Building a better mousetrap, or toilet

Innards of the Super Toilet. The
white ring around the green
doohickey is the flapper valve. 

 One of the good things about having a blog is that I have inadvertently created a timeline of projects that I have completed. This helps we when something fails and I can go back and see when I fixed or replaced it. So, back in 2019 I replaced the sink and toilet in the bathroom. I recently noticed that the toilet was running randomly, a sure sign that the tank was leaking into the bowl. So, being the Amateur Plumber First Class that I am I removed the tank cover and literally looked into the problem. I was immediately reminded that I had purchased a Super Toilet, one that could apparently flush dozens of golf balls at once, a useful feature at times. One thing that was a hidden feature that this mad flusher possessed was an increased difficulty of repair, and more expensive parts. For those of you that have reached my lofty status of Amateur Plumber First Class, you know the most common cause of tank water leaking is the flapper valve, a rubber gasket that seals the tank after the flush and the doohickey (technical term) drops back into the tank. Apparently, these flapper valves have an engineered life of a few years before they fail to seal properly and allow the tank water to leak out. Now, why would a rubber gasket last only two years? You would think that buying the American Standard Super Toilet capable of flushing dozens of golf balls would also include higher quality components. However, similar to buying a high end luxury car, you may get a more comfortable ride, but repair costs and intervals are shorter.

As an aside, I haven't noticed an increased efficiency or flushing ability of the Super Toilet. It needs a the normal amount of "courtesy" flushes of any other toilet. I still haven't tested American Standard's golf ball claim, which I assume hasn't been tested by other home owners, for good reasons. Consumer Reports, are you listening? 

Anyway, the replacement of the flapper valve was not as easy as it would be in a normal toilet. After my first attempt, the toilet leaked even worse. At first I thought the leak was coming from someplace else, reenforced by my mistaken confidence in the Super Toilet that the flapper valve wouldn't fail so quickly. But after a time I realized that I hadn't reassembled the doohickey correctly allowing the water to continue to leak. The Super Toilet now stands ready to flush dozens of golf balls, should the need arise.  

A pretty morning in Saratoga

In other news, we had a pre-Christmas shopping trip to Saratoga Springs which was great, except that a block from our hotel, a guy lost control of his Jeep in the snowstorm and hit our Toyota head on. We were stationary at a traffic light and were unhurt. Luckily the car was drivable I wont bore you with the details but eventually his insurance found him to be 100% at fault and we can finally proceed with repairs. The estimate I got yesterday was $4100, less than I expected. They do not expect to begin repairs until March.

So now we enter what I consider the doldrums of winter. Short cloudy days, long cold nights without the benefit of Holiday lights to brighten the mood. Cindy and I are looking into possible winter escapes to sunny locales to help move the grey season along.

Retirement Update

Most days start like this.

 Literally almost everyone has asked me how it feels to be retired. The short answer is pretty good. The longer answers follows. The thing I notice most is the lack of stress. I never realized how much I thought about work, even on my days off, until I didn't have to. While I was working, I would think about the next shift, what would the weather be like, with whom I was working, and what the potential workload would be. That I am not doing that nearly 24/7 is quite the relief.

I was also checking my work email a lot, along with the schedule spreadsheet and my shared documents. That stuff dominated an entire browser on my phone. All that is gone.

Our lifestyle has already changed significantly. With both of us retired, the urgency for the more mundane tasks of life is gone. We now feel more free to enjoy our morning coffee, rather than jumping up and racing around the house in an effort to complete everything before the next set of shifts arrive. Suddenly, we are not doing anything tomorrow either. 

A cheap door in it's day, but still 
beautiful.

Obviously planning appointments and getaways is so easy now. No need to plan around the work schedule, and really the only thing in the schedule is other appointments. I do need to start blocking potential vacation and get-away weeks so we can take a trip if this virus thing ever goes away.

The culprit

I have been doing some work on the house. Current project continues to be the door from the kitchen into the pantry. With the colder weather approaching, that job has taken on more urgency since the pantry is unheated. I've got most of the layers of paint, stain, and varnish off. Just need now to clean it up and rub it with some mineral oil. 

Adventures in plumbing continues as the sink drain in the half bath has started to leak again. I cannot believe what trouble that has been. Of course, it is the most inaccessible sink drain I have ever seen, and I am not looking forward to wedging myself in there again.

I've got a full cord of firewood coming later this month. I have about a half cord stacked and ready to go in the garage, but with being home this winter I expect to burn more wood. I really look forward to watching the bad weather from my couch, and not driving through it to work at 11 PM.

P.S. Google has "updated' their blogging app and I don't like it. I'm really struggling to get the blog to look the way I want it to look. Sorry about the weird picture placement and random gaps in the texts. I'm still trying to get it figured out. 

Been busy...but still kind of bored

Weeds gone. Mulch in place. Note the silly faucet
 sticking out of the near basement window. Far
window has the dryer vent.  You can see the wall
wash light between the window and chimney

Job allowed me to get the tractor and
 trailer out for the first time.

We did finish the sun room (furniture and window treatments still pending) but have remained quite busy over the past few weeks working on projects, doing upgrades and maintenance. One of the bigger projects was tackling the abysmal excuse for a garden we have on the north side of the house and around the corner to the driveway. The other three sides have been improved, but this was such a tangled mess I was dragging my feet on it. First Assistant Cindy did the hard part, weeding while I did the raking and lugging of mulch. I very optimistically bought 4 bags of mulch, It turned out we needed 12 more. I could say that I grossly miscalculated, but I didn't calculate at all and just guessed so my wild optimism and pitiful lack of gardening experience resulted in miserable failure. Overall though it was a good job and it went well. The flowers that were already poking through will continue to grow while we have hopefully suppressed the weeds. It greatly improved the appearance of the house.

I also added 4 more landscape lights. 2 wall wash lights and 2 path lights. You have to be careful when adding lighting. Once you install the system, adding additional lighting is easy, so unless you limit yourself the house will look like an airport.

Another job that has been in the cue is to fix the faucet at the basement window. I mentioned last month that I replaced the pipe and faucet but failed to figure out a good way to attach it to the house, then left extra pipe until I did. Well I found a bracket that actually would work and finally cut the pipe to fit and we now have a rather nice looking outdoor faucet that works.

The next window over has the dryer vent and it has been nothing but a pain in my ass since the day we hooked up the dryer. Without rehashing the entire story, I'll just say that I switched to the old school solid, non-flexible dryer vent pipe (which is safer yet harder to find and install) and replaced the vent cap. I was very proud of my work until I found that after a few days of running the dryer the cap would fall off leaving a convenient entrance into our basement for many types of bugs and other critters. I finally figured out that the seam of the pipe was slowly expanding with use allowing the vent cap to fall off. Some crimping and professional grade aluminum tape finally fixed the problem.

The old beast 4 years ago. Lawn was
nasty back then.

As I mentioned above I fired up the tractor for the first time and that went well, but it was a different story for the old push mower. Apparently storing them at an angle is a bad idea. When I went to get it from it's spot, I saw that oil had been leaking out of the muffler for some time, making quite a mess. After some online research, I found that this can indeed happen and the solution could be easy, or maybe not. I was pretty sure I was going to need a new mower but after cleaning up the mess, then pulling the fouled spark plug and cleaning it, the old beast fired on the third pull belching blue smoke and spitting oil out the exhaust. I went ahead and started mowing and the exhaust cleared itself. All is well. Can't seem to kill that thing.

So obviously I did cut the lawn for the first time, but not before putting down fertilizer and crab grass killer. The directions said to apply and then water the equivalent of a half inch of rain and Binghamton said "hold my beer". No need to get the sprinkler out around here this spring. I double checked the forecast and just managed to find a dry day between deluges. Perfect.

The lawn is looking far better than when we moved in and we are happy about that. It will stay greener in the summer, even if it stops raining (HA HA).

It's an old house

Before picture of the grate
 from the "bar".  A cream color
 that yellowed to a light
 mustard.

Our house was built in 1915 and it shows it's age. This is both good and bad. It's good in that it's a well built home, heavily constructed. True 2 x 6 rafters, 16 inches on center, with a steep pitch and 1 x 6 sheeting. It would support a tank. There are one foot thick block construction that make up the exterior walls give us a strong and silent home, almost like sitting inside a bank vault. Beautiful hardwood floors throughout, solid plaster on lathe walls. But there is a downside as well, old windows that are beautiful, but now showing their age so a major project looms. Galvanized steel plumbing that has been haphazardly and partially updated with copper and PEX. The galvanized pipe that comes in from the street is no doubt corroded and limiting our flow and pressure. That would be an expensive fix. An old octopus heating system in the basement that has an updated burner, but takes up too much room and runs too much despite my miserly adjustment of the thermostat.  Of course we still love the place, and our work is really starting to make a difference.

Finished product. Photo by Cindy

Our peeling Easter Bunny got a fresh coat too. 

An example of the myriad of jobs are the heating grates throughout the house. They are just plain ugly. I did the bathroom grate when I redid that room, and just finished bar grates, both the heat and cold air return and they came our very nice. The process begins with cleaning, then removing the loose paint, I do this by using a wire brush attachment on my old electric drill. Then we pick a spray paint color and apply multiple coats. The trick with spray paints it not overdoing it, with multiple light coats much better than one heavy, dripping coat. Not a good job for an impatient person. The bathroom grate is a high gloss white, the half bath a gloss black, and we went with a copper color for the bar, which came out very nice.

Then there's the plumbing. Like I mentioned above, it's a mishmash of different types of pipe, which unfortunately included galvanized steel. Last summer I replaced a section that went to the spigot on the  north side of the house. The shut off on the line had been leaking since we moved in. I managed this by cutting off the connection to the copper and rerouting it with PEX pipe, which is a D.I.Y. plumbers best friend. PEX pipe uses solder-less connections to copper and other PEX, and is easy to work with.

The culprit. I added the white
 tape to show the plumber
 the leaky part. 

Then just yesterday there was a more serious problem. After my morning shower I took a load of wash down to the basement and saw water on the floor, then noticed water spurting out of a pipe near the water meter. Luckily it must have just happened. It looked like the galvanized pipe had split. I needed to get into the office so that provided me the perfect excuse to not mess with it. I shut off the water to the house, gave Cindy my regrets and good byes and abandoned the mess. From work, I called the plumber and they showed up before 11 am. Turned out to be a bad gasket in the fitting between the pipe and the water meter, and something I probably could have fixed, but I was happy to let a professional deal with it.

We love our house, our home, and completely understand what we have. It sure has given me fodder for the blog, and will for years ahead. For example, every single window needs to be removed, re-glazed, and repaired. Every single window sash cord needs to be replaced. I hope to begin to tackle that this year, starting in the bar. Don't worry, I'll keep you updated.

Me and my bright ideas. (What a summer it was...part 2)

The main bath in our house has always been an issue. It really needs a complete redo, like down to the bare wall studs and floor joists. The problem is that such a job would leave us without a tub and shower for a time, and I'm just not inclined to deal with that. Plus, I am not equipped to design and build a new bathroom, so we'd have to go down the road with contractors and such. No fun. In any case, the bathroom has been serviceable as it is. After several tries I finally managed to fix all the leaking problems, and have become marginally good at caulking, which is more of an art that skill.

I could paint this. With a roller and gallon of Glidden. 

Sidebar: Anybody can caulk, just like anybody can paint. I can paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, just not like da Vinci. Of course, this is not to say that caulking a tub is like painting the Sistine Chapel, but the comparison fits I think. You can put enough caulk around a tub to make it stop leaking, but some art keeps it from looking like blown in insulation. The same applies to the bathroom, in general. I didn't want to just throw in new fixtures and be done with it. I wanted it to look nice too and was afraid that my skills ( or lack thereof ), didn't match my aspirations.

Then one recent day as I was shaving and becoming annoyed again by the worst sink on the planet, I made my decision. My next decision was even crazier that the first. I decided to march downstairs and announce my plans to Cindy. Before I knew what I was doing I told Cindy that the sink and toilet had to go, and I was replacing them both.

New toilet is in. Annoying sink is gone.

You would think after 30+ years of marriage, I would have learned my lesson by now. Once I announce any plans to Cindy, formal or informal, it's a go. There is no turning back. It's a good thing, in some ways, since I am a bit of a procrastinator, but it's bad in that I haven't always thought  things completely through before announcing them. Then the night sweats start until I can think of an escape route. By that I mean a way to get expert help, or at least some other layman that can say something like "no, turn it to the left!". More on that in an upcoming blog.

It actually started with the toilet. It always had a tendency to clog, and recently seemed like there was some sewer gas leaking out. This meant that there was likely a gap in the wax seal, or some other more serious fault. If you are going to remove the toilet to replace the seal, and the thing doesn't work all that great anyway, you might as well get a new one. Then there's that ridiculous sink. They really spared every expense when they bought it. It was a small, single sink with no room to put anything down. So if you set down your razor or toothbrush, it would invariably slide into the bottom of the sink.

Replacing a toilet is actually pretty easy. There's the wax seal, a couple of bolts that secure it to the floor, then a water hookup. Selecting a toilet is a different matter. I've never really looked at them before and was amazed at the selection. Do we really need this many choices in toilets? Anyway, we ended up with an American Standard toilet that claims you can flush a bucket of golf balls. That should do.

Oops. 

SO toilet installation almost always starts with toilet removal, which is neither pleasant nor easy. All the bolts on the old toilet were rusted. Normally, you remove the tank then remove the bowl, but with the rusted bolts, they were locked in an ugly embrace. The floor bolts were rusted too, but I managed to break them off. Then Cindy and I had the wonderful job of carrying the icky assembly down the stairs and to the curb, without gouging a wall or making a mess. We did it without arguing. Amazing.

Finshed! Halloween decorations by Cindy. 

The new installation was easy. New bracket, seal, and hook up the water. A couple test flushes and no leaks! A rare accomplishment for this very amateur plumber.

Next came the vanity. After MUCH deliberation, we ended up with a 36" vanity with a manufactured marble top. The manufactured marble has an integrated back splash. I loved the real marble but didn't want to deal with gluing the back splash to the wall. Anyhow, the main difficulty was that we needed to "off-center" the vanity to have reasonable clearance from the toilet, which meant there would need to be some creative plumbing.

So other than the offset, the vanity installation was pretty straightforward. The wall and floor were not square, of course, so I attached quarter inch shims to the front of the vanity, then attached it to the wall with two inch wood screws. Then I caulked the top and sides of the back splash and it was done. Miraculously, no leaks once again.

We really love our new bathroom and it turned out to be one of my nicest improvements to date. We still have the old pink tub, but I did fix the enclosure, add a new rainfall shower head and update the faucets so it's not all that bad. It's behind a shower curtain anyway so you really don't even see it.

Well that's it for Part 2. Next blog will continue the summer projects including a problematic half bath update, finally painting a door, and the final work done on our chimney.

How I won the Daytona 500.

I wandered away from the office on a recent night shift
and snapped this picture. 

One of the not so good side effects of having a job in meteorology, is the hours. The weather waits for no man (or woman) and like donuts, people want a fresh batch when they wake up. This means that there are night shifts in which we prepare forecasts for the following day. I have in fact muttered "time to make the donuts" as I stumble out of the house on my way to the graveyard shift at the NWS.

I've been doing this for 30+ years on a rotating basis and I'll tell you there's no good way to work nights and try to get a reasonable amount of sleep. Everyone seems to handle it differently. I'm exhausted by the time I get home, around 730 am and normally just collapse in bed. Some manage to stay up for a good part of the morning, falling asleep in the afternoon, not waking until it's time again for work. That method is not real good for family life, but may result in better sleep. For me, I've noticed that it has become more difficult to sleep during the day as I get older, and I often wake up between 11 am and noon, giving me only a few hours of sleep. This in turn leads me to take an evening nap before returning to work at 10 pm. This leads me to winning the Daytona 500.

Alas, my name does not appear here. 

Sleep deprivation and odd hours can result in strange behavior. In my case, I occasionally have episodes where I awake with a start, completely disoriented. I need a complete reboot in these instances, since I do not know the day, time, or sometimes even where I am at. It can be unsettling. Another effect can be strange and vivid dreams, which I can often recall after waking. This is how I wan the Daytona 500. I recently had a vivid dream in which I was asked to drive for one of the Earnhardt's, which one, senior of junior, I do not know. I was asked to step in mid race as the driver became ill, and through a series of crashes and dumb luck, I managed to win the race. I woke during the dream, thought about it, fell asleep and the dream continued. I was receiving accolades in person and on social media when my alarm awoke me. It was time to head into work. The dream was so realistic, I was still somewhat disoriented for the first few minutes of the drive to work (why am I in this SUV and not in a Stock Car?).

The dream itself is a mystery to me. I am not a NASCAR fan, haven't watched the race in years, and don't even know who the current champion is. Why would my brain create such an elaborate fantasy for me is really strange, I had no idea I even had the base information to create such a story. Still, I enjoyed it and appreciate the effort.

On the home front, my "solution" for the pipes in the half bath was a bust, literally. In the epic cold spell, the pipes froze once again. I will have to pull out the insulation and get to the pipes and repair the damage. The plan now is to install drains so I can turn off and drain the pipes in the coldest weather to avoid further damage. That's going to have to wait until warmer weather so until then, the half bath is out of service.

Hitting a moving target

A rather ugly yet plain bathroom. Note the
$5 light fixture/ 

We keep changing our mind on what we want to work on next so it's kind of hard to plan ahead. After discussion it has been decided that the half bath off the kitchen was next on the list, since I've done such a good job on the upstairs bath. (Ha Ha). I really don't understand the evolution of our tiny powder room. It was clearly not in the original plans of the house as it was added to the porch, but it seems like an early edition as it has some of the same old tile that is found in the main upstairs bathroom. It looks like an older style construction, but they punched a hole in the basement wall to get the plumbing through. In any case, the paint and tile are quite dated, with the lower half of the wall a metal "tile" that has actually rusted in spots. The first two rows of tile are ceramic, and I may retain them for sentimental or historic reasons, but that metal stuff below has to go. No decision has been made on what to replace it with, but I may dabble in ceramic tile. It should be a good place to practice at something I've never done before. The toilet and pedestal sink are newer, and in good shape so their fate is unknown. The toilet tank, at a minimum, will need to be removed to get to the tile, and if we decide to replace the sink, we will we to make that decision before I get to the tile work.

Old tile detail. along and above the thin black tile is
ceramic. Below is metal. It's amazing how well it matches.

A more pressing problem is the complete lack of insulation under the floor and in the walls causing the occasional frozen pipe. Next to and behind the bathroom is the old porch, which is unheated, and below is an unheated crawl space. I've insulated the pipe the best I can, and even added a heater to the crawl space in the winter. There is a small heater in the bathroom itself, but in the coldest weather, freezing pipes are still a problem. It really surprises me that they built it this way with no concern for frozen pipes. What I really need to do is force myself into the crawl space and insulate it. This may be a job for the fall, when all the bugs and spiders have gone away.

Use the regular paint for big jobs. Save the spray for small
ones, Trust me on this. 

Getting back to the upstairs bathroom, I mentioned last month how I needed to repaint the bathroom door as the old dark color was bleeding through. Well, I went ahead and bought the spray version of my favorite stain blocker made by Zinsser. This was a mistake. It does say on the label to use in a well ventilated place, and they mean it. Despite opening the window, the fumes were just too much, especially considering how big the door was, and how much paint I needed. I had a headache for two days. I was smart enough to do the second coat with the regular, brush applied version of the product, but frankly that stinks too. The good news is that the door came out great, after two coats of the stain blocker and a finishing coat of semi-gloss enamel.

On the lawn and garden front, I've had a sudden invasion of crab grass. Looking around the neighborhood, it looks like it has it everyone has crab grass to some degree, so I guess that makes me feel better. I have fertilized the lawn twice now this year, with little effect. Part of that may be due to the fact that I will not waste the time and money to water the grass, especially on the large side lot. As we get into August there's not much reason to do anything about it this year, but I'll do some crab grass research over the winter. In the meantime, I'll continue to call the collection of weeds and crab grass our "lawn".

Cold

We finally got some snow to go with the cold.

It's been really cold lately, record cold in fact, and it reminds me of the kind of cold we had back in the late 1970's. Back then, we had several days in a row below zero, pipes burst, and the old cars we drove in those days didn't start real well. I was just a teenager without responsibilities and enjoyed the brutal cold. Now, I own an old house, for which I am responsible to heat and maintain. Our old house, has been doing just fine, having endured cold winters for a 100 years, except for a poorly conceived addition, in which they built a half bath in an old porch. The plumbing for the bath runs through an unheated crawl space. Not good, especially if the temperatures fall below zero. When we moved in, the pipes were damaged from previous freezes and needed repairs. After they were repaired, I did my best to insulate the pipes and the floor. Last winter was relatively mild, and we had no problems. Over the Holidays, in anticipation of the cold, I shut off the water to the room and sure enough, the pipes froze. Of course, this was just before a big Holiday dinner we were having, and I was at work, so First Brother In Law Randy came to the rescue, and with the help of brother Ed, got the water running. No pipes had burst. If anything, it's gotten colder since and I have the water off. I hope we have no burst pipes. A summer time job will be to wedge myself into that crawl space and properly insulate those pipes and wall.

Katia enjoys the fire.

With the cold, we're close to halfway through our full cord of wood. Almost everyday, if we are home, we build a fire in the fireplace. If I leave Cindy keeps it going, including trips to the garage to stock up on wood. As inefficient as it is, it really does make a difference in keeping the downstairs warm, and it's great to look at. Katia has finally learned to lay on the rug next to the fire to warm up. Tiny little Natasha looks at the fire with interest, but generally wanders away and sleeps the day through up in our chilly bedroom.

We haven't had much snow, but much of what we've had came in two recent storms. A nasty rain, to ice, to snow storm left about half a foot and with some trepidation I went out to start the snow blower. I had started it in the fall, but figured with several below zero nights, it would be difficult. Much to my surprise, it started on the first pull. Off I went to clearing the driveway and walk, along with several of the neighbors sidewalks. One of them returned the favor as I slept off my graveyard shift and cleared mine after additional snow fell. We are lucky to be in a great neighborhood.

On the home improvement front, I installed the home security system we got from SimpliSafe. It was actually quite easy, with the hardware pretty much stick on. The package we got includes motion sensors, glass break sensors, panic button, and door and window alarms, along with two entry keypads and key fobs. I need to purchase a smoke alarm and CO detector. After you install it, the hard part begins. Thanks to living in New York, The Empire State, otherwise known as the Rules & Regulations State, the system has to registered and licensed, which means paperwork and questions. So, while the system is functional, it's turned off until I can get the blessing from the local 911 center.