biggerboat's building boondoggle blog
I started this in H&F but this seems a better place for it. These are my H&F posts. A bit long-winded but hopefully entertaining. I'm sure more hilarity will ensue.
I've been debating about doing this, and I sort of thought it might qualify as health and/or fitness so I'm gonna do it.
A little background. I have a very old house that I started to remodel about 10 years ago, then ran out of money and WIM to finish it. I gutted it completely and moved walls and did a lot of interior work. But I never did anything with the exterior.
It is sort of falling apart now. The roof leaks and a lot of the wood siding is so rotten I can stick my finger through it. It needs to be completely replaced.
I just paid the house off so I can sort of afford to completely re-side and re-roof it..............if I do it myself. Another factor is I just got out of a serious relationship and now I have way too much time on my hands. I'm going a little stir crazy.
Now to the health tie-in. The last few years I just haven't been able to do things like this. I used to be able to work sunrise to sundown. But lately I'd be good for about 2 or 3 hours and my back would just tell me to stop. However, due to this forum, my back is really feeling strong again. I think I'm up for the challenge. The other health aspect is mental. I don't feel good unless I have some sort of challenge like this. It gives me something to look forward to. I'm really needing something like this about now.
So, I think I'll sort of log this activity as well as lifting. I'll have to cut back on lifting/running some. Mostly due to time considerations. I'll be working on the house on Saturday/Sunday so no lifting/running on those days.
I haven't committed to this quite yet, but I think I'm close.
On the house front. I went to the city website to see what permits I'll need. It was so confusing that I called, got an answering machine, and never got a call back. So, I went down to city hall to ask some very basic questions. Apparently the appropriate question answerers are only there MWF but a substitute question answerer was available. So, after waiting 1/2 hour the substitute question answerer informed me that he couldn't really answer my question so he told me to come back when the real question answerer was there.
I suspect this will not be healthy in any way.
I tweaked my back Wednesday doing deadlifts.
The back pain has nothing on the pain the city is inflicting on me, though.
Went back to talk to someone again. I at least got the right day. The girl was really friendly and helpful. However, she seemed to not really know what all I was supposed to do. Which, as you will see, nobody could.
The first thing she did was pull up my address.
Apparently, there were 3 expired permits associated with my house. About 10 (or more) years ago, I did a big remodel. I did it mostly myself. The first permit was for an interior remodel. I had to get electrical, plumbing, framing and probably more permits. I remember having each one signed off on. However, apparently there was a final inspection that I never got. This is just conjecture based on what she said and my hazy memory. The second was for a garage. I hired a contractor to pour the slab and I framed and finished it. Apparently the slab inspection failed but the framing inspection passed. I'm not sure how this happens. I really don't recall any of this. The third one was for a bedroom addition. I never did this. I do not recall even applying for this. But, it is there. More on this later.
So I asked a lot of questions and the girl was very polite when she had to repeatedly excuse herself to ask someone else that knew the answers. From what I gathered I can do most of the work on something they call an express permit. However, if I want add a small porch roof I will need site drawings, impervious cover documents, elevation drawings, detailed framing plans and flood plain people approval. At minimum.
Back to the old permits. The girl indicated that I could fill out a form to remove the permit for the addition since I never did it. She then sent me to someone named Tony on another floor to figure out what to do with the other ones. Tony, it seems, did not have his coffee this morning. Either that or he was just an *******. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. He told me they couldn't do anything about any of them since he had no idea if I even did any work or not. Which is problematic since I can't get any new permits with these on their computer. After much discussion he agreed to go back downstairs and talk to the friendly girl. Tony then came up and informed me that I needed a Life Safety for Expired Permit permit. He informed me that I needed to go back where I started (the line that I waited over an hour in) to start this process.
So, I go back to the window and explain to them what Tony said. They seemed a bit confused on exactly what a Life Safety for Expired Permit permit was. So, they suggested that what I really need to do is re-submit all three permits and get inspections on the work I did over 10 years ago. Even if I didn't do the work. They then put my name in the computer to talk to someone. However, the number of people waiting had swelled considerably and I had already been there 2 1/2 hours so I think I'll tackle this another day.
Only because many of the posters there are, in fact, the worst people.
Let's go back to fishing.
We've got a few things that we kinda want to do with the new house. It really doesn't need anything, but a couple of things might make things a little better.
We've been thinking about putting our AC unit on the roof. It's on the patio and crazy loud in the summer when we want to sit out. A lot of our neighbors have theirs on the roof. Not sure how much that will cost. Might be on our "maybe later" list.
Our next project I think only requires a bit of sweat and not much money.
We don't have any water outlet at the dock. It's a pain to not only run hoses to the boat and cleaning table, but the watering the back yard is a pain as well. We have to run 100' hoses from our screened in porch. Pain in the butt.
We initially thought we might just try to tap into the faucet on the porch, but that would require pulling up a LOT of pavers. We don't really want to go there. So, we have another faucet on the side of the house that we think we're going to tap into. It's going to require a lot of trenching but little disruption to our patio. I've thought about trying to find the water line coming into the house but forget that.
I'm just going to try to put a T on the faucet coming out of the wall.
Here is the faucet (pic from the top)
Here is what I think I'm going to try to do
On the AC, a couple things to think about:
If it's loud, make sure it's located well away from sleep areas. Also, consider maintenance up there vs on the ground.
I don't use my AC, so can't really say if noise and problems are correlated or not.
On the AC, a couple things to think about:
If it's loud, make sure it's located well away from sleep areas. Also, consider maintenance up there vs on the ground.
I don't use my AC, so can't really say if noise and problems are correlated or not.
Yeah, the logical place to put it based on where it is, is right above our bedroom. Right now it is right next to our bedroom window so I'm not sure if it would be worse.
Fortunately, my next door neighbor owns an AC company so I can get the scoop from him.
LOL, we would die if we didn't use our AC.
I sort of imagined I could find threaded brass pieces to do this. Wrong.
It looks like the best way is to run copper to the ground, then thread pvc into a copper threaded adapter. This will mean sweating the pipe, something I haven't done in quite a while. IIRC, it wasn't too hard but I'm a little nervous that somehow I mess something up and we are without water until a plumber can come clean up my mess.
I already bought the parts so I guess I'm just gonna have to roll the dice.
No seven out!
Are you having to sweat where you cut the existing faucet or is that threaded? You shouldn't have to to convert from copper to pvc.
Are you having to sweat where you cut the existing faucet or is that threaded? You shouldn't have to to convert from copper to pvc.
Oh geeez. Too late.
Ah, don't sweat it.
hehe
Sooooo...... I tried to get the existing faucet off and it came off, kind of. It didn't unscrew from the pipe. It was a two piece faucet, which I didn't even know existed. I figured I would try to just screw the pipe adapter to the piece of the faucet that would not come off the pipe. I didn't want to risk breaking the pipe with too much force.
We got everything put together, then turned on the water. All of the sweated joints were A-OK, but the place where I screwed on to the existing faucet piece had a drip. Not too bad, but still. I unscrewed it and put pipe dope AND plumbers tape on it and screwed it back. Only it ended up not in the right place since I didn't start it where I had started it before. So, I messed with that until it ended up where I wanted it. Turned the water on and it has an ever so small drip. Like one drip ever minute. We put a small jar under it to see how much water was coming out and after 2 hours the water didn't even cover the bottom of the jar. Maybe a teaspoonful at most. I'm inclined to leave it for a couple of days to see if it seals itself, which I think is possible. I don't think I will just let it drip even if it is almost negligible. It probably won't hurt anything but it will bug the heck out of me.
Oh my.
So, I couldn't let that drip continue. So I unscrewed the apparatus I created from the pipe sticking out of the wall. Unfortunately, 1/2 of the threaded part simply broke off. I sat there for a while trying to figure out a solution. I thought about cutting off the part of the faucet that looked like it had been glue/threaded on. It wasn't coming off. But I buggered the existing threads so I didn't think that would seal even if I was successful. Then I thought about cutting it off at the end of the copper pipe. However, it looks like there was some solder or something on the end that I couldn't pry off and there was no way to sweat a coupling on. Even if it was clean, there was only about 1/2 inch coming out of the wall. I feared disaster.
Soooooooo.. I got rid of the piece of threaded pipe that broke off, leaving a bit maybe 1/2 inch of thread, if that. I carefully put plumbers tape and coated that with pipe dope and threaded it on. Then I held my breath and turned the water on. NO LEAK!!!! Woot.
However, the faucet is now at a bit of an angle. I'm going to live with that.
I feel a little stupider right now.
The old existing faucet was simply sweated on to the pipe sticking out of the wall. The plumber just heated it up and it came off. Then he soldered back the assembly that I built to save me a few bucks. He said it was ok.
Didn't cost too much so there is that.
I think I mentioned my wife's daughter is getting married in June.
I really want to go on a detailed rant about this but I'll stick to the tl;dr version. WAAYYY expensive and soooo much anxiety. I just don't get it. Just go to the jp for goodness sake.
And spend the money on a car or house or something.
I feel a little stupider right now.
The old existing faucet was simply sweated on to the pipe sticking out of the wall. The plumber just heated it up and it came off. Then he soldered back the assembly that I built to save me a few bucks. He said it was ok.
Didn't cost too much so there is that.
This gave me a nice giggle. It's amazing how a pro can diagnose and fix something in a few minutes I've been dicking around with for 2 days.
For example at one of my rent houses, the air handler inside the house started dripping condensation onto the floor underneath. YouTube said the coils were probably freezing up and needed to be cleaned. Which I did and put in a new filter. No dice. Called my AC guy. He walks in, opens the door, takes a look, goes to his truck and gets his air compressor, blows out the drain pipe, and says you should be good to go.
I use him a lot and I guess he felt sorry for me so he didn't charge me.
Worked on the boat today. I'm replacing the sirius weather module and antenna in hopes i can get the xm satellite weather working. It is really nice to have if you go offshore. You can see where storms are forming and which direction they are moving. We have regular radar too, but the range is limited and it just doesn't show as much. Both together are great.
Anyway, got it all hooked up but no feed from sirius. I went on the website to transfer service to the new unit but it says my subscription won't work with it. It's a brand new unit so there shouldn't be a technical issue.
Unfortunately nobody mans the phones on the weekend.
Ugh. I already hate sirius so this just makes me hate them more. Their website sucks balls and it's so difficult to get anything to work.
I suspect there is some sort of activation fee or something.
Just wait til you go to cancel.
Sirius came with the Subie. I was on a trip when the free period ended. Once I got off the wait list, it took about another half hour of me trying to get the CSR to stop hard-selling me, and just end the subscription.
They did send me a check of $.02 later, I can't remember why. Maybe it wasn't really a free period, but a super-low-price.
I hate Sirius so much.
Excuse me while I rant.
Soooo... as stated before, Sirius has a frickin' web page to transfer service to a new device. Only, guess what? It doesn't work. Or, it didn't work for me.
So, I called and got a somewhat unknowledgeable human. She told me I didn't have the right plan. Only I did. We went back and forth for a while before she finally told me she could do it for a $16.00 fee. I figured as much.
So......I go to my boat and it tells me I don't have the marine subscription or the audio subscription. (You have to get both, no option to just get marine). So, I called again. The guy, who was somewhat more knowledgeable but not much, told me I didn't have a marine subscription. I explained to him that I've been getting billed for 2 years now on a marine subscription. We argued for about 20 minutes about this before he finally says "oh, I see you have a marine subscription." GR...... So, he said he would have to set me up on a new plan and that it would cost me $47.00. I asked if there was anything different between the plan I've been paying for and the new one and he said, "no, they are both the coastal plan." So, why am I paying 47.00 for a plan that isn't any different from the plan I've been paying for. We went round and round on that for a while before he told me because I've been a customer for a while he would waive the $47.00. Gee, thanks. Anyway, he set things up and told me he would call back in 45 minutes to make sure it was working.
Only he didn't. I went back to the boat and it said I did have an active marine subscription, but not an audio subscription. So, I called back again. I got by far the least helpful human of the bunch. She told me that my equipment was faulty and that I needed to get that fixed. I explained that it was a brand new piece of equipment. Then she told me that I needed to get an audio receiver. This was untrue as well. The device I have is designed to handle both. It even says "Sirius XM" with a weather feed and an audio feed out. We argued about this for while and never got anywhere. She sent another signal to my device and told me to wait for the second guy to call me back. Basically blew me off.
I went back to the boat and turned everything off and back on. Both things are working. Not sure why they didn't before.
My head hurts.
probably <0.01% of their customers use marine features
Yeah, that's true.
I have to say, it's pretty slick. It's just an overlay on the existing map on my simrad. It shows a lot - lightning strikes, wind direction. Nice to have if you are offshore and see stuff off in the distance.
That being said, when storms pop up on the coast and you are offshore, it doesn't matter much what radar you have if you have to go through it to get home. I guess maybe a little help determining which pass to come in through.
My niece came to stay with us for about a week. She volunteered at the St. Petersburg Grand Prix. She's a huge F1 fan but likes all racing.
She got me in on Friday. Not really my thing. Loud and crowded. Just doesn't interest me. Cars were driving around, but not actually racing I don't think. She wanted to get some autographs so we went to an extremely long line. We couldn't even see the beginning of the line and they hadn't even started to sign anything. I ended up sitting under a shade tree while she waited in line. Actually, there were two lines. They split up the drivers. Anyway, she got the autographs she wanted about 2 hours later. She got really lucky because she was the next to last person to actually meet the drivers. They all left right after she got her signatures. I think I would be pretty upset if I stood in a line for 2 hours and didn't get diddly. She got some selfies with some of the drivers too, but don't ask me who. She was pretty excited about it.
She was set to volunteer for 3 days so my wife and I decided to try to run a water line from the side of the house back to the dock. We trenched almost the entire distance (ended up being 110') on day one. We finished up digging on day 2 and put the pipe down. Glued the pvc, and soldered the copper and put it all together. Held our breath and turned the water on. SUCCESS!!! No leaks. It was truly a miracle.
I need to brace it a little better but here's the end result:
Meanwhile, my niece was working on race day and scored some cool videos. Got some good footage of Jon Bon Jovi and Brett Michaels, in addition to even more of the drivers who I don't know.
But, the big score (IMHO).....she got a selfie with David Letterman!!!! How cool is that?
Anyway, great weekend for everyone.
I might have taken on too much with this novel. I'm having trouble getting my arms around it. Too many moving pieces maybe.
