Bolo's House

I'm recording the various things I have done, am doing, or have scheduled to do to my house.

• Incidents
• Appliances and gizmos
• Odd Repair Jobs
• Things to Do
• Yearly Maintenance Schedule
• Lists of work done
• Toilet Cleaners & Cleaning
• Home Improvement Resources
• Replacing Moen Cartridges
• Moen Cartridge Design

Incidents

A Tree Falls

I used my bow saw to defoliate the trunk. A friend helped me carry the trunk off the house, and break it up.

Damages

The Patio Door has Rot

Once I started work on this I discovered that the sill plate of the door, some of the surrounding brick molding, the house siding, and the deck joists in that area were all rotted out. To fix this, I need to remove the deck, so I can remove the patio door and rebuild the rotted members. Afterwards some new siding and deck joists should have the south side of the house prepared for winter.

Water in the Basement

I had to mop about 3 to 4 gallons of water from the basement. Then I cleaned the dirt from the window well, and regraded the outside to give the well a slight lip. I need to do something more, but this should work for now.

Play it again, Sam!

Killer Elite Dust Bunnies From Hell

How not to build a deck

To fix this I need to build a set of "hard points" that are correctly attached to the house's rim joist with lag screws, and that are correctly flashed into the siding so as to make sure water is shed from the construction instead of being trapped! Once that is done I can reattach the deck joists to the hardpoints. This will provide a gap between the deck and the siding so water will not be trapped, and will also make working on the deck easier.

Appliances and gizmos

Kitchen Stove

Microwave

This fall (1999) when I was looking at new dishwashers, I found a microwave that I liked. It is as powerful as the old microwave. It fits under my cabinets, so I can reclaim the counter space where the old nuketron sits. It is another rotating-element design. The interior is large enough to hold a full size plate, and is long enough for a 13" pan to fit inside. The microwave is a GE Profile Spacemaker II Sensor. I really like it; the sensor allows the microwave to reheat food and boil water by itself; it senses humidity levels (and who knows what else) to determine when the task is done. I find that this works really well in practice, although some "tricky" foods such as noodles or rice (which contain a lot of water) are often not heated enough on the first try. Best of all however, I reclaimed a 24" x 24" area in which I can do cooking on! Previously I only had a narrow 12" by 48" of counterspace to work with. I still have that, but I also have this huge area too!

Dishwasher

Both my parents and my sister recommend Maytag, they have had their units for one and two years, respectively, and are happy with them. I am considering another Whirlpool, one that has a lot of sound deadening features and a delay mode. I often end up washing dishes at odd hours, and the machine is sort of loud to run while sleeping. Between the additional quiet and the ability to delay the wash until I am asleep, or until I have left the house, dishes may get washed in a more timely and convenient manner.

I ended up purchasing the Whirlpool that I was looking at, a Whirlpool Gold Quiet Partner with a Accuwash Sensor. That fancy name means ...

1. It is the Gold model with the good interior baskets, trays, control features such as delay wash, various cleaning modes, etc.
2. It is a quiet model with lots of sound insulation. I used to be driven out of my basement shop when the old dish washer ran. This one is just a quiet hum down there.
3. It has a sensor that looks at the color of the water and keeps on washing the dishes until the water is clear enough. If you have lightly soiled dishes this saves on water. If you have heavily soiled dishes it keeps washing until they are clean, so you don't need to run them again or wash by hand.

Lawnmower

I purchased a self-propelled Lawnboy Gold Series mower. It has a 21 inch cast-aluminum cutting deck, and the traditional 2-cycle Lawnboy engine. The drive system has an interesting set of clutches. When the transmission isn't clutched in the two driven wheels are completely free-wheeling, just as in a push mower. When the transmission is engaged the clutches lock up, and .. Voila .. self propulsion! It is almost as good as a differential. The mechanism appears to be similar to automatic locking hubs on a four wheel drive vehicle.

I also purchased a rear bagger with my mower. A Lawnboy mower will discharge grass in 4 ways: mulch, side throw, side bag, and rear bag! This is done with a set of interchangeble plates. The plates cover and/or open the side and top of the deck to provide ports for any of the grass discharge options. For rear bagging, a plate is used which has a bagging duct in the top and a cover for the side-ejection port.

Dehumidifier

I've added a fan to the basement to recirculate the basement air mass. This increases the amount of wet air which passes by the humidifier, and helps to keep the basement dry. A friend recommeded purchasing two smaller humidifiers, but I find this works for me. If I had some walls in the basement, the multiple humidifers might be the choice to go with.

Washer / Dryer

I had MG&E, Madison Gas and Electric run the gas line to my new dryer. The cost was quite reasonable; it cost $131, $4 less than the $135 estimate.

Refrigerator

Satellite Receiver

After having the service for some months, I am favorably impressed with it. I find the picture quality as good as cable, probably better. I receive some channels that I really like, such as the Comedy Channel and the Science Fiction Channel, which are unavailable through TCI.

The gripes I have with the system are:

• I can't use the tuners on my TV or VCR.
• The service is pricy. I'm currently paying $70 a month for the equivalent of Enhanced-Basic cable service and several movie channels. It's a lot more service than you can buy from TCI for the same amount. But the price still irks me; I think cable pricing irks me in general :-(
• The service is disrupted whenever a thunderstorm clobbers the line of sight between my antenna and the satellite. Fortunately this doesn't happen too often.

Odd Repair Jobs

Dishwasher Died

Furnace Wiring

I was taking a closer look at my basement wiring, and discovered the real source of my difficulties. Actually, there is a seperate circuit for the furnace; it doesn't share the basement lighting circuit. Apparently what had happened was when the furnace was upgraded a few years ago, the person rewiring it switched the furnace power lead with the lighting power lead! The end results of this was that my water softener had its own 15 Amp circuit, and the the furnace and all the basement lights shared another 15 Amp circuit!

The fix was simple enough; exchange the two hot leads in the junction box back to where they should have been. Now the furnace and its accesories (the humidifer) are on their own circuit. The water softener, a low current device, grabs its power from the lighting circuit.

Water-stop valves

Upon examination it turned out that all the valves were leaking by the valve stem, as is to be expected with most valves. However, tightening the packing or gland nut to compress the valve-packing more didn't do anything! When I had the time to turn the house water off to dismember the valves and determine what was wrong, it turns out that the valves started leaking because I turned the water to the toilets off when I cleaned the toilet tanks. When I turned the water off, the hard-water deposits on the valve stems cut right through the valve packing material and completely chewed it up.

OK, so it's time to replace the valve packing. Guess what? The valve inserts, valve stem, and everything else was corroded solid. So, no hope of fixing the existing valves. The plumbing in the house is copper, and I didn't look forward to re-sweating all three valves.

Fortunately, I was able to purchase new valves that exactly matched the existing ones. I was able to use the valve-head assembly from these new valves on the existing (installed) valve-bodies, and Voila! that fixed the problem... In two cases.

I wasn't able to find a replacement for the third valve, which was different from the other two. Fortunately I was able to dissasemble this valve-head. I had to extensivevly clean the valve stem to remove the water deposits and to clean up the (slightly) corroded valve-stem. I was able to install a slightly larger packing on the not-quite-perfect valve stem, crank down the packing nut tight, and the third valve was OK too.

But that's not all! Guess what happened to the packing on the valve connecting the city water to the house when I turned it off to work on the interior plumbing. If you guessed that its packing started leaking, for the same reason, you are exactly right! That one is more difficult to fix; I need to shut-off the curb stop so I can replace the main shut-off in the house with a new valve.

Things to Do

Short Term

• Replace the main water shut-off valve. The packing on the existing one is in poor condition.
• Replace rusted-out sections of rain gutter.
• Install curtains in the computer room.
• Install covers over the North window wells.
• Fix the living room drapes to not drag on the floor.
• Clean the outside windows.
• Install flourescent lighting in the basement.
• Install a free-flowing outlet to improve clothes drying. The current one restricts air flow more than the ducting to it does!
• Patch and reseal the asphalt driveway.
• Scrape and paint the various windows that are actively peeling.

Longer Short Term

• Flush the hot water heater.
• Fix the basement windows. All of them were either glued or sealed shut with some junk. That makes the opening feature of them mostly useless. I discovered this when I needed to open them to flush some gas fumes from the basement!
• The Moen faucet cartridge in the Master Bath sink should be replaced. The only water temperatures are warm, and warmer!
• Patch the crack in the West foundation wall. It leaks when the ground is saturated. This will require some hydraulic cement, and also moving my washer and dryer to work on it.
• Regrout the wall and floor tiles in the master bathroom.
• Reglue some loose tiles in the main bathroom.
• Install additional towel holders in the bathrooms.
• Install new rubber gaskets and tank bolts in the toilet in the Master Bath.

Spring

• Mulch around plants in "flower" beds, trees, and other weed-ridden non-lawn areas.
• Grow additional grass in the current lawn.

Medium Term

• Re-arrange the phone wiring.
• Remove metal filings from the hardwood floor in the computer room.
• Strip and Wax the hardwood floors.
• Strip and reseal the window sills and sashes to prevent further moisture damage.
• Clean, repair, and reseal the Deck or Give up and rebuild it.
• Scrape excess paint from the windows so they seal properly.
• Install ethernet and cable jacks.
• Wash the outside of the house.
• Empty window wells of debris. Dig bottoms to below window level and backfill with gravel for drainage. Aka, install french drains at the bottom of the window wells.
• Install new interior lighting; many of the existing fixtures lack the glass pieces which diffuse the light.
• Clean paint drips from the trim, built-in furniture and floors.
• Repair the patio door screen.
• Install a new screen in a screen frame, repaint the frame, and install it in the master bath.
• Repair the kitchen sink window screen, it has a big hole that bugs crawl through.
• Install window well covers.
• Install storm windows on the basement windows.
• Regrade the area around the house to promote better drainage.

Long Term

• Re-grout the tile floor in the master bath.
• Paint two bedrooms.
• Paint myriad closets.
• Replace vinyl flooring in kitchen and hallways. With what you ask? Hardwood is tempting.
• Sand and reseal water stained floor boards in the master bedroom.
• Replace the kitchen countertop. Corian!
• Repair or replace the double-paned glass in the patio door. The old units have lost their air-tight seal.
• Replace the glass in the NE bedroom's lower N double-pane awning windows. There is a hole in the outer pane!
• Replace the sink drain in the master bathroom. The chrome plating has flaked off and the steel is rusting.

Yearly Maintenance Schedule

• Spring: Clean the gutters
• Summer: Clean the gutters
• Summer: Trim the shrubs
• Fall: Clean the gutters
• Start of Heating: Check/Replace the element in the humidifier, clean the humidifier.
• Start of Heating: Have the furnace checked out.
• Late Fall: Clean the gutters
• Late Fall: trim the trees.
• End of year: Replace the air filter in the Furnace. Hmm, move to start of heating?

Lists of work done

1999

• Fixed the furnace wiring problem.
• Cleaned the dryer duct, and replaced a plastic section of the duct with metal.

1998

• Sealed the various rust holes in the gutters with roofing cement. The gutters are too rusted out to fix properly, they should be replaced. Until that happens, the roofing cement should hold. Redux... After 2-3 months, one of the leaks started again, but the others remain patched.
• Trimmed the shrubery again. This time I really trimmed the junipers back a lot. They look much nicer now, and the snow load shouldn't hurt them as much in winter. I should have done this a long time ago, they look healthier and some that were not doing very well are perking up quite nicely!
• Replace or re-pack the water stop-valves on all three toilets
• My oven stopped working again as I was trying to cook food for a party on New Year's eve at the end of 1997. I ended up putting oven stuff into small batches into the toaster oven to cook it :-( After digging around inside the wiring for quite some time, I Fixed the oven yet another time. More connections needed to be re-crimped.

1997

• Mowed the lawn short for fall. I learned that keeping the lawn short over late fall and winter will keep the lawn from being damaged. The longer grass allows it to matt easier and makes it easier to pull out chunks of grass when doing lawn maintenance.
• Fixed the oven. When set to 500 F, the temperature was only 325 F. And it took an hour to warm up to that lowly temperature. I crimped some loose connections in the oven wiring, something I had also done to the stove elements which improved their operation. I cleaned the contacts on the broil element, which were coated in sugar? from a oven fire. I think one of the legs of the 220 circuit wasn't providing power to the oven elements, which was causing the funny behavior I was seeing.
• Found a larger shower curtain for the master bath. I had to combine two curtains to make one large enough. Now the bathroom floor stays dry when I shower!
• Openned up the front and rear yards by trimming some of the lower and downward growing branches from the trees. This should let the grass underneath have more light to grow. Hopefully, it will also open it up enough that the mosquitos no longer find it a perfect resting area.
• Trimmed dead branches from trees. Otherwise they would just fall to the ground when the wind blew.
• Lots of lawn work. The lawn actually appears green and lush most of the time! Watering and overseeding have really helped out.
• The garage is almost empty of stuff left over from moving! There are just a few more things to toss or drag inside.

1996

• Installed a new air filter for the Heating/AC. The filter is a "Space-Guard" high efficiency unit which only needs to be replaced once a year. It does a really good job of removing dust from the air.
• Cleaned and lubricated the humidifier. Replaced the "metal-sponge" evaporative element.
• Cleaned the interior of the toilet tanks. Lots of crud, rust, etc had built up there, and it flushes into and stains the bowl.
• Trimmed the shrubbery. Those innocent looking shrubs and bushes produced a tremendous amount of waste!
• Removed the tree which fell on the roof.
• Weed the strawberry patch, and the flower beds of the worst weed ... it has a cluster of 4 leaves at 90 degrees to each other, two small and two large. I have no idea of what it is.
• I Fixed the electric mower my dad loaned me and returned it to him. I'm planning on purchasing a Lawn Boy.
• Build a table and an equipment rack in the computer room ... I purchased some used computer desks, which work quite nicely. I still want to build a rack to put the random hardware in.
• Cleaned the outside of the windows.
• Point the downspouts to drain away from the house.
• Open the clogged overflow in the main bathroom sink. It was rusted at the lower end.
• I reseated the fixed panel of the patio door so it would seal against the weather seal. Unfortunately, I found a problem.
• Clean the gutters. It was easier to do this from the roof than with a ladder.
• MG&E checked the A/C. It checks out ok!
• Mow the lawn. Yeah!
• I De-thatched the lawn using a steel (bow) rake. This took multiple passes, each from different directions.
• Sprayed broad-leaf weed-killer on the lawn, and around border sections of the back jungle.
• Removed hornet or wasp nests.
• I Retrieved my drill press and table saw from JohnW's basement.
• Install gas piping to the clothes dryer.
  The MG&E guy had the neatest portable pipe threader that I'd ever seen. Powered, accepts up to 1 inch pipe, and includes a cutter, threader, and reamer. All the size of a small toolbox!
• Raked the lawn again to remove last year's remaining leaves. This also removed a tremendous amount of debris and dead grass.
• Remove leaves from the window wells.
• Replace bulbs in the outdoor light fixtures.
• Clean outdoor light fixtures.
• Clean the water softener.
• Replenish the water softener's salt supply.
  There are two types of salt for the softener, pellet and crystal. I tried 50 pounds of crystal. When that is finished, I'm going to try the pellets, and see which works better. With crystal there is a choice between solar (evaporated salt water) salt and rock (mined from caves) salt. A new softening agent is available which uses potassium instead of salt. It's supposed to be more environmentally friendly and safer to drink.
• Eliminated some odors. I believe the odors originated from the cat, no, the cats who kept Daniel out of too much trouble. After many failed attempts at cleaning the affected area, I found some enzyme cleaner which did the trick.
• Clean the wood trim, doors, cabinets, window sashes, etc.
• Vacumn the window screens.
• Rake the lawn to remove the bulk of last year's leaves.
• Vacumn the walls and ceilings in all rooms and closets.
• Clean and sweep the basement. Removed a lot of stuff.

What NOT to do

• Experiment with water displacers to reduce water consumption in the toilets; the current models are all high water use designs.

  Why ... the Monona Water Utility repair guy told me that this would be a big mistake; the toilets are designed to flush with that much water, and to try to make less do wouldn't work; it would just lead to duplicate flushes.

Toilet Cleaners & Cleaning

So, I'm a guy and I'd prefer to not have to clean the toilet very often. So, I try out these things that help keep the toilet clean for you.

• The best thing I've found so far is the Vanish Power System. This is a small plastic container which hangs on the interior of the tank. You drop a solid block of whatever-it-is into the container. Due to hydrodynamics and some plumbing, each flush a new charge of blue-colored special stuff is mixed into the tank water. The advantage of this is that it controls the concentration of cleaning gunk in the tank. So, unlike other tank / pellet systems, the cleaning stuff in the tank doesn't get more and more powerful and corrosive as time goes on.
  Unfortunately Vanish no longer makes the pellets for the system. However the X14 system blocks are just the right size to fit into the container.
• See the above, which I now use the X14 blocks in. They seem to last a reasonable amount of time.
• I do not like the 2000 Flushes blocks. They are supposed to last a long time. What happens is that the blocks disolve into a lump of debris in the tank. The intensity of the block works OK for a while, until it disolves into the pile, and then the water lightens up quite a bit. If you disturb the tank any the debris from the block floats around and creates a super-powerful staining and chlorine combination which is outright dangerous. I also don't like this system because it leaves all sorts of scum in the tank and bowl water. The toilet bowl was never clean, unlike the others. I think the little particles from the disolving blocks were sticking to the bottom of the bowl instead of flushing.
• The little Vanish drop-in blocks are OK. I think they don't work as well as the Power System because the water keeps on getting stronger and stronger as the toilet isn't flushed. Which also means the block is getting disolved more and more, so it doesn't last a long time.
• If you have serious calcium stains in the toilet bowl, try a pumice stick to remove them. It is a bit time consuming but works and doesn't scratch the bowl.

In the in-home trial I did the X14 block in the Power System holder out lasted the other two. The Vanish drop-in was almost totally consumed by the time the 2000 Flushes block disolved into the heap and started causing problems. The X14 block in the Power System holder is still going strong. The giant 2000 Flushes block lasted the same amount as the smaller Vanish drop-in, which didn't have any of the harmful side effects or dirty toilet bowl. I'm getting some more X14 blocks for my toilets for now ...

FluidMaster may do these systems one better! They have a system which directly treat the bowl flush water as the toilet is flushed. This keeps the harmful chemicals and corrosion out of the tank. Of course, it uses special refills and such. Looking at it, it is a bit like the Vanish Power System, but bypasses the tank. Their refils also use some special surfactants which are supposed to coat the toilet bowl to make the solids flush out and not accumulate. I'm going to get a FluidMaster fluid assembly to upgrade one of my toilets with and see how well it works.