wire telephone and matched the red/green to the white/blue pair 1, and the yellow/black to the white/orange pair 2 for the RJ12), an F-type coaxial (Catv) Keystone coupler for the cable, and a RJ45 Keystone Coupler (Cat 6) for the ethernet cable.

Once the cable was set on the TV room, we ran the cable down the middle of the attic to the area over the A/C system (look for the yellow cable).

We fished the wire around the skylight housings and into the attic over the back bedroom.

In the attic over the back bedroom, the cable comes along the side of the attic,

under the catwalk, and along to the corner that goes outside the loft and back to the computer room.

The idea is to put a wall plate in the wall next to the A/C vent in the computer room.

Cutting a hole for an electrical box , we can then fish the wire back to the corner in the attic and pull the cable out into the room.

We then installed another of the Shaxon Keystone Wall Plates.  This time we only need one port for the RJ45 (Cat 6) coupler.

Running a simple 14-foot cat 5 patch cable from this outlet down to the router, we have what we need to run the TV or Blu-ray DVD player with internet connectivity.

As a side-effect of all the work in the attic, running the cable, we found areas on all 3 main work areas -- over the TV room, near the A/C system and in the back bedroom around the loft -- that were under-insulated.  So we bought 6 more rolls of R-30 unfaced fiberglass insulation (2 trips: 4 rolls of 23 inch wide $181.77 and 2 rolls of 15 inch wide $42.17; all 25 feet long, 9 inches deep) and installed that to boost the insulation in these areas.

So the wall-plates, inserts, and cable were all fairly in-expensive, the insulation was the most expensive part of this project.  Plus the three days of work in the attic.

The Back Bedroom Bed, Part 1

As the River of Rocks curves around the house and to the back sidewalk, it creates a bed between the River of Rocks and the back bedroom.  We want to excavate it, so that the plants will grow well, and extend the Zone 9 irrigation from the beds along the West side of the house (outside the computer room and the guest bedroom) into this additional bed.

So we start by digging a hole.

Then we expand and deepen that hole.

Notice that we are uncovering the main sprinkler water supply line, and the wiring that controls the various irrigation valves for Zones 6 to 11 (and the ground).  We have to dig carefully to avoid breaking this water supply line.

Digging on the other side of the water supply line, right up to the house, and the wall for the Iris bed.

We hit a solid layer of rock, about 16 to 20 inches down.  That seems almost deep enough.  Using the jackhammer, we create a hole near the Iris bed that goes thru this layer of rock to the next level.  That is another 12 inches.

So we could take out another 12 inches of rock to get to 32 inches deep.  But this rock is very solid limestone; it does not break easily.  And it is 12 inches thick.  And we are hemmed in by the house on one side and the River of Rocks on the other, so we can't really work freely in this narrow slice of the backyard.  Although it is 34 feet long, it is at most 80 inches wide, and most of it is half that width.  So we will just stay at the 16 to 20 inch level.

Keep digging, mixing the soil with leaves, and filling in the bottom half of what has already been dug out.

And keep digging.  We come across a big rock.

but using the jackhammer, we can break it into smaller pieces and pull it out, leaving more digging to do.

With more digging, we find more rock,

which is then broken up

 

and taken out.