homeownership
- A stoppage in a pipe somewhere kept the toilet from draining.
- The flapper valve in the toilet stuck open, causing the water to run and run.
Installing OpenGarage
Last week on a whim I ordered a little OpenGarage unit. OpenGarage is an open-source hardware and software design that allows for remote monitoring and triggering of a garage door opener. My garage door opener is old and doesn’t have software built in, which is fine, but having the capability to remotely check and trigger the door would occasionally be nice to have. So, for $50 I figured it was worth a try.
The unit arrived earlier in the week. Minimally packaged in a small padded envelope, it’s smaller than a deck of cards, a small circuit board in a 3d-printed enclosure. The kit included a wire for connecting it to the garage door opener and a Micro-to-USB-A cable to provide power. It was a breeze to connect to my home wifi network, and easy to register for an online token so I can connect to it when I’m away from home. This morning I installed it - two screws hold it to the garage ceiling, the wires connect to the same opener terminals as the hard-wired control button, and voila!
It will take me a little time to figure out what automations I want to set up. OpenGarage supports IFTTT integrations, so I may experiment there with some time- and event-based notifications. For now, though, it looks like it was an inexpensive, easy way to get online monitoring and control capability I didn’t have before. Neat!
Not exactly to plan
Way I planned to spend Friday evening: reading a book and watching TV.
Way I actually spent Friday evening: feverish trip to Home Depot (20 minutes before close!) to rent the 100' sewer snake.
But it’s not yet 10 pm, and the sewer is once again running freely, and at half the cost of calling a professional.
Still doing the post-mortem on the remains, but my first guess is that a small stuffed toy got sent to its' watery grave by a resident toddler.
Drying out
It’s been a bit of a wet week here in eastern Iowa. We had storms starting Monday night through Tuesday, then again Wednesday morning and evening. My neighbor Jim told me yesterday that he measured something like 5 inches after the Monday/Tuesday storm. No big damage; the neighbors lost a small branch from their tree, that’s about it. However, the split in our tree in the front yard is much more noticeable now than it was a couple of weeks ago, so we’re gonna have a tree service come out and look at it to see what our options are. If the south side of the tree splits off, it’ll fall on the house, right on Laura’s room. Not good. So we will see. I’d hate to lose that tree, though.
Yesterday afternoon we worked on outside stuff; I cleaned out the gutters and checked out a couple spots on the roof that I think are leaking a little. I’ll be heading to Lowe’s in the next day or two to check out my options for sealing up the leaks. Oh, and they need to make gutter guard with a solid top; the mesh guards do no good at filtering out the leaves from the locust tree and all the little messes that the oak tree makes.
So that’s my homeowner’s report for the week. Still plenty to do on the house; my list of major things that’ll need done in the next 5 - 7 years is pretty long. But hey, it’s a good house, worth working on. God will provide as we have needs.
Finally done
Last night I used a jigsaw to cut two small notches, pulled the garage door opener up about another inch, reconnected everything, and it worked! So, 9 days, some very cold fingers, and one broken thumb later, we have a functional garage door and can park the vehicles in the garage again.
This opener has three working remotes, which means one for each car and one for the house… no more cold, late-night, barefoot trips outside when we forget to shut the garage door! The only thing still not working is our van, which is supposedly equipped with the HomeStar system, and thus should be able to be programmed to open the garage door from a button on the overhead panel. So far, no luck. But even if I don’t get that figured out, I can live with it. :-) It feels good to finally get that project finished.
Making progress
Yesterday morning we got a guy out to fix the garage door, so it now goes up and down like it should. So last night I spent most of the evening trying to get the garage door opener installed. Close, but no banana. The rail on this opener is a bit taller than the previous one, and with the limited space between the garage door and the rafters in the garage, it’s just too tight. So my next step will have to be to use a jigsaw and cut a small (1/2" max) notch in the right spot in a couple of rafters. Slowly but slowly, it’s coming together.
I fought the door, and the door won
Today was lining up to be a fairly unadventurous Saturday. I had a church basketball game in the morning - we got beat by a team who must’ve shot 85% from the field for the game. They were on. It was scary. Then we took the family to Hy-Vee for a late breakfast, and a few of our friends joined us. Finally, we headed home. My remaining task for the day was to install a new garage door opener. Our old one is probably 30 years old and has been slowly dying for a while now. We found a nice new one on clearance at Lowe’s last week and bought it. So, I was all set.
I got the new opener unpacked and assembled. Then I took down the old one. So far, so good. However, I noticed as I was taking down the old opener that the torsion spring for the garage door, normally attached by two lag bolts to the frame of the garage, had pulled out one bolt and was in the process of pulling out the other one. Here’s an example of a torsion spring:
No problem, I thought. A quick trip to Lowe’s procured two larger lag bolts, and I set about installing them. It was a bit tricky - I had to put some weight on the spring to hold it down into place, but I managed to get the first bolt in. Then I came back up to tighten it, and the whole thing let loose. I didn’t see exactly what happened, but my left hand was bleeding and swelling. So Becky called Janice who was a life saver and came over to stay with the girls, who were napping. Then we went to the urgent care clinic.
One hour and three x-rays later, the doctor decided that I had fractured the last bone in my thumb (the one at the end of my thumb). No stitches were necessary, they just used some pressure bandages on my thumb and index finger to get the bleeding to stop. And I’ll have to wear a splint on my thumb for 4-6 weeks until the bone heals. Here’s what it looks like now:
So, this will put a damper on a few activities. No more basketball for the rest of the season. I will probably be able to play the piano enough to lead worship at church next Sunday as planned, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope for the Bach fugue on the pipe organ for the talent show. It has been a bit of a challenge typing this post, too, but I’m starting to figure out how to type without my index finger and thumb on my left hand.
Mostly I’m thankful that it wasn’t any worse; it sure could’ve been. The Lord was watching over me, even in my poor judgment of what I could manage. I’ll be calling an overhead door company on Monday, and will gladly pay them to fix the torsion spring and finish the opener installation. Some things, I guess, are just better left to the professionals.
The Great New Year's Eve Flood of Aught-Six
Let me tell the tale of the Great New Year’s Eve Flood of Aught-Six. You won’t hear it from anyone else. As most calamities begin, so began this one; not with a single odd event, but with the convergence of multiple odd events. In this case there were two:
The end result of the convergence of these two events was the Great New Year’s Eve Flood of Aught-Six. At first, it didn’t appear to be too bad; water had run out of the bathroom and into the hallway, but that was about it. Becky called for me to help, and I quickly used the shut-off valve to stop the water. We grabbed some towels and started sopping up the mess. Then we heard another sound of water running. Suffice it to say that our floors are not waterproof; the wooden floor let water run through right down into the basement. And then a bunch of water backed up near the toilet and made its way down as well.
So downstairs we went, to find water running from the drop ceiling in several places. I grabbed a bucket to catch the worst of it, but there was already a nice puddle stretching from the computer table over to Laura’s playset. Again with the towels. My computer monitor, tower, and keyboard were fortunate; they got splashed on a bit, but didn’t suffer any damage. My printer/scanner I’m not so sure about; when I picked it up a good 2 or 3 cups of water ran out of it. I unplugged it and set it in the downstairs shower to drain out. I haven’t yet tested it for damage, but I’m not too hopeful.
Being as this flood occurred mid-morning, the rest of the day was spent cleaning and repairing; I replaced the various valves in the toilet and it seems to be much happier now. Two of the ceiling tiles in the basement were waterlogged beyond salvage; a quick trip to Lowe’s found me a partial package with just the two tiles that I needed, which was a much better option than having to buy a full carton of ten. Several hours of a box fan on high speed managed to dry things out pretty well in the basement. All that really remains is for me to hang the new ceiling tiles, sweep the floor, and test out the printer.
Thus ends the tale of the Great New Year’s Eve Flood of Aught-Six. Pray it never happens to you.
Today's lesson: Air Conditioner drain lines
I may be reasonably intelligent, but sometimes I miss the obvious. I have known since we bought our house that there is tubing running from the furnace across the floor and under a wall into a drain below the bathroom sink, but it never dawned on me why it was there.
Yesterday morning it became clear. I went downstairs for a shower and found the bath mat sopping wet. And more water standing on the floor. My initial reaction was to think that the sewer pipe had gotten clogged again; I’ve had to snake it out twice in the last 3 years. But no, my mother-in-law wasn’t here, so that couldn’t be it. I cleaned up the water as best I could and then headed to work, but not before mentioning it to Becky who was up early with Addison.
Becky investigated further and found that the water was coming from that drain line. And that drain line carries the condensation that builds up on the air conditioner coils which are inside the blower there in the furnace. It ended up that the drain line had gotten totally clogged up, and finally the water had started leaking. So she turned off the air conditioner, cleaned up the rest of the mess, read up on the topic on the internet, and then called me to discuss the issue.
My initial reaction was to say “hey, let’s just stick a bucket under it and empty the bucket occasionally.” Then she told me that according to the internet the a/c can produce 5 - 9 gallons of water a day. I wasn’t expecting that. So the bucket idea was out. We ended up hitting Lowe’s (so nice to have a Lowe’s only 3 blocks from our house!) on the way to WT practice last night and picking up some new tubing and a few screw-on connectors so I can have a way, outside of cutting the tubing, to clean it out again if the need arises.
The other complication was that the previous owner of the house built a nice little wall around 2 sides of the furnace to hide it from sight and make a nice little hallway. Unfortunately, the drain pipe was on the back side of the furnace, towards the wall. So I spent a bunch of my repair time last night with my upper body shoved through a 15" x 18" hole I cut in the drywall. It probably would’ve made a funny picture, but thankfully Becky left the camera upstairs. I’ll put up a cabinet door or something over the hole so I can get to it next time if I need to.
By 9:30 last night I had it all fixed and the mess mostly cleaned up. I checked it this morning and the line was still draining nicely. All in all it only required a few hours of sweat and about ten bucks worth of parts. Not too awful, as home repairs go.
Oh, and I watched the water drain after I turned the a/c on last night. Five gallons per day is an understatement.