Distractions

This section is devoted to all those NON radio projects that distracted Don from his hobby.... ;-)
(text follows these pics)

3apr07 Day 13. Almost finished the gable overhang project. Overhang increased from 11" to 32".

1apr07 Day 11. Coffee klatch with Jack and Rene. The barge boards are covered with grey sheet metal. Center supports for the 32 inch wide soffit covers are in place. Ready for soffit covers next.

26mar07 Day 6 Stripped shingles from right side of roof. Took shingles to dump. Installed two more cantilevered 4x4 supports. Got to admit, the dump facility is stupidly set up with ridiculous guard rails that just get in the way. Stupid. It took some ingenuity to work around them.

25mar07 Day5 Installed hauling box on car's roof rack. Had coffee klatch with Jack and Rene. Finished lowering, washing and cutting up the long gutter. Stripped shingles off left side of roof. Installed the hardest 4x4 cantilever, the one on the end.

24mar07 Day4. "Dump truck" hauling box built. Long gutter down. Leaky roof covered with heavy plastic. Now ready to start gable extension.

23mar07 Day 3. With most of the rotten wood removed gable overhang now ready for shingle and decking removal just to 4 feet behind gable face. This allows insertion of new 4x4 overhang supports and a recovering. Open only one side at a time to minimize risk of rain entering attic.

21mar07 Day 1. Started work on exterior front gable end after completing the gable end-truss reinforcement in the attic. March/April are wet months so opening up the gable end of a roof to do work that extends the roof overhang on the gable end means getting several things done prior to opening the roof. They are:

1. Heavy reinforcement of the left and right rafters of the gable end truss.... but first build a "cat-walk" above the attic insulation, from the ceiling trap door in the east end of the gable through to the west wall of the gable end.

3. Build a hauling box "dump truck" for the car roof rack.... the better to haul shingles to the dump. Easy off loading required.

4. Remove continuous aluminum gutters both of which will be too short. The longer of which will be cut up for replacement of damaged front gutter. This preserves the attractive older gutter profile on the front. Today's gutter installers don't make this profile any more.

18jan07 tossed out papers accumulated since 1988 or so. This job distracted me for five full days of sorting and sifting.

3jan07 finished controller project. These are to be used in equipment in an ore refining process. Next is working with a new client to design/build a relational database system for their business. I will use the brand new Cnawlece database kernel. Google "cnawlece" for more.

26dec06 decided to do gyproc returns on the windows... gets rid of the wood. Looks cleaner, modern. Just new taller baseboards to do, after we replace the flooring in the laundry room and that area of the house. In spring.

10dec06 cupboards and new sink done. Just baseboards, window trim, new floor and paint touch-up to go.

21nov06 been two weeks remodeling our laundry room. Got two more weeks to go, in between regular work, to get this done. Whole project started when upstairs toilet seal leak ruined gyproc ceiling downstairs in laundry room. FEATURES: fix leaky toilet seal; replace gyproc ceiling with T-Bar ceiling installed 3 inches higher than old ceiling; upgrade copper water pipe from water tank to shower with 3/4 inch pipe to fix temperature changes in shower if someone turns on a water tap elsewhere; add hydraulic shock absorbers to eliminate the water hammering that occurs when the washer's water solenoid valves snap closed; replace Fat Albert ceiling light with light box built into T-Bar; relocate all washer and dryer plumbing and electrical so machines can sit tight to wall, gain 5 inches of floor space; replace crude, "apple box" cupboards with something nice; replace flooring; new paint; new window trim and baseboards; install a fish in the wall (a fish is just light twine, in this case) for the future pull-through of special cable for satellite TV.

16-23aug06 at Barb's home on Shuswap Lake. Relaxed and pottered at repairing a bit of rotten decking. See pix above.

1aug06 started reno on Reg's house. Putting in a new bedroom window. Day 1 siding off and fill nail holes in it. Day 2 tear off gyproc, insulation, move studding, add header, frame out rest of rough opening for window 95" by 47", cut opening, install window, clean up. Day 3 finish back framing, install insulation, remove small window, cover hole with sheathing, install gyproc "board" and tape it, clean up. Day 4 strip wall paper from original gyproc, remove wallpaper backing and glue, finish "boarding" including steel J-bead and corner bead, mud the wall, clean up. Day 5 spend four hours putting on siding and filling cracks.

18jul06 looks like my Hitachi SL2000 print engine won't ever print again. No parts available. After spending 26 grand U$, I feel ripped off by Hitachi. Great Machine. LOUSY PARTS SERVICE. I don't care if it is 15 years old. I expect parts somewhere in the world and I can't get a damned thing for help from the Hitachi website. No amount of Googling helps find parts. Its like the SL-2000 never existed. Great job Hitachi-guys! (not)...

9mar06 with help from the secondary vendor, LaserMaster, I am overhauling and repairing my circa 1990 typesetter. Tough to do without the service manual and some training but I will get the job done....

3jan06 turns out the cylinder head isn't cracked. A magnaflux test proved that. Just the cylinder head gasket was damaged and caused the leakage of coolant into the number 2 and 3 cylinders. Got a refund on the wrong cylinder head that came in from Edmonton. Reassembled engine top end with new cylinder head gasket and new head bolts, of course. $$$

1jan06 Not quite done with the car. Seems the vendor gave me the wrong replacement cylinder head. Have to wait till Tuesday the 3rd to re-order. Meanwhile been cataloguing the 15 old radios I acquired over this past Fall. Will post some pictures and details soon as I get clear of car repairs and the last of a small renovation job I am doing for a friend.

26dec05 You see pictures of the cylinder head gasket replacement work I did.... instead of fixin' radios...... should be done this task by New Year's.

oct-nov05 I made three carpentry trips to Mayne Island. On return from second trip the engine overheated in one of our freeway's famous "stop, inch along and crawl" episodes. The overheating weakened the cylinder head gasket which eventually broke down and leaked several weeks later in December....

5aug05 The past week has had me washing down Jack and Rene Carradice's home, garden shed and creek bridge in preparation for painting which I start tomorrow and expect to carry on for at least a week. The big airless sprayer will make short work of some of it and its brush and roller for the rest. Oh well. Also got a call to repair break and enter damage at a friend's business. The perp smashed three glass blocks in glass block walls adjacent to doors so as to reach in and unlock them. Ten hours work today got the glass blocks replaced and one of two door frames repaired using steam to raise wood crushed by a jimmy bar then burn-in sticks to do final filling and blending.

21-31july05 We were away on holiday at Magna Bay on Shuswap Lake in central BC. Relaxing, feeding ducks and buying a Weller 8250 soldering gun for five bucks from Al Hein at his garage sale at his home in Ainsworth BC. Thanks Al. (used it mar06 on heavy solder on chassis)

20july05 Now I can cover up the well chamber in the back yard. Then finish the rest of the water distribution manifold's copper plumbing. Do the 220 VAC pump motor wiring. Tidy up the pump and pressure tank plumbing. Set the air pressure inside the pressure tank. Adjust the cut-in and cut-out pressure settings on the motor's control switch. And I am then done. Ready to pursue the next priority task. Enjoy the pictures.

20july05 Finally got well pipe lifted up today, after spending several hours a day for the past three days! Total lift was 8 feet. First day I only lifted 12". Second day, yesterday, I lifted 18". Today the gravel finally released most of its grip on the pipe and I lifted the last 5 feet by noon. . As the pictures below show, I managed to build the tripod, install the new coupling and extension, pound it all back down the hole and hook it up to the pump by 7:30 pm. At this point, midnight I will go out and check to see if the well holds its prime..... and it does! This means diagnoses of the leaking coupling was accurate and the grueling task of pulling up the well pipe was worth it. .......my wife Heidi asks "so why do you pound the pipe down only to arduously pull it up.... so you can pound it back down again?" ....if I had the answer to that before I started, I guess I wouldn't have had to go through this exercise several times. So we have Rule ONE: hire a pro. Rule TWO: if not be sure to use a hammering coupling with good pipe thread sealant.

18july05 Plumbing in the well's pump and pressure tank could have been an easy task but I have been at it for a week or more. Why? It took a lot of testing to determine that I did not sink the well's sand point deep enough. (a sand point is a special screened pipe attached to the bottom of the well pipe --- water enters the well pipe through this screen) The task of fixing this problem has not been easy. First, remove the lawn above the well chamber in the back yard. Second, dig and expose and remove the concrete plank cover. Third, test again to make certain that the water table is drawing down sufficiently whilst pumping that air is entering the top part of the sand point. Fourth, have a 5 foot extension pipe made; attach it to the top of the well pipe and then spend 5 hours with a sledge hammer pounding the whole pipe column down exactly 5 feet. Fifth, Discover that even with a protective collar in place I have almost completely destroyed the threads at the top of the new pipe. But not quite and I am able to reconnect the pump and after a "proving" process to get the mud out of the sand point I actually got water sufficient to run the lawn sprinklers at 40 pounds per square inch pressure. Sixth, but one needs to shut of the pump and wait an hour or so then see if the well "keeps its prime".... and my well didn't. Seventh, a determination is made that the hammering also damaged the airtight seal of the inappropriately small coupling used to join the original 20 foot well pipe to the new 5 foot pipe..... and this means lifting the well pipe and sand point assembly 8 feet back up out of the ground to allow rejoining the pipes with a new "hammering coupling", one specially designed to withstand pounding in a well. Pulling the pipe up is SLOW going.

14july05 Mounting the computer control for the zone valves done.... took most of a day's work to run wires under kitchen crawl space and route them into the car garage to the wall location Heidi chose for the controller. Now it looks neat. No visible wiring.

7july05 took off on canoe expedition with my pal Ross. See picture (above) of us picnicking on an island on Nicomen Slough (river). This isn't exactly a distraction..... :-)

4may05 for next 3 months most of my spare time has gone into excavating our weedy, humped-up front lawn and replacing it with 5" of sandy base soil, adding a sprinkler system, then turfing the new dead-flat front lawn area. Then I added the Zone 3 piping and sprinklers to the south side of the house and part of the back yard.