July, 2009

Just a quick update before bed: on Saturday I rented an Attic Cat insulation blower from Lowes and picked up a few more bags of insulation. I ended up blowing two bags into the garage attic and the remaining three bags into the condo attic. It was actually pretty fun and I’m satisfied knowing that will pay dividends not only for the garage but for the condo as well.

On Sunday I found a leak in the basement. The piping behind the shower sprung a small leak sometime recently and the laundry room floor and under the shower were covered in water. I was able to find the leak without too much difficulty after ruling out the dehumidifier and the shower drain. I cut open the drywall and hired out a plumber to weld/solder in a new section of pipe. Here’s the new pipe.

Here’s the piece that was removed… notice the water deposits.. making me think this has been a slow leak for a while that widened after the shower was used on Saturday.

That’s all patched up now and I had the contractor who is mudding our garage today and tomorrow patch up a few spots in the house too. After the mudding is done in the garage, I’ll:
-mount up all the accessories that need studs (to create the holes)
-remove accessories and prime and paint
-cut floor, install drains?, apply floor covering
-reinstall accessories

It’s hard to believe the garage project is getting close to completion!

Anyone who knows me reasonably well shouldn’t be surprised I found this youtube video quite humorous.

Orange Juice… wait… 9mm handgun… wait… butter knife!

It’s been a busy week: last Thursday and Friday I worked in Waterloo, Canada and flew on the corporate jet for the first time. I was home Saturday but spent the whole day drywalling the garage with some dedicated friends. Sunday and Monday were spent gone on vacation to Frankenmuth and Tuesday through Thursday I was gone working in High Point, North Carolina. I enjoy the busyness of go-go-go weeks for the most part but it’s always nice when you get back home and have plans to stay a while.

While in High Point, I had dinner with Bryan and Hayley Williams (cousins of my wife) at their new home in Thomasville – about ten minutes away from my hotel. We had grilled chicken and pineapple, beans, and potatoes – a nice meal and a welcome reprieve from the usual on-the-go food typical of business trips. I also had dinner with a coworker of mine (Suzanna) and her husband and son. One conversation that I enjoyed was about geocaching – using a GPS device to find hidden treasures planted by other geocachers. It sounded interesting and I’d heard about it before but never met someone who was involved. Mark convinced me to give it a try so I checked out the website when I got back to the hotel room and was surprised to see that a cache was planted near the Fairfield Inn where I was staying! This couldn’t be just coincidence, right? Using the Nuvi and doing some searching, I found the cache. All in all a neat experience and I’m sure this won’t be the last one I find.

http://picasaweb.google.com/chad.kettner/NorthCarolinaJuly2009

I may or may not have mentioned this, but last Thanksgiving while in Frankenmuth, I submitted a guess for the number of Christmas lights on a giant 40 to 50 foot tree in the main lobby. There were tons of entries submitted so I thought nothing of it – until early January when I received a letter from the Bavarian Inn stating that I had won the weekly drawing. Nice surprise! I had won free brunch certificates for two. A month later, I received a second letter from the Inn, this time stating that I had won the overall contest and as a result, was given a gift certificate good for a free night’s stay for up to four people. Now we really had to revisit Frankenmuth before the expiration dates in 2010! This past weekend provided a good opportunity to do so.

Among the highlights were a trip on the Bavarian Belle, dinner at the Frankenmuth Brewery, and the discovery that Frankenmuth holds the only other Oktoberfest sanctioned by the German government. That sounds like another reason to go back!

http://picasaweb.google.com/chad.kettner/FrankenmuthSummer2009

Today saw a great deal of work done on one of my summer projects: the garage renovation. I and three others tackled drywall and finished the 24′ x 24′ x 8′ area in seven to eight hours. A drywall lift rented from Home Depot for $30 made a huge difference and allowed us to break up the work so that we could be attaching one piece of drywall while also measuring for the next piece. We broke for lunch and had yesterdog delivered (by the wives) and went out for ice cream when finished. All in all, a very successful day and I’m very grateful for the help from Mike, Eric, and Phil. Jason also deserves a thanks for spending a few hours with me on Wednesday picking up the drywall. Here are some pictures from the day.

I took a quick trip to Waterloo, Canada this past Thursday to Friday to do some training and work at a subsidiary there called Softcare. While everything went smoothly at the office, the highlight of the trip for me was actually the plane ride there and back. I was able to catch a ride on one of the Steelcase corporate jets and it’s an experience that I’ll never forget! We were treated like royalty and it’s quick! I left my house and 90 minutes later, we touched down in Toronto. Try that on commercial! Here are some pictures as usual…

http://picasaweb.google.com/chad.kettner/Toronto2009

I flew on one of the Steelcase corporate jets today and absolutely loved the experience – no lines, no waiting, no customs, and a spacious interior are some of the perks of flying corporate versus commercial. The plane is a Falcon 900EX and doing a little research on them, I found a neat video included below.

Not a bad plane for twenty-five to thirty million!

A little over a week ago I posted a picture of some duct piping I creatively put together to attack a problem with hot air in the condo. That solution was obviously temporary – and given that I had today off from work and the weather was supposed to be mild (in the upper 60s), I took the opportunity to start putting the permanent solution in place. Up into the attic I went…

As you can see, it was pretty warm in the attic despite only being 67ish outside. The sun beating on the shingles for several hours this morning is the culprit.

I started with the vent into the A frame of the cathedral ceiling. Used a 14×6 opening for this one. I had to pull back a lot of insulation to get at the drywall.

This is a shot of the transition out of the wall cavity I’m using as a pipe. This is directly above the return air duct vent below the thermostat. You can see the top side of the can light in the hallway by my left foot. The transition piece is a 14 or 12 by 3.5 that’s made for this purpose. This was the hardest part of the whole day: I had to cut through 3 2x4s laid on top of each other to get into the cavity from the top… finally borrowing a reciprocating saw to make it easier.. otherwise I’d probably still be up there drilling holes. After about three hours, I’d gotten it trimmed and perfectly sized.

I used six inch piping throughout.. a y-pipe here allows me to put one vent in the A frame of the living room and another into the master bedroom (which gets really warm on summer afternoons as it’s on the west side of the condo).

I did quite a bit of eyeballing on this project… not typical for me but it worked out well. Here you can see the two pieces that will eventually connect.

By this point, I’m sweating like there is no tomorrow. It’s climbed to 70 outside and about 105 inside.. enough to max out the thermostat.

Here’s the cut and placement of the pipe for the master bedroom. Used a 12×6 here.

Here’s a shot from above the master bedroom showing the entire system. I had to break from the project to head to a 4th of July party so I left the duct taping and clamping for tomorrow. I also need to insulate the pipes to prevent the hot attic air from warming the air in the pipes on the way to the air handler.

After returning from the festivities earlier than expected, I finished the drywall and vent work on the visible side. Here is the A frame vent. Almost looks like it has always been there.

Here is the master bedroom vent. A little close to the door for my liking but there is a few inches of clearance between the edge of the vent and the wall. Both vents have levers for opening and closing so this should allow a lot of flexibility for efficient cooling.

Tomorrow I’ll finish up and in addition to a little work in the attic, I need to open up the bottom of the wall cavity and seal off the existing vent (below the thermostat) so that the suction is from the two new vents in the ceiling. After tomorrow, bring on the hot weather!

I took the TT into the dealership this morning for an oil change and was presented with a $1400 quote for a full brake replacement. Evidently the fronts are about 90% worn and the rears are 80% worn and the discs are too thin to resurface – meaning it all needs to be replaced. I had some idea that this day was coming – last summer I had the dealership investigate a scraping sound from the rear passenger brake area and it turns out I had rust on the rotor. They removed it and the car felt great for about two weeks, at which point it returned. At that time, I looked into aftermarket brakes kits and such as my gear head past forces me to always think about upgrades versus a simple replacement. I didn’t spend much time on at last summer though as it wasn’t imminent. Now it is.

I ended up researching options and purchased EBC Sport Rotors and Hawk HPS pads for a total shipped cost of about a third of the dealers quoted price. I used to do these upgrades all the time in college, replacing rotors and brakes on both my Altima and Del Sol. Hopefully I still have the ability… if so I’ll be able to do the work myself and save a boatload of cash. On top of that, I’ll have much better quality components on the car… can’t beat that!

The low-end of the home theater received an upgrade last week with the arrival of a Polk Audio PSW505. I had previously owned and employed the PSW404 – a great subwoofer – but an opportunity presented itself to upgrade to the bigger brother. The PSW505 features a twelve inch woofer (versus ten inch) and a 300W RMS BASH amplifier (versus 200W). Initial impressions are extremely positive and this speaker definitely fills the entirety of the basement better than the PSW404 was able.

I also purchased a DVE calibration disc and a Extech SPL meter to set up both the picture and sound to cinema specification levels. I’m especially excited to do the sound set up because I’ll finally know how loud my system plays and will make sure it’s well balanced for the ultimate in movie enjoyment.